Irish Roots

     It won't be long now until we leave for a large family vacation to my husband's native land, Cuba. This is something that we've been planning for months. I've been reading in Spanish, speaking Spanish, eating Cuban food, listening to Cuban music, saving money for Cuba, and buying gifts to take to Cuba. It's going to be an awesome trip to see family and hopefully explore a little more of that incredibly gorgeous island, (I was there once before in 2006) but for goodness sake! I have roots too! And not all of them are gray. Happy St. Patrick's Day to all and especially everyone whose name starts with an Mc or an O'.

Your's Truly,

 the former, Tracy McGlinch.

Dress Up

I seem to have a very strong desire to "perfect" this image. It is my fourth attempt at working on the idea.

For most of my adult life I've painted realistically. I always said I couldn't draw from my imagination if my life depended on it. If it wasn't set up in front of me to view, I couldn't get it on paper. When people wanted me on their Pictionary team I warned them that my drawing skills would be no better than anyone else's. And I was correct.

But I've always wanted to illustrate children's books and knew that unless I worked on the skill of drawing from my imagination, I would never be able to come close to making that a reality.

In 2011 my step-daughter Ashley (my personal cheerleader) bought me a sketch-a-day book for Christmas. That little book started to change everything for me. On March 4 2012 I drew this image in that sketchbook for the Illustration Friday word of the week - INTENTION: (Well, at least she had good intentions)

I was pretty proud of it at the time and thought "Hey! Now I can be of benefit to a Pictionary team!

Almost exactly a year later I felt that I had improved my skills and could do a much better version. I did this one for the Illustration Friday word of the week - PROTEST (the fish was definitely protesting).

And in 2015 I felt like an absolute expert and decided I could do so much better. Here's that one:

So there you have it.  The top image is where I am after 5 years of drawing while relying heavily on my imagination. I certainly use reference material in my process, but to be able to have done the top image 5 years ago I would have needed a little girl model, a happy dog, a curious cat (one that would allow me to put clothes on it and then pose nicely), and a fish that I would have had to put through way too much trama.

Have we all seen the last attempt of this image?

Probably not.