Entering the Tomie Depaola Award 2013

By in Children's, Other Challenges, SCBWI, Work

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I just turned in my submission for the SCBWI Tomie DePaola Award).

As much as my final result looks to me like a bit of a scribble, this was actually a pretty hard challenge for me. I can only equate it to writing a short story or maybe logo design (which is not my strong suit). I’m glad I did this as it put me outside my comfort zone and pushed me a bit. Wow, I should do this more often. And yes, my brain hurts a little.

I really wanted to try out a few more iterations of design for this but I plum ran out of time as I have a lot of other things kicking around in my skull that need to be worked on. So here it is.

The challenge this year was to illustrate a poem for a book intended for babies up to two years old. I should be an expert on this target audience by now!

Media: Adobe Flash with a bit of help from Illustrator and Photoshop. Google Fonts’ “Oregano”.

Edit: 1/12/2014
Well… I didn’t even come CLOSE to winning the DePaola competition. In fact, I seem to have been in the group he specifically DIDN’T like. Hnh.

“The entries were all over the place. Here I am going to get a little critical. Some pictures were way too busy. Some bordered on the grotesque. I really worried that some images might have frightened little ones. There were a bunch of “up the nostrils” point of view. Really? But the thing that bothered me the most was the apparent need many of you had to illustrate an actual sneeze with all kinds of “stuff” flying out of noses. Hey, this is FLU season. Another note: Quite a few elephants intriguing, maybe? Enough said.”

I’m not sure if I’m bristling or flattered considering I’ve been spending time with the target audience for a while now and dislike a lot of art in her board books. Why would a 2 year old be either frightened or grossed-out when most of them are digging about their own noses and some are eating their boogers at this age? Ah well, he did say to surprise him.

Like on Project Runway, you can please the judges and head for a commercial success, or you can please yourself and hope somebody “gets” it… or you can try and run the middle and somehow make what pleases you a commercial success. Somewhere, there’s a happy medium. This was a good thing for me to attempt.

Of the top picks, my personal favorite is Alice Ratterree‘s because I love her style of classic illustration.

Bedford Avenue Juice Shop

By in General, Work

Back in the late 90’s to early aughts my brother, Harris, lived on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn across the street and a few blocks up from this wonderful juice shop where he took me for my first freshly juiced orange-carrot. I just couldn’t do the green stuff. We joked it was a lot like Annie Hall. Anyway, I made this illustration for him about 10 years ago or so. Custom giclee wasn’t that common and it was very expensive, so I printed the illustration myself onto four iron-on papers. I then painstakingly lined them up, ironed them onto a canvas, stretched the canvas, framed it in black electrical tape, and then presented it to Harris as a gift. Yup, classy. He loved it.

The juice shop and dress shop next door are no longer there. The street shot from Google shows that corner now to be so boring I won’t even bother posting a photo of what’s there. No flower stall, no vibrant yellow and blue walls. Oh well. Time passes, things change. Perhaps that is why art is (or should be) important.

Last spring, Cafepress offered a 16″ x 20″ canvas print including shipping on Groupon for $40 so I figured I’d try it out with this image. I pulled out the old image and discovered that not only could I not find a copy at a resolution higher than would print at 8 x 10, I HATED the techniques I used to digipaint it. This was back in my forced-patterns phase. That is to say, someone gave me a critique that I didn’t use enough pattern and texture in my work and I took them literally. Ouch. What they REALLY meant, I realized years later, was that my digital work was not friendly and organic-looking enough. Anyway, with the Groupon about to expire and REALLY limited time, I channeled my best Andy Worhol (that is to say my digital work will probably never be finished if I keep looking at it). I managed to locate the original drawing (inked as if it was meant for a comic book!), re-scanned it, blew up the low-res, aligned the paint layer as best as possible, used all the base colors, and repainted the image in roughly 5 hours.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s still not the greatest but it’s A LOT better than it was. I just uploaded it to Cafepress. Let’s see how it turns out.

Another Illustration for K12

By in General, Work

I think it may be time to recalibrate my monitor. Hmm. Anyway here is another illustration of the adventurous prince for the Remedial Reading program. I had 4 hours to do it – it took 5.5. I had to figure out how to draw what was requested! The rights belong to k12 but I am permitted to post it to my site for portfolio display only:

Another Illustration for K12

By in General, Work

For the Remedial Reading program. Another illustration of the adventurous prince. The rights belong to k12 but I am permitted to post it to my site for portfolio display:

Illustrations for k12

By in Work

For the Remedial Reading program, I got to do a few illustrations. 4 for Tom Thumb and 1 for an internal story. I was allowed only about 4 hours per illustration and I’m not thrilled with my scaling on the horse illustration (Tom should be half his size) but I was afraid it wouldn’t “read” very well as these go into display assets at about half the size I’m showing them here. Also, I really need to learn how to draw bugs without getting quite so detailed (see the ladybug and grasshopper images from my Illustration Friday set).

The rights belong to k12 but I am permitted to post them to my site for portfolio display:

Tom Thumb:

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Prince, Vine and Moon:

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