Miyazaki illustrates Chesterton!

The Japanese edition of The Napoleon of Notting Hill by G.K. Chesterton had a cover illustration done by none other than Hayao Miyazaki! And here it is, at last!

I say at last because I have known this was so for a long time, from bibliographies of Miyazaki's work, and it excited me tremendously. But I could find no image on the internet and I had no way of getting it... until I met Father Peter Milward, founder of the Japan Chesterton Society (the first one there ever was) at this year's Chesterton conference. My father asked him about this book, and he said that he had been the one who edited it and he'd send us a copy. I am so very grateful!

New way of using lace

I love lace, and I'm always trying to find ways to put interesting texture detail into pictures. One way would be to scan the lace into my computer and apply its texture to pictures digitally, but I don't like that idea because I always want a picture to be complete physically. Everything that's going to be part of that picture, I want it to be part of the picture in real life, not only after I've turned it into a computer file.

Also, working with real things gives you more options. It always gives you more colors, of course, since computer monitors can only show a certain number of colors while pigment combinations can show the entire visible spectrum. (in the scanned version of the picture those colors are taken away, but still) But it also means there are more ways you can use something like lace. If I scanned it in, then I could put it in a picture with several different colors and opacities, but it would always be the same arrangement of light to dark ratios. But with real lace, I can do many things, each yielding and entirely different sort of texture. I can right-out paste it on; or I can coat it in printer's ink and use it as a stamp with a brayer; or I can airbrush over it as I've frequently done; or now I've found I can partially paint it with acrylic, lay it on the paper, paint over the whole thing with ink and a lot of water, then remove the lace and get something like this:

As usual when I first try out a new technique, I'm going to do fanart on this piece, But this is definitely a method I'll be using again.

Wedding at Cana coloring page

The second luminous mystery.

You can buy the whole set in high resolution files that you can print and copy as much as you need for just 5 US dollars. Just go here.

Baptism in the Jordan coloring page

One of the teachers from a Catholic homeschooling program at my church found a coloring book of the Mysteries of the Rosary from the forties. Because the forties were before the pontificate of HH John Paul II, there were no luminous mysteries, so I was asked to provide them. This is the first.

You can buy the whole set in high resolution files that you can print and copy as much as you need for just 5 US dollars. Just go here.

Based on Real People

Acorn Teacup

The mice were really bad in our Minnesota cabin this year. They had stored acorns in everything: dresser drawers, the plumbing, the carburetor of the lawn mower, light bulb sockets, and a teacup I had on display.

I intend to color this with ink wash.

Cloverfield Illustration

This will be in an upcoming issue of Gilbert magazine, illustrating a review of Cloverfield.

Minnesotan Inspiration

I went to Northern Minnesota for the Summer, and in the forest away from the internet I was very inspired. This post is just photographs, but I intend to put them to use as resources.

The Snake River


A tamarack bog. I love tamarack bogs; their verticality seems almost Gothic.



I bought a really cool old watch.



The state flower of Minnesota, Lady Slippers are actually rare and many Minnesotans have never seen one in person. I never had before.