Mixed Media From My College Years

These are different projects I worked on in college... A lot of my work I gave away as gifts, but I did hold onto a few, including homework assignments:


This wolf was a watercolor that took way too long, but was created at a time in my life when I needed a project that was more than it was worth. Instead of using a multiple tipped fan brush, I painstakingly brushed on every hair of this wolf individually.

This fun little red panda was part of my adventure into pastels. I would like to work more with pastels, if only I had the time.

I love this little hamster.... I could have made the hamster a bit more rich in color, but everything else about this painting I love, especially the depth of the berries.... this was done in watercolor.

This watercolor of an ostrich always cracked me up. The ladies in my dorm (in college) at first thought that the gray was either a starfish, or a man bent over holding two red balloons. I just always enjoyed the ostrich's happiness.

The following black and white was a homework assignment, created with black ink. I loved the whimsical Alice in Wonderland "MadHatter" feel of the different pots and vases that I conveyed in this overlapping study of depth.

My best friend in high school was my greatest muse. She loved to pose for the camera, and I loved taking pictures. Later I loved recreating my photography into watercolor or other media. I never got very good at reproducing the human face acurately (as I can animals or even the human body)..... this still remains my favorite human watercolor.

My self protrait in college... don't ask and I won't tell....

An oil painting that I did as an assignment in college.... again no facial features, but I do love this hands on creation.

This was a fun one, and one of my favorites.... It was patterns that I created and printed from PhotoShop and then applied the gradients to a lion cub resting on a tree branch. I also used poster board as a way of displaying depth.

I cried over this graphite drawing of jars. It was my most challenging drawing assigned to me yet. I had the worst time with shading and I threw my heart, blood, sweat and tears into it. After many failed attempts, I finally perfected my vision and presented this.... It was one of the few displayed in the halls of my college. I learned so much about shading with this project that I feel my present work never would have progressed without this challenging (yet productive) assignment. It is a work that I look at and say to myself, "it's just a few jars," yet I don't think I could ever bear to part with it.