The close of my 2013-2014 School Visit Season

The World's Largest Jack Rabbit in Odessa, TX

Now is the time of year when the school year comes to an end, and similarly my “school visit” year has come to an end as well. In 2013-2014 I had the opportunity to visit many wonderful schools across North America. If I was more diligent at keeping up my blog I would have devoted a blog entry to each school, but since I am a sporadic blogger I’ll try to lump them all together in one entry.

I don’t think British Columbia and Louisiana come into direct competition very often (not a whole lot of curling on the bayou) but for some reason they seemed to be involved in a contest to see which one could delude me into feeling like a literary celebrity. They each booked me for a full week. In British Columbia I spent the entire week working with a school full of young authors at Taylor Elementary. It was a rare treat to be able to spend multiple days with the students, sharing first my author/illustrator presentation, then having multiple workshop sessions with each class.

This is me drawing a caricature of a contest winner
in Taylor, BC

In Shreveport Louisiana I spent the week visiting 6 different schools and participating in their city wide Art Break, where the city’s convention center is devoted to student art and performance from across the parish. And they had a definite agenda, and that was to send me home heavier than when I arrived. Fried green tomatoes, crawfish, and barbeque were among their weapons of choice.

I also got to visit my first military base school in Fort Leavenworth Kansas. I made it to schools in both Carolinas, Texas, and Ohio. I was able to visit family and friends while visiting schools in Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York. I visited students in my neighboring state of Massachusetts, and finished up with a visit to a school in Jamaica (Jamaica, Vermont, just 45 minutes up the road from me).

Here a few things I learned this past year:

         1) In Canada they pronounce “The A to Z Mysteries” as “The A to Zed Mysteries.”

Coming in for a landing in Canada.

         2) To eat a crawdad, twist off the head, suck the juice out of the head, pinch the tail, pull out the meat (eat it), then suck the claws. And most importantly: DON’T TOUCH YOUR EYES FOR THE NEXT 48 HOURS! (the spices burn).

 

This a small serving of crawdads. Cathy and Louis Smith demonstrate the proper technique.

         3) The world’s largest jack rabbit is in Odessa Texas.

         4) In Hershey PA Chocolate Avenue is lined with Hershey Kiss streetlamps.

         5) There is a life size replica of Stone Henge in Odessa Texas (not sure if the Druids would know what to make of Armadillos).

 

Stone Henge, Texas style

         6) Vince-a-saurus, Maddy-a-saurus, and Akeem-a-saurus are a few of the First Grade Dinosaurs in South Carolina

         7) Kids who attend school on military bases do NOT have to salute their teachers

It was a great year, and I would like to thank all of the teachers, librarians, PTO & PTA parents, principals and community leaders who worked hard to make my visits possible.

A workshop with students in Clayton, NC

One of many royal welcomes in Shreveport, LA.

Scrooge Abridged

This was my Christmas card from 2009, before I started my blog. I created it with the panels lined up horizontally, and folded accordion style.  But it's fun to stack the panels vertically and scroll down through the story. I should say my memories of A Christmas Carol are from the 1951 movie, with Alistair Sim as Scrooge. I think the problem with many filmed versions of A Christmas Carol is that they cast a grouchy, gruff actor to play Scrooge. I think the key to the character is finding an actor who can be convincingly giddy after his transformation. Grumpy, cranky and mean is easy; sincerely joyful and ecstatic is hard.

2013 Holiday Card

Here's my 2013 Holiday Card

 This image of the caroling snowmen was originally painted as an assignment for Wowindows (www.wowindows.com) a company that makes holiday posters for windows that glow at night as they are backlit from the lights inside the house. The posters are most effective if there are large opaque areas of black, to contrast with the translucent color areas. The image also needs to be vertical, to fit a variety of windows.

For my card I de-verticalized the image to give the snowmen a nice roundedness. I added a blue nighttime sky with snowflakes, but I toyed with the idea of keeping the black background with snowflakes. My daughter was the only other person in the house when I was playing around with the backgrounds. She nixed the black sky, so I went with the blue. But I'm not sure, I kind of think the black is cool and graphic.

This is the original version as a holiday window poster

This is the alternate card. 

WEIRD DRAGONS

This guy has a snout like a gavail, kind of beaver feet,
and I 'm not sure what animal has little knobs like that.

I attend a writers' critique group most weeks, and I generally spend most of the time listening. When I listen I like to doodle, and what I'm doodling has nothing to do with what I'm listening to. My high school biology teacher was stunned because I would be drawing constantly the whole time he was lecturing, but I was still able to get A's in his class. I mention this because I have a habit of drawing dragons during my writers' meeting, and I don't want people to think I'm not paying attention. Rarely does anyone in the group read a story that has anything to do with dragons, but for some reason that's where my brain goes.

I guess this is pretty typical

Usually my basic dragon prototype is an alligator head, a dinosaur body, iguana spikes, and giant bat wings. But I've been playing around with the form and trying to introduce DNA from some other species (I really was paying attention in biology class).

Different kind of dino body.

I scanned a few and added some color in photoshop.

Aquatic dragon (I don't think he's going to fly very far with those wings).

Maybe a rainbow stork dragon? Definitely from the tropics. The feet remind me of aye-aye hands (except with webbing)

Snapping turtle head. I figure this guy doesn't move to fast, except for his head and neck. And those wings are just for show. Maybe, like a hippo, he sits with most of his body under water and the  heads whips around and catches prey. Maybe the wings swish the fish to where the head can snap them up.

Not quite sure what to say about this guy. Probably good at texting with those fingers.  But why is his head so heavy?

A Blast from the Past

I've been trying to post an illustration every week on the "Illustration Friday"blog.
This week's theme was "HYBRID".
I have an illustration that features a whole bar full of hybrids. This is an illustration I did at least 20 years ago for a puzzle company. All they told me was that they wanted a science fiction bar scene, kind of like Star Wars, but, with all original characters. That's my favorite kind of assignment. I should mention that probably as long as science fiction has existed as a genre there have been scenes like this, assemblages of other worldly creatures hobnobbing and sharing libations.

The puzzle as to have a thousand pieces. I tried to fill it with details, so every piece would have something interesting on it. A few years back I received an e-mail from someone who bought the puzzle when it was published, and tracked me down. They wanted to buy a new one, but unfortunately I couldn't help them out.

Sketchbook Doodles: Robo-Bugs

For some reason I started playing around with mashing up insects (and arachnids) with robots. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say mechanical vehicles. I took two of the doodles into photoshop and added some color. 

 It's important to let your mind wander, you never know what it will lead to.

Puppies! Puppies! Puppies!

With July comes the launch of a new chapter book series that I’ve been illustrating entitled Palace Puppies, written by Laura Dower.

Whenever I’m discussing what goes into illustrating a book cover I explain how the cover illustration should engage the reader, how it should convey information about the character and the setting, and most importantly how it should make the reader curious about what is happening inside the book. With Palace Puppies there was one task that superseded all the others; make some really really really really cute puppies.

Another interesting aspect of illustrating these covers was the specific directions I received regarding the color palette (Sunny and the Royal Party was to be a little more pink, Sunny and the Snowy Surprise a little more blue, etc). I didn’t really appreciate the reasoning behind this until I saw all for covers presented as a group, with the varying color trim. I enjoy looking at the 4 books together as a set, it reminds me of a box of puppy marzipan or something.

Creating the text illustrations for Palace Puppies was fun on a number of levels. It was fun to show the regal lifestyle of Annie and James, the princess and prince in the fictitious kingdom of Glitter Rock, and their puppies, Sunny and Rex. The royal family has loved dogs for generations, so wherever possible I tried to incorporate canine elements into the lavish palace décor.

I was allowed to be creative with the placement of the illustrations and how they interacted with the copy. This meant more work for the designer, who sometimes had to bend the shapes of the paragraphs, but I think it makes for an end product that is much more fun to read. I'm really hoping young readers enjoy this fun new series.