A sneak peak into my work

Ever since I was a kid I have loved to draw and write books. I have boxes and boxes full of little drawings I've done over the years. I just doodled for fun for myself and didn't really show much of my stuff. No one really knew how much I loved to draw throughout high school. Now that I'm in college, whenever I tell people I am an art major, they always get excited and want to see what I do... well I have always been extremely shy about showing anything to anyone probably because I don't think it's "perfect". Well, I'm a way off from perfect, but after looking through my sketchbook today, I realized that in fact the more I "doodle" and practice putting ideas on paper, the better I become. I noticed alot of my artwork getting a little better as I went through the sketchbook. That's the cool thing about sketchbooks is youcan go back and see the progression after time. SO, today I finally decided to post a few sketches I've done. I haven't completed most of them, they're just rough ideas, but I actually got excited about a few of these characters and I hope to someday create a really good idea for childrens books with some of these characters. Eventually, with the help and idea of my brother Marshall, I may just create a blog just for my work and maybe get people to see it....maybe. In the mean time, it's mostly just a hobby. Here are a few of my favorite characters from my sketchbook.

This was my idea for a character for a project last semester. I had to include him because I thought he was so cute! Maybe I'll use him for some kind of Easter themed book or something. He needs a name though... ideas?

Meet Jo. I created him during my religion class last semester. He was inspired by a patient I met at work who dressed quite similar to him and had a cane. When I saw this man, I just HAD to create a character out of him!! The name is acutally the name of our intern... I might change it but we'll see. I thought about maybe doing some kind of comic strip out of this one, or maybe a book...






This is Lep! He is a leprachaun! I was just fooling around with this one... he'd make for a clever window painting for St. Patrick's day.









I don't really have an explanation for this one... but he's kindof funny. I was thinking of creating a character that expressed how he was feeling just with his eyes. Eyes are in truth the windows to the soul. He actually somewhat led to another character design I'll show later named Grimm.









This is RALLY!! He is one of the characters I got excited about because I think he'd make for a fun book. I named him after another patient I met at work named Ralston, we called him Rally. I thought it'd make for a cute name for this dog. And it sort of sounds like RILEY which is the name of my adorable dog whom I love. Anyway, I think he'd make for a fun book... it's just coming up with a story line that's the hard part!




This is the lovely Cleo. This summer I have been trying to work on my head drawing skills. Honestly I have always hated drawing people because we've all looked at millions of people and we know how they are supposed to look. And I have struggled with making them look right. So, I always did cartoons of people that look silly on purpose. I have been trying to force myself to combine the two. Realistic with cartoon. I'm still working on it, but I got excited when this little lady came along. She's kindof inspired by the character Beyonce plays on Austin Powers. Cleo is short for Cleopatra. And I named her this because she's a diva, like Beyonce! We'll see where this goes. I doubt it'll go into a book but perhaps some kind of ad or something would be fun.


This little guy doesn't have a name, but I created him for my Dad actually. My dad has alot of funny ideas for a kind of comic strip you might say. One of which is a list of "You might be an donkey if..." lol! I loved some of his ideas, so I made this fella. We'll see where this one goes too. I've always wanted to illustrate my dad's jokes. He's got some good ones.










This is Victor, and I have no idea what I'd do with him. He could make for some kind of villain. Personally, I think he looks like a gay hairdresser. Haaaay!









This is Vanessa. She's yet another practice head drawing person, but she

turned out cute. Again, I don't really know what I'd do with her but I like her!




Meet Little Willy! He's a character I liked for a book. There's a little room for improvement, but if I could think of a good start to a story I'd love to use him!

So all of the above pictures are of one character named Grimm. He is the most recent development and I am really excited about him! I definately want to create a story out of him . There's still alot to do, but I want to make a story out of him. Grimm is a Grizzle who lives in the jungle. He will eventually have a friend/sidekick named Grover, but I haven't found a character I like yet. Anyway, I really think I might be onto something with this one. I also think I might end up doing like some kind of book of limricks with this. Either all one story or a few short ones in limrick. That'd be cool!

This last one is a little dedication to my little brother Parker!! I did a little doodle of him the other day and I think it turned out kinda cute! Maybe I'll do a book about Parker too. haha!

That's about all I have for now. I hope it wasn't too much!! I think I might start to turn my sights towards finishing some of these characters instead of creating more. I never finish anything I start so I hope that I actually do this time. I hope you enjoyed these! Give me your comments!

Loving Summer!

Malone and I have had an awesome summer so far! We've been keeping quite busy, especially on the weekends. I found a few pictures to kind of help highlight some of our adventures.

Taking a step back, these were just a couple pictures from Deidra's bridal shower in Rigby. She had a hawaiian theme, and it turned out pretty good! She got lots of gifts and I think everyone had a good time. I could tell Deej had fun, and that's the most important! I don't really have any pictures of the wedding, so I stole some of Deidra's off of facebook so I could share! Thanks Deej!

Yes, this is a pot of gravy, but not just any gravy. I MADE it from scratch! And it was good! This is the first successful batch of gravy I have ever created. I just had to include this, for those who know me, this is amazing. Moving on...




Malone and I went with my family down to the Manti Pageant on June 27th. I forgot just how beautiful the temple was there! We loved the pageant and spending time with the family. I am pretty sure the grandkids were confused as to what was going on in the pageant, but it was fun to see them get excited.

Malone was pretty excited too!



Me and Malone saving seats...


Parker's such a cool dude and an awesome uncle, he kept trying to keep Claire and Chandler under control... which is hard to do when they're together!
I love this picture of Jacob, he's soo cute!



We were invited by our good friends Jared and Emily to go camping/rafting with them and their family on the Hoeback 4th of July weekend. We had a blast! And I wish I had more pictures, but my friends promised they'd get more pictures to me. But for the mean time, here is a view of the scenery from our tent.




Here's the view inside our tent... Oops! (That'd be Malone)





And this is the view of...what happens when you don't use sunscreen on the river. Malone got some pretty interesting patterns from his life jacket haha. Poor kid. I got a little burned on the spots I missed with sunscreen, but I didn't burn nearly as bad! Anyway, the river was a blast. Lunch counter, the big "climax" was sooo scary, but way exciting. We had alot of fun spending time with Emily's family, they're really fun and super nice to let us tag along. We left home Thursday morning, July 2 and came home on the 3rd. The weather was perfect! A little chilly in the morning, but plenty warm in the afternoon (as you can see from Malone's lovely shade!) That night it rained like crazy and there was lightening and thunder. Our friends Kishel and David decided to bunk with us in our huge tent b/c they were afraid of getting soaked in their little one. Malone and I were able to do about 3 runs down the rapids, and 2 down the calm parts. We loved it!

I didn't get any pictures from 4th of July really... that kind of stinks. So I borrowed some from Malone's sister Heidi... hopefully she doesn't mind! But Malone and I had a good day. He had to work first thing that morning at Broulims, and I went to the Rexburg Parade with my mom and Parker. While looking for a place to sit, we stumbled across my dad's brother's family, Karl and Tiffany, so we sat by them and chatted. Afterwards, I went home and waited for Malone to come home so we could head over to his parents house. They were having a little family reunion. Pretty much all of Malone's brothers and sisters were there as well as neices and nephews. It was fun to see everyone and see how the kids have grown. We had dinner and visited, took family pictures, and then Malone, Malone's nephew, and I all went to see fireworks in Idaho Falls. We borrowed his brother's dog Koda and took him along with us. It was fun having a dog again, even though it was temporary. Koda didn't like the firworks, but the rest of us did! We had a really good seat and it was perfect!

Everyone gave us a hard time about not having kids, so we had Malone's brothers dog and his sister's dog as our children! This is Koda and Red. Adorable dogs! I would have loved to take them home with me!

The other day I decided to make a change! Finally! SO I dyed my hair! Here's a before shot...

here's after... but it's probably not the best picture. Oh well!

Last weekend I had the lovely opportunity to go to my cousin's weddings. Daniel's was on Friday and Aubrey's was on Saturday. Ashley and I arrived Friday night about half an hour before Daniel's reception ended. It was then that we found out that most of our cousins had gone back home because they were all sick and throwing up! Over the weekend, this crazy bug spread to more cousins. Eventually Aubrey and her hubby got sick on their wedding day. I felt so bad for them! But somehow I lucked out because I never got sick. Even though everyone got sick, we still were able to visit and have some fun. I won't be making it to the reunion this weekend, so sorry family! I love you all!

One last thing, I wanted to let everyone know that Malone and I are moving! We've lived in this tiny apartment for a year and are ready to move into a little bit bigger apartment. We're moving July 31! So we've got to get packing! Luckily we're just moving down the street, but we're excited. Our friends Kishele and David are planning on moving the same day to the same place as well, so at least we'll know one couple in our new ward! I wish one other friend, you know who you are, would move over there too! We'll just have to see though!

That's all I've got so far... but no worries, we still have more adventures to come this summer! And hopefully I have my camera!

Crazy Weekend

This week has been crazy! About a week ago, Malone had an accident in his mechanical lab at school. I'm not sure if I completely understand how it happened, but he was working with a metal lathe and as he went to turn off the machine, something broke and a piece of metal flew and hit Malone right in the face! He got away with a fractured nose and a good two inch gash under his right eye. He had to go into the emergency room on campus and get sewed up. Luckily he was wearing safety goggles! We're pretty sure that those saved his eye. Thank goodness! Malone has been really sore all week and his nose is really tender. He had alot of bruising around his eye, nose, and cheek and was very swollen the first few days. Malone got the stitches out yesterday and he is looking so much better! He's been healing quickly and we don't think the scar will be too bad. The pictures don't really do justice, but you get the idea. We're a little frustrated with the school because we ended up getting a bill for $200 from the health center. They aren't taking any responsibility or liability. So we're fighting it hoping that either our insurance or the school will help us out here.










as of today, this is how he looks--not too shabby eh?

The same weekend Malone had his little accident, I had the opportunity to go to my best friend Deidra's wedding! It was so much fun! I didn't really get to snap any pictures... Don't know what I was thinking! But it was Saturday the 20th at the Historic Shelton in Idaho Falls. It was a nice ceremony and the reception/party afterwards was lots of fun! Malone reluctantly came with me, despite his sore face, and I think he enjoyed it too.

Camping Adventure!

Friday night Malone and I got to go camping with a few friends of ours from our ward! Malone had taken off work Saturday so we could go. Unfortunately for us all, the weather was looking pretty bleak before we left. There was a big rain storm coming that night. Despite the predicted nasty weather, Emily, Jared, Kishel, David, Malone and I all decided to go anyway. After Malone and I got off work around 6 or so, we packed up, picked up our friends, and were off! We had decided to go to a place Malone knew about in Island Park. We got there around 7:30 or so and were welcomed by lots and lots of, you guessed it, mosquitos. But luckily the area we were in there were no other people around so we had it all to ourselves! As we set up camp, we could see the dark clouds approaching from the south. It was a little nerve wracking because it didn't look good and we didn't want to get drenched. We managed to set up camp, eat dinner, and even cook some smores before it started raining. We covered our wood and all of us climbed into me and Malone's big-ol-tent. We played games for a couple hours while it sprinkled rain outside. We somehow managed to keep dry that night with only a few light showers; no wind, no storm, nothing! The next morning we cooked up some breakfast and packed up camp. About the time we were packed up, it started to rain again. Only this time it started to hail! So we decided to just go home. Even though we only got to stay overnight, we all had a wonderful time together! I hope that we can do it again sometime, only maybe next time we won't get wet!

Jared and Emily Davis


David and Kishel Olsen



This is how the sky looked most of the time