Looking Up
We have sun in Seattle today. Not a cloud in the sky. This is the kind of day that makes Seattleites smile at each other in a goofy, I-love-you-man sort of way. So I pick this day to write about clouds, and not looking at things very carefully. Last year when I was illustrating Dinosaur […]
A Movable Wall
I shipped off a book dummy today. It’s a good feeling. The dummy is for the book Boom Boom by Sarvinder Naberhaus that I am illustrating for Beach Lane Books. It’s a pretty minimal text, so there is lots of room for me to develop my own story line for the images. I like to […]
Bowling for Dinosaurs
From Books Around The Table, Bowling for Dinosaurs A question I often get asked is, Do I use photos to draw from when I illustrate? The answer is Yes and No. I try to draw from my imagination as much as possible, but there are times when a photo captures more details than my imagination […]
Beauty In Limitations: A Printmaker’s Perspective
From Books Around the Table, Beauty In Limitations: A Printmaker’s Perspective: Denslow’s Mother Goose, W W Denslow, 1901 I have been thinking about limitations lately. Like illustrations from old picture books before four-color photo-processing became the norm. The ones I’ve accumulated are mostly from the 40s and 60s and they seem have been printed that way […]
A Portfolio Primer
From Books Around The Table, A Portfolio Primer A week ago Tuesday I was the main presenter at our regional SCBWI monthly meeting. The purpose of my talk was to prepare illustrator attendees for the upcoming regional conference in April by reviewing a selection of portfolio submissions. This was a public critique session with an audience […]
