Pythagoras Translated

I just brought in my mail and much to my surprise found a copy of What's Your Angle, Pythagoras? (Charlesbridge Publishing) translated into Arabic! I knew there was a coming translation, but I didn't expect to receive a copy since an overseas company purchased the sub-rights and handled the translation. I can't read a word of it, but from what I can discern the publisher that issued this version appears to be Al-Balsam Publishing. The book opens back to front and all the illustrations have been flipped to read right to left. Very exciting! I guess I can now say I'm internationally published!

Goodwater Trail

It's crazy to think it was warm enough for short sleeves this past weekend after it had just snowed the Tuesday before. I was grateful for the warm weather though. Between work, chilly weather, and allergy season, it seems like forever since we've spent any meaningful time outdoors. So taking advantage of the pleasant weather before it changes again, we got in a long-desired and much-needed hike this past weekend, this time at Good Water Trail in Georgetown.



The trail is apparently a whopping 25 miles long and encircles Lake Georgetown. Being much out of practice with hiking and in far less than tip-top shape, we did only a very short segment of the trail. The trail follows along the edge of the lake, but at enough of a distance that we couldn't see the water during most of the hike which we found a bit disappointing. Even so, the weather could not have been more ideal for a hike. I'm hoping for more of this perfect weekend weather in the coming months...

Snow in Austin!

It's been so long since I've lived anywhere that gets regular snow that I can't help but get excited when we have even a little. Yesterday I sprang out of bed when my husband said, "Hey, it's snowing!" I threw on some clothes, grabbed the camera, and ran out into the cold to take a good long walk around the neighborhood. For the first hour or two, this snow-storm was pretty steady with those big tissue-paper flakes. After it tapered off we had a sprinkling of flurries throughout the afternoon.





The unusual weather seems so strangely appropriate to me since the painting I'm working on at the moment happens to be a snow scene. I'm grateful for the reference and inspiration (and that I didn't have to drive anywhere in it)!

Pythagoras & the Ratios

I'm very pleased to announce the release of my most recent book, Pythagoras and the Ratios from Charlesbridge Publishing. I posted a couple interior illustrations in a previous post - you can see them here. You can see another interior page if you visit this image viewer at Barnes & Noble and a couple more also at Amazon.com if you use the "Look Inside" feature.

If you have/know any kids learning or struggling with ratios then this is the book for them. Here's a excerpt of a review from the School Library Journal:

"Gr 4–7—This picture-book introduction to ratio and proportion also explains the connection between math and music through a story featuring young Pythagoras and his family......."

".......The story is amusing and offers a glimpse into life in ancient Greece. Acrylic and colored pencil cartoons depict the clothing and lifestyle of the period in a pleasing palette. A historical note and an experiment in which readers are challenged to use Pythagorean ratios to create a musical instrument with six glasses of water in varying amounts are appended.—Barbara Auerbach, PS 217, Brooklyn, NY"

Happy 2010!

I hope the new year is finding everyone very well and I hope everyone had a very peaceful and relaxing holiday season. We had a good visit with Chris' family in Arizona. Our excitement for the trip was during our drive up from Phoenix to Winslow, when we hit impassable snow in Payson, AZ and ended up having to stay the night in a hotel. It was quite strange - there wasn't one bit of snow on the southern approach to Payson, but as we passed through the town (which really isn't very big), we came into steady snowfall and positioned at the northern departure of the town were several police who were discouraging drivers from continuing on. So, we stayed the night, bought chains for our rental car in the morning and made the very slow trek toward Winslow. It was a very beautiful, but somewhat nerve-wracking drive.

As with most gift-giving holidays, I usually receive a good number of children's/art books for my ever-expanding collection, but this year I was also able to add some original illustrations to my collection. My husband gave me two original paintings by Omar Rayyan, of whose work I'm a huge fan. You can see these paintings here and here. I think he is just brilliant with watercolor!

The new year also brings with it a new video game project (to be disclosed in the future) for my husband who spent the last several months of 2009 working long and hard on the environments for Darksiders which just came out in stores today! Tons of video clips here.

As for resolutions for the new year, I think I'm just going to recycle last year's resolutions and give them another shot considering the only one I can say I really succeeded at was gaining some weight. Maybe I should add to that list to try to update here more frequently!

Little Lost Squirrels: Safe at Home

This painting brings the "Little Lost Squirrels" series to a happy conclusion with all the little squirrels sleeping soundly after their troubling adventures away from home and Mother Squirrel.

I was a little concerned that I might end up using to much brown in painting the interior of the squirrels' tree home, so I made a solid effort to bring a lot of color - pinks and purples - into the wood walls and floors and I think it worked out pretty well. Given the chilly weather we've been having as of late, I think the Mother Squirrel's got the right idea having a warm cup of tea after a long day.

On a personal note, I just took a short break from another project while my parents were in town visiting. We all had a good visit and in continuation of our occasional hobby of staying in supposedly "haunted" hotels, we took a couple days to drive down to San Antonio for an overnight stay at the reputedly haunted Menger Hotel. We also took the opportunity while we were in town to visit the Witte Museum and the McNay Art Museum. Sometimes I find that I like the architecture and design of the buildings of art museums as much as (or sometimes better) than the art collections housed within. I found this was somewhat the case with the McNay where a portion of the collection was housed within an old mansion. The mansion encircled a lush courtyard full of decorations and interesting architectural details. Patterns similar to those on the stairs in these pictures were repeated on ceilings in a couple rooms of the mansion - a nice reward just for looking up!




It was nice to recharge for a couple days, but now I have to get back to work. But just maybe I'll put on some Christmas music and wrap a few presents before I dive back into painting.....

Little Lost Squirrels II

I suppose this piece would be more appropriately titled Little Lost Squirrels 0 as it's actually a prequel to Little Lost Squirrels:

It may be hard to see in the picture, but the two little lost squirrels can be seen in the distant landscape as two tiny silhouetted shapes traversing an open field. It's always challenging for me to maintain a good level of color saturation in twilight and night-time paintings. I think using a lot of purple in the shadows helps keep some color in areas that might otherwise fall into grays and blacks - it's a subtle thing, but I think it helps.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope all my readers have a very relaxing holiday today with friends, family, and lots of turkey and stuffing..... followed by a nap perhaps...