Last night I got another inspiring email from my daughter, Heather Shawn Clausen (A.K.A. JagularXing).

Hey!! How is everything going? I’ve been busy the past couple months trying to build A portfolio! I’ve been teaching myself how to paint with acrylics and I’m really excited to show you the finished pieces! I’m still trying to teach myself different techniques so they’re not too busy, but hopefully I’ll get there … Okay… so here’s the latest… including the first paintings I did on canvas board!

The first pic is one i did using hard pastels with water, then going over it with colored pencil and charcoal. It turned out really bad at first and didn’t think I would be able to save it.

The second is supposed to be a zombie girl. I used colored pencil and marker

With Star Gazer I was just messing around with the silhouette idea… then every picture after had the same effect. The next pic is my first attempt at acrylics… I did not think this would turn out at all after trying to shade with the paint. I reverted to shading with black colored pencil, haha. Since then I’ve learned how to keep the paint wet!

Oh I also have some cool news.. John and a couple of his friends that he shared an office with came up with an online comic idea about a year ago about work and the conversations they had, except they’re replaced with animals.. A polar bear, a penguin and a meerkat.. It’s pretty funny. The comic is called “Bearly Competent”.. so we finally got to work on it some tonight.. John draws up a scene and I take a picture of it then fix it up and color it in photoshop.. the one we did tonight actually turned out pretty cool!! I’ll attach a couple pics!

I’ll also attach a pic of my work desk i’m setting up!

Let me know how things are going over there! You seem pretty busy judging by your blog!

Love Heather