Illustration Friday - Monster

An old piece: I use this one on school visits. I cover up the bottom part of the illustration with a flap and ask the class to guess what might be under the bed.

My little poet

My eight year old daughter Sydney, pictured here with her cousin Jenna, was given a prompt and asked to write the rest of the poem. Am I proud? Syd's is highlighted - of course!

"I cannot go to school today,"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay...

I think I got brain washed again,
I think that I have grown a fin.
My stomache hurts like Squeezey Cheese,
I think that I have broke my knee.
My nose is falling off my face,
I think my eye is out of place.

What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is...Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going our to play!"

Illustration Friday - Feet!

This is a detail from a spread in One Odd Day, my forthcoming picture book with Sylvan Dell Publishing, .

SCBWI Schmooze at Quail Ridge Books & Music

My wonderful local critique group hosted a Schmooze yesterday evening and I have to say it was a big success. My pal Ian Sands and his wife Kimberly really came through with wonderful food. I can't say enough about the phenomenal local writers and artists- both the highly decorated veterans and the soon-to-be-discovered spare nothing in their support and passion for their colleagues. The highlight of the evening was the creativity excercise led by illustrator Leah Palmer Preiss. It was fun, funny and had what I am sure will be a lasting effect on everyone that participated. I've admired her work long before we moved here and was delighted to learn that Leah lived right here in Raleigh. She didn't hesitate to say yes when I asked her to keynote our Schmooze. She is unbelievably talented and uniquely creative but also warm, encouraging and generous.

Try it yourself: Leah provided little slips of paper with words on them (she is also a calligrapher so the words themselves were beautiful) and we were asked to pick out seven of them plus an image from some Victorian scrap she also provided. The words on the paper were fairly simple - Animal, Plant, Place, Thing, Person, Shape, Style, Color, Emotion, Action, Change, Word & Idea. On the back of each slip we were asked to come up with an associated word - be creative. Once all seven words were completed we traded our collection of words for someone else's. This is where the real creativity begins! Now everyone was asked to write a very short story - just a few sentences - using the seven borrowed words and using the image for inspiration. We took turns sharing our clever, funny, and amazing little stories.

After that we played a game called The Exquisite Corpse. After folding a piece of paper horizontally into fourths we drew a head in the top quarter, leaving just a little indication of where we left off in the next quarter down. Folding it so our drawing was hidden we passed our paper on to the next person, received someone else's and drew our contribution to this drawing's upper torso. We kept trading until all four sections were complete with the body parts we imagined might belong - then opened our paper to reveal amazing creatures!

Illustration Friday - Tatoo

Portrait of a Wife Beater from my sketchbook at the pool last summer.

Sometimes it's pure joy...

to just draw. This is one of those rare sketches that satisfies the process and the outcome equally. My local scbwi group is hosting a schmooze on March 11th (come on over to Raleigh's Quail Ridge Books & Music) and I did this for the flyer we will be putting up.