Painting again (Welcome back!)

This week's assignment for Lilla Rogers' class was about wall art, with a focus on collage, paint, layers, and text. Our color palette was limited to neutrals, plus the colors of our birth sign. I'm a Taurus (May), and my colors were green and yellow.

I'm a somewhat messy artist, but because I've been working out of our bedroom, I don't go nuts very often anymore. But this week, I did not hold back, and I pulled out art supplies that I haven't used in years. It felt tremendous to just sit down and paint, and to smear around so many layers of oil pastels that my finger nails were caked with the colored oil for days. I kept saying to myself, "Welcome back."

Hand lettering

This week's assignment for my class with Lilla Rogers was about children's books. Everyone was to create a cover or a spread for Hans Christian Andersen's tale, The Snail and the Rose Tree, with character development and hand-lettering as our focus.

Although I pretty much choked on developing my characters, I spent a ton of time on hand-lettering. I absolutely love illustrations with hand-lettering, but I never felt I'd be very good at it, and I found this part of the assignment to be extremely rewarding. I've already incorporated some of the lettered styles I created into my current children's book illustrations, and it felt great!

A bit of what I made this week:

Pods and plates

This week's assignment for my class with Lilla is about Home Decor, and we are focusing on pod-types of plants and dinnerware sets. I'm still not sure what I'll go with, but here are some possibilities. If you'd like to weigh, your comments are most welcome. (:

Over in the Meadow submission

Outside of some freelance work and being Archer's mom, I've spent most of the past three months illustrating books for a new children's book publisher. I've said this about a million times lately, but it really is a dream come true.

It was my teacher, Mark Mitchell, who notified my class of the call for illustrators back in February. I read the submission guidelines and got to work. About a week later, and with crossed fingers, I sent these two pieces in. Over the next several days, I refreshed my email's inbox about 500 times, hoping for good news.

That email did arrive, and it's been a scary-wonderful experience since.

A long lost painting found. Thanks, Bobby.

A couple weeks ago, I received a friend request on Facebook by someone I did not recognize. I generally try not to answer those, but I accepted right away. I was annoyed at myself for doing so, and I decided to keep an eye on his posts for any chicanery.
Yesterday, I had this sudden urge to check my Other section within my Facebook messages (which I almost never do), and I had this message:

Hi! So I'm pretty sure I bought gigantic painting of yours. It's about 6 ft tall, and it appears to be of a man that looks not unlike Norman Mailer, sitting in a flannel shirt, with a cup of coffee. He looks to be sitting in front of a computer, and the word "The" is below the computer, as in "...New York Times"...did you paint this portrait? If so, I love it! Who is that guy? Is it Mailer?
If you didn't paint it, I still love it.
Thanks!
Bobby

I was FLOORED. All caps.

Back in 1994, I had lent a painting to a local Chicago restaurant. I moved to New York in 1995, and I just didn't take care of my loose ends. I failed to inquire about it, the restaurant closed down, and I never saw that painting again. I have always kicked myself for letting that happen, as the painting had represented a shift in my student work, and the actual painting of it was a very meaningful memory for me as well.

And then this message one day on Facebook. How amazing.

Now I know that it wasn't trashed, that my immature inability to call that restaurant before I left in 1995 didn't result in complete regret, and that there is a person out there that would not only pick up that painting, but he would search for me, just to let me know that he had it and liked it.

It was quite a day for me yesterday. Meaningful in so, so many ways. Thanks again, Bobby, for seeking me out. I suspect your life will be full of creating little miracles for people.

It's critique night with Giuseppe Castellano!

Tonight is critique night!

In March, my wonderful and generous illustration teacher, Mark Mitchell, made arrangements for a critique session with award-winning illustrator and Art Director at Penguin US, Giuseppe Castellano.

Giuseppe created a mock assignment for our class, based on the very first Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books (Giuseppe also oversees the imprints of Grosset & Dunlap, the original publisher for both series). He gave us very specific guidelines to follow, and encouraged us to treat this as an actual submission. The class was excited and enthusiastic, and everyone worked diligently to get the assignment turned in on time.

After reading through The Tower Treasure, it was the road leading up to the tower and the yellow jalopy that stuck out for me. I used my Brooklyn photographs and a couple of watercolor paintings to digitally collage my cover. It's been a couple of months since I created this, and I can now see many things I'd do differently, but I really can't wait for this critique. I'll let you know how it goes!

When in doubt, cut it out

This past week, I spent much of my time focusing on my characters for a children's book project. I had a stack of drawings and paintings in my bedroom, as well as various digital attempts on my computer, but I still could not "find" my characters.

Then I remembered my new mantra: When in doubt, cut it out.

I immediately grabbed a stack of my texture paintings that had already been scanned and filed on my computer, and I began cutting shapes. Within a few minutes, I'd assembled this little owl, and I played with his eyes and wings. I gave him different expressions, imagining things he might say, and I had a little photoshoot session with him.

Although I went on to make my character with a completely different style, it was this cutting process, and puppet-making process, that cleared my mind and helped me to animate my character.