A Great Honour

I am a huge, huge fan of Jody Bergsma Designs.  She is an artist located in the Pacific Northwest....Bellingham, WA to be exact...and her work is featured at Ben Franklin Craft Stores up there.  I did a whole colouring book of hers, I have a Sagittarius magnet and also these two stickers on my car.

This one is especially significant as it features PNW animals with Native American/First Nations designs for the wolf, bear and eagle.  I am desperate to replace this sticker because I am going to have to get a new car eventually and I need to have this on whatever new car I get.

Jody did a beautiful illustration of Sasquatch with some other PNW animals and featured it on Facebook.  I was pleased that this was taken seriously and not done as a goof or 'silly' type of picture.  She asked people to submit titles for the picture and the title with the most 'likes' would get a print.  I thought of one right away and I checked the comments to see if anyone else thought of it too.  To my surprise, no one did.  So I typed 'Guardians of the Forest'.  To my utter shock, it got well over 200 likes and my title was selected for Jody's print!  What an honour to title a picture by my fave artist!!!  WOW!!!  

Please be sure to visit her website, Bergsma Gallery Press, to view more of her beautiful and charming works of art.  I'll be framing and hanging it in a place of honour.  Thank you SO MUCH Jody!!!!

Orca Whales

I love, love, love orca whales.  PLEASE don't call them 'killer whales'.  Just don't.  My first experience with them was at Sea World in Florida and again at Marine World Africa USA in California.  While I found them to be extremely charming, adorable, smart and endearing, something just really bothered me about watching these beautiful creatures performing for humans.  Did you know that they are really part of the dolphin family?

I went on a whale watch in Victoria BC in 2007 and seeing the Resident L Pod in the wild brought me to tears.

This is L-41, named 'Mega'.  He was born in 1977.

Suffice to say I will never go to another performing whale show again.  It's just wrong.

I bought this original painting by Spray Bombs in Victoria's Inner Harbour to commemorate the experience.

I also love Pacific Northwest Native art depicting them.

 This is by Jody Bergsma Designs.  She is an artist in Washington State.

Isn't this adorable?!?!?!??!

Jody Bergsma Designs Colouring Book

I just finished a Jody Bergsma Design colouring book, that I started last fall. There were about 18 designs in all. I did them with gel pens and coloured pencils. I really enjoyed doing this book and am kind of sad that I finished it. As always, click on the pics to see the detail of the shading and such. I coloured this one with Jaime and her nephew in mind.

I kept dragging my hand through the wet gel pens when I first started, hence the big smudge on the bottom right. It was a conscious effort on my part not to keep doing that.The gel pens really make the pictures shimmer, which is hard to see when the pages are scanned.



I had to rely on the internet in order for me to use the accurate colour scheme on the birds.



This was the final picture in the book and of all of them, this is my fave the way it came out.