Wednesday, August 20, 2014

IF: Journey



The word of the week for Illustration Friday is Journey, which is great because the newest story I've been working on has to do with an imaginative little mouse who embarks on his own adventurous journey. I loved using rich, earthy colors on this little fellow and it made me wish that fall was here already!

Friday, August 8, 2014

Tomie dePaola Award


I was thrilled upon hearing the news that I was chosen as one of the fifteen finalists for the Tomie dePaola Award! I am very thankful to Tomie dePaola and SCBWI for the honor.

In other years the prompt has been to illustrate a passage from a book or a poem of his choosing. This year the task was to create characters and a story from our own imaginations in six panels, so the possibilities were wide open! I think it was a wonderful assignment because for illustrators aspiring to make picture books, creating consistent characters and an interesting story involves so much more than creating one nice picture. I have experience with telling a story in a 32 page book dummy, so the hard part for me was figuring out how to tell one (with no words) in only six panels. After doing several thumbnails to work the story out, I decided to do the final panels in black and white with the only color being the red string to really emphasize it.

Once again, the inspiration came from personal experience. Not long after I adopted my cat, Dino, I gave him a big ball of yarn to play with. Because what is cuter than a little kitten with a ball of yarn, right? My mistake was leaving the ball of yarn out when going to bed. When I woke up in the morning the very long string of yarn was wrapped around all of my furniture winding through my living room, dining room, and kitchen. My immediate reaction was to laugh. Though it took much of the morning to clean, it looked like he had the most fun ever. Also, I never left a ball of yarn out unsupervised again.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Balloon Hat Boy and Dog


This started as a doodle in my sketchbook and I thought it would be fun to turn into a colored illustration! It is a lesser known fact that besides being an artist, I also know how to make balloon animals. I learned from my dad, who was a professional clown- although I can't make hats this elaborate, I do know the basics like dogs, giraffes, bunnies, swords, and ray guns (that alternate as blow dryers).

A photo of me at about six years old modeling a more simple version of the balloon hat: