Em's Smorgasboard.

I had the absolute honor and distinct pleasure of doing a smorgasboard this holiday season for a friend of mine over in England! SmorgasBOARDS are my absolute favorite things to do because they're a visual representation of a person. It took me about a month to do this piece, at 15x15 inches, and surprisingly, it made it to England in 5 days! It was finally given to Em on Christmas and she loved it! Check it out, including some of my favorite details, by clicking below!

Windwaker.

Back in 2015 when my sister when my sister got married, I wanted to make her something special. My whole family loves the Legend of Zelda. We grew up playing it, our parents played it, it's a thing. For her wedding, I used cut paper to create a piece of art based off of the Legend of Zelda mosaic pieces that are out there in the world. She loved it. You can see it here! 

This year, for Christmas, my sister wanted me to make her another Zelda piece, but also wanted it to be a smidge bigger. I did her one better and did one three times bigger and decided to paint it. Little did I know, this would be the most ambitious undertaking I've ever pursued.

This piece TESTED me. I painted it and used a copic liner for the smaller black outlines/details, but I am so happy with how it came out and so was she. It took hours, DAYS! I had no idea it was going to take as long as it did. I told her that if someone had paid me to do this, I would've charged them $500 based on the time it took.

Check it out and all of the fun details! I'd love to do another one, but I'd plan better next time. Click to enlarge! I'm proud of this!

Meghan.

A friend of mine passed away a couple of days ago. Her name was Meghan and all she wanted was to make it to Christmas. She passed away not long after midnight on December 22nd.

It's hard for me to imagine there being a god when he would allow someone to suffer as much as she did and at such a young age. Meghan was only a couple of years older than me and she was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer a month after my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. My dad lived for just over 6 months after his diagnosis and he would often talk to Meghan on the found. She was a comfort for him. Meghan fought on for 3 years more than my dad. Her spirit and eternal hope would've kept her around forever. It was her body that couldn't fight anymore.

Meghan and I went to the same elementary school. We both won the spelling bee. She was always kind and truly one of the nicest people in the world. There isn't a bad thing to be said about her. I wish she would've lived beyond all of us.

A lot of things don't make sense to me. Why her? Not that anyone deserves to die, but she definitely didn't. One of the last things she did before she passed was have me do a piece of art for her friend who has been watching her two cats. She wanted me to draw her friend's cats as a thank you for watching her cats. Meghan posted the piece on her facebook and implored anyone looking for art to reach out to me. She changed her profile picture. She posted a status about how this was near the end and that was it. To even go out of her way to write about me left me speechless. I couldn't believe it. Here was a girl, fighting to live, writing a glowing review for me. So, I wanted to share that piece with all of you.

I am lucky to be here. I am fortunate to have made it through Christmas. Tomorrow I am going to her funeral. There's never enough time. We all take everything for granted. Stop doing that. Breathe in and breathe deep. Nothing is guaranteed.

To Meghan.

Merry Christmas!

It's Christmas and I wanted to share a couple of pieces I whipped up for the occasion!

A friend of mine asked me if I could make her a Scrooge from A Christmas Carol. Did you know I've never seen or read it? Maybe I'm a bad Christmas fan, but that didn't stop me from having a FIELD DAY making this! It is chock full of texture, color, and mark making. She loved it, by the way.

The other thing I did was treat myself to a new artistic tool called a CUTTLELOLA! It's a dot making pen that kind of seems like a tattoo gun! It has two speeds and in 40-45 minutes, I was able to make this Santa! The pen gets pretty warm after about 20 minutes. An artist designed it to help with wrist fatigue. I think it's pretty neat. The finished art looks like a xerox which is weird, but for my first attempt, I can't wait to see where I go with this baby!

I hope everyone had an awesome Christmas and even better holidays. 2020 is nearly upon us and I AM READY FOR A GREAT YEAR! So, cheers to you all and thanks for sticking with me!

15. Kylo Ren.

Kylo Ren. I am in love. I saw the FINAL STAR WARS movie last night at 1:30 AM in IMAX (and it didn't get out until 4:15 am) and it was SO, SO GOOD. I cried, hard, a couple times, but Adam Driver. I love you. I adore you as this character. Also, I really, really love how this card turned out because of the purples and reds. I'm learning more about painting and it's so fun, but here we are, at the end of this series. I learned so much and had the best time doing it. Thanks for sticking with me!

14. The Child aka Baby Yoda.

There is nothing cuter in this world than Baby Yoda. I know it's not actually Baby Yoda, but that's what I'm calling him. I literally cannot contain myself when I see him. I think my heart is going to explode every single time I lay my eyes upon him. UGH! The Mandalorian as a whole is pretty fantastic, but I love that little creature. One more Star Wars post to go!

13. Rey.

Rey is one of my favorite characters from the new series. She's tough, compassionate, kind, and fights for what's right. Had to hook her up with a nice blue glow in this portrait. Rey forever.

12. Darth Vader.

There is no Star Wars without Darth Vader. He's easily one of the greatest villains in cinematic history and I couldn't wait to post him. I'm doing a Star Wars marathon right now and he's just too good. This is officially Star Wars week! The last movie comes out Thursday and I only have 3 more portraits to post! I've enjoyed this a lot.

11. Stormtrooper.

They never really know what's going on do they? I don't.

10. Jabba the Hutt.

I wasn't originally going to do Jabba the Hutt. I was having trouble selecting characters, but my little sister, Shelby, suggested him and I had to do it. I wanted to make sure he wasn't a bunch of muddy colors, but a fun, bright, slobbery mess. I really love the way he turned out. He's way cuddlier than they make him out to be in the movies!

9. Poe Dameron & BB-8.

The only card to feature two characters: Poe Dameron & BB-8! I had to paint super small to accomplish this, but this is a card I am also super happy with. I loved doing his jacket and his puffy vest and BB-8 looks super cute back there hanging out. Only 6 cards left!

8. Lando Calrissian.

Lando. The most fashionable person there ever was in his capes. I held a vote to see if people wanted to see old or new Lando and old Lando won. Party.

7. Boba Fett.

I'm not Boba Fett's biggest fan, but for some reason I chose to spend an ungodly amount of time pouring over the details of this bounty hunter. I mean, he's a cool dude, don't get me wrong; he's a true rebel. I don't know, I wanted to get all of the metal and rust spots down. This one is definitely my favorite!

6. C-3PO.

I find C-3PO to be kind of annoying, but when paired with R2-D2, I love the two of them together. They pair well. Anyway, I was freaking out having to do this gold metal, but I actually like the way it turned out.

5. R2-D2.

If R2-D2 isn't one of the cutest little droids, I don't know who is. I like when he uses that little arm to fix things. If you look at the card, it says Artoo-Deeto, but on a bunch of sites, it says his named is Detoo. Matt jokingly said, "What if this card is worth like $900 and you painted on it?" I'd say that'd be about my luck.

4. Chewbacca.

The Chewbacca noise has a few different spellings, but I can do it and it's pretty impressive. This was one of the first ones I did that made me realize I could do this set. So, I'm super happy with him!

3. Han Solo.

Han is a real rebel because he does what he wants, but comes in and helps everyone anyway. I'd hang out with Han Solo in the Millennium Falcon.

2. Princess Leia Organa.

I wanted to make Carrie Fisher more illustrative than realistic when I did her for this trading card. I had a good time with her. I definitely wanted to do iconic Leia.

1. Luke Skywalker.

In honor of the LAST STAR WARS MOVIE OF THE TRILOGY coming out in a mere 15 days, I wanted to do something REALLY special. Back in May, Matt and I took a trip down to Bell Buckle in Tennessee where we wandered around an antique shop. In the back, in a little basket, sat a set of old 1977 vintage Star Wars trading cards. I knew right then that I had to buy them so I could paint mini portraits on the front of the cards.

The back of the cards are super cool because they say stats about the character or talk about a scene. It's like an altered card, but not in the traditional sense. Anyway, I'm doing a series of 15 characters and I'm debuting a new style, too. I feel like this is what I've been working towards my whole life. Definitely want to do more in this style going forward.

It seems fitting I'd do this near the end of this year. I've done a lot of work in different styles and now I'm finally finding my way. It's very illustrative and I can't wait to show each of these pieces off because I feel like they just get better and better.

To Star Wars! Let's kick it off with Luke Skywalker!

Hodge Podge.

I've done a lot of random work over the last month and I thought I'd just post all of it. The Super Mario piece is neat because I did the pixel Mario and Matt did Metal Mario. The last piece is a special one. A girl I went to high school with asked me to paint a portrait of her best friend's dad. He passed away and she wanted to do something special for her. That was a hard task. The photo was super grainy and you couldn't see any detail, but my friend and her friend absolutely loved it. It was framed and put next to a photo of them. Check out everything below and HAPPY DECEMBER!