Baby Trunk Fish=cute? Who Knew?!

Recently while searching for some fish reference, I stumbled upon a photo of a tiny baby trunk fish. These are quite possibly some of the cutest fish I have ever seen. They're plump, polka dotted and not much bigger then a marble. I had to draw/paint one out in my sketchbook...along with a few other sea friends (I'm told sea friends are now called "sea kittens?"...really???).

Saturday Night Breather!

No better way to spend a Saturday night then to painting and sketching for yourself. After working, I decided to start playing around with a few colors. Here's a few little thumbnail paintings I made this evening in my sketchbook. These little moleskine watercolor books are AMAZING. They hold gouache like a dream and the pages don't buckle! (I tend to be a little too generous with my paint, so this little book proves to be a champ!) I just wish they made these books a wee bit bigger!

3 Is The Magic Number

Getting stuck on pieces is something I'm always going through. I think it has a lot to do with making a large quantity of work in a short period of time, the gears stop working and you have to oil up the machine. Something that helps me tremendously is going back to the basics, doing 3 color paintings and putting no limits on the materials you want to use. In this case, gouache, ink and pen. As long as It involves 3 colors. Seems weird, but it always works and gets me out of a bind. Working this way also starts to inspire me to make more limited color pieces and focus more on composition.

Birthdays at the Buscema house

Every year when our birthdays came around, we were always excited to see what our Gran'pa would come up with for us. That's because he would always (never missed a year!) draw us our birthday cards. It was by far the best present and something we always looked forward to getting. Here are two cards he had made me when I was in my teens:

At the time, I worked at a local bookstore...we would ALWAYS get customers (mostly on senior discount day) in the store trying to return books they had purchased eons ago!


If you know me, you know that I love my monsters dearly. You also probably know how what a pack-rat I am with my collectibles!

Meet...Easy Bake Bear!

Last night I was finally able to finish customizing my teddy trooper toy! He'll make his debut at Genuine Artikle's custom toy show, December 20th. I really underestimated how much time and patience these little toys require to customize.