One Week With an Illustrator in The Studio

   This week is one of those rare weeks where I get to feel the joy of finishing off a few projects and packaging them up to send out to clients. Sooooo Happy!!! Most of my projects stretch on for months on end so whenever I finish a project it is a mixture of relief, excitement, exhaustion, and paranoia that they will come back for yet another revision on something.  It's often like building a skyscraper with an indeterminate number of floors.

   I began the week with some more color and border samples for "Pigs Under the Post Office"

Continued with some e-mail correspondence with a repeat client with whom I will be starting another imaginative family portrait.  I posted images to my artwanted.com portfolio, filled out my application for the East Burke Fall Folliage Festival, read art blogs, listened to art related podcasts, and talked to the graphic designer for my "A Cloudy Day " book. That book is finally going to print!!!!

I then found out that a book I illustrated the cover for in 2010 has finally been published! So I sent a congratulatory postcard along to that client.

 I was finally able to make some time to do the absolute final revisions for the Bull Illustrations. I also got to use my "new" printers full 13"x19" printing capabilities for the first time : )  $82 for the ink and photo paper!

Then I had half a day to work on the final line drawing for my wedding invitations I'm doing the illustrations for. As much as I would like to show the progress for that, I really want to keep it a surprise for now but will definitely unveil that eventually.

The second half of the day I took the time to do an original watercolor painting of the turtle from "Samantha Loses the Box Turtle" which is a commissioned reward for the kickstarter campaign. Complete with a certificate of authenticity and free postcard samples of my art to go along with all of the other cool prizes they received from the author.

I started this week on a  high from having finished the final art for "Samantha hatches the Chicken Egg". One of the full page illustrations below.

Today and tomorrow I will be finishing off the week by mailing/delivering the art, writing this blog post, probably updating my website and blog with my two new books available, "Samantha Loses the Box Turtle" paperback version and" "Hello Jesus, it's Jeanne... Again". Then I will transfer the final drawings for my pig book onto the final painting surface to prepare for a full week of painting next week!

A Peek Into An Illustrator's Life: One

This is the start of a series of blog posts I've wanted to start for quit some time, in which I hope to share some funny and interesting stories from my life as an artist or life in general.  A good children's illustrator knows how kids think and what they want to see. I think we pretend this has something to do with our keen insights or our fascinating ability to observe human nature at it's best. When in reality we all know it has a lot more to do with the fact that most children's illustrators are still just big kids ourselves. I still haven't figured out how to brush my hair. I once read a post on facebook asking,  "has anyone noticed that grownups are just kids trapped in bigger bodies?"

How else can a children's book illustrator start such a series but with a quote from a kid?! Kids are the best!

One day while working in the studio I was listening to an old episode of "This American Life"  about the logic of kids.

                  Adult: "What does the tooth fairy do with all the teeth?"

                   Kid: "She collects them and makes stuff."

                  Adult: "Like what?"

                  Kid: Tooth chairs , tooth trophies and tooth houses"

               ...Adult: "Why does she make houses out of teeth instead of bricks?"

                  Kid (without missing a beat): "Because no one doesn't have brick teeth"

The things that kids say are just so unbelievably genius in their originality and spontanaity! This reminds me of the time I went out to eat with family after church. There was another family from church sitting at the table next to us. The mom was actually one of the religious ed teachers and I always see her showing her kids how to do the sign of the cross, explaining the various things the priest does etc.  When it came time to order drinks I overheard the little boy tell the waitress that he wants a Bud light on Draft! The look on the parents faces was priceless. I later heard the father tell the waitress that they discovered the boy had read the phrase from a sign hanging in the restaurant "We serve Bud light On Draft!"

       Some grown ups spend a lot of time trying to be young again or look young again, while kids just can't wait to grow up. I suppose that has something to do with why many children's books apeal just as much to the parents reading them as to the kids being read to.