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I'm currently feverishly attempting to finish this months sketchbook so I can move on to the next one. Last year I used cheap, boring sketchbooks. This year I plan on spending lots of money on sketchbooks of odd sizes of varying colours and with thick paper.

I always found it hard to take anyone seriously who wears a vest and chaps.

Just a little sketch...would have liked to have finished...Deadlines, Deadlines, DEAD----lines.

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Here are some ink doodles from my last sketchbook(Nov 08 to Dec 08) I've been studiously keeping sketchbooks since I was 14. I think there is no better tool in exploring your own artistic potential. Now of course I have boxes and boxes of them.
I am once again looking at being represented by an agent. I was talking with the super-talented and inspirational Colleen Doran earlier and she suggested my problem with agencies earlier may have been to do with the type of agents I was looking at. That perhaps a literary agent might be a better choice than an art agency. She has done a tonne of research on the subject and published the results here on her blog. At the moment I'm talking to 5 different publishers and it's just too much. things keep petering out. So, I'll give it another try.
And finally, do you like Lord Of The Rings? Well, blogger Kate Nepveu is weekly publishing a post about her reading of the book on the Tor.com site. I'll be reading along and leaving comments. Also, I may republish my thoughts here.

What is the flower that likes summer the best? Ofcourse, it is the sunflower. Here is a whimsical ink drawing featuring the 'portrait of a sunflower family'.

Do you see another family too?

© Trapezoid Art

Here is yet another piece from my favorite art school project, my Scandanavian Myth project. This is a pretty dark piece and not very refind but I find it interesting as an experiment. I really wanted in this picture to evoke an expression of mass and shadows and perhaps evil. I'm not very good at evil, I shy away from extremely dark imagery. I think I can infer something dark but a direct visual translation seems false to me. Some artists pull it off really well, like Goya. In this piece I do like the exploration of mood and place, which was the point. After I had done this piece I felt freer to have more finished pieces have a more pronounced sense of emotion and expression.
I watched Revenge Of The Sith yesterday and I can't stop watching the opening spaceship battle sequence. I want to watch it over and over, it's the craziest, coolest thing. Well, I like it.

As if this week wasn't exciting enough already, we heard - just yesterday - the news that Colin Thompson's The Short & Incredibly Happy Life of Riley has been chosen as a finalist for this year's Children's Choice Book Awards.

I'm meeting with Colin Thompson (and some folks from Fox Studios) so if there are any questions I can ask him from his fans, pass them my way. He's thrilled to publish his picture book, The Little Book of Happy Sadness (coming in September, 2008) and even more from him in seasons following, including Norman and Brenda, a sequel to The Short & Incredibly Happy Life of Riley.

Norman and Brenda

(coming soon from Kane/Miller Book Publishers, Inc.)

This is Ellie, from book 2, embarrassed and trying to melt into the floor.Suddenly my time is my own, again.
I've been working nonstop since September on the second Ellie book, first some marketing stuff with the publisher and then the revised art and writing for it.

All during November I worked all day and all night on the book. I stayed up til 2, 3, 4 in the morning. Sometimes til after 6am. Sometimes I went to bed at 3 and had to get up at 7:30 to get my daughter to school. It was a grueling schedule, definitely.
I missed some very important events. I don't even want to list them because if I think about it too much I'll be too sad and will question my priorities.
Basically I put my life on hold, for the book.
Nobody asked me to.
Nobody forced it on me.
I have a weird sense of focus when it comes to books.
Whether reading them or creating them, I enter the world of the characters and it's nearly impossible to come back out before the job is done.

With Harry, Hermione and Ron, my teenage self became the fourth buddy, the one not mentioned in the book by the author. I hung out with Hermione in the girls' dorm. I had a crush on both Ron and Harry, and wondered whose side Snape was on. In that big cataclysmic fight scene I was there, helping our guys to triumph over evil.

It's the same way with my Ellie McDoodle books. I become part of the book, both observer and creator, an unwritten and unmentioned character who goes on every adventure, shares in every secret and sometimes wishes my real life was so exciting.
(Actually, my real life is plenty exciting, but a lot of that is due to the books!)

All through November I lived the Ellie book.
I sent the last package of art and text to arrive on my editor's desk on the last day of the month.
There will still be little revisions, and the first package of the first 44 pages has some very rough art in it, so there are about 11 illustrations that I know will need redrawing.
But the bulk of it is done.
Book 2 is written.

I think you'll enjoy it. I laughed a few times, out loud, while writing it.
I felt Ellie's angst and I understood her pain in certain scenes.
I think the reader will, also.
Ellie McDoodle: New Kid in School won't be on bookshelves until the end of June. In this book, Ellie starts at a new school in a new city without any friends.
Like me, Ellie has trouble sleeping before the big event.

Here's a sneak peek at page 66:

Now, I can't wait for the whole thing to be printed into a galley and then published as a real book.
I think it's a good one!
But there's plenty of things to do before the book comes out.
Like answer all this email.
I have 958 messages accumulated, which need responses. Very few of them need only filing or deleting.
If you've written me and you've waited patiently for two months for a response, know that you've got plenty of company, and I might be responding soon...