For the month of July we are featuring critters of the jungle and rainforest, to celebrate our upcoming coloring book! You can follow along on the Facebook page, Twitter, and this blog. All illustrations are by Melissa Rohr, copyright 2018.

This week's critters:
Hippo
Elephant
Orangutan
Slow Loris
​Jaguar

Here are a couple of pages from our upcoming coloring books: a Woodland Coloring Book & a Creatures of the Water Coloring Book!

I've decided to create another set of woodburned ornaments this year. Here are a few of the new designs, freshly woodburned. They still need a coat of stain, and a bit of ribbon, but I like how they turned out! Which is your favorite?

At a few recent art fairs, people have asked me about the process of my watercolor illustrations. So, the past few weeks I've taken some photos of my Sea Dragon illustration while I was creating him.

Most of my illustrations begin with a doodle in my sketchbook. This doodle may have been inspired by a dream, a funny experience, or a random character that popped into my head. I usually feel most comfortable using a black ballpoint pen for my doodles.

My next step is to sketch out the creature lightly in pencil, and then watercolor over the sketch. After the watercolor is dried, I use ink for the linework. In this case I used India ink with a pen nib. I also highlighted a few areas with colored pencil.

I finished him up with a green mat and a fun frame. I  hope you enjoy the finished Sea Dragon!

Watercolor & Ink Sea Dragon by Melissa Rohr

Here's a few mini illustrations I've been working on recently. They measure about 2.5 x 3.5 inches. I'm planning on framing these in some cute, tiny desktop frames, and displaying them in our vending booth. What do you think? Do you have some other ideas for mini illustrations I should work on?

Here's a sneak peak of some finished pages from our upcoming Robot Coloring Book!