Looks like there's quite a trend on Illustration Friday to post giraffes for this week's topic, Heights. I'll be no exception with this gleeful pair:
So a blue million bunch of sketches going on around here but they are not making on the blog. To catch up here's some character sketches from a new book, 12 Months of Monsters:
Sometimes when I settle in to do my daily sketches I just can't think of anything to draw. Either there's no project I'm working on, or I can't think of some clever anecdote from the day to illustrate. Then I start feeling frustrated and think "maybe I don't have to draw tonight".... "I did sketch, um, a couple nights ago".... "the muse is just not in"..... but I've learned the hard way too much slacking on daily sketching leads to guilty feelings similar to those experienced when one eats the last three left behind cupcakes from one's child's birthday party. So here lately on the nights when I can't lure the muse out, I remember what keynote speaker Laurie Halse Anderson said at the LA conference this year:
"If you think of your muse as your 6 year old self how would you treat her? When she comes to your door would you give her rules to follow and a list of tasks to finish? Would she come a lot if you did that? Instead would you pull out all your old toys and bake cookies?"
If my 6 year old self showed up at my door she would not want to draw character sketches from the next book I'm planning to submit. She would probably also not want to do a sketch for that magazine job due next month nor would I imagine she'd be much into thinking up some licensing illustrations. These are all projects I give my grown-up self. No, my muse would want to draw horses - Prancing, leaping, galloping. So over the last couple of weeks as the muse has been shy, I've handed her the reins and let her draw what she wants:
Several times I've mentioned the workshop I did with Jim Hoover, an art director at Viking Children's Books. Tonight I'm going to post the entire process of the spread assigned from the workshop, from my initial sketches several months ago to my revised edition finished last night. First the general idea of the story:
Just some straightforward sketches tonight so I can cross off "post in blog" on my to-do list.
First some poses from my illustrator's group. This is Anna who we drew a while ago, I posted about it here. She is always a beautiful subject:
In a few days I head to LA for the 2011 SCBWI Summer Conference. I"ve never been before but have heard accolades by the dozens for the conference. There's a small army of folks on Twitter going. My goal, in the midst of my usual summer deadlines, was to finish 5 of my facelift pieces in time for the conference. Happily I was able to do so. I've painstakingly printed out a portfolio and loaded them onto my iPhone so I have a tiny little portfolio always in my hand!
Hot. Just slimy, crusty, tiresome, sweaty hot.
Its over 100 degrees here in Music City and in my studio the AC is losing its battle against the heat, which make working in front of a computer monitor and under drawing table lights no fun at all. But sit here I do because I'm in the throes of deadline mania. Not only do I have several illustrations due for my regular VBS project with Lifeway, and a book cover, and magazine illustration for Somersaults I'm also heading to the SCBWI LA conference in 10 days... which means I'm on it trying to get my portfolio updated. Yowza. So while I haven't been posting many sketches the last few weeks, its not for lack of drawing.
As proof positive here's a couple of kids from the recreation activity books for my Lifeway series, Amazing Aviation Adventure. In the last decade of working with the good folks over at Lifeway I've drawn kids doing everything from holding spoons in the armpits to doing a backwards somersault through a hula hoop. I'll make a bet with anyone that I can draw a kid doing anything. And he'll be blindfolded. And East Indian. Go on, try me, I dare ya.
I'm once again combining my weekly sketchbook post with Illustration Friday because over the weekend - on a midsummer night - we took the Small Fry to see Cars 2
Oh the excitement.
The Fry could barely contain himself through the 15 minutes of previews before getting to the main event. What helped was the 50 gallon drum of popcorn we bought him for dinner... uh I mean, to eat during the movie.
It ended up with me holding the popcorn so that he could more easily slurp from his giant lemonade. He buzzed through both in the 120 minutes it took for Tow Mater
Every night in a good faith effort to get the kids in the general direction of a bath, we unleash something terrible around our house.
It snarls.
It growls.
It howls.
And if it has to, it will gobble up a hapless toddler who doesn't strip a diaper off fast enough. It is......
At approximately 7:15 most nights Baby Sprout runs through the house streaking "the trolls are coming! the trolls are coming!" whilst leaving a trail of clothing behind. Its definitely the highlight of her night.
To be continued....
On another note, here's the first two sketches for a narrative I've been thinking of illustrating. Its about a boy who tried to take extra special care of his mother..... and then she went and ignored his specific advice. The words are not mine, and credit must be given to the great A.A. Milne:
James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree
Took great care
of his Mother,
though he was only three....
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.
So over the last few months readers may have noticed I've made cryptic referals to some cosmetic surgery. Fortunately we are not hanging by our fingernails to the edge of endtimes as predicted so I'll go ahead and reveal my big project for the summer: a facelift.
Not for me, silly, for my portfolio.
In October of last year I decided to do seven knockout pieces to show the world. Seven because it replaces the majority of my older work and it's just enough to be do-able. The parameters are thus: each piece has to look good as a mailer, which means fairly close detail. The group has to show a variety of ethnicities and expressions. And, most important, each piece has to have that wow factor. I wanted these to be better than any illustration done previously. That is a seriously tall order.... pushing one's work is hard anyway, but I'm fitting these in around my regular projects and the assorted family obligations. My regular weekly sketches have been a conditioning factor for creating these, and of late, working on them has replaced my nighttime sketchbook ramblings.
At any rate here they are. Two have already been completed and I've stacked them at the top:
The Storm
The Pea
The Super Hero (and the one I'm currently working on)
The Cheshire Cat
The Race Down the Beanstalk
The Tea Party
The Nightmare (and the runt of the litter, this
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.
This weekend was Derby Day, as I'm a horse lover it stands to reason that I follow the Kentucky Derby. Its the most exciting two minutes in sports after all. But because its only two minutes, I love how for two hours prior to the running of the race NBC fills the screen with all the heartwarming and gripping stories behind each contender. Accordingly there is also a herd of video shots showing foals cavorting alongside their mamas, while the voice-over intones about the destiny of one of these little guys: 3 years, and a mile and quarter later a blanket of roses and greatness is waiting for them. So here's my Illustration Friday for Beginner:
Also on the horse lovin' theme I decided to add another Lessons I Learned from My Horse:
Lesson # 2
Always know where home is
A horse will return to the barn in half the time it took to ride away from it. If they "lose" their rider along the way, they'll go home anyway. Horses know what to value in life: food, safe stall, and friends. If a raging thunderstorm or careless owner separates them from home, they don't get distracted by circumstance, but work to find their way back. They know what's important, we should be so good at figuring this out ourselves
This week the Fabulous Illustrator visited las Vegas for the first time. It was a business trip and yes, I did sleep and no, I did not incure any mob gambling debts. I'd heard it described as a "Disneyland for adults" and I'd have to agree, not only for the anything goes mentality but also for the sheer volume of manufactured reality. I walked through miles of hotel and casino with false sunrises, airbrushed clouds, and engineered rivers. The last night was the best night I had to draw and I wandered through two casinos pausing to sketch and watch. For a place that is basically not a city, there was quite a bit of restless energy. Everywhere, people had somewhere else to be; either a show to get to, dinner, a better section of slots, and most of them were on their cell phones. 
I was trying to capture the true ostentatiousness of the place with sketch of a child and her father in a hallway of boutiques. 
While the adults had other places to be, the few children I saw were dwarfed by the size of the architecture and didn't seem to understand why they couldn't stop and look at everything. This little girl is actually a composite of all the kids I watched trying to climb in one of the fountains in Caesar's Palace. The giant stone figures, pouring a waterfall over her head, cast disapproving looks at the children below but this didn't stop every parent I saw from pausing by the fountain to take a picture and then holler when the subject attempted to climb the sides.
I drew this poster sketch on the plane ride home. Maybe I'll do it in the same style as the 1930's WPA posters I mentioned in this post.
Finally back home over the weekend, I got to relax again and do a little planting. Also on the plane ride, I'd read an article about the continuing demise of the printed word in favor of iPads and whatnot. I couldn't help but think that if I were teaching the Sprout and Fry how to do a garden, I'd much rather drag a $15.99 book out into the dirt than a $500 iPad.
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.
I thought I'd lift the veil a little on how my creative process works. In the past I've run into people who are baffled that I can't just dash off a finished illustration in the same time it takes to watch American Idol. I wish. Instead what I - and most other artists - endure is the generation process known as sketching. That's the part where you try to get the image out of your head and onto the paper. Usually it involves drawing the same thing over and over again, sometimes making little changes, sometimes starting again from a whole new angle. If this sounds tedious it's because it is. I often compare sketching to cleaning a house: You work all day and at the end you feel satisfied to see how much work you've done and the finished product. But you are also bone-tired and brain dead. Unlike painting - which, for me is rejuvenating - sketching out an idea tends to be very draining. But it is where the REAL creation takes place. Like a pregnancy's first trimester, all the organs are formed and start working, the rest is just filling in the blanks and gaining weight. Here's an example of my sketch process as I worked out an idea for some licensing. This is a series of images merging nature, shows and hats. Sketching for work takes up a significant amount of my time and paper, this was 6 pages from my sketchbook:
So 6 pages and a couple of nights work, I got one pretty good sketch and some more ideas to play with....
It's Dear John in
Over waffles and child shenanigans Saturday morning, Jim Dear showed me a story in the paper about the Borders Books on West End closing. Unlike Davis Kidd, which was always there, I remember clearly the birth of the West End Borders. Jim Dear and I had just gotten married and felt lucky to be renting a house in the artsy enclave of Hillsboro Village. We jealously guarded our ability to walk to everything and waited anxiously for the opening of Borders.... how wonderful to have a bookstore we could stroll to on a Friday evening! Over the years we spent Friday nights at Borders and Sunday afternoons at Davis Kidd.
The word on the street is that Borders took too late to the online retail environment. And it's true, as part of their brand, Borders believed in the in-store experience - they were the first to have a cafe, the first to offer wireless internet. But even the hippest coffee and the tastiest muffins could not compete with the double punch of ebooks and people preferring to shop from their La-Z-boys.
Sigh.... technology
I'm not a crusader against technology in publishing. I AM a book lover and therefor don't see an ebook reader in my near future, but I do think that e-readers fill a niche in the market place for people who can muster the energy only to thumb "next page." These individuals, unable to summon the strength to crack a paperback let alone balance a 200 page novel beside their smart phones and remote controls, are truly sympathetic creatures. Aside from the obvious deterioration of upper body strength I would be concerned about how this technology, which is galloping closer to the under 5 set, impacts a person's ability to understand the natural world. Wonder why? Consider this: when an 18 month old sees mom's hand grab a page, move it through the air and then allow it to fall slowly into another place he sees a physics lesson in motion. When a 5 year old drops a paperback and board book on his sisters head and hears the different thunks they make, he learns another. So what? He can learn the same lesson from his toys, right? True, unless his toys are replaced.... one by one.... with electronic gadgets and apps. A recent acquaintance, whose youthful parents were raised on a steady diet of TV and video games, and who are making sure to bring only the best binary code to their child, visited our neighborhood and remarked on the rocks in our back field.
"Wow! where did those come from?"
"Well," was the reply, "they were dug up when the neighborhood was built."
"Cool! so you could just dig one out and roll it down there?"
Riiaaaahhhhhhgggt.
The rocks in question are 800 pound boulders that can't be moved unless you had a crane to do it. Now commentary of this nature could be understandable coming from a three year old. But this person is older than that, and certainly old enough to have experienced an actual rock. However just like Borders' "customers" this person has eschewed the "in-world experience" for a virtual life.... and at the same time has forfeited the knowledge that a boulder the size of a VW is not something you casually rearrange in the landscaping. This is the same mentality as that of people who build enormous million dollar houses in the wilderness and then get annoyed when bears and wild fires show up without a casserole. When we are clumsy with it, technology steals more of the natural world from us. My concern is that, as the generations pass, Baby Sprout is going to be on a date with some bozo who thinks that he can pull the car just a little too close to the edge of Make-out Lookout and not put the emergency break on. If the car starts rockin' and the wheels start rolling and the car starts sliding.... I don't think there's an app to stop that.
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...
Is it me or has there been a whole lot of protesting going on around here lately? Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Madison. I'm waiting to find out that I'm going to have to take an alternate route to the corner gas station because some group of commuters is squawking about the lack of decent public transportation in the face of $5 gallons of gas (wait a minute, that might actually happen.) Like a few other fabulous folks, I, too, drew similarities between people protesting for better living conditions in Libya and people protesting to keep the better living conditions they already protested to get in Wisconsin. Here is my take on both:
I have just one last question on the public employee debacle in Wisconsin: Any chance you folks need a director of interactive marketing? 'Cause I have a hubby who would love to work in a public job where the benefits are SO FREAKING AWESOME they actually bankrupt the state.
In all the international dialogue about waiting to get what you want, Jim Dear and I got to discussing our own goals in life. Far from being in any danger of being imprisoned for thinking (I mean ...er... shouting) that our leader is an oligarch elected yes man, we fall somewhere on the Wisconsin side of the scale. Though maybe it doesn't matter if what you want is clean drinking water, a safe neighborhood, a fair market, a decent job, or a dream project.... the seeds of revolution take root in years of planning that never yield a goal:
Finally to lighten up a little bit, one night I drew this while listening to the doves outside the window. It had been pouring rain but they were ever the optimists - cooing away - hoping to get what they wanted: a little romance on an early Tennessee spring night.
As an introduction this SbS, I think this headline says it all:
It was as if God had accidently dropped a thousand gallon Walmart brand garbage bag full of snow, and it broke all over our fair city. My commute home with kids was transformed from 15 minutes into 3 hours. Three hours of creeping along in zero visibility with cars panicking, braking, and sliding off the road in every direction. What could possibly make this trek home more of a pleasure cruise? How about a 5 year old and 2 year old singing Jingle Bells and yelling HEY at the top of their lungs. For. Three. Hours.
I almost ran the car off the road on purpose:
Not to be outdone, Jim Dear decided to carry the record for the longest drive home of anyone we know. After leaving work at 4pm he arrived home the following day, at 5 minutes after midnight. Lucky for him, he left his cell phone at work, so he was unable to receive my increasingly frantic calls to friends and finally to the police in an effort to find out where the wrecks were. Finally at 11pm he called from a pay phone to say that he had decided to go to the grocery store because he couldn't get into our neighborhood. He was planning to ditch the truck and just walk. An hour later he stumbled through the door looking like this:
On a less frigid note, one of the reasons Sketchbook Sunday is a little light this week is I have been spending some time working on the story for a new picture book. It's the story of a boy who wants to go build a rocket terribly bad (anyone who knows the Small Fry will wonder where I got my inspiration.) Undeterred by his lack of materials or knowledge he sets off to build his rocket, prove his big sister wrong and keep his little brother out of his hair. I'm experimenting with the idea of having the characters actually be aliens instead of people. I'm not sure if that would detract from the idea, I'll be running it by my critique group, but, please, feel free to weight-in Dear Reader. In the meantime here's some characters sketches of the little engineer.... at the moment his name is Milo:
Finally some housekeeping stuff: I've noticed I've got a few readers on Facebook.... welcome! and thanks for the comments;) But I've noticed that FB sometimes doesn't translate the formatting, so I'm inviting you to click through and follow the blog for an enhanced experience.
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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
Here's your warning: There's a heavy dose of political commentary in this Sketchbook Sunday. This week we watched the State of the Union the night before buying a new(ish) car amid surprised exclamations from the dealership that we were not financing it and that we were not upside down in our trade. Apparently they "see that a lot." All were inspiration, so read on at your own risk . . . but first some kid cuteness:
The Baby Ox
Baby Sprout has a very physical sense of humor. She is always falling into things, falling over things, bashing around and cracking herself up. And she's never happier doing this than when she is naked. She's like a cross between a 70's streaker and Mary Catherine Gallagher. When her performance reaches a fever pitch, Jim Dear and I call her the Baby Ox. This sketch shows her actually being rather demure..... really she's just sitting down to catch her breath.
Cheap at Any Cost
During Tuesday night's State of the Union President Obama (obviously) spoke about the economy and how to rebuild jobs in this country. Now really, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what the situation is here: all the stimuli and relief and tax break and tax hike and this-n-that-n-the-kitchen-sink packages have created a blue million jobs. . .
. . . in China.
Obama referenced this in his speech immediately after he spoke in glowing terms about our "innovation", our "colleges and universities that people travel to from the world over", and about the "hard work ethic" of our society. Indeed these terms glowed so brightly for a minute I thought I was watching the Oscars. We have the best, most innovative, most crazy risky-but-with-a-huge-payoff ideas and we work the hardest to make them a reality. And you know what? Obama is right. We did, after all, harness nuclear fission and land a man on the moon. But even for all this radiance, for some reason, businesses are just not creating jobs in this country.
So businesses must not be looking for the best. My guess is they are looking for the cheapest.
As Jim Dear says, "They'd rather have good enough, than the best at any cost." In the race to short term stock price gains we are un-diversifying our economy. We believe we can create a "knowledge-based economy" but we're not smart enough to do that. If we were smart enough we'd see that if we are all high-tech, healthcare, and green industry workers, we will all make less money. Because as the supply of those workers goes up, their wages will go down. Simple supply and demand economics. We are the smartest, best, and most innovative country out there, but the ace-in-the-hole of our economy was its diversity. Instead now we are in a race to the lowest common denominator. Hence, this sketch of the race - the best worker trips over the splinter of our trade agreements as the cheapest crosses the finish line:
My SCBWI Kite
Thursday I got my SCBWI Bulletin in the mail. Always on the cover there's an interesting illustration involving a kite, the Society's m
Aww look happy they both are. Lovely illustration Mary!
Wonderful pair, I really like your style! Their faces are just great! Love the peach-color trees, too.
Oh, they do look happy! This piece is just so well done. I love it!
Awww! Your giraffes have such wonderful personality! I especially like the one with its eyes closed!