Sunday, July 31, 2011

Illustration Friday: Obsession

It takes a little bit of obsession to grow really big flowers OR make linocuts. I enjoy doing both! Come on over for a watermelon slice served under the sun flower!
Check out the other garden images at Between the End Pages. This is the new children's illustration blog I'm part of with Brooke Boynton Hughes, Tina Kugler & Marsha Riti.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Between the End Pages

I have some exciting news. Brooke Boynton Hughes, Tina Kugler, Marsha Riti and I have started a new blog together featuring our children's illustration. It's called Between the End Pages in reference to all of the great art that happens between the end pages of children's books. 

Right now we have some summertime garden illustrations posted including my night and day gardens. I haven't posted the day image here yet, but you can go over there to see it first!

We plan to do some giveaway downloads, share some news, and figure out what Tina means by having a scribble-off. I'm super excited about the new group and I hope you can visit us. I'll keep a permanent button on the left here to link to the site. See ya there!

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Linoleum Scraps

















I finished carving my Summer Garden block and printed it today. Usually I sweep the linoleum scraps into the trash as I go but today they just kept piling up on the table. Here's a picture of the block-

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Illustration Friday: Perennial

I can't afford to buy a lot of flowers every year so I always buy perennials. I would love to find one of these perennial crescent moon flowers for my little plot!

I painted this Harvesting the Night Garden print yesterday. I am part of a new super exciting group of artists and we are giving ourselves a prompt to illustrate each month. July is "summer garden." I'm also going to finish the daytime companion to this print next-you can see that drawing a few posts below. Pretty soon we are going to debut our new children's illustration site and I'll get to introduce you to the other artists. I can't wait!

I took some photos of the different layers of watercolor as I painted them on the night sky. The progression is kind of interesting to see.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Questions?

I'm thinking about doing a little write-up about my process. I would include info about mounting linoleum to a block, transferring an image, carving, and printing. But does anyone have any specific questions that I could answer? Let me know!

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Podcasts

I think most artists like to listen to things while they are working. Making art usually involves long stretches of time when your hands are busy but large parts of your brain aren't occupied. So your thoughts roam around or in my case, I sometimes get sleepy. So my favorite way to keep my brain occupied is listen to recorded books or podcasts. I listen to music a lot too, but it isn't as engaging as listening to a story.


My favorite podcasts are interviews with other artists. I love learning about their lives and how their artwork evolved. The interviews are often inspiring and sometimes trigger ideas for new things I want to try. So I thought I'd share some of my favorite podcasts. If there are some you love please share them with me!

Reading Rockets has a wonderful list of video interviews with children's illustrators and authors. They are all worth listening to but my favorite is at the very bottom. Audrey Geisel talks about her husband Dr. Seuss aka Theodore Geisel. Dr. Seuss is such a legend, it's great to listen to his wife describe him as a real person who worked very hard at his craft. You can click on any of the images- they link to the artist's websites.


Just One More Book was a long running blog that isn't active any more but the old posts are still there. If you scroll down on the right side you can see the list of podcast interviews. These are all children's authors and illustrators. Mo Willems' interview is great! His answer to, "How do you get started?" begins, "I look at my mortgage, and, um, that inspires me."

I recently found these podcasts from the National Gallery of Art. I listened to most of this long presentation by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. They are such a comedy team! I got to hear them speak when I lived in Salida, Colorado. They gave a presentation in the smallish Senior Center of this very small town. They were letting the community  know about their plans to drape the Arkansas River canyon with silver fabric for 42 miles starting in Salida. The crowd was skeptical to begin with but Jeanne-Claude and Christo won everyone over with their charm, humor, and practicality. I'm a big fan now and I look forward to seeing their Over the River project in the next few years.

One of my favorite interviews is with book artist and author Audrey Niffenegger. I knew her name because her novel, The Time Traveler's Wife is one of my favorite books. But I didn't realize that she is also a book artist making hand made books. This talk with Audrey came from Steve Miller's list of interviews with book artists, printmakers and poets that you can find here.

Escape from Illustration Island is the place to go for interviews with illustrators working in lots of different areas. I really enjoyed this one with Dave McKean. What an incredibly creative and interesting guy!

I just had a friend mention Daniel Pinkwater's podcasts on NPR. I didn't realize he was doing children's book reviews. He is the author and illustrator of one of my favorite books from childhood, The Big Orange Splot. You'll get a kick out of this review of Calef Brown's book Flamingos on the Roof. Daniel and Scott Simon take turns reading lots of the funny poems.

Another thing I do occasionally is just search for names of illustrators on YouTube. Here is a video of Marla Frazee talking about picture books and specifically All the World written by Liz Garton Scanlon and illustrated by Marla. This is a beautiful book illustrated by one of my most favorite artists.

Tell me about some of your favorite podcasts and I'll listen to them!

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Postcards


Today I did the layout for this postcard. It's nothing special, but I think it looks nice. I haven't sent out a postcard to art directors since last Christmas, oops! I've been using GotPrint for postcards. They do a really nice job and the cost is less than a lot of places. I want to do a new business card also, but I haven't figured that one out yet. Hhmmm........

OK! How's this for a business card?