Linda Mahoney Art

This summer has been the wettest and lushest Cloudcroft summer in my memory. There was a storm during the night and the village was blanketed in a fog when I first went out to walk the dogs this morning. A nippy 40 degrees had us walking at a nice clip. The interesting thing is, that despite the waning of summer, many berries continue to add blooms to their branches. The second blooming of elderberries and the wild strawberries is rather unusual. In addition, many of the wildflowers have continued to exhibit their blossoms. There are hints that the aspen leaves are beginning a subtle change and I suspect the wildflowers will be caught unaware by an early frost. I have seen many cottontails here this summer and watched two of them playing one morning. One was charging and then jumping over the other. That happened several times and then they finally chased each other around and around in a circle. I suspected they were siblings. It makes me smile to remember it now and their appearance...

It's 8 something in the morning and I am on the deck in Cloudcroft. Hummingbirds are feasting on the red and white petunias and their feeders. The sun has just begun to rise above the pines and aspens and the temperature is knocking at 60 degrees. I am in a light sweat suit with a cup of coffee and would think I was in heaven if I didn't have a long list of things to do. There are numerous illustrations waiting to appear and it seems the employers all finally decide what they want at the same time. I'm thankful for the work. Yesterday, I took some time out to work on the painting above. It's done in colored pencil. I have been trying to figure out a way to work in a different technique. I like how it turned out, but the paper is translucent and keeps the whites from looking as bright as I'd like. I will continue to work in this vein to see if I can duplicate the style on my fav Stonehenge paper. I will be doing a companion piece to this one of hollyhocks. Let me k...

Virtually all of my illustrations begin as rough hand-drawn images in graphite pencil (black and white or grayscale). Some employers want black and white images only. When that is the case, I continue by cleaning up the drawing and shading it in pencil. If the employer wants line drawings only, I transfer the outline for the finished drawing and then go over it with ink. For colored illustrations, I continue with the graphite and use water color markers, colored pencil, acrylics or gouache to color the images. After that, I scan them in and usually tweak them a little more in Photoshop. Here are a couple of black and white images done for fantasy type illustrations. Hold tight to your dreams ~ Linda

Illustrations have been keeping me busy. I'm including some samples of just a few of the many I've been working on recently. Most of them have been for children's books. Some are in color, like the Taco Dog (shown above gobbling Santa's tamales). Some have a message like Petula Pelican, who struggles for women's rights issues. Part of the fun of it all is becoming "acquainted" (at least via the internet) with people from all over the world. Petula's author is a wonderful, 85-year- young woman who lives in Kansas and has al- ready published several other books. She is a wealth of knowledge regarding homeopathic remedies and is an inspirational lay minister as well. I haven't been blogging in a while because of all the other activities. Stay tuned for more illustration samples to follow. All the best ~ Linda