Oh, Chickadee!

This winter is going out like a LION, isn’t it?! Here we are hunkered down for yet another snow storm. It was in March 2006 that I drew this little chickadee with a ceramic vase holding branches about to bud, a hopeful gesture titled, Forcing Spring.

Fast forward to last March on this very day, when I was working on cover ideas for Jennifer Jacobson’s manuscript Oh, Chickadee!

I’ve always been enamored by chickadees. When McSea Books offered me the opportunity to illustrate Jennifer’s non-fiction story detailing a year in the life of these friendly little acrobats, I jumped at it.

Jennifer and I met just before St. Patrick’s Day at Ri Ra’s to discuss my first dummy, toasting our venture with some Guinness…Slainte!

We’ve been in a critique group together for almost five years, and the chance to collaborate on a book is an absolute DREAM. Our posse of Critters, who all attended Kindling Words a couple of weeks later, have been so instrumental in my kidlit journey! I showed Jennifer a second dummy with revisions she suggested.

After sharing our dummy with folks at Maine Audubon for accuracy, I began final illustrations in early May.

Once a small sketch is approved, I enlarge it on my copier, and trace onto pastel paper. This red barn is one of my favorite buildings on Peaks Island, and is featured in the opening spread.

Here, I go! Red first:)

I intended to have the barn show up a couple of times, to indicate the territory that chickadees occupy. They don’t fly south and tend to have smaller orbits than other birds. Marty made a little paper model so I could draw the barn from above.

I draw from direct observation whenever possible, and my illustrator neighbor, Doug Smith, loaned me a little wind-up goldfinch, slightly bigger than a chickadee. I found a small stone about the size of a chickadee egg, which is only about half an inch long! I invited my birding neighbor, Patty Wainright, to offer input on my process. She contributes to the Peaks Island Land Preserve’s bird blog and loaned me a stack of her books. Another artist neighbor, Kathy Hanley, loaned me books as well. It takes an island village!

In my collection of nature objects, I have a nest that came in handy for staging an illustration. After watching bird nest cams, I considered this angle.

There’s a lot of guessing in illustration. It’s hard to know the exact proportions of something I have never seen.

In May my own baby chick was on hand for a Mother’s Day picnic on Peaks Island.

My studio sits in the northwest corner of an old sea captain’s house. From my window, I spied a crow hopping in the tall grass of our No Mow May yard. I’d just illustrated a book, Winter Crows, by Rae Chalmers, so crows are completely on my radar now. I went out to investigate and found a fledgling of some kind. Was the crow helping or harassing? Any ideas?

I ran back out three times, to chase away a cat as well as the crow, who may have been cawing about the cat? So much to learn, for this baby bird new to flying and for me, learning about the birds in my habitat.

Meanwhile, I was in need of a model for an illustration in which a child feeds a chickadee by hand. My young neighbor, Lucy, obliged.

Have you ever done this? I haven’t fed a chickadee by hand, but you can learn how in the back of the book. In the final illustration, I aimed for a likeness of Jennifer’s daughter, now all grown up.

Here’s a work in progress of that illustration:

Edits were made in July to this final. Can you find what’s missing in the book?

Meanwhile, I spied chickadee merch everywhere….coffee beans, bedding, and…beer!

Yet they remain in peril on this planet.

I did the last illustration in July.

Then I jumped over to finishing illustrations for another book, stay tuned for that story. Soon enough, color proofs arrived in November! I got out the two dummy books along with the original to compare color results. My hand-lettered title worked out, I think. Many thanks to the wonderful designer, Jill Weber! She is both an illustrator and designer and combines her super powers in brilliant ways.

Enormous thanks to Stephanie Mulligan at McSea Books for making this endeavor a lovely object. And her timing is better than Santa. My advance copy arrived on Christmas Eve!

Hello, book spotting at the Brick Store Museum in January! I am honored to be in the company of Chris Van Dusen and Lucky Platt. I’ll see Lucky later this month, for a star gazing book event at the Unity Public Library on March 25.

Jennifer did a school visit in Bristol, and we’d love to visit your school. Give us a shout. A swell review from an expecting bird blogger, Jeffery Mann of Because Birds, includes a chickadee call.

This just in from Emily Liebling, first grade teacher at Reiche Elementary School in Portland, Maine. I sent her a copy pronto because her class had just embarked on a unit about birds. They installed a bird feeder in their classroom. Hooray for budding naturalists!

Calling all librarians! We’ll be signing Oh, Chickadee! at the Maine State Library’s Reading Round Up in Augusta on April 27. If we don’t see you there, stay tuned for book signings to come. Thanks for reading and keep looking up. Spring is on the way!