An Angry Gesture

It's not too hard to come up with angry/frustrated gestures for my character lately. 

All I need to do is look out the window.

And the news says more to come in a few days?

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

Illustrated Me

I just hung my "illustrated me" doorknob hanger on the door to my studio.

This week, fellow illustrator Claudia McGehee and I did a presentation at the Iowa City Public Library. We spoke about what it's like to be freelance illustrators and did this craft with the kids. 

There were an awful lot of talented young illustrators in attendance!

This is Oliver, our big poodle. He wasn't at the Library, but he's often in my studio. 

Finding Friends

I know...

I've been quiet.

But I'm here, having fun, searching for friends on my blank pages. I just love honing an expression, a gesture, and trying to bring my vision of a character to life.

I'm working on a picture book by Alice McGinty, to be published by Charlesbridge Publishing in 2014.

So don't worry if you don't hear from me quite as often for a bit.

I'm happy.

I'm drawing.

I'm doing what I love.

And I hope you are, too!

Alien Encounter...

It's not very often that I see a creature that I've never seen before.

And even less often that it's standing on my front porch.

Yesterday, I went to close the inside front door and there was this thing standing on my porch, nibbling my pansies. It was bright yellow with stripes and spots and I couldn't help but think that it looked like some odd combination of salamander and squirrel. 

 

It had such a distinctive, graphic pattern on its back--- yellow stripes with polka dots!

 It turns out that it was/is a Thirteen Stripe Ground Squirrel. They don't really thrive around here, but are prominent in the Dakotas.

He's really quite cute---

Once I realized that he wasn't a mutant, alien, deranged, newt-rodent!

The Bane of My Existence

I hate doing laundry. 
I find it endless and unrewarding. 
There are so many other things I would rather be doing than matching his soccer socks, or trying to get a dissolved Skittle stain out of her favorite shorts. 
Once, when my husband and I were enduring a mandatory "buy a timeshare at our condominium resort" program in order to procure free Disney tickets, the salesman asked me my occupation. I answered, "Laundress". It was a very effective and honest answer.

My purgatory would be an endless mountain of laundry.

Constantly washing,

Forever folding...

Hey, wait a minute????!!!!!!

Push Me Pull You...

It's been a Push Me Pull You kind of day.

Kind of week even.

Do you remember that wonderful creature from Dr. Dolittle? The Push Me Pull You--- a llama with a head on each side of its body. Unless it worked together, it couldn't move...

The kids are back in school.

Activities have started back up, and, as you read in my last post, I've had deadlines. Hence, the Push Me Pull You effect.

For example, if this gets done...

Then this does not.

If I do this...

 

Then this is what happens.

'tis the season. It's all good and will work itself into a chaotic rhythm before I know it.

Until then, Push Me Pull You.

Deadlines period.

I take deadlines seriously.

I have learned later in my professional life that others do not.

It really comes down to whether you see a deadline as a guillotine, or a mere suggestion? Deadlines to me are akin to my mother counting to three. 

Did I know what would happen if she made it to three? 

No. 

Did I want to? 

No. 

And there it was--- 

Not worth the risk.

If I miss a deadline, I must be subconsciously convinced that something terrible will happen. My hand will fall off, or my teeth will pop out, or... I don't know?

Perhaps it was growing up with a father who had us to the airport 3 hours early for our flight.

You had a deadline.

Needed to be prepared. 

To face it. 

To meet it. 

To fulfill your obligation.

I've been working on one for a children's magazine. Can't show you too much. Top secret world of children's publishing, you know...

But I will make it. 

I take deadlines seriously--- period.

Torn

I spent my morning doing illustration work. I have often said that I have creative A.D.D.. I hardly noticed that I had journeyed across my studio and was absorbed in wiring old glass rosaries together into a necklace.

I looked up and noticed this little boy sketch stuffed into a wire basket of baubles. He looked a little concerned, like he didn't belong in there. He had been torn off the page of some unneeded document and tucked away for another time.

He looked at me.

I smiled at him.

Another time...