More daily faces for you! Remember I’m working on expression with the least bit of erasing possible, so some will be good.. and some won’t!
News: Book Cover Illustration
Recently I was approached by the editor of “Ruby for Women Magazine” Nina Newton and asked to do two illustrations. One for a magazine article on Organization and one for the cover of her Valentine E-book about Saint Valentine. She has a pleasure to work with and both her book and Magazine edition came out this February. You can view them here:
AlphaBeasts “S is for Satyr”
Daily Faces
Recently as I was looking at some of the amazingly talented artists out there I became jealous. Hey, I’ll readily admit that sometimes I dream I’m a famous illustrator and I drool over the beautiful spreads in the Caldecott Award Books. But then I wipe off the pages and remember I have something to offer too! In this specific case I think my jealousy was a good thing because it motivated me to action. I was noticing how the expressions of the characters seemed very natural. With only a few lines this illustrator was able to capture the essence of the emotion and portray it with ease. Some days my characters expressions come very naturally, other days I fight with the eraser until one of us wins (usually the eraser). So, I decided I’d teach myself to have natural and easy facial expressions on ALL my characters, cause it’s that easy right? My plan is to draw a face a day for a whole year or until I stop throwing my eraser. I’ll post them here once a week for everyone to see. Some will be total failures, some will be amazing successes, but my goal is to use an eraser as little as possible and grow as an artist in the process. And at the end of my little experiment who knows, I just might hear a Caldecott calling my name…
Illustration Friday “Forward”
This week’s Illustration Friday theme is “Forward”. My idea was inspired the other day when my oldest daughter was giving her little sister a piggy-back ride. They looked so funny flying through our living room. She reminded me of a little monkey clinging to her sister’s back and screaming “GO!” Then she tried riding her brother’s back, but this time they didn’t so much fly as creep through the rooms with her still yelling “GOOOO!” and giggling uncontrollably. Somehow, when I sat down to draw it became a tortoise with little mice riding on his back yelling…. FORWARD! Gooooo!
Illustration Friday “Prepare”
This week’s Illustration Friday topic is “Prepare”. It made me smile when I considered the possibilities for my sketch because in my house it seems like everything we do takes hours of preparation. It’s hard to go anywhere or do anything with three young children without packing for any and all potential situations and/or catastrophes. A quick trip to the grocery store quickly turns into multiple lost shoes, three trips to the bathroom, a toy for everyone, an extra drink of water, a handful of snacks shoved into my purse a diaper bag with extra clothes in the trunk and then turning around at the end of the street to drive back because I forgot the actual grocery list on the kitchen counter! Now that some of my children are old enough to get themselves “prepared” it makes me laugh to see the kinds of things they believe they NEED, and I wonder… What is going through those little minds?
Illustration Friday “Grounded”
As part of my goals for the new year I’ve decided to participate in some of the amazing groups and competitions that exist in this big wide world. One of them being Illustration friday (Illustration friday). This week’s topic is “grounded”. After sketching a few ideas I dismissed the most obvious (although I liked a few of the sketches themselves) and chose one that was a little off the beaten path. Here’s one of the sketches I didn’t choose but I thought you all might enjoy seeing anyway!
Merry Christmas
My Interview
Hello everyone!
I just finished an online interview with the SCBWI cyber cafe. I had tons of fun and now they’ve posted it on their blog: As the Eraser Burns blog
They are featuring illustrators this month and there are plenty of talented people to see (including me of course ) I thought you all might like to take a look!
Jasper is finally finished!
After three months of hard work on the children’s book “Jasper Finds a New Home” the illustrations are finally finished! Now comes the hair-raising part where I ship all the originals to the publisher and pray nothing happens to them along the way! I thought you might like to see a few more from the finished product to be printed this July by Folded Leaf Publishing.
