Taste The Rainbow!

        This past week I was at the Laundromat keeping my fiancé company when the vending machine called my name in no uncertain terms and with a very distinct glow, faintly trickling past my right eye. I vigorously walked in the direction of the faint hummm and was encountered by these bizarre colored disks in a red package with large white letters. They were small, strange, hard and shinny with a large white letter on each of the disks as well. I once saw E.T. Eat a substance similar to these on TV., back when I still wore those umpa loompa jammies with the zipper down the front and slippers sewn onto each leg. Yet those were very different than these. I knew these couldn't belong to him because the letter on them was an "S" and not an "E" or a "T" . Confounded I dumped some out onto the table in front of us and was only slightly surprised to see them roll around and form themselves into a crop circle sort of pattern before my very eyes. I ate one and then another. They kept making their way from the bag, to my stomach with such ease but not without a good deal of chewing along the way. That was my favorite segment of the journey as each bunch, when chewed, would release an assortment of fruity flavors upon contact with my tongue.

      I eventually realized the bag would soon disappear and no trace of the flattened spheres would remain as proof of my encounter. Of course saving some aside was out of the question as each subsequent sample called out in a distinct vocal pitch increasingly fine tuned to my inner longings for fruity substances. Thinking quickly on my feet . . . I got nothing. But then Barbie told me I should do a painting of them. And so after about fifteen minutes of moving the pieces around, looking through a viewfinder, I came up with the absolute best composition I could possibly muster under the circumstances. Then Barbie picked them all up and rolled them onto the table top, like a pro at a craps table in Vegas, and I painted them!

      So it is without further ado my dear blog readers, facebook friends, fans (well it sounded good), and family members that I present to you this 5"x6" watercolor rendering as proof of the alleged encounter with Martian space disks. Take it or leave it as you please. It is my contention that these colored disks are in fact sent from Mars in an attempt to search out and gather information from among the most astute and learned of all humans (clearly their navigation software is a bit glitchy) on the planet earth in an attempt to learn our strengths and weaknesses, so that the whole of Martian kind might stand some small chance against us in the ensuing war over their home planet. You've been warned!

Thankfull for All of My Clients

Sooo excited to receive ten copies of "Samantha Loses the Box Turtle" in the mail today! It's been available for digtal e-readers for about a year now but I had always hoped it would one day make it to the printed page. Thanks to our successful kickstarter campaign this book is now available in print. The picture below shows the books spread out with one of them opened up to one of the internal illustrations, there are a couple of bookmarks and some amazing stickers as well that the author sent to me !!! Sooo Awesome! In the upper part of the photo are a couple of the near finish illustrations for the children's book I'm currently working on " Pigs Under The Post Office" .

I was pleasantly surprised to turn one of the shipping boxes over and find this great little message. It's a stick figure drawing of Samantha and says " what Samantha would look like without you" .  

I'm sooo blessed to work with such amazing clients who value what I do enough to hire me and who care enough to go that extra step. I've had a client who published my process work into a book just so I could show future clients my process and how much work goes into each project. I have a client who has gone the extra mile to publish his own books and continues to help me publish books for my other clients and who did book readings, fall festivals and even did some plein air painting with me and set up a number of other successfull book projects for me with new clients. I've had clients who send along bonus payments when they get the final art, love it and realize how many hours it actually took to complete the way they wanted it. I've had a client who got me my own studio for free at an old convent, paid for an apartment for me for a few months to finish their book (on top of regular payment for the illustrations), took me out on his boat to go fishing in Boston, brought me home cooked meals in the studio, invited me to use their pool any time I wanted, moved me back to Vermont from Boston with a company truck etc. I've had repeat clients who keep me in business. I had a client who liked to call every now and then just to talk about faith and life as friends. My clients have sent me copies of our books, send me amazing encouraging e-mails when I'm feeling stressed, they are respectful to me and generous.

      I try my best to be professional but at times it's difficult working for soo many different people over the course of the years and it can be overwhelming when I promise to have things done by a certain time and then take on too much other work to follow through. My clients are patient and understanding. I have no idea where I would be without them!!!

         So getting these books from Daisy and this fantastic little drawing and note just hit a chord with me. It made me realize that too often I focus on the few clients who never seem to make their payments on time, or who pull out of a project without paying for the work already done or who just keep wanting more and more without offering more pay. It made me realize I would rather just focus on the great clients who follow through on their end of things. They may feel like they can't do the illustrations without me but I know for sure I can't do these illustrations without them!! I'm particularly thankful for those clients like Daisy who have experience with teaching kids and who devote their lives to loving on kids. These are the clients who write great stories that kids will love and that will teach kids. In the end that's the real reason I'm in this business. Sure a large part of it is that I'm still just a kid at heart and I love to be able to bring that out in my illustrations but I could paint all day and not feel fullfilled unless it were for the books being published and making into the hands of kids.

Beauty and Pattern in Nature

Have you ever seen such a thing as what's displayed in the photos below? believe it or not these photos aren't taken at the Harvard Museum of Natural History or any other museum with magnificent collections of rocks and minerals for that matter. These are magnified photos of common sand! "Professor Gary Greenberg who has a PhD in biomedical research from University College London said: 'It is incredible to think when you are walking on the beach you are standing on these tiny treasures."


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2011471/Pictures-sand-Close-photographs-reveal-incredible-beauty.html#ixzz1jAeBfjDb

Just last week I was watching tv and amazed all over again at seeing close up pictures of snowflakes. I'm sure we've all seen them at one point or another in our lives but it's easy to forget these kinds of things in our daily lives. So have another look! For more snow flake pics go to snowcrystals.com where these were taken from.

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.

He Looks just like YOU!

Whenever I have a spare moment I enjoy looking through other artists blogs and seeing all of their work,  process and studies. Recently I realized that some of my favorite blogs do nothing more than just post some of their finished artwork with a simple title and maybe a short description for what inspired the piece. I then realized I very rarely post finished art on my blog or atleast none of my newer stuff. I've done a bunch of finished book covers recently that I posted but have left out so much of my other art. So now I'm going to start posting some finished artwork every now and then for those who never have the chance to make it to my actual website. You can allways view more there http://www.matthewgauvin.com/

    This first one is from the book "The Little Boy Without a Name and Without a Birthday". I recently posted this image on my artwanted page and got a comment that it looks like a norman Rockwell! LOL, Yeah, maybe when he was ten and just starting to paint! But he was deffinetly one of my first inspirations, so it was fun to be compared to him.
          I also keep hearing that the little boy looks like he was modled after myself, BWAHAHAHAHA. Seriously had about five different people say that. I never wear red, don't have red hair, I'm 27 with thinning hair. But I do have glasses and messy hair and used to be extremely skinny and I used to have blue shoes, so I can see where they are coming from.
         I find it quit interesting that the author of the book actually has people telling him that the little boy looks like him (he wears glasses too). The funny thing is that I have often felt a character looks like me a bit but in those instances I spend hours trying to resolve the issue,haha. I'm thinking of one character in particular for my "Samantha Loses the Box Turtle" book where no matter how much I changed the character, I kept feeling like it looked like me. I have  a feeling this is a somewhat common thing amongst artists, as I have noticed it in other artists work. Sometimes it's because we use photoreferences of ourselves as a starting point but mostly I think it's simply because we are our own most familiar face. Some of us even dare look at ourselves in the mirror every day!
      As artists, the way we draw is to observe nature and try to mimic it in some feeble way, even when we're drawing something imaginairy like a monster or a talking train or unicorn, dragon etc. we are allways going to rely on our minds reference library taken directly form nature itself. I've allways wondered how a person blind since birth might go about the task of drawing various things, if overnight they were given the ability to see, to draw extremely well and weren't alowed to leave the room or look at other artists work. I think in a way that's a bit of a conundrum as I can't imagine an artist being able to draw well, if they don't have some sort of knowledge base for what exists in the world. You can't draw a cat if you've never seen one and you can't make a dragon look like a dragon if you don't share a common understanding of the various things that make it a dragon. However I do know that there are a wide range of possible ways to draw any given creature and still have it remain recognizable. Will Terry has an excellent video about how to design characters on his folio academy website which illustrates this point perfectly. Regardless, every artist has to start with something. We don't create out of nothing. God is the only artist in all of human history who has ever created out of nothing. Many artists draw images from their head, but their head is filled with everything they've ever seen in life and observed in nature. We don't create in a  box no matter how talented we may be. I think even Feank Frazetta would have to attest to that if pushed far enough.

Watercolor Landscape: Calm before the Storm

There was plenty to be done in preparation for Hurricane Irene. In particular I was concerned simply because I had no idea what to expect, so I didn't know if I needed to put boards over my studio windows to protect my art, should I pick the rest of my tomatoes even though there are about thirty green ones? should I put sandbags at the base of the garage door to protect my fathers camaro that we just had brought up to this house?, or the 48 oldsmobile that has been sitting here for years? In the end I just picked up the larger objects in the yard and didn't worry too much about all the extra stuff. I did however find myself at the church helping the nights of Columbus cut down a bunch of brush and trees and tear down and old fence. There's nothing quit like a gathering of ten men with trucks, chainsaws, weedwhackers a heavy duty chain and an old wheathered fence. Whoever put those fence posts two and a half feet into the ground, to insure they wouldn't fall over, certainly didn't have us in mind as the ones who would be ripping them out!

     Before all of the fun began, I found myself with an hour or so of quiet misty morning light in the church parking lot alone, as I had to drop my mom off to work early in the day. So I brought my watercolor sketching supplies along and did the image above. As this was one day before Hurricane Irene I'm calling it "The Calm Before the Storm". It was an interesting feeling to be working on such a calm scene a day before destruction and chaos was predicted to hit the area.

Should Modern Illustrations Use Older Designs?

This is a question that's come up a number of times for me as I illustrate various books. For my first book I was faced with the issue of whether I should use an older model fire truck. If I remember correctly, the client liked the older fire trucks and wanted one of those to represent the small town. I think that worked fine. However a lot more of my illustrations have gadgets like phones, tv's, clocks, cars, etc. which raise  a question for me. Sometimes the more modern designs are so sleek and so small and simply not as illustrator friendly as the older models.
          I'll give you one example that comes to mind. I'm currently doing a book that will have an alarm clock on various pages. My concern with the newer clocks is that they may not be as easy to illustrate as a recognizable object if it's further in the background. When you see an older model alarm clock with the round face and the bells on top it is easily recognizable as a small suggested shape or close up.

    For a different book I had to show a girl in a crosswalk with a cell phone. The trouble was how to illustrate that because modern cell phones are tiny or even just hang on the ear. SO I ended up oversizing it a bit so it wouldn't just look like she had her hand on her head.  When I look into the future I see this becoming more and more of an issue for illustrators as I fully expect we will need to rely on older models to get our points across. Imagine having to illustrate a guy reading a newspaper in a time period where physical paper newspapers have been replaced by digital readers. You would have this slim piece of plastic in his hands that could be mistaken for any number of other objects. Not the same as a good ole black and white newspaper with all of it's glorious creases, fold and the shear size and shape of it. We've gone from record players to tape players, to CD players and now into the tiny MP3 players.

    So I wonder how other's generally address this issue.