IF: Round

I thought this old illustration would work well for today's Illustration Friday topic and be oh-so appropriate for the upcoming holiday season:
I painted an early version of this image in art school and then re-painted it shortly after I graduated. Looking at it now I can only think how much better it would look if I re-painted it yet again. It's kind of fun (and occasionally painful) to look back at old work and see where you've improved (and where you still need some work!). This painting had a brief life some years ago as a greeting card for a charity card company and it's been more recently revived as a greeting card once again in my CafePress shop. Need Christmas cards? Get them here!

In the Book Forest

Just when I was starting to appreciate the relative speed of digital art, I had to go and do something like this -
- which is currently in progress and taking quite a lot of time.

I started a traditional version of this piece many years ago as a poster to take with me to the second annual SCBWI Winter Conference. It was very large when compared to the sizes I'm accustomed to working with and proved to be rather overambitious given the very limited amount of time I had to complete it. So... it has sat around in my closet waiting for its day of resurrection which seems to have come at last. Now, I just need to tame this beast by painting lots and lots of books, books, books!

Feather Study & a Visit to Missouri

I'd seen a number of watercolor studies of feathers online recently and had a bit of an itch to do one myself. Fortuitously, I stumbled across this bluejay feather and thought it would be the perfect specimen:These little nature studies are really fun to do and much quicker to finish than my usual work. I hope to do more of these in the future. This one's available here in my Etsy Shop.

I didn't find any feathers... but hopefully our most recent excursion outdoors will give some inspiration for further studies. We just came back from our annual trip to St. Louis to visit my family, where we all set out on a short side-trip together. We clambered about on huge rocks at Elephant Rocks State Park:
Visited an abandoned lead mine at the Missouri Mines State Historic Site which was excellent reference for my husband in his video game work:

Took a boat tour through an old flooded mine at Bonne Terre Mine:

And circled back to St. Louis where we got to be kids again at the incredible playgrounds of City Museum:
Busy vacation! Now I need to recover!

Kitten Spots

Here are the finished versions of my kitten spots. As you can see, my intention at the time of developing these years ago was to have a different image for each season that I could use on letterheads, etc. in conjunction with the current season:
On an aside - well, I followed my own advice from my last post and went to see Paul Zelinsky speak at the Allen Public Library last weekend and he was just great. He showed us all about the construction of pop-up books and the amazingly complicated paper engineering involved. Additionally, the people at Storyopolis Entertainment ran a raffle wherein to my disbelief and amazement I won a very limited edition print of an image from Tony DiTerlizzi's The Spider and the Fly!

I am one of those people who never wins anything, so I was and still am so excited that apparently I had to blog about it! So the lesson for any local Dallas children's book aficionados is to go support these presentations - even if there aren't any future give-aways, you might get a chance to see the moving innards of a pop-up book or some such and how cool is that?!

Woodchuck Mama

This illustration appeared in last May's issue of the children's magazine Clubhouse Jr.
It's now available here in my Etsy Shop.

I don't know if I have any local readers, but in case I do I thought I'd bring up something very cool that's happening here in Dallas. Storyopolis Entertainment has established a speakers series featuring various children's book luminaries. The speakers give their presentations in both the Ball Park in Arlington and the Allen Public Library. Here are links to the list of speakers at both locations:
Ball Park: http://www.storyopolisentertainment.com/texas-rangers
Allen Public Library: http://www.storyopolisentertainment.com/allen

I went to see Raul Colon last month in Allen and really enjoyed the presentation. I'm going to try to see them all!

The Sand Lion and a Little Rage

All finished:
And regarding the "rage" in the post title - no, I'm not angry about anything, but I have to take a moment to promote my husband's new video game Rage which just released today. (And in the unlikelihood that the title isn't enough of a dead-giveaway, this game is not for young children! :) )

Official website: http://www.rage.com/gate/?return=%2F
EGM Review: http://www.egmnow.com/articles/egm-review-rage/
Several trailers: http://www.gametrailers.com/game/rage/5315

IF: Ferocious

Okay, maybe not so much...