Trick or Treat

Yeah, they work hard for the candy.

Of course, if mine bring home any dark chocolate Reese's, they'd better hide 'em.


Which treat do you love the best?

Is It That Time, Already?

My daughter wants a new swimsuit. We were at the outlet mall, browsing. I pointed to an orange striped bikini that didn't look too revealing.

Me: How about this one?

Her: It’s okay for you, maybe.

Me: Honey, I think my bikini days are over.

Her: Nuh-uh. Have you seen the people on the beach? You’re skinny.

Me: That doesn’t mean I'd look okay in a bikini.

Her: What are you talking about? No one looks good in a bikini. Those days are gone!

I'm not sure if that’s good news or bad news. I’m going to eat another scoop of ice cream and think about it.

Just For Fun

I've been playing around with character studies, and range of emotions. A few of my favorites so far:




I think she may have issues she'd like to address...




This one might be willing to negotiate...





This one doesn't find Cheerio's all that fascinating.

I'm Going To Get It Right This Time

In a move that was either clever or crazy, I had the drawings for my current project critiqued at the same time as the manuscript. I might be a bigger glutton for punishment than I thought.

The art director took one look at my dummy, and based on some of the other images in my portfolio, decided I should go in a totally different direction for this book. I actually didn’t get too upset about the idea; in my gut I had the nagging feeling she was right. Even if her being right meant I had to start aaaaaall over from scraaaaaaaaaaaatch.

I spent weeks working away with all kinds of new enthusiasm, much happier with my new possum drawings. Then, when the roughs for my new dummy were nearly finished, I saw this:




C’mon, that doesn’t look like a possum to you? Actually, I was sitting across the table, so I saw the upside-down image of this in the knotty pine. A lightbulb just blinked on in my head. I went to my sketchpad before I could forget about it, and scribbled my favorite sketches so far. Even the rest of the family unanimously voted the new sketches were way better than the old ones.

So here I go again. Starting all over.

Third time’s a charm, right?

Possum Poses

These are a few doodles I made while working on my picture book dummy. I managed to get to my first goal, which was to finish my manuscript and send it for a critique at a local conference coming in February. I’m hoping to get a dummy finished before the conference, so I can include it in my portfolio. I still have plenty of scribbling to do…

Blogapalooza!

Angela Nickerson of Just Go! is hosting a blog party today! She invited everyone to share their strangest or scariest trip. I thought of strange trips and scary trips, but then I tried to remember my first trip ever. That trip down memory lane was strange, scary, and a little surreal:

It was dark, and my brothers and I were tired and sticky in the back seat of the car. We arrived late at night at the house of people I didn’t know. My mom took me to the room where a girl named Joyce slept. Joyce wore baby doll pajamas – I loved those pajamas! They looked so pink and fresh. I didn’t have pajamas like that.

Then Joyce’s mother took a brand new pair of pajamas out of a drawer and gave them to me. They were just like Joyce’s, only smaller. They were perfect! I slept at one end of the bed with my feet pointing one way and Joyce slept at the other end with her feet pointing the other way – did you ever have to sleep that way?

In the morning I met Joyce’s little brother. His name was John but everyone called him John-John and he wore thick glasses. I never saw a boy so little wearing glasses.

John-John did not want to eat his breakfast.

The grown-ups took us to a place called Lollipop Farm. It was a petting zoo, but I don’t remember petting anything. I don’t remember any lollipops, either.

I do remember an enormous, snuffling pig. Pigs weren’t supposed to be terrifying. In story books they look like you can pick them up and put them on your lap.

I did not want to pet the pig, even if he did sort of look like he was smiling.

That’s all I can remember of our trip to Syosset, New York. When you are small so much is confusing and strange. You are dragged from one place to another with little explanation. You meet people and have no idea whether they will be in your life forever, or only for a day.

I looked up the Lollipop Farm. It was owned by Harry and Alice Sweeny and located at Jackson Farm in Long Island until the late 1960’s. Lollipop was the name of the family goat and mascot. Alice Sweeny even wrote a picture book called Lollipop Farm, published in 1950. The location is now home to a Border’s bookstore and a pizzeria.

For more travel tales, hop over to Just Go! and join the blog tour! Happy travels!

The View From Below

I made some discoveries while working on sketches for my bug’s eye view. My first thought was to do something fanciful, so I sketched some little flower people hiding among the plants:



But I realized as soon as I zoomed in on their little world, the perspective was pretty ordinary. So I tried something completely different:

Now we’re more based in reality, but the meeting of two worlds - one from the ground up and one from the sky downward - gives the more out-of-the-ordinary perspective. You can tell this would have to illustrate a story from the mouse’s point of view. This is the painting I decided to work on first – I’ll post the result when it’s finished.

I was surprised to end up with two completely different looks from nearly identical settings. I still like my little flower creatures – maybe later I’ll find a new setting and paint them, too.