My Blog

Free Shipping Day

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:26:49 +0000

Tomorrow, December 16, 2011, I’m participating in Free Shipping Day, which means anything you order from my website tomorrow will be sent to you with free shipping and guaranteed delivery by Christmas Eve. I’ll cover all the shipping costs for you!
Merry Christmas!
You can also check out the Free Shipping Day website where over 2000 other online merchants are offering the same deal!

Here are some ideas for giving the gift of art this Christmas - art that encourages, delights, and speaks to hearts all year round. Remember that to receive shipments by Christmas, orders must be placed by December 16th.

The Coming is a full color art book of my paintings, telling the story of Christ's arrival and the fulfillment of the long awaited promises of God. As a special promotion, each book purchased from the website by Dec.16 will include with it two FREE greeting cards of my paintings: He Is The Hope Of All Nations and God Became Flesh.

Christmas Cards - Almost all of my paintings are available as Greeting Cards, and The Coming paintings are especially wonderful to use for your Christmas cards. All cards are blank on the inside, with a description on the back, and they're also standard sizes for framing! They're available in discounted box sets of 8 and 25, and for boxes of 100 cards, they're only $1 each!

Gift Tags - Tag your gifts, and make your wrapping meaningful! Each package comes with 12 different tags, with strings for tying onto your gift.

Giclee Prints are also available of my paintings, on Archival Paper or full size Canvas, and can be framed to make excellent gifts. Currently, there are only a limited number of canvas prints available, so don't miss out!

Gift Certificates - Gift certificates are a great way to give art and allow the recipient to choose what they like best from the website. When purchased, the certificate will be sent to you by email and you can print it out and give it, or send it by email to friends and family from a distance.

And don't forget - if you're near Escondido, CA, you can always select Customer Pick-up for shipping and arrange to pick up your order at the studio. No need to worry about shipping!

May this coming Advent season be filled with joy and anticipation! Thank you for your support and for sharing my work with others!

Busy

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 22:55:04 +0000

Busy...Mjghula...That’s how you say it in Moroccan Arabic and that’s what I’ve been since my last blog post, oh so long ago! Many have asked what creative projects I’ve been working on. Since I’m still in the preparation stage for opening my studio here in Morocco, I’ve been spending a lot of time studying Arabic. One of the great things about being able to draw is that I can create my own pictures to help me memorize new words. It’s so much better to learn them in association with the actual thing or a picture of it, rather than in association with the English word. Can you guess meanings of these pictures? It’s a good exercise for me as well in sketching more quickly and not getting bogged down with detail and perfectionism!

The Lost Thing

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 20:45:32 +0000

Shaun Tan is one of my most favorite artists, and his recently produced animated short film (adapted from his book, The Lost Thing) was just nominated for an Oscar!

I’ll be posting more about him and his work, because I absolutely love his art, but you can click HERE to view the trailer for The Lost Thing.

You can also watch the whole 15 minute film at THIS LINK, but it’s definitely on my list of films to buy.

And lastly, here’s SHAUN’S WEBSITE, so that you can explore his other work. The Arrival is my favorite of his books!

Ancient Roman Mosaics

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:49:00 +0000

The land of Morocco used to be part of the Roman Empire and has numerous sites of ancient Roman cities, with still standing architecture and amazing mosaics. Having studied art and taught art for years, I’ve seen so many pictures of mosaics, and could imagine they must be quite impressive...but they were just small pictures in a book.
It’s another thing altogether to actually see them in person!
They ARE impressive! The shear number of hours that must have gone into creating them, cutting each little tile by hand and placing it in the design, is overwhelming! And they’re beautiful! I love the patterns too! Reminds me of quilting!

Omani Henna

Sat, 8 Jan 2011 21:15:58 +0000

So, I’m back in Morocco now, but I’ve been looking back through pictures from my trip to the Gulf. I love finding new designs and styles from different cultures, and I’m always thinking about how I can incorporate them into my art. The henna designs in Oman are different from those in Morocco.

These are dried henna leaves, which are ground into a fine powder and mixed with water and lemon juice to make the henna paste. Sometimes they mix turpentine into it, to make it absorb strong and fast into your skin, producing a darker stain - which is so frustrating for me, because when I paint, I try so hard NOT to get turpentine on my skin! The health hazards are pretty significant so I always use barrier cream when I paint with oils. Needless to say, when I make my own henna, I don’t use turpentine!

They fill a cone of plastic with the henna and draw on the design with the thick paste (like icing a cake). As it’s drying, it stains the design onto your skin, and then you scrape the dried paste off. The stain last for at least 2 weeks.These were fun new designs to me - the one she used on my hands had lots of circles and it reminds me of the herbal essence logo (a design I really like, by the way).

The henna is bright orange the first day, and then within a few days it becomes a dark brown (compare my hands above). But every person’s skin absorbs it differently. You can see below the difference between my skin type and the skin of my Omani friend’s daughter. Also, the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet absorb it much more darkly than other areas of skin. Scraping the henna off only when it’s completely dry also makes the stain darker.