Happy Winter!

Happy Winter!

Art imitates Life

All it needs to complete the match is the cat, a mouse and a toy train.

Happy Holidays!

Here's wishing Happy Holidays to the faithful readers of my blog!  Thanks for reading my little old blogger blog.

On the 7th day of Christmas...

On the 7th day of Christmas the USPS gave to me... 2 winners to the Goodreads giveaway. Soon copies of 'Mouse's Christmas Cookie' will be jetting off at Santa-Speed to West Virginia and North Carolina.

Meanwhile I have accomplished near biblical miracles of shopping, thanks to modern online technology. I have barely set foot in a mall. Whew!

A delightful book event at Parkplace Books

A delightful evening was had by all at the Parkplace Books holiday event in Kirkland. A group of live musicians (Ostgard) played wonderful quiet holiday music in the background while patrons nibbled cookies and sipped wine and cocoa.

I had a marvelous evening of interesting book chat with local authors. Nina Laden was there with her amazing book collection. I sat with local book makers brimming with the excitement of being an author. And why shouldn't authors get a little recognition? We spend out lives in total isolation - never getting the applause that actors or musicians receive and require to keep them inspired. Even though a picture book artist does everything that a movie-maker does - creating characters, costumes, dialogue, emotions, directing and choreography... we never get invited to any Oscar parties.

It's sad that events like this are so rare here. My neighborhood doesn't even have a bookstore anymore. So last night was wonderful to be in a place where books are as important as designer furniture.

Beware! Peter Panda may be hurtling towards you!

What's is this? A christmas tree ornament? A countdown to new years? I'd guess it's the world of Peter Panda bouncing into bookstores in the not too distant future.

Beware! In a nearby galaxy Peter Panda may be hurtling towards you! (I rarely get to use hurtling in a sentence) but in this instance it is justified.

Who says illustrators don't get Holiday parties?

Who says illustrators don't get Holiday parties? Well... after going for two decades and 30 books without a Holiday party, I've finally been invited to one. Imagine that!

'Mouse's Christmas Cookie' - a new book!

Santa arrived last week with a box full of books. So it's starting to look a lot like Christmas around the studio desk. My new book with Two Lions finally arrived and I'm delighted with how the digital detail of the artwork translated into print on paper.

It's just amazing what printing can do. I'd think one appealing thing about digital coloring is how the artist can achieve color depth and control it with finesse. Also details like clouds and atmospheric shadows are fun to do... things which would drive an artist nuts with traditional paints.

Let's hope Santa likes having a mouse drive the Christmas toy train.

The sun never set on this little book...

 

This was a fun book to get in the mail the other day. What I especially like about it in 'real life paper' is that it's so small. There's something about it being so small that makes it endearing somehow.

My favorite way to look at it is splayed open in a fan so you can see all the pages at once. Don't ask me why... must be an artist thing. This book was truly international. I landed the book from London and it was designed in Australia and New Zealand. So the sun never set on this little book. lol!

My favorite way to look at it is splayed open in a fan so you can see all the pages at once. Don't ask me why... must be an artist thing. This book was truly international. I landed the book from London and it was designed in Australia and New Zealand. So the sun never set on this little book. lol!

Digital art can be amazing - so is the printing...

I was delighted to receive the sample copies for the November issue of High 5 . It was fun to see how 'Nosy Rosie' came out in print. It's exactly as I hoped.

Digital art can be amazing - but the printing also seems equally amazing to me.

I like how the details hold up at every level.

Characters and a new book dummy...

Characters and the dummy that I've been working on. I did the dummy with Indesign... which is brilliant at making changes. It's fun to do a book with people characters for a change.

I liked how the cast looked all lined up in front of the dummy.

Too busy drawing to feed the hungry blog...

I've been too busy drawing to feed the hungry blog.  But here is a sneak peek sketch from a new book that showed up last week. This is a book with lots of fun characters. This is nice since it seems lately I've just being doing books about animals.

Lately I have done 2 cat books, 1 gator book, 2 worm books, 2 mice books, 1 pig book and a panda book. But people are endlessly fascinating and I like to draw them.