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This is a blast from the past, 1995 to be precise. When John managed Lode they used to make flyers to get people to come to their gigs. This was for Halloween and I turned each person from the band into a pumpkin :) Inara George was the lone girl in the band and she is the SKINNY pumpkin and all the rest are the boys: Gabe Cowan, Robin Moxey and Lon Baker. Sometimes the bands artist friends would make the flyers and sometimes John would come knocking on my door to ask if I could crank out a quick flyer to advertise the band and I would happily make art for the group. We did lots of them :) I kept them all because they were so talented and I knew they would make it and they have, just not together. Good Times. This incorporates Halloween and skinny in one fell swoop for Illustration Friday's "skinny" theme. Here is Lode courtesy of Geffen Records.

1995 Valerie Walsh

Imagine! I wish I could distribute flyers to publishers as easily as this. I may just use this illustration on the envelopes I will be using to send out the next package of promotional materials.

I’m a big fan of Scott Hansen’s (AKA ISO50) work and this new poster is a knockout. Love his use of Hellenic Wide for the type. The poster is for an upcoming show at the Los Angeles Arboretum.

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Have I been idle? Noooooo way! -I have been very busy and productive lately.
Have I been painting? Well no…

However I have been doing a lot of freelancing on web sites and graphic design.

I was playing with my old friend “Illustrator” this week and boy did I have fun. It is hard not to get completely distracted with Adobe programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator. There is not a week that goes by I don’t check out something new or inventive in the programs I use. The possibilities with these programs are endless. In recent months I have been mainly working in Photoshop and Indesign and Illustrator hardly got a look in but it was great to get back to using Illustrator this week.

Twilight tour flyer design: Mountain District Christian School.
I have some freelance work for another Christian school; Mountain District Christian School, creating their annual flyers and doing some ad work. This past week I put together a few ideas and developed the most appropriate concept for the first flyer design into an almost finished flyer. The design concept was screaming for a touch of fun vector graphics, and so I starting playing with my old friend Illustrator. Once I started, all I want to do is keep exploring the possibilities but I stayed focussed temporarily. I guess it is not unlike the flow I get into when I start painting. I can totally loose myself in anything creative especially when the subject is a happy theme. I love conceptual work and instead of just adding information to a flyer, I like to send an immediate message in the design. The flyer was for an open day which they inventively called “twilight tours” as the tour was in later part of the day. I focused on the main graphic being appropriate to twilight tours.

I used Illustrator to create the graphics and introduced the school’s images and text into the design. I presented the design to the school and they loved it. I had so much fun creating it. Some days I just LOVE my job and this week had been great. I always love it when I have work that I can spend time on and explore the possibilities (creative licence).

Stock Illustration: Debutante / wedding vector graphic.
Hooked on playing with Illustrator, I got my teeth into this illustration for a stock image I plan to submit to www.istock.com I thought I would try stock illustration and see how it goes. My daughter was the model for this vector drawing which will be appropriate for a wedding stock image, debutante ball / presentation ball stock image, formal stock image, or anything girly.

Hut Landon, director of the NCIBA, writes a lovely commentary in this week's Publishers Weekly Soapbox (In It Together, December 3, 2007: page 76). He boasts about the wonderful independent bookstore community in Northern California which includes Bookshop Santa Cruz, Green Apple Books, Book Passage, City Lights, Cover to Cover, Stacey's, A Great Good Place for Books, Cody's, Hicklebee's, and Kepler's (to name a few).

Landon points out that in this part of the state, "there are more than 150 independent bookstores within a 100-mile radius." Wow, do I wish I lived in the center of that circle. Another interesting fact, also pointed out in this week's Publishers Weekly by Oscar Villalon (The Book Reigns in Northern California, December 3, 2007: page 27) is that Northern Californians "spend more money per capita on books out here than anywhere in the U.S."

I have not visited all of the bookstores that I mentioned above, but from those that I have seen the interiors of first-hand I can say this: no two are exactly alike. Isn't that what being independent is all about?

These business owners and outside-the-box booksellers know what it takes to survive, and thrive, to keep the new generation of online, superstore-shoppers coming back again and again.

And, in case you're wondering what wonderful books all of these stores will be carrying this holiday season, their 2007 Holiday Catalog is available on line.

Yesterday, we also flew Kay Haugaard, the author of The Day the Dragon Danced, up from LA to the NCIBA trade show for her author signing. This is the first time we had ever met, despite working with her for two years already on her book! I suppose the internet and electronic communications makes this more and more common. On the one hand, it's great that we can work with people all over the world easily, but on the other hand, it's sad that sometimes we'll produce an entire project, an absolutely amazing work of art, and never meet.

At any rate, we were very happy to see each other for the first time. There was a line waiting for Kay at five minutes to one, when her signing was to start, and within half an hour, all 64 copies of The Day the Dragon Danced were gone. She kept saying that it was quite an experience, to have so many people clamoring for your book all at once. And that's another reason I love the NCIBA trade show.

I love the NCIBA tradeshow. Every year, I completely forget that I love the NCIBA tradeshow until the middle of the first day (I probably said the exact same thing last year, too). I love it because I get to see old friends that I only see once a year, I get to strengthen relationships with people I have met recently, and I get to meet new people. And I'm sure I've said this before, but book people are the nicest people you'll ever meet.

This year, I caught up with:

-All the fine staff of Linden Tree Children's Books in Los Altos, California, where I worked from 1996-1999. A whole bunch of them came by my table; four or five of them were my coworkers way back when-- they are still there!

-Walter the Giant Storyteller. He was walking down the aisle perpendicular to mine. I said, "Psst! Walter!" and waved him over. I showed him our upcoming title, The Wakame Gatherers by Holly Thompson, and he immediate wanted a copy to show at his "best books of fall" talk in November.

-Kathryn Otoshi, who I finally met just this past Thursday at a children's book publishing event. And then on Saturday, there she was again! I know that Kathryn is an illustrator (Marcello the Movie Mouse), but I have heard that she is a woman of many hats. I will get to the bottom of this.

-Sales reps Nancy Suib, Howard Korel, Dan Skaggs, and Jim Caretta. All really great people.

-Edna Cabcabin Moran, who I just met a few weeks ago at another book event. She is the author and illustrator of The Sleeping Giant: A Tale from Kauai. We chatted for a while about reaching the Hawaiian market and the need for more books about Filipinos. I'm not in the habit yet to take lots of pictures for the blog, so the only picture I have is of Edna and me!