2 pianos 4 hands
At last! The illustration I did during the summer for Portland Stage Company is now all over the place. I had fun drawing hands many, many times. Nothing like the relentless practicing necessary for the musicians portrayed in the script. I got Marty to pose for one pair of hands. And our neighbor’s son, Jacob, posed for the other pair of hands. Portland Stage gets great coverage for their marketing, which means the visual needs to fit a wide variety of formats. I supplied the art in separate layers; the title font (2 Piano 4 Hands) was one piece, the illustration another, and the...
Read Morein with the new
I found some mitten wrapping paper by Graham & Snow that became a collage card to ring in the new. The first week of the year was busy with newness. I went to an opening for an exhibit of photographs by Peaks Islander Zev Eisenberg in the lobby gallery of the Chestnut Street Lofts in Portland. Zev, a junior in the new media department at U Maine in Orono, possesses an eye for the surprise moment. As the son of Avner the Eccentric and Julie Goell, he’s wise to the slight of hand and lyricism that are everyday in his household. Here he is straightening his work with the level in his...
Read Moreblizzard blast
Christmas was sweet around here, thanks to secret Santas, and a dusting of confectioner’s sugar, followed by a good blast of snow on Monday. Even a visit to Nana at Birchwoods was a delicious treat. Nothing like an overload of sugar to fuel a session of snow sculpting. I visited the Freeport Library on Wednesday for a celebration of winter with other DownEast authors and illustrators. Even that place looked totally sprayed with snow. The first to read was Lynn Plourde, a word player extraordinaire. Her background in speech therapy no doubt informs her lyrical delivery of rhymes;...
Read Moreknitting a story
Funny how many strings connect us, and when they come together, there’s a story. I’ve had mittens on the brain lately. Spotted my neighbor, Pam, knitting on the boat on Friday morning. She had a story to tell about her mitten, being ripped out too many times because she wasn’t following a pattern. Patterns! Folks have been asking about the compass mitten pattern for those featured in Ice Harbor Mittens. The author, Robin Hansen has put the pattern in a nifty kit with yarn. She happily showcased them at our book celebration on Saturday at the Maine Maritime Museum in...
Read Morejoy
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...
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