Cupcake scavengers (another one behin
Thanks so much to everyone who entered the giveaway for my picture book, BUGLETTE, THE MESSY SLEEPER! Following are the winners. Congratulations! (We didn't reach 50 so I'll hold onto that original piece of art for another giveaway.) Please email me your mailing addresses (bethanie (at) aquapup (dot) com) and we'll get your books in the mail to you:
Jill
Nichole
Portia
Ben
Also, for those of you with little ones in your lives, I'm doing another BUGLETTE giveaway. This week it's a t-shirt (very fetching with jewels, as modeled by my daughter!). Just leave a comment on this post on or before June 3rd. I will give away one t-shirt, 100% cotton, screen-printed. I have size XS (2-4) or S (6-8). Good luck! As with the last contest, I can only mail to the US. I'll announce winners here on June 8th.
Soon, I'll be posting some photos from my launch party that took place at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA this past weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, the crowd was wonderful AND we sold out of books!
Finally, now that my "30 Lessons Learned" is over, I will likely take a bit of a hiatus from the weekly blogging. Hopefully I will be doing more Illustration Fridays. I'm also in the middle of another couple of projects -- still learning lessons from those and DEFINITELY learning quite a bit about post-publication "stuff". I will likely put together another series soon. Feel free to chime in if you have any suggestions. :)
Today is Buglette's birthday! I'll be visiting some great blogs next week for a virtual book tour. In the meantime, don't forget to leave a comment on last week's post for my book giveaway.
In honor of my little bug and her escapades, following are some of my favorite books with themes that are similar to Buglette. I hope you might enjoy some of these titles (along with Buglette, of course) for a hefty dose of not-so-quiet sleeping and unusual but uber-lovable little characters:
Not-so-quiet sleep books:
Bear Snores On, Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman
Goodnight Gorilla, Peggy Rathmann
The Napping House, Audrey and Don Wood
Little Hoot, Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Jen Corace
Roar of a Snore, Marsha Diane Arnold and Pierre Pratt
How do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight, Jane Yolen and Mark Teague
Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late, Mo Willems
Books with little heroes and heroines:
Song of Middle C, Alison McGhee
Jeremy Draws a Monster by Peter McCarty
Olivia, Ian Falconer
A Carousel Tale, Elisa Kleven
April and Esme, Tooth Fairies, Bob Graham
The Curious Garden, Peter Brown
Clever Jack Takes the Cake, Candace Fleming
Happy reading!
I am very excited to announce that I'll be giving away signed copies of
Buglette, The Messy Sleeper. I promise to keep it simple, in the wake of reading
this blog post (check it out for a good chuckle).
Just leave a comment on THIS blog entry on or before May 21st. That's it! You don't need to jump through any blogging, Facebook or Twitter hoops. Winners will be announced here on Wednesday the 25th. I will be giving away one signed copy of
Buglette for every 10 comments I receive, up to 50 comments. If I receive over 50 comments, I'll add a framed original illustration to the giveaway as well. Winners will be chosen from a random drawing. I can ship only to the US. My apologies to friends abroad.
So, go ahead and comment below. Your comment can be as simple as "I want a book". Please spread the word!
Thanks to those of you who have stuck with me from the beginning as well as all newcomers. Don't forget to check back here Wednesday, May 25th for a list of winners AND another fun giveaway.
After the illustrations and manuscript were finalized, I received a marketing and publicity questionnaire from Random House that included questions like: how many Nobel Prizes have you won? Okay, that might be a small exaggeration, but it WAS eight pages of questions about my background, my education, my motivation, my honors, my media contacts, etc. As a first time author, it was daunting.
But, I slogged through and I am happy that the document forced me to think. It made me consider all aspects of my life and how they might relate to this new path as a writer and illustrator. It made me consider interview questions that have come up again and again. It gave shape and weight to my aspirations -- that felt good!
Here is one recent interview, this one is with California Readers. It covers some ground that (amazingly), I haven't covered in my blog ramblings.
PS, Giveaways will begin next week. Check back next Wednesday for details. :)
This is a quick sketch of some of my favorite things. Of course, bikes are front and center. (I used to race bicycles.) Now, my cycling time is limited to quick outings. Still, I feel like a kid whenever I'm on a bike. I hope that never changes. Other favorite things: tree houses, terracotta, convertibles, fountains, fruit trees, swings, books and art studios.
Today is Disco's birthday. (Disco is our 10 year old vizsla.) My eldest daughter's birthday was two days ago. My youngest daughter's birthday was a month ago. Starting in January, we enter our annual "birthday season" where nearly each weekend is punctuated by a birthday party for one of my children's friends. For some reason, they are all bunched up during these months.
When I sat down to write this post, I began to think about all of these events in our lives that require our attention. Our years are broken down into events, our months are broken down into events and our days are broken down into events. On top of that, I tend to categorize my time. As a mom, I have kid time and grown up time. Life can feel so fragmented! It is easy to long for more time of one kind or another. But somewhere along the line, I realized that kid time and work time are not so separate. I will admit that I often want more time for painting or writing. But realizing that I am an artist AND a mom whether I'm changing diapers or hunched over my drawing table makes for a lot less mental anguish. That is a lesson that I learn and re-learn daily. :) I continue to look for ways to bring these worlds together, rather than drawing lines between them.
I recently wrote an article for my Mom's Club about creativity and where it fits into life. I've posted some excerpts below. Obviously it is aimed at parents of small children, but I'd like to think that it behooves us all to find time to be creative in our own way:
GETTING CREATIVE
4 Comments on 30 Lessons Learned, #28: Disco, Birthdays and Time, last added: 4/21/2011
Technically, I learned about these gadgets after I finished Buglette. But, they are just so awesome that I have to let people know. If I'm the last one to this party and you all have had these in your studios forever, well, then please humor me. :)
These are slide order racks -- yes, the contraptions in diners that seem to magically hold orders in the air. It just so happens that you can get them in various lengths and they hold art, too. What could be more perfect for multi-page work? You can see everything at once, move images around easily and you don't have to deal with tape or any other nonsense of the sort. I think they are filled with marbles. Maybe magical marbles. If you choose not to hang them on the wall and just play with them instead, they are the loudest rain sticks you have ever encountered. (Sorry about the ugly, ugly flash photography.)
I want to take a moment to thank my faithful readers! I love your comments and interactions. Please keep visiting; I will be doing a few giveaways in the coming weeks. And now, back to my lesson:
I've been starting to contemplate readings and signings. I'll be doing readings at a number of Bay Area bookstores. Since I'm a visual person, I want to bring things for people to look at and/or interact with at presentations. Plus, as a somewhat shy person, I'd much rather share the stage than have it all to myself.
So, I decided that it would be fun to have a little Buglette doll to bring along as well as leaves for my little listeners to sit on. (Thank you Mom for helping me to sew 20 leaf cushions!) It always amazes me how much better kids do at listening when they have a "spot". I'm hoping the leaves will serve this purpose.
This is a fun and frivolous little post about rubber stamps. Not long after I finished the art for the book, I decided that Buglette rubber stamps would be lots of fun. So, I did some line drawings and had these two stamps made.
And, indeed, they are fun (although clearly I need to work on my stamping skillz). It's taking lots of self-restraint not to stamp everything in sight. I'm hoping the kids at my readings will enjoy them as much as I have! (Today I even sent away for a few more.)
Before I get into this week's post, I want to let folks know that you can enter to win a copy of Buglette at Goodreads. As well, there will be fun giveaways happening here on the blog in the coming weeks. Stay tuned! :)
I tried a few sketch directions and everyone gravitated toward one image fairly quickly. After a few small revisions, the sketch was approved. (Whew, one hurdle down!) The cover image was straightforward -- it was not a huge challenge for me technically. But, I found it very difficult to actually do the cover. It had to be perfect. It was the cover after all. Paralysis set in and lasted for a while. And then, multiple rounds with the tiniest variations began. Thank goodness for deadlines or I might still be working on it.
Now that it is done, I am happy. I like the simplicity and color combinations. I also enjoyed doing the lettering.
It was sooooo frustrating for my 7-year old self that my new little brother couldn't walk OR talk OR follow instructions when he was born. I came up with all kinds of plots (not this one exactly) to make him grow faster.
I've been missing my IF buddies! I'm in the middle of a big old deadline, but I hope to get back to IF more regularly in a month or so.
It seems that book trailers are all the rage these days so I wanted to make one. Or, I should say, I enlisted my talented family to make one. I just did a simple storyboard. Then my husband did the editing and animation (lucky me) and my brother, a composer, did the music (lucky me). It was a very fun collaborative project.
You can view it here:
http://www.aquapup.com/buglette
I'm realizing that there's plenty more to be done once the book is finished, i.e. marketing and promotion. I used to work as a designer in a marketing agency. Thus, I like to think about tie-ins and promo pieces (just not enough to do it full-time). This is a mock up of one of the pieces I proposed: a door hanger. It seems like a perfect tie-in for little dreamers. My publisher has been wonderfully receptive to ideas (yay!) and they are producing door hangers, stickers and postcards.
As an aside, two lovely pre-spring surprises arrived at my house this past week. One: my advance copy of Buglette! Having my own book in the house is a bit surreal. I smile every time I walk by it. And two: beautiful flowers from my friend that perfectly match the cover of the book. I had to take a photo...
I have a drawer full of watercolor swatches. These are palettes that I've used for previous paintings and/or just colors that I've mixed together and like. The colors in each swatch are noted in abbreviations because I tend to forget what I've used. These swatches are a great starting point for paintings. When I'm first considering the mood of an illustration, I'll often empty this drawer in front of me and start picking through for colors and combinations that give the right feel. Also, because this particular project is multi-page, it helped me to hang swatches/color palettes with the sketches (all over my walls) so I could see how the various color palettes work together.
A quick side note: I was the winner of a fabulous onesie from
Joy Nevada's Etsy shop. Her illustrations are whimsical and suited perfectly to apparel for little ones. Thank you, Nevada!
Just so last week's post doesn't make watercolor painting sound too ominous, I should mention that there are times when it works the first time around. After a quick color study, this spread came together just as I had hoped it would. (Mama, Spot, Red and Buglette are picking aphids for dinner. Of course.)
The more layers in your tutu, the better you are at ballet. (This is what I've been told by some very young and very opinionated ballerinas.)
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Wow- this looks really fun, Bethanie!!
Bethanie it looks like you are having a ball..so pleased for your very deserved success!
Jane x
Looks fabulous! Congrats!