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.

More Ripples

Ripple is making waves! Over $2,700 raised so far!! Holy Mackerel!!!

Here are some new paintings that could be yours for 10 clams apiece:

Shooting Stars, Star Fish, and Super Stars

MNSCBWI Summer Workshop

There is a great workshop coming up this Saturday at Elva Resa Publishing! We will learn all about the publication process at small presses. Elva Resa has published a couple books with the lovely Christina Rodriguez (The Wishing Tree and My Dad's Deployment). Their imprint, Alma Little, published Cedric and the Dragon this June! It was such an honor to work with the folks at Elva Resa. They were so supportive and kind, I feel very fortunate that they took a chance on me and gave me such a fantastic opportunity! Hope to see you there!

Saturday, June 19, 2010

noon-3pm

Elva Resa Publishing

1890 Wooddale Drive, Suite 100

Woodbury, MN 55125

$25 members/ $35 non-members

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!

Ripple

Head on over to Ripple, a blog started by the fabulous Kelly Light. She wanted to make a difference for all the wildlife affected by the devastating gulf oil spill. Artists are donating works that you can purchase for $10 to help support relief efforts. Every little bit counts! These are the wee paintings I contributed with original titles such as: Blue Crab, Blue Bird, and Blue Turtle.