Several Thousand Words

I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that if I could draw, it wouldn’t have taken me till age 26 to settle on a career. (I use the word settle very loosely.)

What I mean is, if I could draw AND write? You couldn’t tell me anything. And I would almost certainly have completed at least one children’s book by now.

But, since I am not gifted with a pencil by any stretch of the imagination, I’d like to take this opportunity to highlight two people with incredible artistic talent; one is a friend, and the other I just recently began to admire from afar.

Amy Rose Pennington is a friend of mine who I met at August Gate. She specializes in drawing the most delightfully whimsical illustrations, usually based on people she knows. I think she is the IDEAL children’s book illustrator (and I’m already attempting to woo her to collab with me– if I can ever get the text of the story completed!) Anyway, our exposure to her art began with a birthday gift portrait of our little family:

And has since expanded to dozens of similar portraits of our friends and church family. You’d be hard pressed to find an August Gate covenant member without an Amy Rose portrait in their home. Here are a couple more pieces that she did for two of my bridesmaids when THEY got married:

 

Amy’s style is so unique and her skill improves with every piece. I’m amazed by her ability to capture emotions and personality in such a simple and spirited way. Check out some more of her work on her blog and her etsy store!

The other artist, Sarah Mensinga, is a bit more established. In addition to her original pieces, she’s worked on a few feature films– and you don’t have to look at her site for more than five seconds to see why. She makes stories come ALIVE. I wish that some of her pieces were for sale, because I could certainly fill a room with them.

  

She’s written a graphic novel (her style is PERFECT for it) and several short stories too. This one, called Fish, is especially lovely. I could talk more about how talented she is, but your time would be better spent on her website seeing it for yourself.

Clearly, I’m extremely jealous of these women and their talents. But I’m also so grateful for them and their willingness to share their work with the world.

There’s one more artist I could highlight, but he and I are currently collaborating on something and I’d rather wait to tell you about him and his work until we have something show. But, I will tell you that he specializes in superheroes– and I will show you this piece, which he gave Todd and I as a wedding gift:

Yup. That’s me and my husband, back when we were young and fancy free and I still had weave in my head. We plan to tell our daughter that superheroism was our gig before she was born.