Rhinoceradical

Hey there blog readers,

Yesterday was a very productive day. Not only did I send out all of the finished artwork for the penguin book I've been working on, but I also rescued an earthworm, started making my first batch of homemade ice-cream, worked on two new portfolio pieces, and found my way into the NY Times.

I posted it to other forms of social media, but I was woken up—in perhaps one of the best ways possible—by a text message from my mother, "YOU'RE IN THE NY TIMES!!!!!!!" I made it into the Metropolitan Diaries section of the paper. (If you're not familiar with it, it's a Monday paper MUST-READ. It contains little stories of NYC and often provides a much-needed Monday morning smile.)

Yesterday, the Metropolitan Diaries... next, who knows? Maybe the Book Review? Ever upwards and onwards.

And in that same vein of ever onwards, after wrapping up the penguins, I've been prepping my portfolio for this summer's SCBWI conference.

In the past few weeks, I've been doodling, not penguins, but a rhinoceros. Herds and stampedes of rhinoceroses. Rhinoceri? Rhinoceroose?

Rhinoceradical for sure.

An Apple a Day

Happy Saturday my dear readers!

I hope that it is drier where you are. Brooklyn today was and still is a cold, wet mess... but the perfect sort of day for staying inside, drinking buckets of tea, and making art. I ask you, what could be better?

So while taking a break from today's projects - further work for Viktor... I'll share soon, I promise - I realized that it's been entirely too long since I last posted.

A couple of weeks ago, we switched gears in Marshall's class and started talking about representing an entire article with a single image and turned our attention towards op-ed illustration. Marshall gave us each a copy of an actual NY Times' opinion piece and asked us to bring in sketches for the following week. AND the great thing about this project was that Marshall told us he would take all of our sketches and final illustrations and send them to the op-ed art director at the Times. GRIN!

So the big question: how to distill an entire article in a single 4 x 6 image? It's not easy. I've never made conceptual, metaphor-based or symbol-based images, so it was a really interesting project and process. It's a little like working out a puzzle, and it took me a fair amount of time... but with decent results. Marshall liked the concepts I put up and suggested I render more than one.

For your educational benefit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/opinion/02engel.html

And finally, my take: