Really Sweet!

A few months ago I was commissioned by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/ to do caricatures of FDR, Eleanor and their dog Fala for them to reproduce onto certain items of merchandise. Mugs and tee-shirts was what I expected. What I did not expect was the packet of caricature chocolates arrived on my doorstep this morning!

Actually it's the caricatures printed in (I assume) edible icing on top of the chocolate. The reproduction is great. Kudos to the chocolatier, The Chocolate Canvas™.  http://www.thechocolatecanvas.com
The reproduction is just as good, if not better, than traditional prints on paper.

  I showed them to my son who is home for the summer from college. He was impressed, but thought it was a weird choice to print old people on chocolate. (He's not a history major, and to be fair, he had just woken up). I just need to keep people from eating them.

Sweet

I'm am going to start participating in "Illustration Friday" a website where illustrators post work relating to a weekly theme. http://illustrationfriday.com/  This week's theme was "sweet".

A new technique?

For years I’ve been struggling to find a technique that is well suited for illustrations that feature a lot of humorous details. One that maintains the fresh quality of my pencil sketches. I used to use pen and ink and watercolor for these pieces, but, in my hands, these tools did not result in work that I was 100% satisfied with (or even 60%). I envy those who have mastered watercolor. I am not one of them. Yet I love working with it, the way the paper and the liquid interact.

I’ve been experimenting with digital techniques. I thought the answer would be to create work from scratch on the tablet, yet I always found something sterile in the results. Too airbrushy.

So, I think I have stumbled on a technique that resolves the issues I’ve been having with both techniques. I refine my pencil drawing using graphite, water soluable black pencils, sometimes black prismacolors. Then I use grey watercolor (neutral tint) to add value and texture, then I scan into Photoshop, and add color transparently, in different layers, with different opacities.

So, I guess I'm really compartmentalize the process, first line, then value, and finally color. But the good thing about working in layers in Photoshop is that I can always go back and adjust my line, or adjust my value.

Original drawing, value painted with watercolor. 

Final piece, color added digitally.

2012 Hoilday Card

I was a little lazy this year, or at least I was hoping to be lazy. I draw this as a black and white holiday card at least 16 years ago, and I thought it would be a simple thing to add color to it digitally (Re-use, Re-cycle, Re-something). It was simple, actually, but more time consuming than I had anticipated. Coloring is probably the simplest thing to do in photoshop, but its taken me 10 years to best way to do it. Add color in a separate layer, with the layer set to multiply. People trained in photoshop probably learn this the first day. Oh well.

Now, if only I can teach these dogs how to play poker. That's art!

More Sketchbook Doodles

Really bad kitty

Get ready for the smell-off!

I think King Kong should have thicker forearms.

Not sure who this guy is supposed to be... Scrooge maybe?

This is how I feel somedays.

June Jam makes Best Books list for 2012!

The Children’s Book Committee at the Bank Street College of Education strives to guide librarians, educators, parents, grandparents and other interested adults to the best books for children published each year. The all-volunteer committee includes educators, librarians, authors, parents and psychologists who share a passion for and expertise in the world of children’s literature. Young reviewers from all over the country, ages 2–18, read and evaluate many of the books as well.

I was delighted to learn that they selected June Jam in the Adventure and Mystery category for readers aged five to nine.

My niece and nephew helped me out by posing for me for June Jam.

June Jam is the sixth book in The Calendar Mystery series. The series features a mystery for every month of the year. We started with January Joker and February Friend, hit our stride with March Mischief, got through Spring of last year with April Adventure and May Magic. June Jam was published last March, and that brings us up to July Jitters and August Acrobat, which came out this past summer.

Ron Roy is writing The Calendar Mysteries as a follow up to his hit series The A to Z Mysteries, which I also illustrated. The main characters in The Calendar Mysteries, (Bradley, Brian, Nate and Lucy), are the younger siblings and cousin of the three main characters in the The A to Z Mysteries (Dink Josh and Ruth Rose).

I finished September Sneakers and am currently working on the illustrations for October Ogre. The A to Z series was based on the alphabet; this one is based on the calendar. Both were, and are, fun while they lasted, but what I need is a series that’s based on numbers so I won’t need to worry about it coming to an end!

For complete of Bank Street's picks, see http://bankstreet.edu/center-childrens-literature/childrens-book-committee/best-books-year/best-books-year-2012/

My First International School Visit

Whenever I do school visits, it seems that the farther away I am from home, the more of a big deal I seem to be. When I give a presentation at my kids’ school here in Brattleboro, VT, I am greeted as just another parent with a semi-interesting job. But when I go to schools in Alabama, or Wisconsin, I’m treated as a prestigious visiting illustrator.  So, by that logic, if I traveled to the opposite side of the planet I would maximize the amount of pomp that could possibly be associated with my arrival.

How's this for an ego boost?

Well, in April that theory was put to the test and it actually turned out to be true. I was invited by The Brent International School in The Philippines to come and give presentations and workshops regarding my work as an author and illustrator. Patricia and Kurt Lamb, the dynamic duo of international school librarians, played host and made my first international school visit a wonderful experience. It was a particular pleasure to hang out with the ex-pat teachers who teach and raise their families in the international school circuit and I got a glimpse into their jet-setting lifestyle.

Ruben's caricature of me.

Patricia and the teachers went above and beyond any school I’ve ever been to in terms of preparing the students for my visit. Aside from being familiar with my books, the teachers showed the students my cartoon drawing demos on Youtube, and even incorporated a little creative writing into the exercise.  I had a session with Brent’s cartoonist club, and Art Teacher and Cartoonist Extraordinaire Ruben Nacion  made a wonderful caricature of me and my “dinosaur tie”.

Patricia and Kurt

I wish I took larger photos of these.

This is only a portion of Brent's wonderful campus ( pre-k through 12).

Who wants to run? Heat humidity index of 200 degrees.

 Patricia and Kurt took me up to Taal Volcano, to listen to a trio of strolling musicians serenade us as we looked out at a lake, that was in a volcano, that was in a lake, which was in a …. (you get the idea). Quite beautiful, and the cool mountain air was a respite from hot and muggy Manila.

Taal Volcano

I had one day to explore Manila (which is quite the megalopolis) so Patricia and Kurt to me to Green Hills, a vast, indoor (with air conditioning, thankfully) shopping bazaar. The only way I can describe it is to take every flea market, shopping bazaar, and souvenir stand I’ve ever been to in my life, and put them all under one roof, and that would be one section of Green Hills.  Tee shirts, jewelry, Indonesian shawls, knock off ANYTHINGS, etc, and there’s a stall for that. Patricia was a fantastic haggling coach, giving me very clear eyebrow signals if anyone was playing  me for a sucker. 

Pretty cool, right?

I think she was curious to see what overlooked gems my artistic eye would discover, but ended up cringing when I went for the coin purse made out of an actual preserved toad .

 I am grateful for the experience, and here are a few of my lasting impressions.

#1 Warm, friendly people (I’ve never been called “sir” so many times in my life).

#2 In the Philippines, you don't need walls, but you do need ceilings (sun, monsoon rains).

#3 Colorful “Jeepneys” (small jeep-looking buses) with chrome fenders, overflowing with riders, zooming through traffic clogged streets).

#4 The juxtaposition of sky scrapers, gigantic malls, and corrugated tin and cinderblock shanty towns. 

I suspect that more and more this is the face of the 21^st century city.

#5 Rice fields and fruit stand overflowing with pineapple, mangos and papayas.

#6 Lagoons filled with fish farms

#7 Gated residential communities, both humble and grand.

#8 Surprisingly few, if any, Manila envelopes.

#9  All the familiar commercial food franchises (along with the Philippines’ own Leslie’s and Jollibee).  

#10 Gigantic vertical billboard advertisements lining the highways, printed on fabric so they can be rolled up during monsoon season. I suspect that more and more this is the face of the 21^st century city.

#11 The wonderful staff and students at Brent, who are more engaged in the world than I certainly am, and who humbled me beyond belief with their warm welcome.

Jeepney