Ahhhh summer “vacation”. I am buried in my studio finishing up the next book. Though close to the end, there are still many miles to travel before I can put this thing to bed. July will be a welcome month of travel as I rinse my mind and eyes a bit after having been in the same coffee…work… mode for so long. In early July I am planning on heading up to Maine with Deb Taylor to visit Ashley Bryan and The Ashley Bryan Center. It should be a nice road trip and I am hoping to bring my mom along for the ride. She and I haven’t had an adventure together in a long while and though we live separate lives hundreds of miles away from one another, I try to give her a glimpse at the magic in the life she helped me create whenever I can.
After that, I am planning to head to Seoul for a couple of weeks. I will be working on sketches and ideas for a new project by then and am thrilled to do so in the studio of my dear friend Taeeun. While in Seoul, I am also looking forward to meeting with Tantani Media, the publisher of my first Korean language book, The Dancing Shoeshine Boy, which has now been published in Chinese and Xhosa (pronounced Kosa) language. In August I will be planning for the new semester and organizing ideas and business plans for Jump-In Studio, Inc. I am officially recognized by the government as a business entity now, so I should probably do something with it along with book making and teaching. I have some ideas brewing. My family wants me to come home for a bit, but after spending so much on travel in July, that trip may have to wait.
On Saturday I had a small book signing at The Children’s Book Store here in Baltimore. The turnout was pretty small, but it was great to spend time with my family and my best friend. Other families that did show up spent time learning the wax resist technique I used to make many of the pictures in Please, Louise. Today, I received the nicest e-mail from one of the attendees that made my day.
It was so great to meet you on Saturday at the Children’s Bookstore. I really enjoyed hearing about how you produced your beautiful drawings in Please, Louise. And drawings aside, your lovely manner and enthusiasm are infectious. You outshine them!
I wanted to tell you that I took your book today to my local library, Little Falls Library. I am friends with the manager there. I showed him your book, which is not yet in the Montgomery County system. He really liked it and is going to try to acquire it for the County. In addition to being a beautiful book, it has a great message and he liked that you are a local Maryland illustrator. As a patron of the library, I also will put in a request for the County to obtain your book, but I am confident that Mr. Lewis will be able to make the necessary arrangements for Montgomery County to purchase your book and distribute it to their libraries.
When I went to purchase your book at the bookstore on Saturday, the bookstore owner said your sister had purchased it and had said to give it to the next buyer. It was very kind of her. As a sister myself and a mother of girls, I know how strong that bond between sisters is and how we want the very best for one another. Would you kindly tell your sister that I said thank you. I have tried to share the gift she gave me. Who knows where it will lead, but I am hoping that many children will enjoy your book as a result.
Thank you also for the poster, which is delightful.
The woman that she mistook for my sister was actually my best friend of twenty-three years. I had no idea that she did this, but it was one of those moments that made me realize how important that relationship is to me. I try to hold on, or “collect” as my friends sometimes accuse me of doing, people who I really like and see something reflected back at me or an opportunity for growth on both sides. As I get older though, I’ve learned that sometimes one should just appreciate brief meetings along the journey and leave it at that.
Every once in a while I get a blog piece from an author that I am so excited about I am compelled to post it immediately, today’s piece fits that bill. Philip Pullman, best known as the author of The Golden Compass, which is in theaters now, also wrote the introduction to the Oxford edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Today, it is my great honor to post Pullman’s thoughts on Milton in 2008. Enjoy!
Four hundred years after the birth of John Milton, he still lives, his example still inspires, his words still echo. Paradise Lost is played on the stage, is sung to music, is choreographed for a ballet; it is an audiobook, it is the subject of countless theses and dissertations, and on the very morning that I’m writing this, an invitation arrives to the private view of an exhibition of paintings and prints called The Fall of the Rebel Angels, whose iconography is unmistakable. (more…)
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Author: Niki Daly (on JOMB)
Illustrator: Niki Daly
Published: 1999 Farrar Straus Giroux (on JOMB)
ISBN: 0374437203 Chapters.ca BN.com
Gorgeously expressive illustrations capture the small pleasures of a dreamy preschooler, the chaos of failed judgments and the matchless relief of reconnection in this longtime family favourite.
Other books mentioned:
Julie Smith offers some Global Diversity activities based on this book here.
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Too bad for me, it's almost time to get ready for school
AGAIN! Everyone thinks teachers get "3 months off" during the summer, but that is not true! Plus I'm getting ready to do home visits with my Kindergarten families, fly to Washington D.C. to a conference, attend 3 professional development days, lead a new teacher induction training, get my classroom set up, and get ready for Open House. I do love teaching, though! (Oh yeah, forgot to mention the lucrative salary and respect that goes along with teaching :) !)
This is an illustration I did for Illustration Friday's theme "Paradise." Sometimes just lounging in the pool is paradise! :)
This is a piece I did for this week's Illustration Friday topic, "your paradise." What immediately came to my mind was a world of chickens, but I decided to give the chickens a break (I draw enough of them already.) So I thought of mice and how a cheese shop would be a paradise for them. I quickly came up with this sketch:
As you can see, its very rough. But if it was for a client, I would certainly clean things up and make this sketch alot neater. I place this sketch in Adobe Illustrator and proceed to draw on top of it. I love this vector program because it allows me to move things around quite easily. The mouse is now at a different place and moved to the right because it was getting lost in front of the cheese window. I am also exploring how I can get more textures in my work.
I am very influenced by Richard Scarry and absolutely adore all his lovely books....I am especially in love with how he draws shops and buildings. I guess my paradise would be to live in his Busy, Busy Town book!
Usually I would draw some sort of chicken palace where chicken takes over the world and that would be my paradise, but I feel like its wise to give the chickens a break and draw something else. Thanks for all that commented on my last week's IF entry- the mouse with his cheese car was a hit! So I think drawing cheese is kinda fun right now and a cheese shop would be a paradise for mice, no?
Over at the Illustration for kids blog, I write a bit more about the process that went into this piece if you are interested. See you there!
We gals here at IFK are re-posting our Illustration Friday submissions along with giving a little insight into the why and how we created them.
--As for the 'why' (the concept) concerning my illustration, in this case, I executed one of the first ideas that came to my mind. It rarely goes that way, though. I tend to either just come up blank on the subject matter and/or go through idea after idea (making thumbs) until I settle on something. And even the idea I settle on usually goes through different variations and forms. For this week, though, it just happened. How I wish it were that way all the time!
--And as for the 'how' (the execution), I worked from start to finish in Painter X, working in layers. I chose to do this in a pen & ink & watercolor style which is very nice for working in layers. I didn't really have a rough as I wanted to work loose and fast. As you can see above, the ink/line work was ultimately flattened to one layer. I will create different layers for the elements (like the image of me, and then one for Bobby, then one for each floating thing, etc.). At some point, I'll compress the layers because getting too many makes it hard to keep track of and I get too lazy to have to name them all. I like to work with my hand-lettering in a separate layer as I do a lot of rewriting to make sure it's legible. That way I don't have to concern myself with doing harm to the main ink drawing.
--Once the inking is done, I move on to colorizing. The last week or so I've been experimenting with Painter's Digital Watercolors, so that's what I used here. For me, the DWs are best for simple & quick pieces I want to look more 'raw'. The DWs default to a transparent layer working over the inking. The DWs aren't as complex as Painter's Watercolor brushes, but you're still able to manipulate the diffusion & something called "wet fringe". These control how much the WC will 'bleed'. Once that was completed, I duplicated the piece which gives you a flattened copy. At this point, I felt it was a tad washed-out so gave it more contrast.
--One thing that I've been dealing with lately is being fed up with over-working my pieces. It's been happening way too often and I've just been plain ruining some pieces as of late. So this is one of several illustrations I've done in the last week which are done rapidly, forcing myself to back off and move on when appropriate. Folks, it's really not that easy to do! But I can tell you I have been REALLY enjoying the the end products much more as well as the process. I tend to feel like the MORE I work on an illustration, the better. No, for me right now, less is more.
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I am so thrilled you reviewed this book, I read it years ago, for my own enjoyment, and soaked up the gorgeous illustrations for hours. It has inspired me to pick up the others in Niki Daly’s series!