A watercolor painting for the Month of Love challenge theme "Secrets".

This year I will be creating art centered around my foxdragon character and exploring more the relationship between it and a little girl and more my fantastical environments. "The Book of Spells" was created for the challenge theme secrets. I loved the idea of these two friends meeting in a vast leafy jungle, hidden under layers of monstera plants.

I created this piece with spring in mind. I don't know about you but during this time of year, I really miss the sunshine. We've been getting a lot of rain recently and so I decided to paint a piece to cheer myself, and hopefully others up.

I wanted to take the time to share with you a little of my process and thinking behind my most recent painting "Dream".

As with much of my work recently it was created from my inspiration and a desire to incorporate pieces of my life while living in Asia. Many of you know that I grew up in Indonesia and also spent some time in Japan. There I found lush Japanese gardens with beautiful temples and arching bridges. A harmony between man and nature.

We are nearing the end of February and also the end of the month long challenge I've been participating in - the Month of Love (an art event featuring a selection of artists and a new challenge/theme each week). This week's theme is "Fantasy" and I knew from the beginning of this month that this was a week I was definitely going to participate in.

When I began brainstorming ideas for this first week's topic of "heroes" I kept coming back to the heroes nature and not to one specific person. In many of my ideas and word lists the theme of a hero being someone who protects the innocent, regardless of their own abilities, kept coming back to me and stuck.

I started with a quick sketch of a woman with a child fending off a dragon and went from there. Initially, the woman was going to be a knight but I decided early on that I wanted to make her more vulnerable and also a part of the larger world I have been creating (more on that later).