Sketches from Como Zoo trip

Well another great Como Zoo sketch trip occurred yesterday. What beautiful weather we had and a great turnout of artists and an author as well. Thanks to everyone for a great time and am already looking forward to the next one! So with that, I have attached a number of my sketches I did yesterday. Hope you enjoy!

*To see larger images click on the pictures

Minnesota SCBWI Como Zoo trip

Well here is a repost from "Christina Rodriguez" who is the illustration coordinator for "Minnesota SCBWI" It looks like it is going to be another great time at the Como Zoo for the annual Zoo Sketch. Here is the info and hope to see you there! I know I will be.

Date: Saturday, July 11, 2009
Time: 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Location: Como Park Zoo and Conservatory, 1225 Estabrook Drive, Saint Paul, MN 55103
Registration: FREE (Voluntary donation to Como Park Zoo is $2)

Pack a lunch, your art or writing supplies, and some sunscreen! We’re going to spend the day gathering inspiration from the various creatures and activities that the Como Park Zoo and Conservatory has to offer. Sketch, paint, write a children’s poem, come up with a new character or story idea, or practice a creative technique….Go WILD with your imagination!

Meet at the Como Zoo Entrance at 10am. It is located at the Visitor Center. We will share our work and maybe even do some brainstorming when we break for lunch. This is a great chance to mingle with some of your fellow Minnesota SCBWI members!

For Como Park Zoo directions (including a map), visit the Como Park website. We hope to see you there!

Taking some time to study the greats

Between work and the ever enticing summer weather, I have found myself doing more and more studying. I know that sounds a bit strange, but it has been a really relaxing and beneficial activity. In particular, I have been looking at a lot of 18th and 19th century drawings. After looking at many a line work, it is amazing to see each individuals expressiveness come through in the simple line. To see how that simple drawing becomes a complex dance between paper and pencil, is mind numbing sometimes. From predetermined paths to the erratic and unexpected. Drawings, though often overlooked, can become a wealth of information and inspiration.

With that, I will leave you with happy wishes for your July 4th celebrations. I will be enjoying my holiday out at the lake and hope you find some fun activities yourselves. See you after the 4th!

Art Soup Street Painting in Elk River

Well, another successful street painting occurred this weekend in Elk River, Mn at the Annual Art Soup Festival. Since the festival happens on the banks of the Mississippi River, I thought it would only be fitting to create a street painting of one of the rivers paddle boats. Below you will find some of the shots and the finished images.

Twin Cities Live and Art Soup

Hello everyone. Here's hoping all of you have a great weekend planned. I know it will be a busy one here with Art Soup tomorrow in Elk River. So as you know in the previous post, I was fortunate enough to have been featured on "Twin Cities Live" yesterday. It was definitely a great experience and really appreciated the hospitalityof both the producer Christian Unser and reporter Melissa Specken. Also a big thank you goes out to Allison Dent who helped set up the segment in conjunction with "Art Soup" this saturday in Elk River. So below are the results of the taping that went on yesterday. They are the two main segments that were on the program yesterday. Just click and enjoy! Below them are the two images that were created as well.

twincitieslive.com - Sidewalk Chalk

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twincitieslive.com - Sidewalk Art Results!

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This is the one that I created during the segment


Here is Melissa Specken and her "Henry"

A first for everything and a free drawing class

Just when I thought I didn't have to get too nervous or anxious about what I do as an artist anymore, I got a call the beginning of the week to appear live on Channel 5's "Twin Cities Live". With a little bit of luck for nice weather, I will be appearing tomorrow at 3pm on the show. Scary I know! I usually do pretty good with groups and such, but that is because i have done similar things before that I knew what to expect. But with the show tomorrow, it will be an entirely new experience. If the weather holds out, it will be an interview in the studio sometime at the beginning of the show and then I am to go outside and do a quick 40 minute street painting that they will keep checking in on. It shouldn't be too bad, but what happens if I freeze when the cameras go live!!!!! Anyways, if you happen to be bored tomorrow around the 3-4 pm timeframe, feel free to check out the show and let me know what you think.

In other fun news, tomorrow night I will be teaching a free drop in drawing class at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts from 6-9pm. In conjunction with "Third Thursday", we will be having a night of free drawing. No need to worry about paper, pencils or anything, just come on down and visit the Wells Fargo room and say hi. We will also be having a couple of 30 minute excursions to draw in the galleries as well. Hope to see you there!


PS, this is a little study I did to see how large the boy on the high dive would be if I were to make it an 8' x 9' streetpainting or Rockwell's image. Even though I think this could be a great one to do, I think I have found a different one that I will be posting about when I am at the event on Saturday.

Decisions, decisions

Coming up this Saturday the 20th, I am going to be creating a large street painting for the Art Soup festival in Elk River. After many many weeks of going back and forth about what to recreate for this event, I am still at the same stalemate that I was at before. At question is the image I am going to work on over the course of the 10 hours. Currently it is between Norman Rockwell's "High Dive" and a couple of other images. I have attached them for your viewing and would love to see what you think. The only thing I worry about with the Norman Rockwell image is its two color domination of blue and gray. Anyways, what do you guys think?

A new book has arrived!

After many many months of hard work and then waiting, I am excited to share with you a new book that I illustrated titled "Come Sign with Us: The Adventures of Potts and Friends". Written by Marsha Peterson, "Come Sign with Us" is a teaching resource for young kids to learn the skill of sign language through stories. As Marsha states:

"My son was born with Down Syndrome and later diagnosed with Autism. He started special education services at 7 weeks of age. When he was a year old, his teacher told me that we may need to learn sign language. As a single parent, I had no time to attend classes and I didn't want to use videos. I started reading to my son and found it to be a wonderful experience. He would snuggle next to me and give me his full attention. I decided that teaching sign language through stories would be an excellent way to learn and to teach him. It also provides an activity that teaches others that care for him so they too can communicate. Today my son knows over a 1000 signs and behaviors are controlled without speaking a word. I hope you will love Talking with Baby."

Having worked with Marsha over the course of the last year, I have really come to respect and love what she is doing and I really hope that you will pass this great book onto people in your lives that may have difficulty communicating with their little ones or who simply want to teach their kids sign language. This first book is actually two stories in one. The first story deals with Breakfast time and the second story deals with Bath time, two of the most important aspects of your little ones day! So with that, I will leave you with a couple of images and hope that you will try Talking with Baby when the book launches on June 28th!

Illustration Friday: "Craving"

This is an illustration from my upcoming children's book titled "Come Sign with Us" where baby is learning the signs for the activities surrounding breakfast. Here, baby definitely has a craving for some cereal!

Meet Reno

Happy Sunday everyone. Hard to believe the weekend has come and gone already, but at least it was a relaxing one for a change. Yesterday I actually got a chance to finally clean up the studio and found a nice pair of scissors that I had misplaced a few months back. If only I had moved that pile of crap it was under weeks ago!

Another fun activity that I got to do this weekend was visit Hoofbeats and Heartbeats to get some reference material for the new children's book project i am working on. With that I wanted to introduce you to Reno, the soon to be star of the book. Linda was kind enough to bring Reno in from the back and got him all saddled up for some shots. Here are a few of him



The funniest thing of all though with the visit was all the other horses who were wondering what kind of mischief Reno was getting into(or what kind of treats he was getting more likely). They were all over the back fence area but as soon as Reno went inside they had to take turns looking in to see what he was doing. Nosy I tell ya! I know I am really going to enjoy this project and am going to be anxious to show you more updates as they come! Until then, you will just have to think of all the fun Reno could get into.

An end and a beginning

Over the last couple of weeks, things here in the studio have been quite hectic. One on hand, I was finishing up with a book project, and on the other I was gearing up for another. The good news is that I am done with the one book and have sent the final scans to the designer. It is always such a great feeling to pass the illustrations on to the designer knowing that the final step of the book is near. And then off to the printer once they are done with it. Hopefully I will have some info soon about the final production date of when the book will be out, but it should be late summer/early fall some time.

So, with that out of the studio, I have a great new project that I am going to starting. The children's book that I will now be working on is going to be a fundraising venture for a wonderful non-profit named Hoofbeats and Heartbeats. They are a therapeutic riding and teaching center for individuals and kids with emotional and physical disabilities. Linda Lewis who runs the center is going to be great to work with and has an amazing dedication to not only her horses, but all who come to ride and learn. To get the project kicked off a little bit, I have attached some sketches for "Reno the Palomino". I look forward to sharing more info about this very important project!

Illustration Friday: "cracked"

The door was left cracked a bit..... This is an illustration I did from the children's book titled "Catch the Wind"

Good news Friday

Happy Friday everyone. Hope you have some fun plans for this beautiful weather we have been experiencing. I wanted to end the week on a little bit of good news. I just received word that "The Sick Bug" has just won its 4th award! How exciting it is. It was named a finalist in the Children's Picture Book category for the 2009 Next Generation Indie Book Award. One of the great benefits of winning this award is that now the book is going to be promoted at the Book Expo America show out in New York later this month!

In other news, I am down to the last few days on my current children's book and am excited to be getting so close to the end! I can't wait to see what the designer does from there and then of course the book coming out later this year! I will keep you posted when I have some more info on the release date. Until then, have a great weekend and will be back beginning of next week!

Illustration Friday: "Contagious #2"

Isn't happiness Contagious. This is an illustration from my upcoming book "A Path to Forgiveness" to come out later this year!

Illustration Friday: "Contagious"

Thought this was a fitting image. It is from a children's book I illustrated titled "The Sick Bug".

Recycling an old painting

Often in my studio work, I will decide to do some painting and realize that I have many unfinished starts to paintings lying around. I know I should finish these pieces, but when it comes down to it, some of them I just won't ever get the excitement back into it. So what to do with these paintings that have started, yet never been realized. Well, today I re-energized one of the them and started a new painting right over the top! What better way to recycle and reuse than to paint over existing work! As you can see by these two images, the image has drastically changed from one of a landscape to a closeup of some of the flowering cacti that I came across a couple of weeks ago. I don't know why these cacti have kept my attention, but for some reason I have to paint them. So look for updates in the next few weeks as the progress on these continue. Now I just have to decide if it is going to be a chunky painting done with a palette knife or a work with brush. PS, the first image I had already started sketching a couple of lines when I decided to take the picture, so sorry I don't have an image of the old piece without any new lines over it.

Mo Willems on NPR

One of my favorite author/illustrators out there in the land of children's books is the multi talented Mo Willems. You might recognize his name from a number of award winning series of books which include "Don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" and the Knuffle Bunny Series. Recently he did a wonderful interview for NPR dealing with "Getting Adults to Draw" and the reasoning behind why they don't anymore. It is really a wonderful listen and would suggest you check it out here. Also a fun link is to his website. Hope you enjoy and get back to doodling!

Art in Bloom Street Painting

This years "Art in Bloom" at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts was a mix of beautiful spring weather and lots and lots of people. I had the joy of recreating Cy DeCosse's "White Lotus" for the Saturday festivities. Given the fact I only had a little more than three hours, I think the piece turned out rather well. This street painting measured 7' x 7'. Also, I have decided to start a blog with my street painting images. The reason behind it is to allow for a quick and easy way for people to check out the work that I have done at festivals and events more easily. Just for your sake, the post on there now is actually the same as here, but is fun to check out the new link anyways! I just started it so it only has a few posts, but I will be sure to get more of the images I have done over the years up on the blog soon. You can get there by clicking here

Some great news for "Catch the Wind"

Happy Friday every one! What a Friday it was. One of the great things as an illustrator of books that happens every now and then is the recognition of a book that one has worked on. In the recent past, the news has usually focused around a great project I was involved with titled "The Sick Bug". Today's email that I received though was focused on another fun book I illustrated titled Catch the Wind which was a project by Mortenson Companies on Wind energy. To my surprise, "Catch the Wind" has won not one award, but three! You can imagine how excited I was and couldn't hold in the news much longer. The good thing here is I won't have to take up three separate blog posts to announce them, just this one. But there is a definite congrats that goes out to all involved in the book and a toast to boot! So here are the recent awards for "Catch the Wind"

1. A silver medal in the MIPA awards

2. A Silver Nautilus Award

3. And a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award

Thanks again to all of you who have helped support this great venture and hope that this is just the beginning of more news to come!

Art in Bloom 2009

Spring has officially arrived here in Minnesota. It is that time of year for the annual "Art in Bloom" at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. With 4 days to discover the beautiful art and floral arrangements that were inspired by the art itself, it is sure to be a great time. And if that isn't enough to get you to come down to the museum, I will be doing some chalk street painting all day Saturday. What better way to spend a Saturday? So come on down, say hi, and wander the galleries. It is sure to be a great time. With that, I will leave you with this Art in Bloom inspired sketch of my own. You never know what the floral arrangements might truly be inspired by!



As for the location of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, it is at:

2400 3rd Ave South
MInneapolis, MN 55404
"Click for Map"

illustration Friday: "Theater"

This is an illustration I did for a memior called "On the other side of the Ocean". It is of opening night at the theater!

Back to the grind

After recklessly enjoying a week off last week in the sun during a deadline, I am back to the grind in the studio. Even though it was a lot of time away from the paints, I think it actually did me good to get away and refocus a little bit. I find myself more energetic and excited to dig in and get this book project complete (which is due in like 3 weeks). The illustration that you see is one from the book titled "A Path to Forgiveness". It is going to be so much fun to see it all come together these last three weeks and can't wait to show you more as I am able to! Until then, enjoy this piece and check back soon for other little sneak peaks

Chihuly: Nature of Glass

One of the great pleasures from this weeks trip to Arizona was a visit to the exhibit "Chihuly: Nature of Glass" at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix. Having seen many of Chihuly's pieces before, I was not prepared for the immensity of what I was to see. Not only was the gardens a perfect fit for his work, but the day was as great as it could get with temps in the 70's. It truly is amazing how an ordinary space can be transformed through one artists vision. Overall, the piece that spoke the most to me was the "Blue and Purple Boat".


And then the "Blue Polyvitro Crystals"


And then...... Sorry, I could go on and on about all the beautiful pieces.






There were also some natural surprises as well with some of the blooming plants.

Off to catch some sun!

Happy Easter weekend to you all. I hope you have some wonderful plans to be with family and friends. I know I will be enjoying not only the company of my family, but also the beautiful sunshine that only Arizona can offer! I will be sure to share with you the amazing photos that I capture of the landscape while I am out there. Until then, TGIF!

Making a push before the trip

Hello everyone. Hope you all had a great weekend and were able to get some fun activities in. Things here have been pretty busy lately with lots of illustrations needing to get done and a shorter and shorter window to do them in. So with a trip to Arizona coming up at the end of the week, it is going to be a crazy busy week. The good thing though is it is really exciting to see the progress of the illustrations come together. To give you a little tease of one that is in its beginning stages, I have attached a photo of its progress. I know it isn't going to look like this when it is done, but wanted to show you how it looks now. Hope you like and wishing you all a productive week!

Illustration Friday: "Talisman"

Before Ned could go out and scare the local children during the night, he had to make sure he carried his lucky Talisman around his neck. I guess even scary things need something to protect them!

Festival of Children's literature

Coming up in a few short weeks is going to be a great event at Open Book in downtown Minneapolis. Not only will the"Reflections" show that I spoke of earlier be on display, but there will be a great festival full of wonderful opportunities and workshops galore. The"Festival of Children's Literature" will be held the weekend of April 18 and 19 at Open Book in Minneapolis. It is sure to be a great time with speakers ranging from Novelists, publishers, and literary agents. Beings this is my first time going, I am anxious to see all that goes on since I have heard great things from it in the past. For those of you interested in going, the information is as follows.

Festival of Children's Literature and Young Adult Literature & Illustration
Saturday and Sunday, April 18-19, 2009
Open Book in Minneapolis
1011 Washington Ave South
Minneapolis, MN 55415

Cost

$ 265 for Loft Members
$ 280 for non members
$ 265 for members of MNSCBWI