This summer’s weather has been sublime in our little corner of the earth. Spared the floods and fires that plague Pakistan and Russia, we’ve been spoiled by sun punctuated by just the right amount of rain. The garden is abundant. At the risk of sounding like locavore cliches, we eat ruby chard, heirloom tomatoes, green beans and truly baby carrots. Added to my (assuredly momentary, nonetheless utterly welcome) good fortune is an abundance of satisfying work. Stayed tuned to see a book jacket illustration I’m working on for John Fontana at Doubleday. He asked for my cabinet...

The days are muggy and languid; the nights bring relief. Thankfully the studio stays cooler longer than much of the house. The wind and the fan help too… until those bits of cut paper start to pile up on the big round table where I sort through my material, seeing which bits of ephemera are calling to me. This summer has given opportunity for collages above and beyond illustration work: private commissions and exploratory work of my own. One I’ve posted so far is Nightswimming. It’s the first illustration on my home page. Check it out, and come back soon for more. And if you get...

Recently (finally!) I turned to my old library catalog card drawers filled with Zip discs, now obsolete. We dug out my old Mac G4 and I began to download a slew of work, a nostalgic journey. Of course the Zip drive seized up after a short while, refusing to dislodge the disc: it was beyond the capabilities of a straightened out paperclip, solved only with needle-nose pliers. Mister Be found another old Zip drive and since then I’ve been humming along, archiving everything. (And I mean humming: that G4 is LOUD.) Now many of the featured/home page illos are either old favorites or more recent,...

Who does this Marty Blake think she is, anyway? Annointing herself royalty? The reasons are slight but several: My initials are MAB and I’ve always been enchanted with Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech. Though she is a dark fairy Queen, haunting dreams as much as she graces them, the magic and surrealism of her description bewitch me. Another reason for the crown is that among a certain circle of old friends it became a favored icon, recurring in artwork and song (Gary Byrd’s “You wear the Crown I wear the Crown So proud to say that we all wear the Crown” we’d mime...

Write to me via the contact button above, and you’ll be sent automatically to the new address. If you want to add me to your address book (please do!) I’ll write you back, promptly. I promise.

Which explains missing areas, the dearth of design categories, and mystery glitches. I’m reconfiguring things every day. The home page will feature a dozen sample pieces. Click a thumbnail to enlarge. While in the enlarged view, you can click on either side to cruise back and forth within any given category, so you don’t need to close the enlarged view pop-up window to look at the next image. None of this could happen without the considerable talents and kind heart of my good friend Steve Covello. He expanded my ideas of what my site could be, he trained me in how to manage it all,...