A Look Back

This little blog will turn one year old in a few days, so I’d like to look back at some of my favorite posts. Almost all of them are about my artwork, which makes sense since I’ve always been an artist first and foremost. My earliest memories are crayon drawings and fingerpainting with my mom in her kitchen when I was three.

The above bear painting from 1989 is a favorite of mine because it came to fruition after I saw my first black bear in the wild while I explored a local beaver dam. You can read more about it in Acrylic Painting: Black Bear At Beaver Dam.

The above buck painting from 1985 is a favorite because it shows the first time I was able to control the paint instead of it controlling me. Read more at Reminiscing, part 2.

Drawing comic strips began in elementary school and followed me into adulthood. The above Louie and Bruce strip from 1981 was the first one I ever sold to a newspaper. Sure, the paper was a small, local publication, but it certainly made me feel like I had made the Big Time! You can read more about Louie and Bruce at Louie and Bruce 001-2022-1020.

I could go on and on about my love of photography, especially my ventures outdoors to get shots of wildlife. Like plein-air painting, surviving the elements to get that perfect scene is a fraction of what it takes to end up with something wonderful.

Another of my favorite pastimes is making covers for my ebooks. This venture started in the early 1990s when I posted my short stories at my website. It also started me on a venture of creating headers for my site.

In 2013, I published some of my stories at Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing service. The learning curve of publishing ebooks at that time was difficult and left me with nightmares. I took my books off market a few years later but kept my connection with Amazon. Since then, they have simplified publishing ebooks, so I have been editing my old books and slowly bringing them back to the digital print market. And I have changed the cover art of the books. “Night of the Hell Hounds” was my first book at Amazon and the first story in The Green Crystal Series.

You can read more about “Night of the Hell Hounds” and the series at New Year, New Ideas, New Goals.

And finally, I cannot close without mentioning all the character art I do for my books. When I create characters, I see them in my mind, then draw them on paper. Sometimes, though, I see photographs of people and use them as characters, drawing their likeness exact, or changing things like hair and eye color, hair style, and face shape to fit my needs. This happened when I was developing my Vree Erickson character. The girl in the photo I chose was somewhat happy and had sunny blonde hair and I needed a pensive girl with dirty blonde—an easy fix with pencil.

I have posted plenty about Vree at this blog and will post more in the future.

Thanks for joining me today for this look back.

Peace and love to all.

Steve, 8/19/2023

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This post “A Look Back” copyright © 2023 Steven Leo Campbell at stevecampbellcreations.com – All rights reserved.

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