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"If a Monkey Jumps Onto Your School Bus" made the cover of Publishers Weekly this week! I've been waiting to see it and today Ginger Nielson was so nice to send me a pic of the cover. Monkey had to share the spotlight with Don Ho and a few other folks. But he's OK with that. Yay Monkey!!

If a Monkey Jumps Onto Your School Bus is in the lower right hand corner.

If a Monkey Jumps Onto Your School Bus
Written by Jean Cochran
Illustrated by me

"If a Monkey Jumps Onto Your School Bus" has been out for a few weeks now. But I never had a chance to share the great book release party we had back in December at the Lunenburg Public Library. Even though it was a very cold and blustery day, there were lots of kids, lots (and lots) of cookies and lots of fun.



Of course we read the book, "If a Monkey Jumps Onto Your School Bus," and looked for the monkey on each page. Then we learned how to draw monkeys. Yes, everyone can draw monkeys!



Then came my favorite part. We discussed character design and how characters can be great launching points for new story ideas. I challenged the kids to come up with new characters. By asking them some questions and combining lots of great ideas, the kids came up with some pretty wacky new characters. It was a blast illustrating their creations. Then I challenged them to go home and write a story about their new characters.

To all of you that were there - I'm still waiting for the story of Henrietta the Hula dancing leprechaun (shown below)!



Thanks everyone for making it a great book release party! For those of you that couldn't make it, visit my website to download the coloring pages and other handouts from the event.

I read this very nice review of "If a Monkey Jumps Onto Your School Bus" today.

"A joyful mix of text and illustration. The core idea for this narrative is not new, but the presentation will tickle listeners. Not only are the text limericks funny, but the illustrations - with humor, expression and activity - take kids on a fun journey. A thoroughly enjoyable book. Highly recommended."

- Nancy Warren Farrell, Juvenile Book Review Committee
Juneau Public Libraries

Wow, it's been almost a month since I've posted. I've been wicked busy. But I have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. The whole family made a pilgrimage to Atlanta for Thanksgiving (no pun intended) to see my brand-new four-week-old nephew Charlie. He one of the cutest newborns I've ever seen (and I'm not saying that just because I'm his aunt!)



Now for the new book. "If a Monkey Jumps Onto Your School Bus" is now officially available on Amazon
(YAY!)

For anyone out there that likes to color, here is a "If a Monkey Jumps Onto Your School Bus" color page. For more coloring pages and more info about the book visit my website. (Click on the image to view larger and to print.)

Dana's Sister,Brandy,had her tenth birthday and she always gets her way so this year she had a egg hunt and at first everyone was just looking for eggs but when they heard they weren't hard boiled that's when a egg fight started.It was very messy and Brandy got in trouble and then Dana found this huge egg that had veins and a heart beat.He took it in his room and put it in his sock drawer.The next morning he heard a loud cracking noise and when he opened his drawer he found this huge gross blob of eggs with two black beady eyes.

What I like about the book is it is like the book "How I Got My Shrunken Head" because in this book the boy figures out how to use the shrunken head and figures out how it has cool powers,and the egg monsters have powers if you touch one.How I got my shrunken head is cool,too.

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted. I've been drawing and painting my little tushy off lately. But today I officially finished the artwork for If a Monkey Jumps Onto Your School Bus Yay! I sent all the artwork on it's way this afternoon.


As soon as I update my website I'll post more information about the book and it's availablity. That's another reason why I haven't been blogging, I've been trying to teach myself Dreamweaver. I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of it.

Here is a spread from IMJOSB. This particular spread is for the copyright and dedication information.

I'm just about done with the underpainting except for the bus interior and the monkey. This is a monochrome layer that establishes the darks and lights in the painting. This is a relatively new way for me to work but underpainting traditional technique used by painters for hundreds of years. Heck if it's good enough for Leonardo DaVinci, it's good enough for me.

To do this underpainting layer, I don't use black, I use a yucky, mix-all-your-play-dough-together kind of color and white. I paint this in Photoshop following the original pencil drawing that I scanned in. I use a couple of different paint brushes but mostly one called "Dark Pastel" which I think came with Photoshop.

There are some geometric areas of the image that I used Illustrator for. For example, for the grill of the bus, I created all those skinny dark areas in Illustrator, copied as paths into photoshop then used them as my selection. Then all I have to do is color them in. It's way easier than trying to draw them freehand.

I'm hoping to get the underpainting done tomorrow and start adding some color.

The next step in the process is painting the final artwork. For this book I'm going to start each illo by doing an underpainting. If you are wondering what an underpainting is, I'll show you next time. But before I start into the final work I like to do a color thumbnail. I take a low res version of the pencil drawing and quickly color it in using Photoshop (see above.) I save these color studies to use as reference as I work on the final. Sometimes I end up changing the colors in the end but at least I have a guide.

One of the great things about working digitally is that I never have to worry about running out of a paint color or forgetting what color I used. I can just open up this color study file use the eye dropper and viola! more paint.

Okay just one more post for today then I have to get my fanny in gear and do some more work before I can post any more.

I did this small study of the monkey. I thought it would be funny if the monkey had one of those bead back massager things on the seat and I wasn't quite sure how to paint it. And this first try proves it! He looks like he's sitting on a big ear of corn. I think I could've fixed it, but my husband talked me into leaving the seat plain. He said that if you haven't been to NYC then you wouldn't know what those back-beady things were. Phew, one less thing to worry about it. But if I ever have to draw a seat made of corn, I'm ready! I also noticed today as I'm posting this that the monkey's left ear is smaller than his right, hmmm.

Here is step two. I've cleaned up the pencil drawing considerably. Using tracing paper I redrew the piece cleaning things up as I went. I scanned some elements into Photoshop to move and/or resize them then I printed and traced again until I was happy with it. (I go through a lot of tracing paper.) Also I went back into Illustrator and established a horizon line so I could draw all the elements that have to be in perspective (in this case the rows of bus seats) Illustrator is great for that because I can easily make my vanishing points pretty far off the edge of the page if I need to.

I think I am pretty happy with it now. We got the monkey on meds and he's no long looking like he's going to kill someone. And since there are nine animals in the story I wanted to fit them all on the bus some how so now they are all there.

Bus number 68 just happens to be the bus my kids take to school in the morning. Although Carol their bus driver is MUCH better looking and her tail is much shorter (just kidding Carol!)

I had a few people say that my last painting demo was useful to help them get started with digital painting so I thought it was about time for another. This time I'm using a different technique for the final art. I haven't finished the piece yet so I'll keeping adding posts as I get to different stages in the process. Feel free to comment and let me know how you think it's progressing.

Above is a rough sketch for the cover of the picture book "If a Monkey Jumps Onto Your School Bus" to be published by Pleasant St. Press The front cover will show the bus from head on and the back of the cover will show the side view of the bus with all the animals sticking their heads out.

Since a bus is mainly squares and straight lines I did an initial drawing of the bus in Illustrator. I find it quicker and easier to draw geometric things like buses and houses that way instead of using a t-square and ruler. Then I printed out my bus and added the characters. I also found a couple of fun fonts on myfonts.com for the title and author's name. One was called "grilled cheese" How can you not like a font called "grilled cheese"?

The monkey behind the wheel is looking a bit psycho at the moment (YIKES) but at least I have something down on paper to start with. I always tell myself to just get it down on paper and fix it later.