Just for the Record(er)

Do you know someone in need of a recorder book? Look no further! The FJH Recorder Method for Everyone is just the book for you! I illustrated the girl playing the recorder and the close-up of her hands right below it.  Note: Click on the link to the book, it looks like you can get a free copy if you fill out the registration form. How cool is that!?!

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

My daughter's elementary school was looking for silent auction items for their spring fundraiser, so I thought I'd donate a painting. There was no way of knowing what I'd end up drawing, so it was super cool to find out I'd be making a portrait of a darling little girl! I traded my black ink for brown and had so much fun making the stripes and swirls and flowers!

p.s. I met this little girl and her lovely mother in person, and must admit that this painting doesn't do her justice... she is impossibly cute!!! :)

Kaleidoscope

This is a painting I just finished for our friends' darling baby girl (the little story goes counterclockwise from the bottom right corner). In other news: my wonderful husband has helped me paint the blue sky and green grass for mural number one, and I hope to get the design transferred to the walls this weekend. I am also making a coloring page for Cedric and the Dragon, a portrait of a darling two-year-old girl, and need to mail out my last two cards that sold on Ripple (thank you Shawn and Faith)! I am sure that I am forgetting something... Many thanks to all of you out there who take the time to stop by my little blog! I'll have a little more time when the kids go back to school, so stay tuned because I am planning my first giveaway! I'll give you a hint: It will be a signed copy of Cedric and the Dragon! ;)

Third Time's a Charm

These are the barnyard friends that I happened upon one day while sketching. What is it with me and cats lately? So, I think to myself that it might be fun to finish it.

My five-year-old was happy to color it, too! SO CUTE!!!

So, I inked it and painted it and hated it. Nothing looked right from the get-go. I was going to try something new and paint with brown, orange, and blue. Yuk. Someone else would have done this brilliantly. You can kind of tell that I gave up on it early and didn't care how it was looking and wrote all over it. Back to the drawing board...

This was attempt number two. I decided to make this a b&w illustration, but didn't realize I had messed up my linework (by the cat's tail) until after I painted it. In the spirit of recycling, I repurposed the paper (A & B) to make some art for Ripple (have you been there yet? It is way awesome!). I used C and c and * to make chicken, cat, and random paint stickers with the awesome sticker maker my wonderful friend, Karen, gave me!

The third time was a charm! So, here is the final result! It inspired me to write the following poem:

Book Club

The finest book they'd ever seen.

They all agreed.

Too bad they couldn't read.

Lost and Found

Here is something new I drew for Project OpenBook. It is an amazing collaborative effort to create poems and illustrations to help young girls in Nepal. The poem I illustrated is called Lost and Found and you can even vote on it if you'd like to! It was so fun to work in black and white! Quiet joy. Blissful, even. I absolutely loved it! If you feel like contributing a poem or illustrating one, check it out! Happy Thursday!!!

p.s. Kelly Light's Ripple project is making waves! Over $500 raised so far to help wildlife!

I Draw and Cook

This is the recipe I just submitted to They Draw and Cook (click the image to see it full-size). It was incredibly fun to mix two of my favorite things: drawing and baking! Look at the cherry cobbler pictured below! It was pretty tasty, if I do say so myself... or you could always ask my neighbor, Mary, who I gave a bowl to as she was driving to see one of her grandkids play soccer or something last summer...

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Howdy! Thought it might be fun to do a work-in-progress-type-post. The story is something I wrote and I'm working on putting a dummy together and then working up the nerve to submit it sometime this year (a New Year's Resolution). We begin with a thumbnail (2x3, something like that).
This was another sketch from a different thumbnail. There were a few. Very "ruff" :)

After moving things around a little, I made the sketches less-sketchy. Knew there would be a wiener dog, but didn't know the big dog would be a great dane until I started re-working it.
I used transfer paper to transfer my drawing onto my nice watercolor paper (I used to work for the Department of Redundancy Department). I inked it all with my trusty Micron pens and began painting with watercolors the following day. The springer leaping for the frisbee is our old dog, Larry!
Action Photo: The paint is still wet. Oooooh....

The finished painting! This is a photo, I haven't scanned it yet, so hope it reads well (click on it to get a better view)! It ended up taking more time to paint that I thought it would, but I am happy with how it turned out. The blue ribbon was fun to paint (actually blue, turquoise, and violet), the silver tabby is our old cat, Lila, and the photo of the dog with the bone in his mouth was taken directly from a thumbnail sketch. The dog has that classic, goofy, young labrador look and I think it might be my favorite thing in this painting. I have no idea how long this took from beginning to end, but it spanned a few naptimes and a whole lot of iTunes! In other news, I am twittering now. It has been a really fun way to meet other illustrators and authors and see what folks are up to. Hope you had a nice weekend!

Circus

Here Kitty Kitty

These are the cats that live at my friend Sharon's house. They are VERY cute, and quite good at trouble-making. You can see more of Sharon's lovely work here and here. How the heck are ya? I'd really love to know! Are you having a good day, on your 3rd cup of coffee, going to the grocery store??? I am about to have a nice cup of tea. Cheers!

Order Up

Hey, there! Here is whole diner piece for ya, hold the mayo.

Elephants!

Here is my 3-year-old with her all-time favorite animals. My Mom loved elephants, too, so I guess it must be genetic....

Flowers for Algernon

Do any of you remember that book??? I remember reading it in school, but that is about all I remember. I know there was a mouse in the story... This is the mouse from the illustration I am doing for the fall conference. I finished inking it today, and hope to start painting tomorrow. It would be great to go back and read some of my favorite books from when I was a kid in school: Where The Red Fern Grows, The Trumpet Of The Swan, Island Of The Blue Dolphins, War and Peace......

Cheese Cake

Here's a new one (little bits of it posted earlier) inspired by my friends, Phil and Amy, who are getting married this summer. I am considering using this for my first postcard mailer.... Hope that everyone is having a great Monday! Kudos to Rachel (the Vet) for starting up her own blog!

The Buff Orpington

Buff Orpingtons are really cute. I am also partial to Wyandottes, Plymouth Rocks, Dominiques, and Brahmas. Did you know that a hen lays a fresh egg every 27 hours? And younger hens lay smaller eggs than older hens. This is not a hen, though, it is a rooster. And yes Virginia, that is a tree frog!

Storyteller Idol

Storyteller Idol is going to be a feature at the Minnesota SCBWI fall conference in October 2008.
I was asked to come up with something for the MNSCBWI website, and I like how it turned out (despite the fact that I did not have a single wiener dog or rabbit to model for me!). Also, I received my first official rejection letter today.... special thanks to Christina for her encouragement! Onward and upward, and back to the drawing board....

Squirrels!!!

These are some squirrel drawings that I did as an audition of sorts for a project with the Cartoon Network. I found out that although they weren't chosen, I was encouraged to submit art again for future projects, so that was pretty cool. I like how this little guy turned out! Looking forward to another warm day today!

The Tooth Ferry

I am not exactly sure where this one came from... but it was fun to try to put a different spin on some of the old classics (wonder if it makes Mary Mary more contrary?). I sent some artwork off today to be a part of the CBIG website, so that is pretty exciting! Happy Daylight Savings Time, everyone!

Fishing

Hooray for March, my favorite month! Got some more cat food last night, that's about it...

Chickadees

Wishing for Springtime

We should only have 4 more weeks of winter if that groundhog was right.... Had a really nice weekend. I attended my first meeting of the Children's Book Illustrators Guild (CBIG) and am really excited to be a part of it! Also, my website has been updated again! Looking forward to relaxing on the couch tonight! Oh, here's wishing my dear friend Jo-Anne a very Happy Birthday tomorrow!