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Illustrating Natural and Unnatural World

Nature, human nature and in between
  • Children's Illustrations
  • About Me
  • Blog: the art of the everyday
  • Contact

Baba Yagas of all seasons

Baba Yaga is a Slavic witch who lives in a chicken footed house. She is found in fairy tales from Bulgaria, the Balkans, the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and other Eastern European cultures. Unlike anglophone witches, Baba Yaga is capable of both good and bad actions. In many stories she can transform back and forth between young and old. She inspires me and I paint her house in different exotic venues inspired by nature from around the world.

Stories, like chicken footed houses, travel fast. One Baba Yaga house hides in a rhododendron forest on the Sandakphu trek near Darjeeling. Another sits in a banyan forest on the island of Guam. A third stands in plain sight on a clearcut hillside in Sourthern, Oregon- a poignant, defiant testament to magic and humans’ insatiable desire for lumber. How did Baba Yaga manage to evade the eyes of the loggers? Or do loggers know her secrets, and guard her truths from the suburban families that buy new homes?

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babayaga_wolfmoon.jpg
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babayagastumps.jpg
Springbabayaga.jpg
mooncakes.jpg
babayaga_guam.jpg
babayaga_skichalet.jpg
horsetail_babayaga.jpg
flyfishbaba.jpg
baba_yaga_guam2.jpg

Food

I developed these pictures to help teach English. I taught English online to kids for over two years as a job. Most of the kids lived in Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East like Turkey. A few were from India, Japan, Korea, and Russia.

I also teach refugee kids who live in my state. I use small cardboard cutouts of these images as props.

I found that food is a great equalizer because we all eat and everyone has likes and dislikes. It is also a fun way to get to know about different cultures.

cake.jpg
fruit pattern.jpg
fruit_papaya.jpg
mcdo fries copy.jpg
chicken salad.jpg
burger.jpg
thanksgivingturkey.jpg
worldfood_udonborschtkabsa.jpg
italianmeatballspiza copy.jpg
zakuski.jpg
trade2_cookbook.jpg
trade_cookbook.jpg
olivier_1.jpg

Celebrations: special days and everyday

From Football Sunday for families that don’t like football to Easter trees, everyone celebrates something somehow. For me, moss filled, covid winters in the Pacific Northwest became a mandala. A fox happens upon a fairy family celebrating some kind of winter holiday. A rat watches longingly. Some hedgehogs make a snowhog in the forest. A cat biking race goes on, with no clear winner…yet.

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bikingcats1 copy.jpg
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sturgeon.jpg

Mothercat's Scrapbook and Diary

I made this scrapbook to remember Jasmine’s fifth birthday party. Jasmine loves singing right now. She wanted to sing happy birthday so many times that she forgot to eat the first slice of birthday cake. All the other kittens waited so patiently, but I do worry that some of her friends thought she was a little bit spoiled. Maybe we can find a kitten choir so she can sing more with other kittens. That way her sister won’t be so annoyed with her. Katie didn’t like the singing.

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jasminebirthday.jpg
Jasmine1.jpg
Jasmine2.jpg
jasmine4.jpg
Jasmine3.jpg

Characters

spotillustration_rahulfishbus.jpg
rahulandmayaeating.jpg
Rahulsfirstdayofkittygarden_HK1.jpg
yetty at dinner.jpg
Yetty_softball.jpg
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Poems

This represents a sampling of a long term project I am working. I plan to self-publish it someday. It consists of short poems in the public domain about different animals. Every letter in the English alphabet is represented, with a few letters repeating. All the poems are in the public domain. I selected many from antique children’s books I found on Project Gutenberg. Many are poems by women, who even in the 1800s were often writing books and poems for children. Some authors like Edith Brown Kirkland were difficult to find much information on. Others writers like William Blake are well known and much loved. William Blake’s wife, Catherine, helped him colorize many of his engravings. She was an artist in her own right, working as a printmaker even after William’s death. She also kept the couple’s finances in order.

As a lover of history, it is just as important for me to celebrate women from history as it is to support the women du jour.

tyger.jpg
Kitten.jpg
peacock.jpg
snake.jpg
mongoose.jpg

Folklore

cougarfish.jpg
Tailypo.jpg
mandala horse family.jpg
wampus.jpg
norse cat.jpg
pink dolphin.jpg

Grown children: for those who believe the dragons died

Postcards from lightly imagined places and somewhat imperfect memories. Stickers for the disheartened. All passed onto you by a slightly unreliable narrator.

unequal love.jpg
outhouse.jpg
rabbitsbizppl.jpg
3eyedcatgod.jpg
iceagetrail.jpg
catgod.jpg
witchhouse.jpg
feralcats.jpg
hungrywall.jpg
seriouspeople2.jpg
wicked truths.jpg
false hope.jpg
game without rules.jpg
personal ambition.jpg
failed ideology (1).jpg

Pale Male with eyass

Palemale_text.jpg
Basholeaf2015.jpg
brownpelican_text.jpg
winter_wolf_greatlakes.jpg
tanwolf.jpg
llama_crop_txt.jpg
sweetclover_cow.jpg
warfarin.jpg
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Slug and Spider

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Worldschool cookbook

From a cookbook I designed and illustrated for the Seattle World School, a public school in Seattle, WA that serves recent immigrant youth. The book includes ten recipes from students, written in both English and their native language.

Yick Fung.jpg
cold weather_2.jpg
trade_1 headings.jpg
cold weather_1.jpg
olivier_1.jpg

Hearts

mimamounds.jpg
hearts_house.jpg
hearts_town.jpg
giantflowers.jpg
hearts_house2.jpg
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Back to Children's Illustrations
13
Baba Yagas of the world
14
Food
14
Celebrations: special days and everyday
6
Mothercat's scrapbook and diary
6
Characters
5
Poems
6
Folklore
15
Grown children: for those who believe the dragons died
Palemale.jpg
12
Natural Science Illustration
5
Slug and Spider
5
Seattle Projects
5
Hearts

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