Something a little different... I made this drawing for The Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary where I regularly volunteer. Unfortunately, it didn't get used for it's intended purpose, but I like him anyway. First time I've drawn a lemur...
So, in an attempt to disrupt my shameful neglect of this blog, here are some more sketches from some time ago...
I feel a bit neglectful, having not updated here since quite some time ago last year! Unfortunately, everything I've been working on as of late happens to be commercial work that I can't show quite yet, so I'm afraid I still haven't much I can share. So, I dug up some old warm-up sketches from last year:
I love Christopher Denise's depiction of kittens in David Elliott's Knitty Kitty which fits today's Picture Book Month theme of cats:
Well, I'm back in town after visiting family in Prescott, AZ. We had a great time and kept very busy. We started out in Tucson visiting the Pima Air & Space Museum, then drove down to Sahuarita and took a very thorough five hour tour of a decommissioned missile silo complex at the Titan Missile Museum:
I can't say I have an especially deep interest in today's Picture Book Month theme of planes, trains, and automobiles, so I had to scrape a bit to find a book from my library fitting the topic. The closest I could come was The Adventures of Taxi Dog by Debra and Sal Barracca, illustrated by Mark Buehner:
Sally Hunter's Humphrey's Corner may be more a portrayal of early childhood than of elephants, but her softly illustrated elephant characters are simply adorable:
Well, I missed a few days of my picture book month updates - not because I couldn't find any fitting titles from my library, but because I've been in transit to Arizona to visit family! I'm still having fun here with my family, but thought I'd try to catch up on my posting, so for today's theme of creativity I dug out Robin's Room, written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by one of my favorite illustrator-couples, Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher. Robin's parents try to channel his impressive, but somewhat destructive creativity by allowing him to renovate his own room:
Harvey Potter's rather, uh, nontraditional farm adds a twist to today's Picture Book Month theme of Farms:
Holly Hobbie's first book in the Toot & Puddle series works well for today's Picture Book Month Theme of Around the World. Toot takes off on a year-long adventure around the world while Puddle waits for his return:
I love Helen Cooper's rich illustrations in The Boy Who Wouldn't Go to Bed:
For today's Picture Book Month theme of bugs, I pulled out my rather battered copy of Nicholas Cricket who "plays every night in the Bug-a-Wug Cricket Band." Written by Joyce Maxner and illustrated by the illustrious William Joyce:
I thought Leo the Lop would be a perfect match for today's Picture Book Month theme of rabbits. I adore those old Serendipity books and always make sure to scout used bookstores for titles missing from my growing collection:
This illustration is currently appearing in this month's issue of Ladybug magazine. Can you find all the acorns?
I have a painting that's very close to finished, but it will have to wait since at the moment I am tied up with work I can't show. So, in the meantime, here's a little owl I painted for warm-up a while ago. He's for sale at my Etsy Shop:
I realize it's quite a bit early to be thinking about Christmas, but I know some people (me! me!) like to get started on their shopping early. With that said, I've just listed two 4-pack sets of of "Winter Campfire" Christmas cards at my Etsy shop. I'm hoping to find more of these cards buried somewhere, but at the moment it looks like this is it, so get them while you can!
I'm so pleased to have been asked by the Allen Public Library to set up yet another display of my work in their gallery/lobby! The illustrations on display this time are from two of my books - The New House and A Place for Zero. The exhibit will be on display in case #4 until June 25, 2012.
I'd been growing a bit weary of my website design for a while now. I figure after six years of the same old site, a redesign might be in order. I wanted to get away from the clutter and go for a clean, simple, and straightforward design - http://phyllishornungpeacock.com/. There are a few pieces of art in the gallery that I've never posted online before, but most of it was either on my site previously and/or posted on this blog. The new design is very visually spare compared to my old design, but hopefully that will only help to not distract from the art itself. Plus it has this cute little animated bird (who's looking a wee bit blurry here...):
I'm going to cheat a little bit for this week's Illustration Friday topic and pull an illustration from my book, What's Your Angle, Pythagoras?
I'm none too thrilled with the way this piece turned out. Something's not right about it, but it's time to move on. So here it is:
Pansies from my little balcony garden! I really like doing these simple watercolor nature studies every now and then. They're almost relaxing to me - probably because they don't take anywhere near as long to paint as my usual techniques. I'll have to do more of them. :)
0 Comments on A Trip to Seattle as of 1/1/1900
Thank you for participating! November is Picture Book Month. Read * Share * Celebrate!
Warmly,
Dianne de Las Casas
Founder, Picture Book Month