Winter SCBWI conference

The big Winter SCBWI Conference in New York City is coming up in just over a week!

Illustrators who are going - Since there's no scheduled time to be able to see each other's portfolios, I'm getting together a group of illustrators at 9pm Friday night in the NY Marketplace restaurant on the lobby floor of the Hilton to peruse each other's portfolios after the private portfolio exhibition. Hope to see you there!

New series in the works!

I'm working on the first book in a series of six early readers for a publisher I've illustrated 24 books for already. This will be my first series of six books for them. Yay! It's a fun series and I can't wait to show some of the art. The first book will be published next month, so I have extremely tight deadlines - only four weeks per book. Yikes! Better get painting...

Another note: I'm attending the SCBWI Winter Conference in New York in a few weeks. My portfolio will be in a private exhibition for art directors, editors, and agents, but since it's private I'm not allowed to be there to see the reactions to my artwork. I can leave postcards featuring my artwork in front of my portfolio and could possibly gauge how much interest there is in my work by how many postcards are taken. We'll see... exciting.

I won Kathy Weller's new picture book

Kathy Weller held a contest on the Picture Book Junkies blog and I won an autographed copy of her first illustrated picture book, The Months. Congrats Kathy! Can't wait to see it.

Illustration Friday - "100%"

He's 100% excited to see snow.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Illustration Friday - "Soar"

This little boy's trying to soar out of bed and downstairs without anyone but a mouse noticing. Some Dads are quicker than that though!

This illustration is a rework of an illustration in which I had Santa sneaking upstairs (instead of Dad standing there). I like this Dad illustration much better.

Illustration Friday - "Backwards"

Penguins dancing forwards and backwards and all over!

This little lamb is learning that watching incredible performers right before you're supposed to perform is a big mistake. I learned that lesson in college when my dance team went to Nationals for Latin Dancing. We watched the team that ended up winning first place go right before us even though our dance coach told us not to watch. We were all jitters after seeing their perfect performance. We ended up winning fourth place -not bad considering the jitters.

Click the image to see it larger. I'm working on this piece for my portfolio - not quite done yet.

Illustration Friday - "Little Things"

Do little flakes of snow cause this much excitement in your house?

Click on the image to see it larger.

Illustration Friday - "Excess"

An excess of cupcakes!

I'm still working on this one to make it a nice piece for my portfolio.

Illustration Friday - "Zoo"

This is a large watercolor painting, roughly 2' x 3', that I created for my brother. I took the reference photos for it at the Columbus, Ohio zoo.

On the zoo theme, has anyone read Adam Rex's new picture book, "Pssst!"? It's hilarious and well worth the buy.

Illustration Friday - "Scale"

"Uh... I know you've been climbing for an hour and all but before you come any further...
may I ask...
are those tights you're wearing?
And what's with all the ruffles?
And are those pink ballet slippers?
And why didn't you bring your own rope and a grappling hook instead of using MY HAIR?"