A new book just hit the shelves, last week. Buddy's Bedtime Battery by Chirstina Geist (published by Random House) is my latest book and I want to take you behind the pages to see how the project progressed.
It's always exciting to get the first printed books in the mail. After months of a studio full of art boards in progress, wet paint and gallons of coffee (not part of the painting process but very necessary), the final product is a welcome payoff. Buddy finally arrived!
Now, let's look at how Buddy arrived. After reading the story manuscript and creating sketches for the characters, a full length book dummy was created. When the book sketches were finalized, the painting process began.
I created a production line of boards with images of each page. I taped the edges with low-tac tape to keep that area clean and white. Then, an underpainting with brown acrylic paint was washed (thin layers) onto the boards. I usually do this when the final art is created with oil paint. The acrylic and polymer layers sealed the paper board from the oils and gave me a good (light and dark) value study to follow.
At this stage, the studio was full of artwork covering every flat space to be found. I have a drying rack for storing work in progress but I like to see everything laid, side by side.
Here is the title page. The towel area on the left was used for copyright and publishing information. The title was placed on the wall, above the bathtub. Notice the pajamas are visible, just below the towel. I often use elements and story props to hint at what's coming on the following page(s).
Here is one of the illustration spreads. One of my favorite images of the book.
This was my table, somewhere under the shingles of drying illustrations. The images were at various stages of completion so Buddy's hair looks really dark on the bottom image, etc. I worked on several paintings at a time and all art started to finalize toward the end of the process....which is also called..."the deadline" (If all goes as planned). It was a fairly long process and sometimes hard to see the end when spending days painting little parts, adjusting colors and adding detail. But eventually, it all came together and a package with the final art of Buddy's Bedtime Battery traveled to Random House.
Then, months later, I get to see the book on NBC, being read to millions of TV viewers. How COOL is that? So exciting! ...So surreal! ...Yay, Buddy!
...deep breath...now, back to the drawing board. :)
One of the best parts about my job as an events coordinator is that I get to go to at least three cultural events a week, and get paid for it.
One of the worst parts is that I can't go to all of the other events that are happening at the same time.
Bookstores in New York have a different issue when it comes to author events than stores in most other places. For us, it's not so hard getting good authors to appear; the hard part is competing with the million other great things that are going on at the same time in the same city.
Tonight (Wednesday), I'm thrilled to meet Meg Wolitzer as she reads from her new book The Ten-Year Nap -- she's one of our sharpest observers of women's lives and Western culture, and totally funny, too.
But if I wasn't at my store, I'd be at Rocketship in Brooklyn for a book party with Jonathan Lethem and Farel Dalrymple for their collaboration on the new Omega The Unknown comics. Two of my favorite creators in one place! -- not fair!
And tomorrow night (Thursday), we've got not only a party for an amazing Russian poetry anthology, with authors actually flown in from Russia and local translators and food and wine... we've ALSO got the brilliant and charming Simon Van Booy, one of our store's favorite authors, doing an intimate reading and conversation about his brand-new cult classic genius short story collection The Secret Lives of People In Love. (We recently did some renovation at the bookstore that allow us to have one event going on upstairs and another one downstairs -- more authors! more choices! Luckily I get to go to both of these, at least for a little bit at a time...)
But, at the same time, my buddy and fellow entrepreneur David Del Vecchio is inaugerating his BRAND NEW INDIE BOOKSTORE, Idlewild Books, with a reading, discussion and reception for Murat Kurnaz's book, Five Years Of My Life, about his internment in Guantanamo. I can't wait to see David's dream come true, and the book sounds amazing.
But lucky you -- YOU get to choose which of these events to attend. Good luck, and welcome to the trials of book nerd life in New York City!
List ten things you like/love/are interested in that start with a certain letter....
I commented on ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
lizzy_lyn's blog and was cheerfully tagged with letter O. (Vowels are tough, but at least it wasn't X or Q.) Here's my list:
1. optimism
2. orchids
3. olive oil (a special kind from a little store in Montreal's Atwater Market. It's owned by a man named Renee who uses the word "fabulous" every time I go to visit him.)
4. October
5. oceans
6. Orion Nebula (No, really.... I'm not just choosing it because of the O thing. I saw Orion through a big telescope a few weeks ago and fell in love with the idea of actually seeing a place where stars are born.)
7. organic gardening
8. ornithology
9. oysters
10.oatmeal cookies (with chocolate chips!)
If you want to play, leave me a comment, and I'll assign you a letter. (Not Q or X unless you make a special request for the challenge!)
The worst part of being so far from New York is missing out on all the great cultural events. One of the best parts is having more time to read!