My artwork almost always involves animals in some way shape or form. Inspiration comes from the animals themselves as well as cultural influences such as the case with my Celtic Animals series.

An idea does not always work in a linear fashion, sometimes the direction I intended to go doesn't work out, but an idea will occur along the way that takes me into a new direction, the way it was intended to go all along.

This is what happened with my newest completed series titled North American Animals Series 1 Mammals.

It started with a pencil drawing of a Grizzly Bear, a simple warm up sketch to practice drawing fur, it felt right at the time to add a circle border around the bear, then another one allowing the bear to step out of the frame.

I still felt like it still needed something more and after a bit of brain storming and experimenting with a couple other animals it hit me that I should add animal tracks to the circle border.

What started out as one simple drawing quickly became a planned out series of 12 watercolor and ink drawings of mammals native to North America.

The first series includes: Grizzly Bear, Black Bear, Polar Bear, Grey Wolf, Elk, Caribou, American Bison, Dall's Sheep, American Badger, Black Tailed Prairie Dog and Mountain Lion.

I kept the watercolor background simple to allow the black and white inked image to pop out at the viewer.

Series 2 is already in the early planning stages and will be of 12 birds.