I had four new titles published this year. I'm very fortunate to have had the opportunity to illustrate these very different books. The first was the fourth in the "Memoir" books, Memoirs of a Parrot by Devin Scillian (Sleeping Bear Press).
This book was expensive. I don't mean the purchase price... but the story is about a guy who buys a parrot and plays a ukulele. So, I
needed to buy a ukulele. That was the expensive part.
Plus, I was also inspired by another ukulele strummer,
Emily Arrow. She visited a nearby school and I sat in on her excellent presentation. Great music...
with a ukulele named "Bow".
Oh well, I could have purchased an African grey parrot. That would have been even more expensive.
My second book of 2016 was
Rappy Goes to School by
Dan Gutman (HarperCollins). No, I didn't buy a dinosaur for this one. They are way too messy... and hard to house train.
The third title for 2016 was
Buddy's Bedtime Battery by
Christina Geist (Random House). A cute story of getting a child to slow down for bedtime. "Beep!"
Then, dancing to the fourth book of 2016 is
Footloose by
Kenny Loggins (Moondance Press). Kenny Loggins (with Dean Pitchford) re-wrote the iconic song to become a kid's dance tune. A story about two children who discover that zookeeper "Jack" and the zoo animals wait until the sun goes down, then
put on their dancin' shoes.
So, there you have it. With Christmas just around the corner, I can think of four really nice gifts for that special child in your life. I'll be closing out the year, wearing my dancin' shoes and strummin' my ukulele. This is November (turkey month) and I definitely have a lot to be thankful for.
That's all for now. I need to practice my ukulele.
A new book just hit the shelves, last week. Buddy's Bedtime Battery by Chirstina Geist (published by Random House) is my latest book and I want to take you behind the pages to see how the project progressed.
It's always exciting to get the first printed books in the mail. After months of a studio full of art boards in progress, wet paint and gallons of coffee (not part of the painting process but very necessary), the final product is a welcome payoff. Buddy finally arrived!
Now, let's look at how Buddy arrived. After reading the story manuscript and creating sketches for the characters, a full length book dummy was created. When the book sketches were finalized, the painting process began.
I created a production line of boards with images of each page. I taped the edges with low-tac tape to keep that area clean and white. Then, an underpainting with brown acrylic paint was washed (thin layers) onto the boards. I usually do this when the final art is created with oil paint. The acrylic and polymer layers sealed the paper board from the oils and gave me a good (light and dark) value study to follow.
At this stage, the studio was full of artwork covering every flat space to be found. I have a drying rack for storing work in progress but I like to see everything laid, side by side.
Here is the title page. The towel area on the left was used for copyright and publishing information. The title was placed on the wall, above the bathtub. Notice the pajamas are visible, just below the towel. I often use elements and story props to hint at what's coming on the following page(s).
Here is one of the illustration spreads. One of my favorite images of the book.
This was my table, somewhere under the shingles of drying illustrations. The images were at various stages of completion so Buddy's hair looks really dark on the bottom image, etc. I worked on several paintings at a time and all art started to finalize toward the end of the process....which is also called..."the deadline" (If all goes as planned). It was a fairly long process and sometimes hard to see the end when spending days painting little parts, adjusting colors and adding detail. But eventually, it all came together and a package with the final art of Buddy's Bedtime Battery traveled to Random House.
Then, months later, I get to see the book on NBC, being read to millions of TV viewers. How COOL is that? So exciting! ...So surreal! ...Yay, Buddy!
...deep breath...now, back to the drawing board. :)
Here is a sneak preview of my newest book, in progress. The title is
BEEP! It's Bedtime by Christina Geist, to be published by RandomHouse. Like many of my other books, I started with an underpainting in acrylic paint, followed by a couple of coats of matte medium. Then it's time to slap on the ole' oil paint.
Each book project requires about twenty pieces of art and some of them are very time consuming if there is much detail involved. A book takes several months of work and somewhere in the middle of the process, I start to feel a little overwhelmed. I usually paint in a production line sort of way, mixing a few colors and hitting several paintings with that paint.
Back and forth, from one painting to the next. Hours turn into days and days, into months. I'm lucky to know what year it is. Anyway, I'm getting close to the finish on this book and all of the paintings that seemed incomplete for so long, are now starting to come together.
I'll show more when everything is finished.
By the way, it is still 2015, right?
