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Here's our latest promotional postcard--with a summer/beach theme! We LOVE summer! May it never end!*

*Unless, or course, you live in a perpetually hot climate--okay. May it end. And soon, right?

Jenn has a new comics section on her website, check it out!

Don't forget, registration opens today for the New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference begin held in Fitchburg, MA on May 13, 14 and 15th.

I'll be there all weekend. And on Sunday, I have the privilege of giving a two hour presentation with my friend, and very talented illustrator Carlyn Beccia entitled, "Digital Painting Duels." If you are familiar with Carlyn and her work, you know that she loves Corel Painter. I, on the other hand, am a Photoshop kind of gal.

If you know anything about New England, you know New Englanders are extremely loyal to their teams. So of course, we could spend the two hours fighting over which which is best, Team Painter or Team Photoshop. Which would be silly, because we all know Photoshop is wicked bettah!

But seriously, both software packages have there own strengths and weaknesses, which is what we will be exploring during the course of our talk. Hopefully the audience will walk away with a better appreciation for both tools, as well as a few new tips and techniques they can take back to the studio with them. By the way, does anyone know where I can get a Photoshop t-shirt to wear?

I've been working to revamp my portfolio website recently. You can see my new, and hopefully improved site at www.jemorris.com. I'm still tinkering with the layout, but here are the things on my wish list that I've accomplished so far...

1. Update the pieces in my portfolio - My portfolio was pretty out of date, which is rather pathetic, considering that's my main source of advertising. So I went through and decided what sorts of work I would like to do in the future and tried to showcase those sorts of pieces. One of my resolutions this year is to review my portfolio the first of every month and cull out the weaker pieces. No more letting it go for 6+ months at a time!

2. Make the site more maintainable - By changing most of the formatting over to CSS, I hope to be able to change the look and feel of the site just by tweeking the CSS files. At least that's the plan.

3. Make it more mobile friendly - Another thing that I could do by putting the formatting in CSS files, I was able to create a style sheet for iPhones and another one to display on smaller tablet screens.

4. Have a way for folks to access individual images in my portfolio - Actually, I fixed this last time I updated my website. But it's a feature I was felt was important to keep. And something you might want to keep in mind if you are setting up your portfolio. A few versions back, I used frames to create my site and it was hard to bookmark a particular image or email a link to an image to someone.

So if you have time and want to let me know what you think, I'd appreciate any comments.

"Don't Panic Annika" written by Juliet Clare Bell and illustrated by yours truly is now available on Amazon UK in hardcover and paperback. I was pleased when Piccadilly contacted me to illustrate this book because a story about a little worrier was near to my heart.

Here's a little peek at one of the inside illustrations...

The Doctor is in... sort of. I took some time off this August to recharge my batteries and I'm having a tough time easing myself back into work. One thing I did was I spent a good chunk of the today brushing up on some anatomy. Sometimes drawing from life or doing some drawing exercises helps get me motivated. Also just drawing something just for the heck of it, like this evil scientist guy that I did just for fun, can help me get in the mood before getting down to business.

Here's my contribution to our spring mailer. People probably think I'm nuts but I kind of like drawing bicycles.

I was so excited when a friend said my new book, "Please Write Back!" was in the Scholastic Firefly book club flier this month, I didn't think the book was suppose to be released until April. Yay! I ordered myself a copy so I didn't have to wait to see it. Okay, I ordered 12 but whose counting.

But what's even more cool was when I started looking at the rest of the page I noticed right on the other side of "Biscuit" were Jannie Ho's emergent readers. It's so funny, not only did they put us in the same flier they put us practically right next each other.

I'm big on writing goals, weekly, monthly and yearly goals not to mention a 5 year plan. I think it's an important part of being a freelancer. If we don't set goals for ourselves than who will? That said, I went back and see how I did at attaining my 2009 goals and guess what? No goals. I've been so busy with my head down, I think 2009 went right by with no goals. Oops! So goal number one this year is to write out my goals and stick them on the wall right above my desk.

There are a few things about goal writing that I learned in a management seminar years ago (back in my cube rat days) that I still find useful. First, I only make goals that are in my control. Getting a book contract from a large publisher would be nice but not something I can control. What IS in my control is creating a picture book dummy and submitting it to publisher X. Secondly, I try to make goals that are concrete. I'm not as good with this one, but I try. Saying I'm going to be more organized is something I say every year, but that could mean lots of things. But this year my goal is to take time to clean off my desk once a week. I think that would be a good start at being more organized.

So here are my goals for 2010...

1. Write my goals and put them some place prominent in my studio.

2. Draw from life, at the very least once a week.

3. Remove personal papers, bills, etc. from my studio. Working out of the house, I've found it easy for home stuff to creep into my work space.

4. Finish listening to the Riven Phoenix drawing CD's (I started going through them last year but I have a lot left)

5. Finish a picture book dummy.

6. Clean off my desk once a week. (I don't have high hopes for this one.)

7. Promote the new Alfie book when it comes out in April. (I've got a few ideas.)

8. Update my website/on-line portfolios at least once per quarter.

9. Give the best presentation I can at the New England SCBWI conference. (My talk will be on Photoshop techniques for illustrators in case anyone is interested in attending.)

10. Back up all my data files at least once a week.

Here's my card for this year. I'm sitting here with two versions because I'm not sure about the "panting" text. But I'd better hurry up and send one of them to the printer tomorrow. Any one have a preference? What I'd really like is one of those sound chips so when it opens it sounds like a big slobbery dog. Hmmmm...

What a coincidence, Anette bakes chocolate chip cookies in her spare time and I eat them in mine. :)

Let's see, what do I do with my time? I have no idea. I was going to write about how I enjoy sewing and gardening but to be honest, I haven't gardened all summer. And the last time I sewed anything was about two months ago. I wonder if other mom's have this issue. It seems like I'm busy all the time, but I'm not sure what I'm doing or if I'm accomplishing anything. Take this evening for instance. I got my son off the school bus. Made dinner. Made sure my son was doing his homework on the computer. Ate dinner. Helped the other kid with her hair and got her out the door for her event. Reminded the first kid to finish his homework. Washed the dinner dishes. Again, told kid number one to focus on his homework and to stop playing with all the formatting options in MS Word. Watched 15 minutes of the news on TV. Finally ended up hovering over the computer to make sure the boy was finishing his homework and not playing with the fonts in Word. Then I took my son to the library so he could pick out some new books. While there, we played a board game. Then we went to Target to buy a b-day present for the neighbor boy. Then I came home, watched another 15 minutes of TV while the kiddos were getting their pajamas on. Then we cuddled and read a chapter of Paddington. After everyone was tucked in (for the second time) I wrote this blog post and drew the little hamster to go with it which brings us up to 10 p.m.

You know, I'm kind of glad I wrote this. I was feeling bad about not having time to garden and sew much lately. But by taking the time to list out everything I did tonight, I no longer feel like I'm just spinning my wheels.

Here's my image for our fall mailing. My eight-year-old son asked, "hey mom, what's up with the giant pumpkin?" When I said I wasn't really sure. He proceeded to tell me how he thought the pumpkin was going to start rocking, roll down the hill, crush the girl and then smash in the bushes behind her. He punctuated each step with an gleefully evil snigger and various crushing noises. Sigh, I had no idea I had created such a violent image.

I'll be at Gibson's Bookstore in Concord, NH this weekend. And now that I see all the great stuff they've got going on there, I'm completely bummed that it isn't closer to my house. Check out all the happenings this month at Gibson's

I'll be there this Saturday at 10:00 am along with children's book author Marty Kelley, the author and illustrator of "The Messiest Desk" and Jean Cochran the author of the book I illustrated, "On a Dark, Dark Night." Marty and Jean will be reading their books and I will be doing a drawing demo and a craft project. So if you are in the area, please stop by with the kids.

My Studio

I'm going to tell you about two references. One that is still in print and the other that is kind of hard to find. It always drives me nuts when folks rave about some great book then I find out it's out of print and costs hundreds of dollars.


First, the hard to find one and it isn't even a book exactly. Some of my favorite reference material is the "Famous Artists Course" from the 1950's. My grandmother took the course back in the late 40's early 50's. Apparently each month or so a new lesson was mailed out as loose leaf pages. My dad told me that my drawing table (also my grandmother's) came with the course material. There are about 26 lessons in all. The stack must be about a foot high. I always tell myself I'm going to go through all of them one at a time some day and do all the exercises but I never do. But there is lots of great stuff in there about figure drawing and composition. I find it interesting that they don't cover color until about the 20th lesson or so. The thought being that you have to master drawing and value before even attempting color.

The Famous Artists Course still exists although I wonder what has changed over the years. Sometimes you can find these old lessons on ebay or if you ever see them at a yard sale, jump on them.


Okay now for one you can actually find. Cyclopedia Anatomicae is an anatomy book. The first half is devoted to humans which I don't use too much. There are lots of detailed drawings of individual bones and such which is a bit too detailed for me. What I like about it is the animals in the second half of the book. There are anatomy drawings (skeletal and muscular diagrams) of dogs, cats, pigs, apes (chimps), sheep, cows, bears, deer, camels, lions and horses. In fact, I think the book does a better job explaining horse anatomy than it does human.

Interestingly, I was wondering about this the other day myself. Kid's always ask how long it takes to do the illustrations for books. So I timed myself to see. I tried to do an illustration as fast as I could for illustration friday. Bottom line, it took me about 30 minutes to complete this little unicorn. But I left out some steps that I would do if this were a real illustration assignment.

My 30 minute unicorn didn't account for time searching for reference material. Many illustration require either looking up images from books or the internet or sometimes actually taking my own photos for reference. I never copy other peoples photos of course, but I do use them to make sure I understand my subject. For example, I recently did a Noah's ark project and spent a good deal of time looking up photos of various animals at the library and on the internet. It was easy enough to find an image of each animal but then I had to dig deeper to see if the photo was of a male or a female and if the males and females looked different (of course you gotta have both on Noah's ark.) Then in some instances I had to find close up images, like when I looked up images of elephant's feet to make sure I drew the right number of toes. If an illustration calls for realistic people, I like to take my own reference photos. These are usually pictures of myself (taken with the camera on a tripod) so I can get the right poses. Sometimes I cheat and try to draw figures from memory but they tend to look stiff.

So once I get all my reference material collected, I do thumbnails to get the right composition. This is another step I didn't do in my 30 minute drawing. Sometimes I know exactly what the illustration is going to look like immediately. It's so much easier when it happens that way. But other times I try different positions and "camera angles" until I find one I like.

Then I do a final pencil sketch and then go to final. Of course like Anette said in her post, this portion takes varying amounts of time depending on how complicated the image is. The little unicorn above took me about 20 minutes to do the final art. But for the following illustration for "On a Dark, Dark Night" I had to manipulate the train photo on the wall to make it blue, design his robots bed sheets, and lots of other little details. The whole illustration took about 2-3 days to complete. So, how long does it take me to do an illustration? I'd say somewhere between 30 minutes and 30 days. But for a page-sized illustration it usually takes me around 2 or 3 days.

Here's my spring promo piece. A bear and a skunk awakened from their winter nap. I bet that cave could use an air freshener right now.

Who doesn't love monkeys? And when I was contacted by Pleasant St. Press to illustrate a funny rhyming book about a monkey and his buddies breaking out of the zoo I couldn't resist. The result was called "If a Monkey Jumps Onto Your School Bus" written by Jean Cochran.

Here are a few websites that I like and/or frequent often...

James Gurney's Blog - James has a wonderful blog that he updates daily with painting tips, inspiration and advice. Definitely worth a visit.

Drawn! - I always check out what new stuff is on there every day.

Prado in Google Earth - This is really neat (BTW, I found it by reading Drawn!) You can use Google Earth to explore paintings at the Prado museum in Spain. You can zoom in way closer than you probably could even if you actually at the museum and really examine the brush strokes.

YouTube - Okay yes, I waste loads of time looking at silly dog videos on here but you can also find lots of neat artist's demos. For starters here's a demo by Riven Phoenix. Or just search on drawing demo or painting demo.

The kid's activities are great times for me to sketch. Here are some sketches from my daughter's ballet practice last week. That was my son playing GameBoy (yay Ninja Turtles!)

Ever want to fly south too?

I've taken several figure drawing classes over the years and none of them ever discussed drawing children. Proportions are relatively easy when dealing with adults because you can follow some basic rules. For instance, most adults are approximately 7 1/2 heads high. But proportions for children are different and to make matters worse the proportions change depending on age.

To help myself. I've made some proportion charts for different age children. These proportions are not true to life, but they seem to work for my drawing style. I think you'd find a real preschooler's head isn't as large as I show it here. But for some reason I need to make the heads larger or the children look too old. I wonder if it's because we grown-ups are always looking down at kids and that makes their heads look bigger us.

If you draw alot of children, I would recommend making your own charts. They can be a handy reference tool. You will need to experiment and see what works for you, because my proportions may not be right for your drawing style.

Here's my contribution to our summer postcard mailer. This little girl has on her red, white and blue and is all ready to celebrate the 4th of July. This was done in Photoshop.

I just finished reading a book about the master of facial expressions, Normal Rockwell. I have this painting of his hanging in my studio for inspiration. When I was a kid the phone company used this same piece on the cover of the telephone book (although, I'm pretty sure it was originally published as a Post cover). I remember spending a lot of time studying all the faces. I didn't know who Norman Rockwell was but I was drawn to all the animated faces, I can almost hear that guy at the bottom guffawing. Hmmm, I wonder if my parents were ever concerned that their kid spent hours staring at the phone book?