How to use this Page

Among the many movies discussed at Disney’s D23 conference (we’re most excited about ‘Monsters University,” the prequel to the beloved “Monsters, Inc.” As the title suggests, the film will focus on Mike and Sulley at school way... Read the rest of this post

After winning back to back games on Thursday, Small Fry's baseball team was positioned to compete for their division championship. In the giddy moments that followed their second win of the night, the Sprout and I walked up onto the field so that she could run the bases and work out some energy. She had longed to be where brother was all season after being held captive in the dugout for fourteen innings. You think you know what your kids face. After all, I'm the grown-up and the parent, I've already slogged through childhood and lived to tell about it. But when I stepped into the brilliant glare of home plate and looked across the yawning stretch of dirt and grass to the flickering back fence in the outfield, I had but one thought....

.... jesus, I had no idea first base was a million miles away.

In that moment I was extra proud of my Fry for a season of climbing into that harsh light, isolated from teammates and parents, and swinging at the ball with everything he had. To me the distance to first base was unnerving, but Small Fry had never seemed phased by it. Was this because he believed that this time the bat would make contact, this time he would make it to first base before the ball did.....no matter how many times he'd missed in the past? Did he believe better than a grown-up could?

Small Fry says "you just go up there and watch for the ball and then you try to hit it, then you try to run really fast. That's how you do it mommy."



Two days later on a sweltering Saturday morning, the Orioles clinched their championship with a final score of 10-8. One of the points belonged to Small Fry who dashed across home plate to start a points rally that would bring his team from behind to take the lead in the 3rd inning. In the beginning of the season we parents had contributed $10 each to buy our boys a "participation medal." None of the 4, 5, and 6 year olds on our team had ever played baseball before. A championship - and the trophy that came with it - seemed well out of reach, we only hoped for a fun few months in the sun and a positive learning experience. However, not only were they in reach, one by one twelve gleaming, gold and red trophies, emblazoned with the heady word "champions" were handed to our dusty, grinning team. Small Fry hugged his to his chest and said "see Mommy if you hit the ball once you get the biggest trophy ever!"

This past week the kids were out of their WeekDay School Program for the break between spring and summer sessions. I managed to keep the bickering and whining to a minimum . . . and the kids were pretty good also. Memorial Day weekend finally rolled around we spent the entire weekend on the deck. The splash pool was pulled out and two hours later a couple of soggy kids finally came in for lunch. The flagship image of that morning is Small Fry running and jumping into the pool. I don't think my sketchbook was actually big enough to accurately capture how much water is displaced from a 60 inch pool when a 38 pound boy barrels into it.


Small Fry also took part in his first tree planting. A friend had given us a small maple, with the advice that maples do well in rocky soil. Jim Dear dug the hole, while Fry anxiously watched to see if we would hit a giant boulder. Amazingly, we dug right down into soft dark dirt and the tiny tree was planted and watered judiciously by Fry and Sprout, each arguing over who got to roll the hose down to it. Jim Dear and I joked that we play a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors every time we plant something. . . only in our backyard its Rock, Rock, Dirt.

In this week's installment I have to post about one of the cutest, itty bitty, tiny things you can imagine. At first I wasn't even sure they were there.... I peered closer in the bathtub thinking it was just dirt. So I scrubbed harder but, no, they did not disappear.

I'm talking, of course, about Small Fry's freckles.

It seems that all this outdoor time with baseball has caused a smattering of brown dust to bloom across his nose. Small Fry is not as overcome about this as I am. His response was "will they eat me?"


Freckles aren't the only things coming out now that the days are longer and warmer. Round here we are experiencing the beginning of the 13 year cicadas. For the next four weeks these critters will be underfoot and smeared on windshields. They've waited 13 years underground to finally emerge, leave their husks behind, fall madly in love, consummate said love, and then die (presumably they were not planning on the windshield part.) This is Small Fry's first cicada invasion and he's smitten. So far we have collected half a dozen husks, bringing them home carefully in the car by hooking their little husk pod legs into the car's upholstery. Yesterday the Fry picked up a live one for the first time. Actually it picked him. In a flurry of wings and eyes it buzzed up and landed on his hand. It gazed at Fry for moment with its weird, red, lazy eye stare - then it was gone.

"Ewww, cool," said Fry, "will it eat me?"


Fortunately it turns out cicadas are just as harmless as freckles.

Well that was a fast 5 years.

This week I have only one sketch to share and it's to commemorate an important occasion: we registered the Small Fry for kindergarten. He'll be attending a school of 600 kids, with eight kindergarten classes. This seems just enormous to me though I've been told it's not. All in all he took registration and the tour in stride. When asked about his favorite part of the school he says "the stage", meaning where the parents can some eat lunch with the students in the cafeteria. I think this is mostly because during this part of the tour he was jumping off the stage with another kid while I hissed furtively in front of the PTA president-mom.

When I sketched this, at first I planned to make the school quite large, looming over the Fry. Then I realized that is not a very positive portrayal of Fry's next step. So I changed to this, a bravado packed boy, backpack slung at the side, facing confidently into his future.

This week I am multi-tasking and combining my Sketchbook Sunday and Illustration Friday post. Illustration Friday's topic this week is stir. I was inspired by one of Baby Sprouts books, Foodie Baby, for this sketch. The whole idea of the book is to answer the question "what do foodie babies do?" So in the book they do things like "say cheese" and "browse in farmer's markets." I decided to add my own "what foodie babies do" (as I've explained in earlier posts that Baby Sprout definitely is a foodie baby) with this illo and caption:
Foodie babies help stir.


On Tuesday this past week, my illustrator's group met to do some life figure drawings. We hired the 12 year old granddaughter of one member as our model. She was beautiful, like drawing a baby racehorse, all long arms and long toes and big eyes. Here's a few of my favorites:




Finally I had to do this illo from Small Fry's spring concert. His class sang Going to the Zoo and they all had these crazy animal masks on their heads. Actually they weren't really animal masks... they were really insect masks. He was a spider. His teacher explained, slightly apologetically, that that's all they had a Target. "No biggie," I said, "there's spiders at the zoo." Fry stood next to his ... ahem.... friend, Anna which, I have to say, definitely seemed to contribute to his improved ability to focus and belt out the song. Almost like he was trying to impress someone...

This Sketchbook Sunday is coming late because we just got back from a weekend trip to the mountains. It was a lot of fun, but a 4 hour return trip with squirmy kids in the car pretty much guaranteed that last night I was flopped in a chair halfway watching the Superbowl instead of in front of my computer.

The City of New Orleans
While scanning in all my sketches I realized that this week had a bit of a musical theme to it. This week I downloaded the song The Stranger by O.A.R. and I absolutely LOVE it, I've worn a metaphorical groove into my itunes playing it so much. But really cool music always inspires me, one of the things I would love to do illustrate songs. A great song always tells a good story and there are many that I think would make great picture books. The City of New Orleans is one of them. It's just filled with fabulous images of the train traveling, the people riding on it, and then the larger future they are all riding into. There was a book version released in 2003 which was beautiful but a classic can always use an update. I've illustrated it in my head many times but never had the guts to sit down with pencil and paper and make a go of it because, frankly, the drawing trains part is intimidating. But this week I sketched out something that could be a title page:


Where Are They Now? (some of them are at your child's preschool)
Of course there are many unusual and disconcerting things about being a mom.

And of course there many unusual and disconcerting things about being a working mom

But I think there are a few unusual and disconcerting things that can only happen when you are a working mom in Nashville:

Like when you see the object of your twenty-something indie rock club-hopping crush pulling his Toyota Sienna (complete with Parents Choice endorsed car seat) into the parking space next to yours during morning drop-off. For a moment, that night of drinking and dancing rakishly close to the stage flashes through your mind. Surely he doesn't remember that night, or you, or your brazen glances as he crooned into the microphone....

Apparently not, since he just removes his ultra hip-dressed self and child from the minivan, smiles sympathetically at your toddler's screaming fit, and strolls into the building as you can't even squeak out "good morning." I don't know which is weirder - being tongue tied in the face of a crush I outgrew years ago, or having my school-girl fantasies of meeting said crush arrive in such a ho-hum way. Back then I imagined it a little differently: him in a leather jacket and sunglasses, leaning against a red Porsche (bought with the advance from his newly minted record contract); me accessorized with a cocktail and a smashingly witty opening line. Neither one of us were carrying a diaper bag in this fantasy. Alas, years later we are now both aggressively angling for the same parking spot and using the same fake-bright voice to wheedle our children into their classrooms. Of course I'm sure he leaves to go lay down some smokin' hot tracks in a sultry-lit plush sound studio somewhere in the neighborhood, whereas I go home to my drawing table and coffee cup in suburbia. Nowadays I can stutter out "hey" as we pass at the schoolhouse door. And watching anyone struggle with the same craft projects and mat covers in the pick-up time rush would reduce even Mick Jaggar to just another dad. But I'm still gla

My new year's post is getting to be a tradition around this blog. And lookee here, I'm actually doing this one in January, unlike last year. 2011 so far as been... uh... eventful. Here's a tally: 3 days after returning from our holiday travels we experienced the second parting of the Red Sea as our hot water heater burst all over the garage, sluicing through the giant oil stain on the floor left from the last owners that Jim Dear and I have been meaning to deal with. The good news is 50 gallons of natural gas heated water does wonders for removing an oil stain...... the bad news is we discovered just how truly horrible the customer service with our American Home Shield warranty is. For a minute by minute replay of that debacle go visit my Facebook page. The short story is that Jim Dear spent the second weekend of the new year learning how to replace a water heater. This weekend was quickly followed by a snow Armageddon, Jim Dear having a wisdom tooth suddenly removed and Mommy having a stomach virus for 3 days. Whew! Maybe 2011 wants to slow down a bit and save up some of the hassles for after daylight savings time. At any rate I wanted to do a post about my resolutions for this year and revisit 2010's just for the heckuvit.

First 2010:
Resolution #1: Create another picture book.
I'm happy to report I did do this one. Myself and some other local SCBWI friends started a blog critique group and all through the summer each of us worked together to get a book ready for the fall Mid-South conference. I wrote about it here and here. I'm still brushing up my book, Nothing All Day, but plan to start submitting in a few months.

Resolution #2: Work on loosening up my work
This was much harder.... as I stated in my 2010 post a lot of my tightness is related to drawing hands and details on characters. Really late last year I had an epiphany about hands, that maybe I just didn't need to draw them anymore. That would be loose. So I've tried doing some characters with just gesture for hands..... its a step, but I think I'm still working on Resolution #2

Resolution #3 Work on licensing ideas.
yes and no on this one. I haven't created any new pieces but in the process of moving I had to sort through several stored pieces that I haven't seen in a few years. Some of these were for jobs, others were just pieces I did for fun, but a few of them could have a second life as a licensed piece. I've started placing them on calendars and cards to submit to some agents.

Resolution #4: finally we get to the one everyone was waiting for - Lose 10 pounds.
OK.
No. I didn't lose 10 pounds. I did gain 3 pounds, then lost that! Then I lost 3 more pounds with a stomach bug I caught in February. Then I gained back 1 pound. Then I lost 5 pounds while walking and eating a bunch of salads right before my 20 year high school reunion. Then I gained that back over Christmas. Then I lost 3 pounds again with the latest round of stomach flu. Let's see where does that leave me?
Oh, I see.....exactly where I was this time last year (sound of grinding teeth).

Well, I'm moving my career forward, I guess I don't have to win a swimsuit competition any time soon.... so there.

So that does it for 2010..... moving right along to 2011, at the moment I have only one resolution: Draw every day.

A few days ago I sat with the Fry and

Ok this time I'm not even going to come up with some witty story to explain why I haven't kept up with posting. Instead I'll just say 2 kids, plus one house for sale, divided by one house sold, multiplied by one move to a fabulous new house. You do the math. At any rate in my last post I explained how we were about to put our house on the market. . . and now badda bing badda boom. . . we are 7 days away from closing on the old and moving into the new. As I have referenced many times I love love love my studio here so I am more than a little sad to be leaving it, however I am focusing on the walk-closets and extra 1000 square feet my kids to get to "decorate" in the new house.

To give an update on my New Year's resolutions.... I have, in fact, started another book based on a conversation the Small Fry and I have on a regular basis. The title at the moment is Nothing All Day. I'll post sketches shortly (read: after moving). A few other illustrators and I have formed an online critique group and its been a great inspiration.

On becoming more loose with my work - still working on this one, but I have been enjoying being loose with the sketches for Nothing. My deadline is early August so that I can get it into the critique sessions for the SCBWI Midsouth conference. Having to get 30 spreads sketched out in 3 months on top of work (and did I mention moving?) means I don't have time to get jammed up drawing each and every hair on my characters' heads.

As for an update on Zoo in the Tub, the word from my recent communication with the publisher is that it is "still under consideration." Okaaayyyyy. I'm going to take that as good news. I have actually gotten very positive feedback from the other pubs I submitted it to, which while not an acceptance, is better than a form rejection letter photocopied crookedly on a piece of scrap paper and I have had my share of those many years ago. Most of the other editors wrote that they thought it was funny though just not quite right for them - basically the equivalent of you telling your girlfriend that you love her outfit but thinking I could never get away with wearing that myself. Oh well, there is a publisher out there somewhere that does dress in my taste.

To sign off here's a couple of sketches from Nothing All Day. For no other reason than animals are easier to draw than people, these characters are mice. I've been reading the Fry and the Sprout a spate of mouse-populated books and noticed that their (the mice, not my children) facial structures and very similar to people's. Enjoy: