Illustration and Poetry (With Cats!)

"Love is the mystery of water and a star." –Pablo Neruda 

April is National Poetry Month. Below is a new piece of art inspired by this
snippet of a poem, step-by-step, working backwards. Enjoy!

After much fussing over details... the final art!

Building up the color.

Another view from the drawing table.

First pencil layer.

Rough color thoughts and a few tweaks on a printout of the sketch.

The original pencil sketch.

Sketchbook thumbnails. (No wonder I can't read my own handwriting!)

Silly Questions**

Can somebody please explain to me why good-hair-days always happen when you plan to wear sweatpants and hunker down in the studio to work-- yet on the days when you have an important meeting or a fancy party, it's awful??

On another note-- April is National Poetry Month. You can sign up here to receive a daily poem by email.

(** While I believe there truly are no silly questions, some are probably more trivial than others. This would be one of them.)

Fool for Poetry

"Beginning April 1, Poets.org will send one new poem to your inbox each day to celebrate National Poetry Month. The poems have been selected from new books published this spring."