JEN KELLER ART

This Thursday was my Gallery opening for Bedtime Stories. It was a wonderful event. Staying with the theme of the show being focused on Children's Book Illustrations, I decided to make the event extra-kid friendly. I started with making the hors devours based on kid food. This included candy corn, goldfish, finger peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, milk with cookies, and cupcakes (with a dog-theme decor). In keeping with my Mattie Story, I also chose to make the event DOG FRIENDLY! We didn't have too many pooches stop by, but the few that did really made the place light up. Fellow dog artist, Barbara Pence, and her English Lab Puppy, Bailey, seemed to enjoy it... Galleries can sometimes be a sterile place, and in order to contradict that atmosphere I decided to dress up the place. I chose a few items in order to create a happy and friendly setting for dogs and kids alike. I also dressed up my promo-material table. I think all of the accesories made the whole room a much ...

One of the benefits of being an illustrator when you're planning a wedding, is creative freedom over all paper products! I had a great time designing these... there are a few special regulars on my e-maling list that should be receiving a hard copy soon! Want to see a little of my web design? Check out Kellercheck.com

So I've decided to do a show featuring my Mattie Story artwork and a few other pieces. The show is called, "Bedtime Stories" since it's all about Children's books. I'm sharing the space with another kid's book author and illustrator, so it should be fun. I'm really excited to do this show! I'm hoping it'll be a good kick-start to trying to get my books published. It will be at the 688 Gallery in San Francisco. The exact address is 688 Sutter Street. The show opens on a Thursday, November 5, at 5:30. The opening will last until around 7:00 pm that evening. The exhibit will be up until November 30 in case folks miss the opening. Hope to see a lot of familiar faces there!!

Look how happy Mattie is eating her peanut butter biscuits!! YUM! I'm sure that puppy knows that Mattie's bark is worse than her bite... Here are a few more paintings I decided to rework. Again, I'm pretty happy I tackled these paintings again and improved upon what I had done in the past.

I was never really happy with the original of this piece, and I've finally finished the re-do. I like this one a lot better, it's just a lot more solid than the original, with the same puppy-child tenderness. Hope folks like it!

One thing I've noticed is that the more knowledge I get about the way things work from the inside, the better they look from the outside. This is especially true of anatomy. Check out this canine study I did of my own pooch. It's not super detailed, but enough so that my own brain can process where certain joints meet up, and how muscles wrap around those bones. Pretty interesting stuff.

Now that things have settled down a bit... I've decided to make more regular visits to the Oakland Zoo and keep my animal life drawing fresh. Today was a perfect zoo day. The weather was outstanding, and the place was practically empty! This made for calmer animals and more enjoyable drawing. I spent time today focusing on elephants and camels. Usually the elephants hang back in their enclosure, but today they came right up to the fence. At one point it felt like I could pet them! I did a lot of sketching and did a final drawing with graphite and watercolor pencil. It was a lot of fun. On my way out, I couldn't resist spending some time with the camels. I had tried to draw them several times during my class, but the space isn't very condusive to drawing due to the fact it's on a slope, no bences, and high fences so nowhere to lean you sketchpad. But today with the lower numbers and amazing weather, I just planted myself on the ground next to the female camel and...