Roadtrip
(watercolor, gouache, and acrylic ink on bristol)

Hidden Picture Puzzle

I drew the Hidden Picture puzzle in the February issue of Highlights for Children magazine. If you don’t have a copy of the magazine (shame on you!), here’s a link to the Highlights web site (spoiler alert: it’s the answer key):

http://www.highlightskids.com/hidden-pictures/answers/february-2012-check-out-our-art

And here’s a little detail from the puzzle:

Illustration Friday — “grounded”
(watercolor, gouache, and ink on bristol)

I am working on a story where the main character spends a little time in the “timeout” chair.  I painted this character study for this week’s IF topic.

Chicken Little
(watercolor, gouache, & acrylic ink on colored paper)

This is my entry for the 2012 Tomie dePaola Illustrator award for the National Society of Childrens’ Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). This year’s challenge is to illustrate a passage provided from the story of Chicken Little (you can check out the details at scbwi.org).

The illustration is ~15″ high and 7″ wide.  It’s a bit more structured than most stuff that I do, but I had this idea with how some of the elements would relate — especially the sky, the birds’ wings, and the turkey’s tail — and it was fun to make it all come together.

It’s the day before Thanksgiving.  Mom is working, but the kids are out of school, so we went to our favorite place for breakfast, the Inn on Coventry.  We always come prepared to draw on the placemats, and I did these sketches of Nooch, Roni, and Boo-boo.  The food and the company was excellent — Happy Thanksgiving!

Illustration Friday — “scattered”
(watercolor, gouache, and ink on colored paper)

Some rake.  Others scatter.

Just having some fun with an autumn-colored piece of paper (and corresponding subject matter).

I just received my copy of the November “Highlights for Children” magazine in the mail.  In addition to the Hidden Picture puzzle, I did the spot illustrations for the quiz on page seven.  Here’s one of the spots:

I drew the “Hidden Picture” puzzle in the November 2011 issue of Highlights for Children.

Spoiler alert — here is a link to the answer key on the Highlights web site:

http://www.highlightskids.com/hidden-pictures/answers/november-2011-viking-cats

I just returned home from the Highlights Illustrators Party in Pennsylvania.  Thank you to the folks at Highlights for putting together this wonderful event!

Rolling out the welcome mat:

For the costume reception, I drew a picture titled “Bunnies vs. Giant Squid” and put it on a t-shirt.  It’s based on the old “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” movie.  A typical reaction was, “That’s cute — wait — is that bunny wielding an ax?!!”  Here’s a detail:

Thank you again to Highlights — I truly enjoyed getting together with everyone, seeing other illustrators’ work, and getting a much-needed refresher on my square-dancing skills!

Illustration Friday — “boundaries”
(watercolor, gouache, and ink on cream-colored drawing paper)

When you are very young, the boundaries of your world are determined by which streets you are allowed to cross by yourself.

One of the intermediate steps for this picture was to lay in some ink washes to establish the values.  I liked the way this looked too, so I scanned the picture before I added the watercolor layer.