Having been working primarily on architecture themed works these past few months, I thought I’d take a little break and try my hand at charcoal again on a bit more of a natural subject matter.I honestly haven’t touched charcoal in over a year, so getting back to the swing of things took some time; but working on this project made me think to myself,” Why haven’t I worked with charcoal more?!”

Continuing on with the local illustration series, and moving away from the town of Gilbert and into the city of Tempe; the first landmark that I want to showcase is ASU’s Gammage Auditorium. ASU Gammage, named after Arizona State’s past president Grady Gammage was designed and constructed in the early 1960s by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright’s famous geometric style can be seen all throughout the exterior and interior, and today the building is primarily used for touring Broadway productions.

These past few months I’ve been experimenting with different styles and ways to visually portray through bead weaving, and one design I ended up really liking was this sort of more realistic approach. I’ve experimented a bit with recreating images through weavings in the past, and have learned a lot from what I can and cannot do when it comes to limits in color and detail; so hopefully this piece shows a little bit of progression in that area.

Starting off the new year, and continuing further on into my series of local illustrations; we have the iconic Gilbert Water Tower. Located in the heart of the Historic District of Downtown Gilbert, this water tower is a main landmark of the town and area. This water tower, originally constructed in 1925, has become an enduring symbol of the town and serves now as a small park and plaza for the downtown area.

About a year ago in the spring, I took some photos of nearby plants while waiting for my next class. I didn’t really have a reason to, but the vivid and vibrant colors that those plants had in contrast to the dusty browns and tans of the desert landscape around it really caught my eye. Going and looking through my photos many months later, I was inspired to try and convey the beauty of this cactus in particular using my chalk pastels on toned paper.

Back to the illustrative series of drawings depicting local landmarks in and around the Phoenix area; and continuing further into the town of Gilbert, we have Liberty Market. Known today as a popular brunch place in the heart of Historic Downtown Gilbert, Liberty Market initially originated as a grocery store in the 1930s. Keeping the memory of Gilbert’s historic district alive through the original building’s name and exterior, the space was later repurposed into a restaurant in 2008.

Continuing on with my most recent series of drawing the interesting and unique architecture and landmarks of places in and around the Phoenix area, I am further exploring the town of Gilbert, Arizona. This time highlighting Petersen’s Ice Cream and Cafe.

With the prospects of very soon starting to sell my work both online and at some upcoming art markets in the coming months, I have decided to start a large collective series of line work drawings portraying some local, unique, and beautiful landmarks and locations from surrounding cities in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

I just took a short trip over to San Diego, California and had a very nice time exploring the city and beaches. This Lifeguard tower in Coronado really caught my eye, and I thought that it’d work perfectly as a continuation on my series of using color and pattern as a means to emphasize architecture.

Recently, I have started to explore a lot with glass beads again and what all I can make that is both new and also unique, with the goal of creating something that can be displayed in the home like a small wall hanging. With that sort of in mind, I have spent some time these past few months just creating and working on different designs and patterns that could maybe translate well in the form of these bead weavings.

Knowing that I frequently like to depict churches in my work, I was asked a few months ago to do a commission of this quaint, little church off the side of Route 95 in Yuma, Arizona. In front of the church is their father’s old motorcycle, which the family has had many memories and trips with.

Ever since my senior exhibition, I have grown to love chalk pastel and all that is possible with the medium. So to start something new and to explore further with a smaller composition, I set myself out to the task of drawing this image of a lone Joshua tree I took from Joshua Tree National Park.

Getting back into the swing of things with pen and ink and thinking of ways to sell my work in the future, I thought I would try an idea I recently had of taking a drawing, scanning it, and printing it onto different colored paper. Here is an end example example of that concept.

I recently went on a week long trip to Oregon and explored the beautiful landscapes, structures, and features throughout the region. One of the things that I enjoyed was all the unique lighthouses. So for this drawing, I really wanted to focus on the characteristic and features of one of those structures.

Still very much inspired by my recent trip up to Northern California and Southern Oregon, I chose to depict Jacksonville City Hall; located in the small and historic town of Jacksonville, Oregon. The town itself is beautiful, both in its historic architecture and in its scenery, that I really wanted to showcase some of that in this piece.

I thought that I would try something new and explore a new style with my digital art that I have been wanting to try for some time now. I have not really messed around too much with color yet digitally, but I still wanted to do a somewhat limited color palette; so this is what the end result of my experimentations ended up being.