#penandink

Happy Mother’s Day 2022!

Happy Mother’s Day 2022 to all the moms out there, but especially my wife and my own mother. It’s been a little while since I’ve updated my website or posted a blog, but fear not, I have been busy in the studio. You can get near daily updates on what I’m working on by following me on Facebook or Instagram, but to sum things up, I’ve been working on a book project…but before I get into that, it’s time to debut this year’s Mother’s Day card for my wonderful, talented, hard-working, patient, understanding wife! I rely on her for so

PMD Xmas Card Envelopes 2021

Somehow, here we are in 2022. I intend to do a year in review style post about 2021, which should be…interesting. I didn’t post here as much as I intended, and I dropped the ball on a lot of goals I had set at the start of the year. But, I think I did accomplish a lot, some of which wasn’t on that goal list (at least initially).

Before that post, though, I have to do the annual sharing of the xmas card envelopes. For anyone new here (which, given my stats and how little time I have to spend trying

Inktober 2021 Wrap Up

Here we are, another year, another Inktober infused with plungers and monkeys (everyone’s favorite plunger-wearing monkey, specifically). I’ve taken to doing these recaps/wrap ups at the end of the challenge, but this one will be a bit of a general “what’s been going on?” as well, since I’ve barely posted anything here this year.

If you follow me on my other social media thingies, then you know I’ve been staying busy. I’ll do an end of year/year in review post like I usually do, but just in general, I’m a bit off of the goals I set for myself this year.

New Shirt Alert: A New…Plunger?

Well, here we are in May (?!), and I’m finally getting around to releasing a new shirt (and if you want to skip my rambling and go straight to decorating your torso, and you missed the other links, you can go get yourself the new PMD Wars shirt here). This one was almost ready to go, much like the Blade of the Monkey shirt from the end of 2020, but I got hung up on the final look. I’m still not 100% sure (not that I ever am about anything) that this one is “done”, it’s one of those that

Happy Mother’s Day 2021!

It’s that time of year again, when we collectively pause to appreciate the people that either brought us into this world, raised us, or brought our own children into this world. It’s been a challenging year-which is almost becoming a new cliched thing to say, unfortunately-but while I’m sad to have not been able to spend more time with my family, I am extremely grateful that I didn’t lose anyone close to me to the pandemic (though last year in general was a tough one for losing important people in my life: my grandmother, a close family friend, a young

Who’s Got the Best Smile?

Four weeks into 2021, four new blog posts?! Yeah, I don’t know what’s up with that. I can tell you right now I already don’t have a plan for next week, so my streak likely ends right here. It was good while it lasted, at least, though, right?

These posts also have been taking a considerable amount of time between editing/prepping files to upload, captioning them, waiting for sluggish load times, and getting into fights with technology in general. I have spent four hours so far (as of…this word) putting this all together, which is fine. I still count it as

Xmas Card Envelopes 2020, and Some Stuff

I think at this point it’s safe to assume all of the xmas card envelopes I illustrated are in their respective intended hands, so I’m going to go ahead and share them all here. As I mentioned…somewhere, I returned to the theme I stumbled onto last year: Totally Reasonable Uses for a Plunger. It proved fun in 2019, it was equally fun in 2020, and I’m much more confident about the potential of turning the idea into a picture book of some type. I’m building a list of “uses” to illustrate, and the envelope art will serve as some highly

Inktober 2020 Recap

Just a few months late with this one. I intended to do the annual Inktober recap right after I wrapped up, which was a week or so into November. But, life sidetracked me between October and November, and the crunch of getting the Xmas cards done (which probably still haven’t all been received yet) and trying at least to hit my 2020 goal of six new shirt designs all threw me off my game completely. If you want to know a bit more about that, or anything else from Toby’s Brain in 2020, you can read my year-in-review post from

Lee’s Dragons: Arctic Dragon

It’s that time of year again! My wife had a birthday, so she got another dragon illustration!

This year’s dragon for my wife’s birthday: the Arctic (or Polar) Dragon. This clocked in at about 56 hours and 4 minutes, give or take. It’s a slight departure from the previous entries in that it’s (digital) pen and ink, rather than a fully rendered digital painting. It was my wife’s request, she prefers my ink work I guess.
I studied some images of polar bears to get an appropriate gesture as well as looked up

Happy Mother’s Day, 2020!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. It is a very weird situation to try to celebrate the people in our lives that have played such vital roles during a pandemic when we can’t, or shouldn’t, be physically close. Whether it’s my own mother, my grandmother, my wife, my sister, my aunts…all the mothers in my life and my family have had a positive impact on my life, and it’s very fair to say I wouldn’t be here in one way or another without their love and support over the years. I love you all, and thank you.

Being

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