caplan art designs
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Professional dog, the box project, encouragement, a chat and gnocchi
My childrens book “The Professional Dog” has moved into color! Over the last week I’ve inked more than 12 of the illustrations just so I could see where I was going. Now I’m doing the same testing with colors. I’m using my butterfly palette (a post about that here) – it’s a fun challenge to…
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Professional dogs, box project, cards, books, the first chat and some biscuits with gravy
The Professional Dog text for my in-progress childrens book is solid enough that this week I focused on the illustrations. I’ve done about 12 of them in ink and have established a pattern for the artwork that relates to the text. I’m working on bringing the illustrations up to the same semi solid level of…
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Dogs, boxes, old stories, cards, nachos and video vibes
The text for my newest childrens book project “The Professional Dog” is shaping up. I’m still collecting dog photos from friends but I’ve almost gotten them all. The project still feels vague but it’s more in focus than it was last week. I’m content to view it with my peripheral vision so to speak. Dog…
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How the Odditorium and Dragon are going
So far so good! 4 of the artworks in my Odditorium exhibit at Caplan Art Designs sold! 3 sold before the official opening! The exhibit is virtual but the gallery still had an “opening night” – as I wrote in my last post it wasn’t the same kind of party as pre-pandemic ones – this…
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Dragon, Odditorium, Time and Burritos
Unveiling an art exhibit during a pandemic full of unknowns has gotten me thinking about uncertainty in general. In the recent past of human history, at least as I read it, “uncertainty” about the weather, if a restaurant was open or not was more normal – in general things tended to be more uncertain, unplanned and…
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How To Draw A Dragon, fine art and postal whimsy
If you got a post titled “Dragon postal whimsy” I accidentally hit a button. Here’s the real post about “How To Draw A Dragon“! After a week spent creating cover art and scanning 36 pages there’s now a coloring book poem that exists in the world! This is the book description: “How do you draw…
A Creative Life, art exhibit, art gallery, Art Word Combinations, artist book, book design and layout, children’s book, creative thinking, ebook, fine art, greeting cards, household surrealism, Odditorium, Sustainable creativity, visual thinking, whimsical art, words and pictures, Writing And Illustrating -

Dragon, an oops, a rhino and recipe postcards
Had an oops during ink work this week on my coloring book poem “How to Draw A Dragon” here’s how I fixed it. Despite the mistake all of the hand written text as well as all of the illustrations have now been completely inked! Here’s how: first I drew the whole book in pencil which…
A Creative Life, art exhibit, art gallery, art techniques, artist book, artistic inspirations, book design and layout, fine art, greeting cards, household surrealism, illustrated poem, illustration, Odditorium, poetry, recipe illustration, Sustainable creativity, words and pictures, Writing And Illustrating -

On Looking at Odditorium
To my awareness there aren’t many books for children that talk about looking at an artist’s exhibit whether the fine art is in a book or on walls. I think looking at a book of fine art is similar to looking at a wordless picture book. Looking at one artist’s series of paintings on a…
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Crows, cookies and thinking in the Odditorium
One of the gifts of travel is the awareness that things don’t have to be what you’re used to in order to be enjoyable. Since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 I’ve been looking at household things with the eye of a traveler. I’m practicing being okay with things as they are, seeing them…
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Crows, writing, art and the odd sandwich
This week in the Odditorium aka household surrealism I thought of how often I use the same pens to write and draw with. It’s not surprising really as elsewhere in this blog I have written about the similarities I see between art making and writing. Here’s a link about that… https://sueclancy.wordpress.com/similarities-of-art-and-writing/ These thoughts swirled in…
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