More Wordsworth and the Dragon: Cover Design-a-palooza Week 1

I am working on cover concepts for Wordsworth and the Dragon. Above is the first design. We will post a design each week and then we will hold a vote to select which will be the final!

New Furry Studio Gremlin

His name is Spike and he loves knawing on art books and terrorizing Miffy and Boris.

Hopefully, eating paintings will not be in his repertoire...

I suspect there will be a lot of cat hairs in the paint tho...

In other news, I just signed up with a sketch journal group through the Art Academy going to Taos, NM in June to take in the atmosphere and draw. I will keep you all posted. It is helmed by Amy Bogard who does really lovely journals of her life. I have been inspired by sites like http://www.urbansketchers.org/ and http://www.theydrawandtravel.com/

I recently posted my Greece Sketchbook. I am hoping that this will be an excuse to do more travel sketching and different techniques.

Pictures from Greece Uploaded!

Finally!  Here they are: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14121972@N07/sets/72157627982573615/

Because everyone loves holiday snaps! "And this is Uncle Ted even nearer the side of the house, but you can still see the front."

Cool Blog: The Girllustrators

 This cool illustration blog interviewed me for their illustrators and technology spot.

http://girllustrators.com/post/12210120234/childrens-book-illustrators-and-technology-q-a-with


While you are there, check out the rest of the site too: http://girllustrators.com/

Boo! Happy Halloween!

Here are some creepy fish stickers from a project for Scholastic Book Club several years ago. They seemed fitting...

Books By the Banks Pictures, 2011

Reception the Night Before with Jared Lee, Jerry Dowling, Me and Jeffery Ebbeler

Carole Gerber and Me with AJC

Scotti Cohn and Me... This is for the Wordsworth Blog

All of us!

I wish I had gotten more photos. It was a great day.

BBTB: A Working Pop Up!

My dream of having a working pop-up has come to fruition thanks to excellent illustrator and paper engineer Jeff Ebbeler.

I made several mock-ups that will be at the Books by the Banks show Saturday based on the dies he created. Here is a video of his initial working mock up. It has a coolness level of 5!




By the way, I will be doing a panel with Andrea Cheng at 11:00am on Saturday. Hope to see you there!

Greece Sketch Book

These are some of the images I doodled in my sketchbook during my trip to Greece... I just got a plein air easel set up so I hope to start painting outside here soon. I wanted to do a little painting there, but fear taking paints through customs.

There are some sites online where people post their urban sketching. I hope to get a lot of practice. I am not totally happy with the thin Moleskin paper. My last one had nice thick paper. I use ink a lot and you cannot draw on both sides.

Not only were the subway cars really clean in Greece, they ads were for art supplies!

Dr Sketchy's October-Brainssssss

Sometimes when I am really swamped, getting out and doing a little sketching helps me work loosen up for better painting (and drawing). This month's theme was "Macabre". It was very entertaining. I wish I had taken video of a big scene they did with zombies and soldiers.

Book Trailer: Annie Jump Cannon, Astronomer

The book trailer is now up on You Tube!

I am very excited about this book. Both the author Carole Gerber and I did a lot of research.

When I was first contacted by the publisher about the book, I was embarrassed that I had never heard of Annie Jump Cannon. As a kid, my favorite show was Cosmos and I wanted to be an astronomer when I grew up. I not only read a lot of Carl Sagan, but was a huge fane of science fiction as well. How had I never heard of her?

Somehow I ended up in illustration and industrial design, but maybe if I had known about her, I would have still pursued a career in science. 

The era of science that she contributed to was an amazing time and it seems like she is lost in the shuffle of more popular scientists like Lowell, Hubble, Einstein, Tesla etc.

When you look at her accomplishments, it is amazing to think that women did not even have the right to vote for most of her life.
 
Illustrating the book was a challenge since varied pictures are not often paired with her information. It was like a scavenger hunt; figuring out what lab equipment to illustrate and how the classrooms would look or what they would wear, what her childhood house looked like... In addition, I did not want to simply replicate the few images of her that are available. I wanted to make them new and my own take of the scenes.

For Example, there is a famous scene showing Annie and her class with a bunch a lab equipment (http://www.wellesley.edu/Astronomy/Annie/Images/lab.gif) I had a really hard time figuring out what they were doing in the picture to make a dramatic scene from it. I asked several people who had actually taken (and taught) college physics to pinpoint what it was a picture of.

Finally, my cousin's husband who teaches engineering at Cooper Union in NYC put me in touch with a professor who said that his assessment was that they were not performing any experiment, it was a posed picture where the photographer just piled a bunch of equipment around them. So, we decided to go with the picture above where she is doing a spectroscope experiment.

The building at Wellesley was particularly hard to find since it burned down many years ago.


I even tried to reproduce the Harvard Observatory wallpaper. I could not find color reference, so had to wing it on that.

Fortunately, I got in contact with a person at Harvard who had made a documentary about Annie. He was able to give me a lot of information-including her eye and hair color. This may seem odd, but the only color images of her were when she was elderly and grey.

Anyway, the book is now out, and I hope people like the effort we put into it. It was a joy painting the life of Annie Jump Cannon!

By the way, a note on the trailer: Several sources said that Annie loved to play the piano. It seemed like Bach would be a perfect fit for a scientist. When I was young, I tried to learn this two part invention #13 myself, to varying degrees of success, mostly unsuccessfully.

Back Cover

Sketch from the layout...

Back in Town and New Book Cover!

Just as I got back from vacation in Greece! While I sort out the pictures and get them uploaded to Flickr (including some urban sketches I did), here is a little post on the final cover design for my book coming out in Fall 2012...

It is a wrap around cover and below is the full composition. This one has a really cool concept. For those interested, here is the sketch

And finally, a touch of Santorini from my trip.

Slam Bang: The Hungry Housewives

The next theme for Slam Bang is Femme Fatales. My contribution will be The Hungry Housewives, with all the glitz and gore that suggests. Stay tuned as my 4 pager develops...

This time, the anthology will be in color... I have mixed feelings about that since the comic I have sketched is loaded with the cartoon violence one would expect. At least a toon is always less visceral looking even when horribly violent. Ask Goya...

More Wordsworth and the Dragon Sketches

I just finished a couple ideas: 

First off, the castle. I went a little crazy on this concept probably because I love castles so much and I have been reading my guidebooks for a trip to Greece I am about to take (the DK versions with all the lovely architecture illustrations with cutaways). The tower in the center is where the alphabet is heavily guarded. I also added a hedge maze, aviary, orchard... I am working on a map too.

  




























The throne room. I am integrating a lot of letters in the design. This scene is from the first chapter with Rho, the King and Sir Clooney. 

Read some chapters here: http://wordsworthdragon.blogspot.com/p/chapter-1.html


You can read up to the third chapter.

Books by the Banks Poster Unveiling at Joseph Beth

Detail of the Skyline

Holding my little mockup to the giant banner...

The Discussion Begins

Great night tonight at Joseph Beth! It was great to see so many illustrators in the audience and on the panel.

I brought my mock up of the Cincinnati skyline I illustrated. I hope to have a working one by the show... Any paper engineers out there?

Below are some of the concept sketches.

Original Idealization Thumbnail

Books by the Banks Poster Unveiling and Article

Miffy and the Cincinnati Enquirer Article. When I opened the section to read the article, she immediately plopped on the paper and refused to move and nipped at me when I tried to coax her.

Thursday, September 8

7:00pm - 8:30pm Joseph Beth Booksellers

Celebrate the kick-off of the 2011 Books By the Banks, Cincinnati USA’s Book Festival with a panel discussion and a rare poster signing opportunity with acclaimed illustrators, including this year’s artist, Christina Wald. Also on hand will be Will Hillenbrand, C.F. Payne, Ryan Ostrander, and John Maggard discussing their work and the illustrations they created exclusively for the annual Books By the Banks posters. Since the book festival's inauguration in 2007, the posters – now considered unique collectors' items – have captured the essence of what Books by the Banks means to the community.

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=239317536113388

 

My Initial Thumbnail

Hope to see you there!

Sometime later this week I will post some sketches (including the unused concept).

Link to article in the Cincinnati Enquirer by Lauren Bishop:

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20110904/ENT07/109040338/Illustrator-s-poster-celebrates-books

Link for Coupon if you buy something the day of the event:

http://www.josephbeth.com/events/BBTB-11.pdf

Advance Copies: The Wild Life of Elk

Good News Everyone! I just got some advance copies of The Wild Life of Elk

It was an amazing project and I had an excellent team to work with and it shows in the book. This was also along with author Donna Love, who had the most difficult task of writing a book about elk that was entertaining and interesting and recommended me for this project.

I also was lucky to work with a graphic designer who was willing to make his job a whole lot harder to make the book look REALLY GOOD! (No spread is the same.)

It is a joint venture between Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and US Forest Service and published by Mountain Press Publishing . There is a LOT of art in this book. This is an tiny sample...

Hopefully it will be available at Books By the Banks. There will be some other book signing events along with the book too. Stay Tuned!

Me, doing research in Jackson Hole at the Wildlife Art Museum. I also went to Yellowstone and Missoula,  Montana.