Laura's Holiday Card - 2023

2023 marked 10 years that I’ve been working with Laura on all of her creative and fun holiday cards. Here you can see every fun holiday card Laura and I have worked on together.

2023 was no exception when it came to something fun. Laura joked about doing a traditional card with just a family photo. I told her their family would wonder if something was wrong or if there was a hidden meaning.

This year was simpler than previous years; minimal Photoshop this time. She just sent me the photos of her family and I went to work with the Polaroid concept and the simple wood background.

What a fun holiday card!! Thanks, Laura!

Art in the Barn 2024

This weekend I participated again in Art in the Barn hosted by the Draper Visual Arts Foundation. It’s a fun, local show that I’ve done for three years now. I always opt to have a tent outside of the barn at Draper City Park so I can set up my own booth. Every year I consider setting in physically IN the barn, but it gets very crowded in there and it’s just not my jam.

I got to chat with some artists who I met last year and meet a few new faces too. The DVAF brought in a food truck each afternoon and there was plans to have live music playing on Saturday afternoon too. I got to chat with Stasia, a violinist who played at last year’s event. It was awesome chatting with Jacque Tietjen with High Adventure Photography and meeting Brooke Ochs, a contemporary folk artist.

This year, Utah’s summer weather got the best of us though.

On Friday, it was breezy, a little gusty, and a few scattered moments of rain. It was honestly no biggie. My tent held up just fine and my displays are heavy wood and pegboard, so nothing budged. I just had to move things around a little bit when it rained for 10 minutes at a time.

I assumed the weather kept lots of people away. There really weren’t a lot of people, but I knew that in previous years, Friday was typically slower than Saturday.

When I signed up for this show three years ago, I had wicked anxiety about it being super windy and stuff blowing over, so my husband and I built my stuff to withstand those potential winds.

Saturday proved to be different.

There was no rain, but by about 2pm, the winds were gusting horribly. I tried to stay confident that my tent and displays could handle it. I even started painting a little bit. But when one of my 7-foot-tall displays blew over and I could see the wind trying to pull tent stakes out of the ground, I cut my losses and called it quits. Thankfully, nothing was broken.

I did manage to sell a few prints and I gave away a bunch of the Delicate Arch postcards that I had made. I got to bond with a couple of awesome artists too who were my neighbors over the fun weather. Unfortunately, both of my kids had soccer games this weekend, so they couldn’t come and hang out with me and let me browse the rest of the show. So I totally missed getting to see the artwork of my friend’s daughter.

Overall, it was disappointing to have to close up early. Saturday afternoon and evening usually brings the most people. But I also understand that we can’t control the weather. Given that this was my 3rd year at this show and this was the first time the weather played chicken with us, I count myself lucky.

And let’s be honest… a little wind and rain is still WAY better than 100°!

Ten Decades and Counting Book Cover

I had the absolute privilege of designing a book cover for my grandpa’s autobiography this spring. He turned 104 in July and he’s been working on his autobiography for a few years with some help from his eldest daughter and a few of us grandkids.

My grandpa, Kenneth, was born in Missouri in 1920. He grew up during the Great Depression and served in the 106th infantry division in WWII where he played with the USO band. He met my grandma by chance at a USO dance. She also served and was a nurse. They were married for over 75 years until she passed away at 102 years old. They raised 4 kids together. And when I say together, I really mean it. My grandpa was more hands-on as a dad than so many men from his generation and I know it made an impression on the kind of father my dad was/is. I’d like to think it even influenced what kind of dad my husband has been to our kids.

With his heavy background in music, my grandpa taught music, band, orchestra, and more in Kansas public schools for decades and was inducted into the Kansas Teachers Hall of Fame in the 1980s.

One of the tasks I was more than happy to help with was editing and cleaning up the photos from my grandpa’s life; photos of varying ages and conditions. We knew that any photos printed in the book would be in black and white, so I was able to clean up quite a few photos and converted any color images to grayscale. This is definitely NOT a specialty of mine, but there are a few I’m quite proud of.

Correcting photos with silver oxidation was a new one for me. Many thanks to YouTube for a few different techniques.

My grandpa is the kid on the left with his brother and his dad, my great-grandpa.

My grandparents in the 1940s.

Top left: my grandma with my Aunt Sue and my dad. Top right: my grandparents with their 4 kids for some kind of “family of the year” photo shoot. Bottom left: my grandparents when they got married. Bottom right: my grandparents in Bali in the 1980s.

For the book cover, my cousin Chris and I had a handful of photos of my grandparents together that we decided between. We agreed that this one worked best for the cover. I love how they aren’t looking at the viewer and it feels like an intimate moment between them. I love the look in their eyes and how my grandma is messing with his jacket button. It’s a perfect pose that shows me how in love they were without looking like it was posed. Honestly, I don’t know if it was a posed photo, it may not have been.

For the cover design, I wanted to isolate them from the background, but I didn’t want the background to be empty either. After cleaning up as much of the dust and spots and noise in the scanned image as I could, I played with some different blurring effects and colors. In the end I’m really happy with how it turned out.

My cousin Chris, wrote the blurb for the back and we were able to get it published through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing.

My grandpa’s book is available for purchase on Amazon if you want to order one. CLICK HERE to buy through my affiliate link.

10-Day Painting Challenge

I stumbled upon a 10-day painting challenge on Instagram co-hosted by Canvas; the company where I got my awesome desk lamp that lets me easily make time lapse videos for my socials and decided to sign up.

The challenge was hosted by Blue Pine Arts; a boutique watercolor supply company based in India, included a private Facebook group (over 600 people!) that I joined where we all shared our paintings each day and how we felt about them and the challenge. I’ve seen challenges like this a lot over the years, but 10 days felt much more doable than a 30-day or longer challenge.

When I saw this challenge, I realized that I hadn’t painted anything since March. I needed a kick in the butt to make more art, and this was it.

Now, what to paint… often the biggest challenge.

Day 1:

I started with absolutely NO idea what I wanted to paint. Thanks to Facebook memories reminding me of an awesome camping trip I took to Kents Lake in central Utah many years ago, I decided to paint that lake from a photo I took.

Honestly, I don’t like this painting at all. I felt rusty. I felt like my hands didn’t know what to do, what colors to choose, how to make the brushes do what I wanted. I kind of gritted my teeth to get it to a finished spot so I could move on. HERE you can watch the Reel I made for this one.

Day 2:

I opted to paint something well within my comfort zone so I could have at least one painting I knew I would be happy with. I painted a galaxy sky on a 4x6 piece of paper with some happy trees at the bottom. I limited palette to only phthalo blue, imperial purple, indigo, and white gouache for the stars. I kinda love it. You can watch a Reel of this painting HERE.

Day 3:

I tried something new on day 3. Upon seeing a handful of other paintings in the FB group I opted to try some misty mountains and trees. I have always struggled with getting wet-on-wet to do exactly what I want. Usually, I have blamed it on the dry Utah climate. One artist explained how she soaked her paper in a bathtub for a few minutes before starting her painting and all I could think of was, “why have I never tried that?!?!”

I submerged a piece of 300lb watercolor paper in a bin and let it sit for 5-ish minutes and went to town with indigo to just see what happened. After that first wash dried, I went in with varying shades of dark greens and blues to add trees and I really love how it turned out. This one was a win. You can watch the process for this painting HERE.

Day 4:

Continuing on this trend, I soaked Day 4’s paper in water too with the goal to attempt an aurora borealis. There are a few artists on SkillShare who’ve done aurora tutorials and I have never been able to get the paint to behave the same way. I honestly hate this painting and I think I have a ways to go to figure out this technique, but at least I learned a few things.

First, soaking the paper for 10 minutes helped a ton, but part of it still dried before i finished the first wash. In the future, I’m gonna try to soak the paper for longer AND paint faster.

Second, I need to choose my colors more wisely. These washes granulated a LOT more than I wanted. Granulation = that grainy separation in pigment. I think I’m good to keep the indigo, but I need to choose different blues and purples that don’t granulate as much. I know some artists love granulation. I do when I’m painting things like rocks, stone, or sand. But I don’t like it for this.

Day 4 was a learning experience, and I have no video of this because my phone filled up!!

Day 5:

I started Day 5 with the goal to paint Horseshoe Bend in Arizona from a photo I took a few years ago. Then my family was invited to spend a day at a lake with friends, so that won. I got it sketched out and some colors blocked onto the paper and left for the day.

Also on Day 5, I submerged a couple of 4x6 pieces of paper in water for 10 minutes and threw some indigo or dark green on them to see what would happen. I had zero plans for what they would be, just decided to let the art gods take the wheel.

Day 6:

I finished the painting of Horseshoe Bend. It was a little challenging to be loose with some of the texture of the sandstone and to not get nitpicky on the details. I did a lot of squinting and stepping away from this one so I didn’t overthink it. Overall, I love how it turned out and it keeps the somewhat “illustrative” style that I love to do when I paint red rock. HERE you can watch a Reel of this painting process.

Day 7:

For Day 7, I took one of the little papers I submerged in water on Day 5 and threw on some purples and pinks to see what evolved; thinking I’d do another galaxy. I ended up with what looked like pretty stormy clouds, so I added a horizon and some simple waves and voila! a moody seascape! HERE you can watch the reel I made for this one. I’m think I need to learn how to make some different waves. In hindsight, this moody sky deserved some more turbulent waves.

Day 8:

For Day 8, I started a larger painting of a part of Kanarra Falls in southern Utah. I was too ambitious with my time on this one. I got it started, but then had to take my kids to soccer and taekwondo. So Day 8 was a work-in-progress.

Day 9:

My family decided to spend the day (a Sunday) in the Uinta Mountains fishing, relaxing, and escaping the heat at home. We spent the day at Pass Lake, which is one of the many lakes along the Mirror Lake Scenic Byway in Utah. My husband and my boys did some fishing (my husband actually did catching). And I painted this little scene. It’s always fun to paint outside when the breeze makes the paint dry super fast. I was also grateful for that breeze keeping the mosquitoes away.

HERE you can watch a Reel of what I pack with in my Art Toolkit when I’m painting en plein air and the supplies I bring. Also, HERE is a reel of me painting this one.

Day 10 (and 11):

For Day 10 I finished the painting of a slot canyon in Kanarra Falls. Well, it took longer and spilled into Day 11 too, but I’m happy with how it turned out. I used watercolor, ink, and gouache.

This painting is an example of one I will probably tweak in Photoshop after scanning it. I want to lighten and adjust the saturation in a few spots to help with depth. Even when the painting part is done, I still consider a few unfinished until I can play with them on my computer. This is why I don't sell very many original paintings (maybe for the right price). We'll see if I can get it to a place where I am happy with it. HERE you can watch a Reel of this painting process.

All in all I am SO happy that I signed up for this painting challenge. I needed to pull myself out of a rut and I needed to relearn how to MAKE time for myself and my painting.

Utah Taekwondo State Championship Poster 2024

My kids and I have been students of taekwondo for about a decade. My oldest and I both have our 1st Dan black belts and my youngest will test for his this spring. You can read about my TKD journey here and here.

I have done a lot of graphic design work for our studio over the years too. My taekwondo master is involved with the Utah State Taekwondo Association and last month she asked me to create a poster for a state championship tournament.

My boys and me from 2018 and 2020.

We haven’t had a state tournament in Utah since 2019. In 2020, all tournaments were cancelled (remember that pesky pandemic?). Then, when tournaments started coming back, USA Taekwondo changed things up. They created regional Grand Prix tournaments that were required for athletes to qualify for Nationals. This essentially rendered our state tournament moot.

Martial arts tournaments are expensive to run and difficult to organize, so I get it. Why put on a tournament if we don’t have to? My kids competed in 2022 because our West Grand Prix was in Reno, NV (driving distance for us) and Nationals was home in Salt Lake City. Last year, we opted out of taekwondo tournaments because they were in Portland, OR and Jacksonville, FL. That was more expensive travel than we wanted to do.

USA Taekwondo has decided that our state tournament can be a qualifier for athletes who want to compete at Nationals… they just have to win gold or silver in their event(s). Awesome news for our athletes and even more awesome for athletes who want to get a little tournament experience, but want to have to travel to get it.

Back to the poster…

I did a quick Google search for taekwondo posters to see what others have done in the past. Most have photos of taekwondo athletes and since we haven’t had a tournament since 2019, I didn’t want to use old photos. Instead, I searched through my own photos of athletes from our studio at various events over the years and turned them into cartoons using Procreate on my iPad.

First I made a save-the-date graphic. I didn’t even know the tournament venue yet!

These are the two photos that I used for this first graphic. I took them at a sparring event we hold every few months at our studio. The first photo is of my son sparring his friend attempting to kick him in the head. He missed, haha!

I drew the athletes on separate layers and exported them separately so I could move them around independent from each other. This allowed me to make my son look a little larger and more proportional to his opponent, who’s like six inches taller than him. It also let me adjust the two girls sparring so Irene is making better contact with her opponent.

Oh, the random stuff that went through my head when creating these… including having to put them all in long-sleeved, white uniforms, gloves, and competition footwear called Daedo socks.

Most tournament posters feature sparring athletes because, let’s be honest, it’s one of the most exciting events to watch. Now that I know more about other events, like poomsae (forms), I enjoy them, but sparring always draws the most spectators.

Even so, I wanted to include more events, so off to my photo archive I went. This is the final poster once they figured out a venue and the little details:

Here are the various photos I used:

I snapped this photo at the 2018 state tournament of one of my instructors, Master Samy Moras as she competed in nunchucks. I was still learning the right settings for shooting indoors, hence the motion blur. She composed a YouTube video about that tournament you can watch here.

This photo is from the same state tournament of my friend Liam, doing a flying side kick as part of his board breaking routine.

A fellow student, Breanna demonstrating the black belt form keumgang in last spring’s black belt test. She was testing for her 2nd Dan black belt.

A former instructor, Logan doing a beautiful flying side kick during his 2nd Dan black belt test a few years ago.

A fellow student, Mirai, demonstrating poomsae during her black belt test last year.

I’m pretty happy with how the final poster turned out. I even managed to redesign the Utah State Taekwondo Association logo to something a bit more legible. Their old logo used a tough font to read and it never actually said “Association” on it. It said “Championships.” That redesign was tweaked even more this week to the final logo below:

What a fun project to work on! It was really soothing working in Procreate on these drawings and having fun with the folds and wrinkles of the uniforms. Plus, I was able to take my iPad with me to the trampoline park when my kids had a play date.

Now the most pressing issues: Are my kids going to compete? Am I??? My kids have done it before. They’ve competed in sparring, poomsae, and board breaking. I’ve never competed. I’ve never wanted to spend the money or stress about having to learn and essentially cram new poomsae in a short period of time. So we’ll see.