Thesis Show

Many thanks to everyone who came out to the show yesterday. All of your support meant so much. Likewise, thank you dear readers from far away for messages and notes!

The show opening was amazing. I felt honored to have my things up on the well with so many incredibly talented people. Congratulations to everyone!

And finally, a couple of photos of my corner of the gallery:

Five books!

Loyal readers. ;)

Big Day!

Thesis show day!

It's hard to believe that it's already May, the show is hung, and I graduate in a week. The last two years have been unbelievable, and tonight is the culmination of a year of work. I'm excited to the point of shaky hands. That said...

If you're around the NY area, I'll see you tonight at the SVA gallery - 601 West 26th Street, 15th floor - from 6-8pm.

Oh, and if it's any incentive at all, I'll have some sweet merch!

I made stamps, lickable and stickable.


And buttons... heaps of buttons.


And will be selling the first official run of Amelia Pepper.

Nearly there...

I'm not going to post any pictures of the full display until after the opening, but for an early sneaky peak... hanging day...

(Bottom photo credit: one Mr. Gant Powell, extremely talented artist and SVA class of 2011)

Flamenguin

Most of you out there in blogland are well aware that I am, by nature, a very silly person. Other than general goofballitude, word play has a tendency to invade all parts of my life, extending well into my work world.

A little background... In order to keep track of all of my projects, I always give them a one word name/title (for file-prepping, list-making, etc). At my least creative, I use the name of the main character. At best, it's a play on words, a pun, or a mash-up of other words in the title. One of the projects that I've been working on and talking about on the blog (here and here), as I've mentioned before, has two main characters, a penguin and a flamingo. I actually gave this project two different titles - "flamenguin" and "penguingo". Ridiculous, I know. But seriously, flamenguin! It was just too good to keep to myself. So if you can make it to the thesis show, you may find that it is actually prominently featured in another one of my books.

Got Mail?

Halloo all.

Show day is fast approaching, and I'm in the process of wrapping up the books - working on a couple paintings, last minute edits, typography, text design, endpaper design - before I print and bind them. This part of the process is exciting, but I find much of this bit (from the finished painted product to output) exhausting.

However, in the process of working out the endpapers for one of the books, I actually ended up getting to do a little bit more painting. For the book I described in a previous post, I designed a set of endpapers made up of postage stamps (as the book prominently features two characters who send letters and postcards to one another.) At first, I thought that I would just do the stamps as line drawings, but after a bit of down time and some scrap watercolor paper, I ended up with thirteen painted stamps.

Eventually, I'm going to print them up as stickers to send out with my promotional materials.

Keep running!

It's my current mantra... only three weeks until the show goes up, so...



just keep running...

Once upon a time...

Gather round dear blog readers. It's story time.

Once upon a time, a flamingo (one, Aloysius T. Pinkerton) and a penguin (the indomitable Birgitta Le Blanc), conducted a most extraordinary correspondence. Penpals and best friends, the two sent letters between the Caribbean and the Antarctic. Their friendship resulted in unexpected travel, marvelous days in the snow, warm afternoons on the beach, fancy tropical cocktails, frozen feathers, unfortunate sunburns...

I could go on, but alas, there is work waiting for me on the drawing table.

If you want to find out the rest of the story, you'll just have to come to the thesis show. (I know, shameless plug... but seriously, thesis show! The opening is May 5th, 6-8pm. Additional dates and details to come.)

New art!

Apologies my dear blog readers. I have been three weeks silent... but let me tell you, they've been a busy three weeks. Most of my time has been spent at my drawing table and only on the computer to do the cursory e-mail check and to hit play on the day's chosen playlist or podcast, so all e-whatnot has come to a screeching halt. However, in the hours that I've spent not on the computer, I finished putting together a total of five dummies and four new paintings. Chock full and all around exciting, but admittedly exhausting.

But this is a short update, as there is another painting waiting for me on the drawing table. In the meantime, however, I thought I'd give you a sneaky peek at one of the new ones.

From the balloon book (as of yet, untitled):

Thesis Dummies

Halloo my dear blog readers,

First, thanks to everyone for the congrats and well wishes. The scholarship was a really exciting surprise this week.

But moving on... you've all been extremely patient. I keep dropping hints about my mysterious thesis, one book, two books, three, four, maybe six book project. Perhaps I should tell you what I'm doing. Originally, my thought was to make a dummy of two or three different ideas and then pick one to finish for the thesis. However, picture book publishing looks less kindly on finished work... an entirely fleshed-out book leaves no room for the excellent collaboration that happens between an author/illustrator and her editor/art director. Publishers do, in fact, prefer to see dummies in the sketch stage with two or three finished pieces thrown in to show how you would render the final artwork.

So why pick one book to finish? The upshot is I'm not. Rather than one book for thesis, I'm doing very finished dummies of three - six original books with two or three finished pieces of art per story. I have one 99% done, a second nearing that 99% mark, and then the third - sixth book... well, loads to do still. Depending on how satisfied I am with the work, I'll show three or six of the books. Though admittedly, a bit schizophrenic, it's been great to have more than one project to work on. When I get fed up with or sick of or stuck on one of them, I can shift gears, work on a second book, and then return to the previous project refreshed and ready to go.

You've already seen a couple of the finishes going into the books, but here are some of the sketch pages that I've been working on this week for book number two.

Be forewarned, the images are not for the faint of heart... here be monsters...

Thesis show!

Mark your calendars folks! The opening reception for the MFA thesis show is going to be May 5th. It may seem early to start planning, but in addition to all of the actual art, there's printing, binding, designing promos, getting prints made... loads to do, as it were.

We've been working on the official promo card for the show as a class, so that our work is all equally represented. Each of us is doing the portrait of one of our classmates.

Philip!

Snow!

For those of you who aren't in New York, you may not know that we've had a snow storm pretty much on a weekly basis since the year started. All of the winter weather has meant a fantastic heap of snowy reference for a picture book that I'm working on about a flamingo and a penguin.

It's an absurdly silly and extremely satisfying project. What could be better!?

New work!

Happy snow day readers!

New York is under another foot of snow, and I'm off from school for the day. That being said, it's still a work day. I'm busy prepping for a conference this weekend. The Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators hosts an annual conference in New York, and I decided that I ought to check it out.

At the conference, I'll be participating in the illustrator showcase and showing a new piece of work - a painting from one of my books for thesis. (Yes, "one of"... I may actually end up doing a series of picture books for the thesis project...) But I digress. Since I'm showing this painting publicly tomorrow, I figured that it's high time I shared it with you.

Thesis?

Happy New Year dear blog readers!

It was a busy end to 2010 and a busy start to 2011. This bodes well for a productive final semester. After so many years of schooling, it's crazy to think that this is my last - LAST! - semester of school. It's both incredibly exciting and entirely terrifying.

That being said, perhaps in anticipation of an ever-nearing commencement date, I've been burning the candle at both ends, working both in the studio and at home on my thesis. For the thesis, I decided to work on not one, but three (soon to be four) picture books. I spent first semester writing, designing characters, sketching, thumbnailing, revising sketches, redrawing, rewriting, editing, and putting together three solid book dummies. All of the dummies are in pretty good shape, but even so, the revisions never end; after a four hour meeting with my advisor yesterday, I have major work to do on all of them.

Dummies are great, and I love having an excuse to do tons of sketches and the opportunity to really get to know my characters... however, it came to my attention that it is nearly the end of January, leaving me with only a couple of months to pull together all of the final art. The last three or four weeks have passed in a flurry of painting and experimenting with color.

I still haven't decided which book I'm going to work on yet, but I've really been enjoying playing with this particular character in paint. A couple of sneak peaks: