re: the Huntington

I had a delightful time on Saturday at the Huntington Library and Gardens. The Orange County chapter of SCBWI went on a sketching/lunch/children's book art viewing trip. The weather was perfect, the company was delightful, and wow! to see original Arthur Rackham illustrations, amazing and delicate Kate Greenaway watercolors, and discovering Jessie Marion King... it was pretty close to a perfect day. If you live in Southern California, and have not discovered the Huntington, it is an amazing jewel that you owe it to yourself to see. I think it is a perfect example of way way way too much money, done right. To be able to collect all of those plant specimens, master works of art, and (?) the Gutenberg Bible, and then to ultimately give it up to the public, seems to me to be money with a higher calling. Thank you!

I am posting a bit of work; I've been extremely busy, but working on several different projects simultaneously. These are two sketches I did on my new Canson sketch pad (wonderful paper texture,) also a page from a new quiet book I'm working on about the Seasons, and then two panels from the last page I've done for Surfside Girls, which I'm particularly proud of.

re: spring cleaning

It's warming up, I'm sitting here with my studio door open onto the garden. Yummy! I've been pretty darn productive lately, although it's mostly been busting out more graphic novel pages, and I don't post those (yet...) This time of year I have to fight the urge to go spend all day in the garden or at the beach... good for generating ideas, but not so great for getting things finished. That takes buttglue, and buttglue and gorgeous spring days don't get on so well! I finished the charity piece for my son's school, and finally am getting to post it. The other sketch is of our Graduate Studios and orange tree at CSUF. The Chair of our Illustration department (and all around wonderful guy) asked us to do some plein air sketching around the department for a project he's putting together. The rest of today will be about finishing the Domestic Life of Bugs piece "Coffee," and putting the final touches on a landscape design. Maybe if I work really hard I'll have a little time to peek at the ocean...

re: snails

Snails are really cool. It rained the other day on campus and I saw one on my way to the parking garage. I had to stop and take a picture. What would it be like to have your eyeballs on stalks? Seriously! I have this charity piece to do for my son's school auction, and of course the snail got incorporated. Here's the sketch, and the photo. The bugs and coffee piece is progressing, about 85% done, but I'm not going to post until it's finished (which should be Friday.) Lots of projects!

Lots of fun! By the way, on a totally unrelated note, I went stand-up paddling last week for the first time. Woo hoo! I was walking on water! I felt cool and tribal. It was glorious. Just the fuel I needed to keep the projects fresh and moving!

farther along

Well I've got too many irons in the fire right now, and I think that's how I work best creatively. Just a slight bit of ADD is good for the art! Here's what I've accomplished on the Bug Coffee piece; the graphite transfer is slightly incomplete due to my small scanner and oversized plywood board I work on, and the color is the first round of color layin. (I got the whole color piece scanned by cleaning off my desk and laying my scanner lid flat. Imagine that!)

I went sketching at Downtown Disney on Sunday with my illustrator group. How lovely! So much fun to be out with fellow artists. A little lunch + a little sketching = a great day.

Goodness! I am posting the drawing I'm wrestling with right now; it will someday soon be a watercolor, but for right now it remains a thick tangle of furniture, bug legs, and perspective. Ouch! Hurting my brain! Thankfully I have a light box, which means I will eventually be able to decipher which line lies on top of which, and will blissfully begin my graphite transfer. How does a gossipy bug cross her legs? How does a mantis grip her coffee, without spilling or impaling it? Does a beetle torso bend enough to sit properly in a chair? There may be people out there grappling with more difficult questions right now, like health care or acceleration pedals, but I've got to believe that these questions rank right up there. Stay tuned for watercolor...

I just finished a piece to send up to LucasArts. That was fun. I've never really done the fan art thing, but Ira asked if I would put something in a charity auction up there, and wanted to know what I'd do with Ahsoka. A spunky girl character? Of course she has to be surfing! I put a logo on the piece for Kashyyk, the Wookiee planet that has really good surf. Sounding mighty geeky, I know, but having an eight year old boy means we are firmly entrenched in Star Wars and Clone Wars and all that- not that I don't like it too! I scanned both my transfer drawing (almost nothing makes me happier than a freshly graphite transfered drawing on stretched paper,) and my finished watercolor.

Well I had a heck of a weekend. I do believe I experienced Geek Nirvana. A former student, and all around great guy, Ira Owens, took me and my best friend Melissa on a tour of his work- at Skywalker Ranch. Words cannot describe how cool it was, from the incredible scenery of the actual Marin ranch, to the organic vegetable garden which they harvest and feed to their employees in the dining room. And that's not to speak of the actual working animation studio, with a collection of the world's most talented (and nice) artists who work (somehow) in this serene environment. Very very inspiring... The only downside I can see is that you would never be able to work anywhere else!

I have been mostly posting sketchbook pages, and that will continue this time as I have been working on my graphic novel, which I'm not ready to post yet. These sketches were from the Denver airport last week, when I went to pick up my new Springer Spaniel puppy Sally. Watch for sketches of her, coming soon! These sketches, along with many others artists', will be put together into a megasketchbook at Cal State Fullerton by Dana Lamb, for their Animation Department's 10th Anniversary film festival, and in support of their Pencil Mileage Club's founding member Mike Williams, who is struggling with Machado-Josephs disease. Check out this link: http://10thpmcanniversaryfilmfestival.blogspot.com/

I've been multitasking lately, which means I've been really busy and not quite done with anything. That's not a bad place to be- there's a lot of possibility in potential energy, right? I've been writing and drawing on the graphic novel, working on a new Domestic Life of Bugs piece, and then there's Eejm. I finished the illustration, but haven't finished the flag. I am den mom of a Bear Cub den, and I am very interested in getting my boys out hiking. We hiked (and summited!) the highest "peak" in Long Beach: Signal Hill. I got to thinking that no explorer went out into the wilderness without a proper identifying flag, so I did an Illustrator version of the coffee-can totem pole my Bears created. They named him Eejm, which is Ethan, Eli, Justin and Micha. I will now print this onto iron-on transfer paper, iron it onto white fabric, trim it with navy blue, punch in the grommets, and tie it to the stick. We'll be ready to conquer the next peak!

Happy Boxing Day! I don't really know what Boxing Day is. I have various friends from Down Under, and I never really got a satisfactory answer out of them when I asked. Some say it has to do with the (?) Boxer Rebellion. Some say it's when you box up all the things you got for Christmas that don't fit and take them back. I don't know. They do love to wish it to you though.

Today the Cub Scouts had a fishing derby. Actually, it was kind of a trial run to see if they knew how to cast before we got really serious. No actual fish were caught, so by default we honored the kid who caught the biggest tree. If you want to stock up on hooks and bobbers and things, find out where cub scouts are practicing casting, and then scale the trees. We all had a great time, though, except for the worms, which Cubmaster John made sure to name before they were sacrificed. Enjoy some watercolor and pen and ink sketches from the trip.

Merry Almost Christmas! I talked to my great aunt in Massachusetts, who was expecting a snowstorm. I'm so lucky to live in Southern California, where I spent the day not waiting for a snowstorm, but sketching at the zoo with my illustrator group! I got very caught up watching the monkeys, with their cute little hands. I realized that while the largest bone in a human's body is the femur, and thus the largest muscles all involve the upper leg and pelvis, in a monkey those areas are almost afterthoughts! The big bones and big muscle tie-ins are all in the shoulder girdle. It was great to watch them hang and swing. Enjoy the sketches...

Ho ho. One day to go in this semester, I've finished the last project, and it's not midnight! I guess I get to watch House after all...

This is for digital illustration class. I think it's my most successful digital illustration yet, because I did most of it traditionally. I photographed the little tin guys (so cute! Thanks Millie and Jeff!,) then drew it, inked it, and colored it in photoshop. My friend Erin introduced me to the work of Tomer Hanuka, who has the most awesome sense of color. Inspirational! Anyway, it's called "Wind Up" and it's all of the little robot caffeine junkies waiting for their morning cuppa jo. Just looking at their psycho painted eyes gave me the idea. Incidentally, I am (once again) trying to give up caffeine. You should see my eyes...

Kelp is cool. It's a combination of two of my favorite things, plants and the ocean. I was out at Dana Point, and found this floating in the kiddo swimming area. I popped it in the cooler, took it home, and painted it. I tried to do that earlier in the summer, but I left it for a couple of days in a bag in the fridge, and I don't recommend that. It got really really stinky. If you're going to paint kelp, do it while it's fresh. I have been searching the internet, trying to figure out what kind it is, but to no avail. There is plenty of info on Macrocystis pyrifera, which this is not, but not a whole lot of help if you're trying to ID anything else. Hmmm... maybe that could be a project... Anyway, I've been doing a lot of exploring of native California species for Surfside Girls. I've been sneaking all sorts of cool things into and onto my pages.

Hey there, I've been cranking away at my graphic novel pages, trying to get as much done as I can before my freelance hits.  I'm amazed at how much there is to think about in trying to tell my story this way!  I've been checking out other graphic novelist's websites and have been very inspired by what I see.  Boltcity.com has a great tutorial.  I don't know if I want to post my pages yet, because I may put them up on their own website.  I will post some character sketches I did of Sam, trying to get my technique of watercolor and sepia pen down.

These are a couple of photos of the patio garden I created for my client in Seal Beach.  I'm really happy with how it turned out.  As I've said before, the working in the dirt, with plants and all of their amazing colors and textures is such inspiration to me and my illustration.  I have been working quite madly on the graphic novel, and will post some sketches next.

Good Morning!  I haven't posted this last week, because I have been exercising another creative side- landscape design!  Brita of Brita's Old Town Gardens, where I used to work on Main Street in Seal Beach, found me this darling job of bringing color and beauty to an upstairs patio on the beach.  I will go photograph the job on Monday, and post it, as it came out beautifully (now I'm inspired to get after my own garden!)  The colors and textures of the plants are so amazing and inspirational.  I am posting a piece I had done for the CSUF show, which we just took down.  It includes two of my direct influences- plants, and reading.  The words in the background of the piece are from Madeline L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time."  It is the part where Mrs. Whatsit explains to Mrs. Murray, on that dark and stormy night, that there is such a thing as a tesseract.  When I read that as a ten year old, I fell in love with science fiction, fantasy, and all of the kinds of writing that confirm that there is more going on in this world than what is obvious on the surface.  Enjoy!

Well.  School starts today!  I love the rhythm of the school season...  Anyway, I thought I'd put more up about the SCBWI LA conference.  One of my favorite quotes came from a writer's workshop, from a woman named Karen Cushman who wrote The Midwife's Apprentice, among other things.  She had such quotable things to say; very inspirational and funny.  My favorite was,

"Write, and Keep Showing Up."  Wow.  That's pretty much it, isn't it?  She also said, "Write, don't fantasize."  I got that one loud and clear, as I'm often dialoguing in my head, and it really does need to get put on paper to be of any use.  I also liked, "Inspiration often hits when my butt is far from my chair."  I write as well as draw, but I think the advice applies very easily to both.  I have put in my posting today a very silly thing, but I'm realizing that staying connected to the very silly thing is an important thing to me.  If you're an artist, you may understand this- to take in a lot of audio information, I have to doodle.  Not just take notes, actually draw.  Teachers get kids in trouble for this, but it holds true for me, and I'm sure those arty kids in detention, that letting the brain drop into that swimmy vat where doodling frees up the thinking (like listening to jazz) really does help the information land and sink in.  So here are the backs of heads I doodled while at the conference.

I went to the SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) conference a couple of weeks ago in LA.  Wow, what a friendly, amazing and talented bunch of people!  If children's book illustration is what you're looking to do, this is such a good support group, and so inspirational!  I haven't posted in a while as it's been all about readying the portfolio and postcards and such.  I am going to be in a small group show opening August 28 at CSUF's Exit Gallery.  The show is called, "From Here to There," and we have our development work up as well as our finished pieces.  The other participants are Erin Shea, Pat Cantor, and Katy Betz.  I did a new piece for it, and am posting a little teeny bit of it.

This is colander-head boy, compare with the digital version from a couple of weeks ago.

Colander-head boy has led me to a whole new challenge, which I am exploring in my special studies Illustration class this summer. I am attempting to paint characters in watercolor, and then duplicate the illustration using Adobe Illustrator. There was a time when I said I would rather dig ditches than work on the computer, but this week I've been doing a Landscape Design job which involves a LOT of soil preparation, and I think I am going to take that back. Working at the computer may not be great for the posture, but at least you don't wake up sore! Seriously, though, there is something good for me in the being out in the dirt, and it's as satisfying as finishing a good illustration to see a newly mulched yard with beautiful, healthy plants.