Farnsworth Bank

On Sunday August 5th, a group of 10 divers from our club took a dive boat called the Great Escape to the backside of Catalina (outer side which is more exposed to the open sea conditions). The dive site we were heading for is called Farnsworth Bank, which is a pinnacle rising up from the deep. The shallowest part of the reef is 55 feet, then it drops down to about 300+.

It's usually hard to make it out there since the site is unprotected, and prone to stormy seas, but on this day, it was calm! We did two dives at Farnsworth, and then the boat headed back to the front side of Catalina to do one last dive at a site called Black Rock. It's pretty cool that you can see the bald eagle nests from our boat when heading to Black Rock. It was another great day of diving here in Southern California.



A wall at 100 ft.

Farnsworth is famous for it's purple hydrocorals. They are beautiful!


My dive buddy Jimmy, He's one of those guys who is totally comfortable in the water.


Going back up the anchor line. This is really important, since we're surrounded by blue water, and there is no reference to where you are. It is easy to drift away from the dive site. We don't want to be drifting out there.


A friendly Moray Eel greeted us at about 90 ft.


This photo I took was on the front side at Black Rock. There were lobsters hiding in the holes and in between cracks of the boulders.


Strawberry anemonies were everywhere. Just amazing colors.

Tape monster

The tape monster



Since I was painting traditionally on the show Camp Lazlo, I would tape up the illustration board with scotch and white artist tape. Well, after finishing a painting, I would end up with a wad of tape. It just seemed like a shame to throw away a beautiful wad of colors such as these. So, I decided to collect those wads of tape, and create a tape monster. In the photo, you can see the tape monster proudly sitting on the file cabinet in front of my cubicle...but since I'm not there any longer, I'm sure the janitor has thrown it away. Tapy, I'll miss you.

Wrapped up at Cartoon Network

I’ve totally enjoyed my three weeks off after finishing up on Camp Lazlo. It’s amazing how quickly time can fly when you’re relaxing. I start back at Nickelodeon next week, working on Fairly Odd Parents painting backgrounds (back to creating bgs digitally). I’m looking forward to catching up with some old friends there. Of course, I’ll miss some of the great people I’ve met at Cartoon Network, and I hope I’ll get to work with them again in the future.

Below are some backgrounds I painted for the show. The art director Sue Mondt was great helping me to acclimate to the new paint and the style of the show. Can’t thank her enough.