joy
While I wait for the go-ahead for final art on a new book project, I am elfishly sending out season’s greetings. I added a couple of elements to an illustration from Nest, Nook & Cranny for this year’s card. If you haven’t gotten yours yet, send me your snail mail address! That humble book has received a string of recent accolades. I am proud to share: the Nook book made it onto the New York Public Library’s 2010 list of top 100 books for children! Cool! The season sure has it’s merry madness. The MECA holiday sale was the kick-off. My students did a wicked...
Read Morethe telling room
As a place where words come out to play, the Telling Room was a fine vessel for a recent workshop I did around Ice Harbor Mittens, throwing images into the sea of ideas, too. There’s a shiny wall there with a parade of random juxtapositions, each one ready to talk. In illustration, words provide me with fantastic places to jump off, dive in, and make a splash visually. We warmed up by passing around a folded piece of paper and drawing a top, or middle, or bottom on one section, but no one could see the whole thing until the end. This game goes back to the Victorian era, when drawing...
Read Morebeyond shopping
The time has finally come! MECA’s holiday sale begins tonight. The tenacious elves in IL 421 have been working on sale items for the Illustration department tables for the past month. While ideas were in the making, the busy and talented Betsy Thompson visited the class to share her wisdom and talents. She brought in lots of sketchbooks, portfolios, marketing tips, resources, you name it. Thanks, Betsy! She also gave feedback on early ideas for products and packaging. These are cute things by Bri Juliana will sell these felt toys that must be fondled: Seumas did some awesome...
Read Morebook brou ha ha
Thanks to several helpings of gravy, I am ready for the upcoming whirl of book events around Ice Harbor Mittens. First off, I am doing a drawing/writing workshop at the Telling Room this Saturday from 1 – 3 PM. We’ll play some drawing games, and let a lost mitten find it’s way home in 10 panels! I made this collage from my pencil sketches for the book, and put it on the cover of the booklets we will fill. Author Robin Hansen has lots up her woolly sleeve, too. Check out her new blog! We’ll be together, signing books, drawing mittens, and having yarnish fun at...
Read MoreMECA lekka trek
The seniors in MECA’s illustration IL 421 blasted down to Boston this week, stopping mid-way at the Portsmouth Museum of Art to see the expansive exhibit, Sugipop!, all about manga and it’s influence on contemporary art. From the opening display of cute severed heads, to the Hokusai book of character designs that spawned Japanese sequential storytelling, the show spans an amazing range of imagery. This is “Yoko Natsu Chan” by Mr. We couldn’t go in this room, but you could feel this piece by Momoyo Torimitsu, titled “Somehow I Don’t Feel...
Read Moreseen and noted
For a small rock, Peaks Island can be quite the draw. In a most rare event, Charlesbridge designer, Whitney Leader-Picone, trekked out here to connect with several islanders who are creating books for them. It was my good fortune to play host, and here we are in my cluttered studio, looking over a color comp for a non-fiction picture book about climate change. Here’s a rough of a spread about the golden toad. I still need more reference on cloud forests and toad eggs, but it’s a start. Here is a comp for the title page. I found an old snapshot I took at the Boston Aquarium...
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