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Yamaha Motorcycle R1 style

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On February 21, I'll be presenting a lecture in Massachusetts at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The lecture, Q&A and book signing starts at 7:00. Contact Professor Brian Moriarty for more information. Photo US News.

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From April 10-14 I'll be one of the featured guests at the 2nd Annual Plein Air Convention and Expo in Monterey, California. I'll be doing a talk on composition, as well as painting in oil outdoors in the picturesque environs, alongside the rest of the faculty and participants. It's a great opportunity for shop talk while practicing in the field.
April 10-14, Plein Air Convention and Expo, Monterey-Carmel, California
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Later in April, over the weekend of the 25th, I will be one of the guests at the Art of the Portrait Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. This event brings together many of the top portrait artists from around the world, painting side by side from live models and explaining their process. My lecture will will be about drawing portraits "in the wild" from candid models, and I'll be on a panel talking about blogging. (Photo Charles Walls) 
April 25-28. Art of the Portrait Conference, Atlanta
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In June I will be one of the guests for a couple of days at Illustration Master Class in Amherst Massachusetts. The spaces are filled for this year, but there is a wait list.

June 12 (or so) 2013 Illustration Master Class, MA

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I have always been into cute stuff.. Forever. But, as time has gone by, I've realized there's WAY more to it than just an attraction to cuteness. I feel 'at one' with cute art. Cute art is my native language. Even in phases when my art has had darker themes, there was always something sort of sweet and hopeful lurking underneath everything I've made. Cuteness permeated. It's always been part of the fabric.

So lately I've been working hard to uncover my truth in life, business, and my mission, and how everything intersects. Who I truly am (to my core) , what I truly care about (big picture, small picture... every picture), what I want to share with the world (what I am compelled to share).

And, of course, the biggest question is WHY.  Why I am driven to share this stuff. The toughest question is always WHY. Why, why WHY.


PLUS... A big, huge honkin' dose of the BRAVE. (Hey, you gotta go there to figure it out. You know what I mean?)

Well, guess what? I'm there. Delving in, sorting out, taking inventory, filling in blanks, turning over rocks...



...in galoshes, with soil up to my shins.

So...The side effect of being ruthlessly brave for the purpose of moving forward (in brand, business, art... and human evolution in general, right?) is that, ultimately, the dots are going to get connected on a much deeper level. The themes that have permeated my entire life have somehow aligned themselves pretty organically and pretty flawlessly with my creative + entrepreneurial goals NOW. Everything, it turns out, is inextricably entwined. (Yup. Wow.)

It's like a jigsaw puzzle that has magnetically linked itself together on it's own.

So I've been living in this "magnetic puzzle" moment for awhile.. But have been stumped with how to best share this effectively, in a positive way, and without getting all gooped up in the details. It's sort of been this riddle that I haven't been able to solve. I am an optimist, but I also can't help but keep it real... And, let's be honest here, my early life was not all sunshine and tulips and rainbows. So... a little tricky, a little sticky.

But then, I had a lightbulb moment. My actual story itself  (GASP!) isn't really all that important. What IS important is what the outcome was. How I handled things. How I handled myself. How I handled situations. How I grew and became a stronger person.






And WHAT helped me to do that.

So, I asked myself: "When I was a really young kid, WHAT were my biggest comforts? WHAT transported me and supported me when I needed it? What made me feel safe when in an unstable environment? What felt like friendship when I most needed it? What kept me hopeful? What kept me ME?"
The answer is, was and has always been cute art.

It was my own cute art that I drew. I drew all the time, and drawing pictures with little flowers and doodles and my own characters and pretty dresses... that was my universe.

It was the cute art on all of the little cute things I had. Not only did I cherish these things because they were so cute and entertaining, but because they were, really, truly and completely a HUGE source of comfort. 

Drawing and getting lost in my own cute art was always my favorite thing to do.  In hindsight, it also allowed me to tune out that which needed to be tuned out. (And, it turned out to be an amazingly effective coping mechanism!) But it also trained mini-me on some really grown-up lessons that served me well later on. I learned to maintain a singular focus on a singular task for a long period of time. I trained with tenacity, patience and stubbornness to complete that single task. There's more to this, but you get the gist...
As for my cute stuff: it kept me company, entertained, comforted, inspired. Stuffed animals, Sanrio goodness. Books. Toys. A Saturday night would turn into a full-on happy thrill-fest when my mom would shuttle us all to the Sav-On drug store for a shopping trip. We'd all roam the store and choose our own candy and toys. It was THE BEST. One of my favorite childhood memories is actually set in Sav-On, I'm comparing the possible contenders with my sister and laboring over exactly what to get. (...And, for my treat dollar, nothing beat the Hello Kitty mini-stationery, notebooks, pencils and puffy stickers.)

Another one of my All-Star Life Savers was my Winnie The Pooh. When I first got him, he was even bigger than me! I dragged that hearty bear everywhere, for a long time. Then one day, we up and moved coasts on the quick. My sisters and I were allowed to pack only our barest-minimum, most-important items. Well, there was NO WAY I goin' anywhere without my Winnie. He even made the trek with his two best buds in tow, Dolly and Penguiny. The three amigos are still with me today.

What I'm trying to say is... the personality, heart and spirit that was present in the product art and characters lifted me. WAY lifted me. Eons. They lifted me then. They lift me today.

 In fact they might be even more important to me now, if that's possible— because I know now that they truly saved me then.





So, my saying "Cute Art Saves Lives" is light-hearted, silly, goofy, a little kooky and a lot tongue-in-cheek.. But, the truth is that it's my truth. Remembering how my cute art helped me so much THEN has turned out to completely inform and directly connect my art, my heart, and my mission NOW.. And NOW, it's all wrapped up in my happy place... :)

So that's the story, complete with overturned rocks and my Cute Art WHY's. (Now tell me... is it any wonder that WHY's and WISE sound exactly the same?)

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Hurrah! The BBC's children's channel, CBeebies, just featured our book, When Titus Took the Train!



You can watch the presenter read it here. He did a great job! (Can anyone tell me his name? I'd love to thank him. I wonder if he's on Twitter.) His name is Alex Winters and he introduces himself over on the CBeebies website. A big thanks to Alex, to children's writer and editor Ruth Redford for tweeting me about it, and to Rebecca Earl (aka Barmy Bex) for identifying Alex! You can follow Alex on Twitter at @alexwinterstv.


Direct YouTube link

Extra bonus! All my books come with FREE downloadable activity sheets on my website, and you can download your own When Titus Took the Train board game to play with your whole family! Or you can download a blank board game template to create your own Titus railways adventure, making up its own highlights and perils. Click here for the Titus web page.



You can also see a cardboard-and-sticks trailer that the writer, Anne Cottringer, and I made to go along with book! Click here to watch the animation and learn about how we made it. We hope you enjoy the book!

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Two variants on a portrait of Juan, a contributor to a book of children's dreams that I am illustrating. It's one in a series published by Roger Omar.
Watercolour gone over with Procreate on iPad. Click to enlarge.

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This is a serious trip. Go to Daily Dawdle (click the painting) and look at their swirling image .gif for 30 seconds - then look at Van Gogh's STARRY NIGHT. The sky will MOVE. Seriously.

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Reviewed by Charlotte Richardson:

Bruce Pascoe,
Fog A Dox
Magabala Books, 2012.

Ages: 10+

“A story of courage, acceptance and respect,” Magabala Books rightly claims of masterful storyteller Bruce Pascoe’s latest YA novel, Fog A Dox. Set in the Australian bush of southwest Victoria and written in Pascoe’s captivating bush vernacular, the story begins with Albert, an old woodsman (“tree feller”) who brings home three orphaned baby foxes, then coaxes his Dingo mix dog, Brim, to nurse them along with her own pups…

Read the full review

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Publisher’s Marketplace published the following on Friday. If you have their paid subscription, you can use their database to see how many books in each genre and editor has signed and how many books an agent has sold according to what has been reported to them. Very interesting stuff.

The Year In Deals: 2012

It’s time for our annual look at trends in deal making from the previous, based as usual on reports to Publishers Marketplace. Which comes with the usual qualifiers: PM deal reports represent only a portion of activity in the marketplace, and characterizations of deal size in particular are dependent upon disclosure from the parties involved. We infer relatively consistent habits over time from our community, and the PM dataset of deals is the only such resource robust enough to analyze over time. To us, the granular year-to-year changes are more indicative than anything else.

Once again, total recorded deal volume increased, up 9 percent in 2012 over the prior year, the largest percentage increase since 2009′s rebound from the 2008 slump. Fiction was a clear growth area, up 13 percent over a year ago and above historical norms, with children’s deal reports–which have doubled over the past 5 years–were up another 11 percent, and significant growth in the newly-tracked digital deals. (One could also reasonably include that overall domestic PM deal reports are scaling by 5 to 10 percent a year.)

Total US Deal Reports By Category, 2007 – 2012

Along with the growth in volume of fiction deals came a clear increase in publisher investment: We recorded 180 fiction deals for six-figures or better (or ten percent of all fiction sales), recording new all-time highs for each category (good, significant, and major deals, with 57 of the latter alone). There were 60 percent more six-figure fiction deals for 2012 compared to 2011. Six-figure nonfiction deals were down 5 percent compared to 2011, and while the overall volume of children’s reports continued to grow, investment there was way down, with 25 percent fewer six-figure deals than a year. “Good” deals were steady for children’s projects, with roughly half as many significant and major deals compared to the prior two years. Overall, six-figure deals for 2012 grew about 7 percent, lower than the total increase in deal volume.

Six-Figure Plus US Deal Reports, 2007 – 2012

As everyone knows, originally self-published books made for a number of high-profile crossover deals in 2012–though in total numbers, we recorded 45 such deals in all. Among fiction genres that we track, romance and women’s fiction accounted for much of the year’s increase, up 29 percent over 2011. Debuts and general fiction held steady, as thriller deals jumped 37 percent, mystery/crime reports continued their steady increase, and inspirational fiction recovered after dipping in 2011.

There wasn’t any agreement from all of you whether to continue doing the “send in any first page” or “use a picture prompt, so I am leaving it to you to decide what you want to send in for January.

Since I did not include the First Page Picture Prompt on Friday, here is January’s prompt. You might recognize it, since it was illustrated by Patrick Girouard, who was featured on Illustrator Saturday, yesterday. I guess I am just in the mood for robots and I thought there could be a number of stories in this illustration. I need you to submit it by January 20th to: [email protected]. Look forward to getting your submissions. All the other things that we have been doing with the featured author of the month and wanting to show off illustrations from all the illustrators out there during the month will continue. I’ll write up the whole thing on Friday.

Talk tomorrow,

“Starting to feeling a little better” Kathy

Filed under: Book Contracts, News, Publishing Industry, writing Tagged: 2012 What sold in books, Chart of book deals this year, First Page picture prompt, Publisher Marketplace

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I did some research over the past few months on The Great Barrier Reef. When I think of the word edge it comes to mind. Due to environmental issues and global warming the reef is disappearing. It is on the edge as are all of the creatures that live there. Half of the Great Barrier Reef has died in the last 30 years. It is home to thousands of fish species and other creatures. The more I learn the more alarming the facts are. I think the reality of the situation is staring us all in the face. The big question is how do we as a human race make a difference?
This image is from the Two Can Art collection of images. The collection is a group of images that are a collaboration with my son, who is autistic. He paints all of the textures and I put them into images.

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The art of healthy eating requires a lot of knowledge and a willingness to devote energy to preparing food. We try so hard to make good choices- eliminating anything white, eating organic- especially for the foods that have a high pesticide and herbicide load (like apples) and making food using only ingredients that grandma would have recognized.  YOu see something like this movie and you realize, how much the decks are stacked against consumers. 

So, the frustrating thing is that even if you eat this great diet, you find out that the couch is full of flame retardants, or that you sleep on a toxic mattress or that the water you drink contains antidepressants and plastics...ugh.

This movie is well worth watching. Especially the part about how much sugar kids get in things like milk - not chocolate milk, just regular...shocking. No wonder our population is so unhealthy. 

The kicker is that our tax monies subsidize this unhealthy yuck- yet, healthy foods not only have to compete with loads of advertising, but also chemicals that don't have to be listed that have various effects on the brain and the big corporations get our tax money. People eat the "food like products" and get sick, then the pharmaceutical companies get their cut, then the insurance industry- it is all really, really disgusting. 

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If space or anonymity are an issue you can carry a very small sketchbook. I made the little sketchbooks below to make secretive little sketches then to easily pocket the sketchbook. The flip side of possibly eluding attention is getting attention you don't want because, let's face it, a full grown adult passionately sketching in a book so small looks like a character from Alice in Wonderland. Children are bewildered by the little books!

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Runners are storming the sliver screen in 2013. I’m not sure if you’ve missed some of these GEMS in the coming attractions, so if so I’m going to catch you up to speed on the movies EVERY runner needs to sit through and rest their glutei maximi for!

Bowels of Fury: A non-stop butt-clenching thrill ride. Quick to the action think of the runner’s rendition of Speed…this ‘bus’ is in motion, it’s got a ticking time bomb in its intestines, if it takes a pit-stop there will no doubt be some kind of explosion. Will our poor running heroine make it through her marathon without disaster? For, as we all know taking that first bush-dive is always a gamble, sometimes it’s all you need to feel better but other times it’s just like opening up the flood-gates to a series of emergencies. This one is a real cheek-clencher.

The Little 5k That Could: Times are tough, race entry fees are getting insanely expensive, so what are the poor, pauper runners to do when they need a certified course to get their USATF recognized PR? This not quite rags to riches story (heavy on the sweaty sock rags, not so much on the micro-fiber riches) is a heartwarming tale of two training partners heck-bent on earning their 5k PR. Between gut-wrenching workouts they must find a way to raise the funds for the entry fees…they hold out hope that amongst the pick-up packet goods that the race shirt is, indeed, awesome and not some corny cotton tee with a lame logo. Runner and Ebert give this one two big toes up.

How the West Was Run: The 100 Mile Western States Trail Run puts Placer, CA on the map…those last 300+ meters are run on the Placer High School track after all. Grueling hill climbs await all those who enter, but it wouldn’t be a trail run without them, right? This story chronicles the entrants of this Ultra race set in 2215 when the supposed ‘End of the World’ is ‘predicted’ to occur. This blending of sci-fi running fantasy is heavy on the explosions, aliens (Will Smith XXXXIV stars and sucker-punches many alien scum) and of course sweaty miles. No spoiler alerts here, but as all runners know it’s not so much the aliens and lasers they need to be concerned about during a race, but good old fashioned lactic acid onslaught.

The Training Journal: Start swooning girls, Ryan Gosling has plenty to quip about ["Hey, Girl...I could stare longingly at your Plantar Fascia for hours."] as he quite literally chases the object of his affection across the US in a series of road races. Our speed-blessed darling at first is unaware of her suitor (don’t worry, Gosling avoids the stalker vibe) as she shares her training and racing plans via her blog, her heart is set on earning a big-time shoe sponsorship. Finally a series of ‘chance encounters’ see our duo meet face to face; he seems to be an excellent pacing partner but can our runnerchick darling ever look past the miles and chicking and into Goslings baby blues?

Running cinema is at its finest this year so start saving those funds for the theaters…just be sure to put in YOUR miles before watching our leading characters put in theirs.

1) Have a funny title for a running themed movie you’d like to add? Double points if you give a little recap!

2) What kinds of movies do you tend to like? What movies do you seek out if you know you’re set for a longer run on the treadmill?

3) If you could give a name to the training/running phase you’re in right now, what would it be?

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http://musicandrockschool.com/

Next stop, Friday: Look for this CrittaColor right around the corner from San Remo Italian Restaurant in Cary, NC

http://www.sanremoitaliangrill.com/main/


http://www.ontheborder.com/location.aspx?RestaurantId=417.002.0038&Tab=0&OnlineEnabled=True

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Somewhat belated 2013 greetings this year as I've been absolutely overwhelmed. Nevertheless it's still early, here's for a legendary Year of the Snake, may all your gorgons be gorgeous!

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Gem from my Vintage 1950s record collection "Don't Whistle at me Baby"

When i started this blog it was 2005 and times were different.. Days were spent without tweeting or checking statuses on Facebook. Nobody was pinning pictures.
I'm not saying that those days were better. It was just different. I like Pinterest, i've been tweeting for about 4,5 years now, and i'm on Facebook, although that's a love/hate affair.

Had nothing more to read... until the box of a little under a 100 vintage mystique mystery romance novels arrived!

My blog is my first and true and only and for always.
But there are times that i just want to show something real quick, maybe say, 'hey look at what i found', and not write an entire article about it.
For short updates i tend to skip the blog and go straight to twitter or facebook, depending on what it is, or in what kind of mood i am in.
Because of this there are some photos that never make it on to the blog. But do deserve a spot. And that's where this whole story was leading up to.
Facebook photo's on my blog.

I love my new vintage mushroom table lamp! A Gilbert Softlite from 1973.

And of course, if you don't want to hold out and wait till the next time i post some of the face photos on the blog, just hop on over and like the vintage playground page. (i have occasional vintage giveaways on the Facebook as well!) Looking forward to seeing you there too!

Vintage acquisition for the home! Green plastic (foot)stool/plant stand/side table with storage space inside! Very mod and very multi purpose!

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