Optical Illusions

A very interesting optical illusion. Posted on Richard Wisemans’ blog. Worth looking at.

The human eye has it’s ‘ticks’. You can’t always trust what you see. If you’ve ever had to participate in a police photo selection (looking for someone you saw for only a moment or two) you quickly realize how limited our visual recall can be, and how we fill in information constantly to make existing possible.

Below the blue and green colors are actually, the same color. Check out his blog for comments, discussion and explanation. As well as other examples.

Recent work

I used this on the cover of a recent promotion. It started off as a sample for a story I am working on and took off as a piece on its won. This usually doesn’t happen with my work. I am pretty tied to narrative and my work resonates best when within a story. But this works well as a piece from the story and a piece that conveys a sense of imagination and adventure.

The Book That Eats People

A picture book I illustrated for Tricycle Press will be out this Fall, it’s called The Book That Eats People. I saw the catalog ad for it and I was really happy that they used the spread (below) in promoting the book. It is one of my more favorite spreads from the book. And yes, the book really does eat people. I’ll be putting up some of the final art from the book as the release date approaches.

Here and there

Just got back from two weeks of travel. New York, Boston, Portland Maine, New Hampshire, the list goes on. Met some great people and enjoyed some wonderful weather. I snapped a few pictures in New York City. The giant Hello Kitty was overwhelming. Along with the other characters that stood 16 feet tall or so. They even had one Hello Kitty rigged as a fountain and crying. It’s pretty moving to see Hello Kitty crying.

Oregon – writing and drawing

Thursday night I spoke at the Willamette Writers meeting in Salem. It was a good time and I had an opportunity to meet lots of new Oregon writers and artists and discuss graphic novels.

I attended the Oregon SCBWI conference on Friday and Saturday and spoke for a bit about Graphic Novels again. It was a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and meet some new ones. And what do illustrators do when they get together? They sketch. I did a lot of frogs for some reason. I think I sat too close to Carolyn Conahan. She draws some great frogs (and fishes and horses, which I still don’t draw well!) and it just took over. David Billings was there, another excellent Oregon based illustrator/animator whom I hadn’t met before. If all the Oregon animators, artists and writers ever showed up at one event at one time, I think we’d fill the Rose Garden. There’s a lot of productive, talented people up here but distance and business (and giant trees and rain and Sasquatch and the threat of volcanic eruptions) keeps us from bumping onto one another too often. Less fisticuffs that way I guess.

Good speakers and reviews and critiques of work and a chance to step back and think about the bigger issues of story, plot and structure in your work. Can’t ask for  more than that from a writing and illustrating conference.

more wagon art…I see a trend

Another page from an abandoned project. But I was happy with the painting and the overall mood. I also liked the line in this drawing. I’ve been putting a lot of effort into keeping a line that looks natural, has a sense of humor to it and is loose.

In the context of the story; the wagon, the stuffed animal, the toy sailboat and the moon all played a part. I’ve been surprised how these small projects, often done quickly from a momentary inspiration, bring  the fun back to what I do and pushes my work forward as much or more then any for pay project. I find when it’s all deadline work, well, it starts to feel like ALL deadline work. Is this really something I enjoy? Why didn’t I go to law school again? But the chance to explore, make mistakes, hike down a road that ends up going nowhere (it dissolves back into the thickets) relaxes me and spawns more ideas. Then it’s back to a deadline project and at least half the pressure for me comes from knowing I have limited time to get something I can live with and something and the client likes.

Now it is time to get back to deadline work!

Diapers are funny.

Things I am learning from my 2, almost 3 year old.

You can be always hungry and never want to eat anything.

Pink is a good color. Good for “anything”.

Planet of the Apes (1968, Dir. by Franklin Schaffner  ) is actually pretty darn funny. AND, Monkey people probably only live in “the woods”. Nothing to fear, here in the suburbs.

Hello Kitty is just plain cool. No mater what. And deserves to be worn on shirts, pants, diapers, socks, hats and coats. Much to the delight of the Hello Kitty Mother Ship that must be raking in zillions of dollars.

Dora the Explorer WAS cool. She’s so one and a half.

“Look it.” is an appropriate response to use when answering any question you may not want to answer. What exactly one is supposed to Look At, doesn’t matter. But it diffuses any situation – picking toys up, a dirty diaper, spilling water all over the sleeping cat. I think the technical term is a “redirect”

Cheese goes well on anything.

You’re never too busy or too full for a popsicle.

The best answer to “What are you doing?” is “It’s a special present for you!” Ripped up newspaper. Thank you!

Naps can be postponed with the overwhleming need to finger paint.

Play-Doh is still a lot of fun.

Just laying around

Here’s a newish piece that never mad the cut for a project I had in mind.

I’m like that it doesn’t have a bright blue sky. It feels windy and blustery. Enough to pick the whole wagon up anyway. Spring, summer or autumn? I’m not sure…maybe autumn.

A couple hundred pages.

I originally started this posting off with quotes about writing and rewriting. Then I rewrote it. Enough said.

As I have been working on the revised draft of Earthling! I have also been doing some quick thumbnails of pages to see how I might alter the script once I get into drawing. The two sides go hand-in-hand. But I want to start with a script I like. A script that works from the perspective of a script and have the art add to it instead of jumping into making pictures that can’t rescue a bad story/script.

It goes back and forth and along the way I am starting to tackle some second and third string characters and settings I haven’t designed yet. The struggle to get a script that feels complete is compounded by the need to create a visual universe that feels complete and carries with it a believable graphic history. But that’s the fun part. Getting all of it to feel complete and real and working together.

My bulletin boards are filling up. Not to mention the stacks of note cards and scribbles from sketch books that I create during the day when I’m not in the studio.

And then they invented Kids Car Seats

I’m far from being a mechanical genius. But I thought I could tackle a kids car seat easily enough. What hubris. 

I spent about 2 hours ( seemed like 6) crawling around my back seat adjusting the seat now that my daughter seems to be growing 5 inches a week. How I ever got the seat installed after her birth I don’t know. I faintly remmeber struggling with it. But with a new born and the sleep deprived state I was in, who knows. Maybe I duct-taped it into place the first time.

The seats are required for children under some height and weight that my wife remembers. My daughter loves the seat and fills it will goldfish and yogurt-raisins. I think she’s more firmly attached to the seat because of the yogurt-raisins. 

I have some Earthling updates to post in the next day or so. I just need to rest up after the wrestling match with the car seat.