Welcome!

Welcome to LEAN2creative works!  Thanks for dropping in to see what is happening with my fledgling art and illustration business.  I am working on a number of projects that will eventually be available for sale in my on-line shop.  In the meantime, please check back in with the blog from time to time: I'll share some of my work in progress, including some of my inspirations and early sketches. 

One of my first products will be a calendar called Market Season, which will share a year of my adventures at our wonderful local farmers market, plus a little about my strategies for making delicious food in that is simple, healthy, and manageable in the busyness of everyday life.  I have settled on the basic design, and am now playing with format, text, and drawing technique.  I am experimenting with loose drawings that use a combination of graphite and colored pencil.  You can see one of these little tests in the picture above right; the one below it is a sketch of the calendar cover, featuring some lovely leeks on my wooden cutting board.

People are often curious whether I use references for my drawings.  The answer is yes; whether it is a goat, person, or veggie, I typically do study drawings first to get to know a subject.  After a while, I know the basic structure and elements of that critter or plant or rock, or whatever it is, and can design new versions of it without models or references.  The arugula in the photo at above left will show up loosely rendered in a drawing like the one above right.  This is a skill I honed in architecture school and beyond; once you study how buildings work, and draw existing buildings, you can start to recombine and reinvent, and create something entirely new in pictures before it becomes a physical reality.