Yesterday during movie time with my kids (we watched “Elephant” by Disney Nature), I was inspired to create elephant art!
They are such beautiful, intelligent animals, and roam such beautiful landscapes.
Elephants Watercolor Art Print with Wood Frame Options
For this artwork, I drew out the elephants (adults and kids alike) in earth-tone colors, set against a colorful backdrop of an African savanna landscape. The landscape is lush with greenery and water, which they are always in search of! This art print is available framed or unframed, with a variety of wood stain color options.
It’s been a while since I’ve been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Costa Rica, but I still feel very connected to the culture and people that I experienced there. One of my friends during my service never actually left Costa Rica. He got married there and founded an amazing company called Bodhi Surf + Yoga with his wife.
In addition to surf and yoga experiences, they advocate for protecting the world’s oceans and have a program called “Ocean Guardians” that I recently signed up for, so that I can participate with my kids and learn what we can do together to protect the oceans.
Bodhi Surf + Yoga is located in Uvita, a small town on the Pacific Coast in the Bahia Ballena (Whale’s Bay). I visited there a few times and always remember walking out into a whale’s tail formation during low tide (you can see a photo of this on their website), and watching hundreds of crabs scramble about the sand!
This seascape artwork that I painted is from a photo that I took along the beach in Uvita. If you ever wanted to experience a quiet piece of paradise, this is the place!
At some point last year, I was listening to the Notorious B.I.G.’s 1994 song “Juicy”, and was inspired to create this artwork:
Spread Love It’s The Brooklyn Way
Biggie Brooklyn Art Print on Matte Paper, Optional Wood Frame
Biggie Art – Spread Love It’s The Brooklyn Way – 2 Color Options, 3 Wood Stain Options
Biggie Brooklyn Wall Art Print on Birch Wood Panel
Biggie Brooklyn Wall Art Print on Birch Wood Panel – 3 Color Options to Choose From
These have been popular as an art print and on shirts, and it’s been cool to see how many customers from Brooklyn have bought the art and shirts!
Biggie Spread Love T Shirt Organic Cotton Unisex
Biggie Brooklyn Organic Cotton Unisex Shirt – Black Shirt Also Available
Biggie Spread Love Women’s T-Shirt Organic Cotton and Recycled Polyester
Biggie Brooklyn Women’s Shirt – Multiple Color Choices
Given the popularity of this Biggie art, I just had to make similar Tupac art, which I finally got around to recently:
California Love Tupac Bandana Art
Tupac Art Print on Matte Paper, Optional Wood Frame
Tupac Art Print California Love – More Color Variations and Wood Stain Options Available
Tupac California Love Print on Birch Wood Panel
Tupac Wall Art California Love Birch Wood Panel – Multiple Color Options
Tupac California Love Organic Cotton T Shirt, Unisex
Tupac California Love T Shirt Organic Cotton Unisex – Black Tee Also Available
Tupac California Love Women’s T-Shirt, Organic Cotton and Recycled Polyester
Tupac Women’s Shirt California Love – Multiple Color Options
Every week I usually play pickup basketball, and nowadays I’m one of the “OG’s” on the court. At 36, I can still easily hang with the guys 15 years younger than me! I just can’t jump as high anymore. As a Dad with 3 kids, they probably see me as old haha. Anyways, I’ve seen some of them wear Biggie and Tupac shirts, and it strikes me that they weren’t even born yet when those guys were alive! But as they say, legends never die.
On a nature trail walk with my sons a few weeks ago, we came across a blue jay, one of my favorite birds.
In the following weeks, my wife bought a bird feeder that we installed on our kitchen door. Within a couple days, the birds really took a liking to it, and it’s great entertainment for the kids to watch. They also made homemade bird feeders outside with pine cones, peanut butter and seeds, and those have been eaten up quickly as well.
This has all boded well for my artistic inspiration! I’ve been meaning to paint a series of bird paintings for some time, so here comes another – a blue jay watercolor painting with a bright green nature background:
Hang the beautiful vibrancy of the cardinal bird in your home with this original painting, created by hand with watercolor paint and professional-grade artist markers!
Cardinal Bird Original Painting in a Grey Wood Frame
The bright red of the cardinal contrasts nicely with the blue sky, which exudes the peaceful feel of nature.
This art print is for lovers of the W&OD Trail in Northern Virginia!
The artwork is hand-drawn and features a map of the trail as it meanders through Northern Virginia, from Purcellville all the way to Alexandria. It includes the main cities and towns in Northern Virginia, like Leesburg, Ashburn, Sterling, Herndon, Reston, McLean, Falls Church, Arlington and Alexandria. It also includes the rivers and streams, landmarks like the Dulles airport, and shows Maryland and DC.
W&OD Trail Hand-Drawn Map Art Print
This W&OD Trail artwork is available here, with options to frame, as a print on archival, acid-free, 10 mil, bold bright white matte paper that provides amazing detail and color reproduction.
The newest addition to my coffee art collection is this black and white hand-drawing of the famous Moka pot!
Moka Pot Artwork Printed on Birch Wood Panel
This artwork is available on matte paper and birch wood panel prints (as seen above), and the original is for sale here.
The moka pot is used as a sort of stove-top espresso maker. It’s more of an old-school DIY type of thing, rather than a really expensive espresso machine. While it doesn’t really make true espresso, it does make a strong and syrupy coffee. I like strong coffee!
In sticking with coffee-themed artwork, here is another recently completed painting, featuring a vintage farmhouse color palette. This one was made with acrylic paint pens and a bit of watercolor paint. It’s available here with a rustic wood frame in a variety of color options.
As an avid drinker of coffee, I suppose it makes sense that I also enjoy drawing and painting coffee images. Recently I’ve made it a goal to add to my coffee art collection available here.
Here are a couple recent ones:
Chemex Coffee Art OriginalGeometric Black and White Coffee Art
The funny thing is that I never drank coffee until my late 20’s, and even then, I didn’t drink very much. Not until I started having kids did I really get into the habit. Looking back, it’s hard to believe I lived right in the middle of a coffee growing region as a young adult (as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Costa Rica) and barely ever drink it! If I had wanted to, I could have easily walked down the dirt roads to my friend’s garden, picked coffee cherries and processed/roasted them myself! Eh, oh well.
I remember one of the first cups of GREAT coffee I had was at a little store that used to be in Alexandria, VA, called “Grape and Bean”. It was a real-deal light-roast coffee with all of the fruity, flowery, aromatic flavors. Not the dark, burned, smoky, ashy stuff that my parents always drank (and still do), which I refer to as “railroad coffee”, since my Dad worked for the railroad. The Folgers type of stuff. I know some people like that, so my apologies if that’s you!
In January of 2019, my wife, kids, mother-in-law, parents and I traveled to Ecuador for a week. I can’t believe a whole year has passed already! It was a special trip that included:
staying in a hotel that was a monastery for hundreds of years in Old Town Quito, an UNESCO world heritage site
visiting the highest elevation volcano in the world, Cotopaxi, and seeing wild horses nearby and picking eucalyptus leaves
seeing the beautiful Andes mountains
bargaining for handmade goods at a large indigenous market in Otavalo
touring a biologically diverse coffee farm in the rainforests of Mindo
visiting and remembering family in both Quito and Ambato
What really made the trip special, however, were the friends and family that served as our personal “tour guides” every day.
My mother-in-law’s cousin, whom we fondly call “Monjita” since she is a life-long nun, arranged our whole itinerary. This amazing woman is in her mid 80’s and is the director of a Catholic school by the northern coast city of Esmeraldas, yet still graciously did this for us!
She visited us here in the U.S. in October, and I gifted her this oil portrait that I did of her:
And also two brothers who drove all of us around every day – Marco and Luis. I learned so much about Ecuador from my conversations with Marco, who my wife, kids and I drove around with. I also did this portrait painting of them, which I gave to Monjita to hand deliver to them in Ecuador:
