What are you doing down there?

Third in a series of unknown numbers!

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What are you doing up there?!

Second in a series…

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Red Balloons and Green Beans

Some nice pics from a wonderful event at Red Balloon Bookshop in Minnesota on Sunday the 21st to celebrate the release of How Martha Saved Her Parents from Green Beans. My thanks to author David LaRochelle and many thanks to the marvelous Red Balloon Bookshop for being a gracious host!

And it was wonderful meeting so many friends and book fans whether they eat green beans or not!

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Bad Beans

Here are two early bad green beans from the development art for How Martha Saved her Parents from Green Beans. Due out in April, be sure and buy your seven copies as soon as you can! It’s all about green and orange isn’t it!?

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More Bean Art

A two color version of a very bad bean! Inspired by How Martha Saved Her Parents from Green Beans! A new picture book written by David LaRochelle illustrated by me, due out in April of 2013.

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The Seven Stages of Working on a Picture Book

Writing and or drawing a picture book; Next to making your own salt, pressing your own vinyl recordings or doing your own dental work it’s the most anachronistic of modern, commercial activities. What does it really say about those of us who do it? I don’t know. But I do know that it ranks as number 6 of the list of Top 100 Jobs you can do while not wearing pants.

And I have spent hundreds of hours researching the 7 Stages of Working on a Picture Book.Here they are. Originally there were 9. But who has time for 9 things on a list? That’s like a story with more than 500 words. Crazy…

1. Excitement . 32 pages of full color hj-inks. This will be awesome!

2. Bargaining. Change the text on this page. Make page 7 a full-bleed. Can you make the eyes less googly? How about a double page spread on 11 and 12? Would a bear be wearing pants?

3. Denial. I have plenty of time…Plenty…I wonder if I have any new emails. I’ll check.

4. Acceptance. 11 days to get it done. 11 more days. I don’t need to sleep, do I?

5. Relief. The cover is done. DONE I TELL YOU!

6. Depression. The proofs are in. They look fine…I mean, they look great. The colors are good. Everything is fine…except of course for everything I’d change if I could do it again.

7. Fear. Will anyone ever hire me to do this again?

Thanks to the Kubler-Ross model.

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Early developmental art

This is a much more painterly piece that was an early take for an upcoming picture book.

Ultimately it was decided that the style should be less painterly and the characters were redesigned as well. It’s cropped so you can’t see the far right because that would give too much away about the book concept and title ETC. Later this year I will post the final results, once the book is done and delivered. But I often start working on a book by painting in different styles. And working with an AD or editor I tend to find something everyone likes. Click on it to make it bigger.

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Society of Illustrators – Original Art Show

I was recently told that the book I illustrated, The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot, has been included in the Society of Illustrators of New York show called: Original Art: The Fine Art of Children’s Book Illustration.

I’m happy that the book stood out enough to be accepted into this prestigious show. I have to give a lot of thanks to the art director on the project, Lee Wade, who pushed me to find the right visual tone for the book. It’s such a pleasure to get notes that are helpful and educational. They help take a project to the next level. And of course thanks to the author, Margaret McNamara for writing a picture book that held so much possibility for out-of-this-world illustration fun.

I’m getting the page I selected printed, framed and ready to ship. The book comes out September 27th.

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Super Space Bot! now in red…

Some development art for a new project. I did 7 designs. 7 slightly different characters with different treatments. I learned what I think will work and what won’t in the book. I seem to need to do 2 or 3 small finished pieces when I start work on a new book. Even if the pieces pull away slightly from the actual content of the book, doing them helps me better focus on the dummy and, I guess, think about how to solve the more difficult issues present in the dummy while I consider the style and techniques. Now to finish up the dummy!

From pencil sketch, finished in Photoshop.

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The Book That Eats People and Philosophy

I just came across a fascinating review/discussion of The Book That Eats People on a blog called-  human behavior. Based in Australia, I believe, they bought the book Down Under. That makes me happy.

I see the author, John Perry, has read the review and wrote a great comment afterwords.  I love the fact that this book is dynamic and offers so many POV’s and can stimulate a discussion about so many different ideas. This reviewer is especially interested in the moral aspects of the story. Is it a good book? Is it scary? Does it have a moral perspective? How exciting to be able to think about these issues as part of a picture book discussion!

Here’s a link to the review at human behavior.

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