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

Sketchbook doodles

After years of preaching to my kids and my students the importance of carrying around a sketchbook with you, I finally took my own medicine. Whether to draw from life when you're waiting at the airport, or just doodling creatures from your imagination I think it's an essential accessory.

I've posted a few of the latter here. No real explanation needed for the alien bug thing and the chubby crocodile guy. Regarding the giants, I just started thinking about how a humanoid creature would look if it was 20 feet tall or so. I figure the brain wouldn't be that much bigger than ours, but the jaw would have to be huge and powerful, which explains the proportion of the head. Obviously the feet would need to be thick and massive to support its weight. At first I assumed all the appendages would need to be thick and massive, but in the 3rd sketch I came up with the idea of long, relatively delicate fingers, because how else would it be able to accomplish anything requiring manual dexterity? The image puts me in mind of the largest sauropods that have tails that end it long delicate whips. I also tried to make all the skin sag, and the larger fleshy masses sag, like an elephant.

Viva Las Vegas!

It never fails to surprise me the unusual places the ability to draw funny faces can take me. I spent the second week in January in Las Vegas drawing caricature for Sharp on their smart boards. It was all part of CES 2012, the annual Consumer Electronics Show. 150 geeks from all over the world were in town checking out new gadgets, gizmos, and anything with a screen. The drawing program I was demonstrating is more of a presentation tool rather than a tool anyone would be making serious art with, but it was fun for the people to see their faces drawn on the "VIEWMONGOUS" 80" screen (I'm assuming VIEWMONGOUS is an officially trademarked phrase of the Sharp corporation). Las Vegas was (get ready for the news flash) glitzy and artificial, but there certainly are less entertaining places to spend a week.

You can get a glimpse of me drawing here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA4Q9IfR6BA&feature=related

My $450 cab ride to Iowa

Since the 2011-2012 School Visit Season has officially begun, I thought it would be fun to share an adventure from a few years back.

“Well, this is our tenth year. Something had to go wrong sometime.” sighed the librarian before she hung up the phone.

Not on my watch! I thought. But this was my fault. I had been more than halfway to the airport in Hartford when I realized that I had left my wallet back home in Vermont. I had week of school visits scheduled in Iowa. I had obsessed over packing everything I might need, but apparently my wallet had not been on my list of essential items.

I caught a later flight to Chicago, but there were no more connecting flights to Davenport, Iowa. And none Monday morning that would get me there early enough to give a school presentation. I was gnashing my teeth and pulling my hair out, but once I accepted the notion that Monday’s visit was not going to happen, I had a revelation. If I could spend Monday’s honorarium getting to Iowa, I could still make Monday happen. My speaking fee would be gone, but at least the kids wouldn’t be disappointed (sounds hokey, but that’s how I think).

My first thought was to rent a car, but I realized I would look like a zombie the next day if I drove all night. Might scare the kids. I would have to cab it. When I asked the Ethiopian cab driver if he could take me to Davenport Iowa, he smiled and said “Yes, Milwaukee!”. At some point there was a consultation with a map. The fare would be $450, I forget if that was before his tip, or including. Either way, I had a few dollars to spare.

So, I got to Iowa in time to sleep for an hour or two, shower and present. And all week the lovely librarian and her husband enjoyed referring to themselves as my Ethiopian cab drivers as they drove me around.

A year later in a similar situation (not my fault, the Atlanta airport was covered in ice) I rented a car and drove all night from Cincinnati to Birmingham in order not to miss a school presentation. If I was a zombie, the kids didn’t seem to mind.

Mother Goose Game

A few months ago I received an assignment from Patch Products: Illustrate a Mother Goose Game. A fun project, the only problem was that I had about 15 minutes to create the artwork (I'm kidding, I had a few weeks, but it felt like 15 minutes). A box cover illustration and 12 different scenes from the classic nursery rhymes for the game board. In order to meet the deadline I painted the the art to a certain level of completion, making the cover a priority, and with two days to go I had the work scanned and finished everything in Photoshop. Luckily the designer at Patch patched it all together. Should be in stores soon!