library of the early mind

I just got home from watching this documentary at the Central Library in downtown Calgary. I loved it. It was both moving and inspiring. As someone who hopes to have a career in picture books for children, this film gave me a lot to think about. Also, it's really interesting to see the faces of some very well known authors of children's literature. Lemony Snicket looks nothing like how I pictured him :)

You can view the trailer here.

would you like to meet the little boy who lives in my book?

His name is Charlie and he's the main character in Bye, Bye, Butterflies.

mmm... tomatoes

I LOVE tomatoes.  They're one of my favorite things to eat, especially fresh ones from my mom's garden in the summer.

These lovely heirloom tomatoes were a gift from a friend of mine, purchased at a local farmers market.  They're such a beautiful, dark color that I had to photograph them, and I'll eventually paint them.  They were delicious too :)

now on facebook

I've been a bit slow to make a Facebook Page for my illustration work.  Some of the illustrators that I admire have them, and some don't.  I wasn't sure if I needed one, but here's what I've come to realize: some people read blogs, some people are all about twitter and some people only use Facebook.  There are people out there, such as some friends and family members, who are interested in following my progress with the picture book but they really only check their Facebook accounts.  So I finally jumped on board and made a page tonight.  There I will post little progress updates as well as links to longer blog posts here. 

If you're a Facebook user, here's the link to my page, or you can scroll down and use the button on the right.

bye, bye, butterflies

I've known about this since the end of July, but I didn't want to say anything until the contract had been signed. Now that it's all official, I'm so happy to announce that I'm illustrating a picture book with Canadian publishers Fitzhenry & Whiteside. It's a really great story called Bye, Bye, Butterflies by Andrew Larsen, who is the author of two other picture books for children: Bella and the Bunny and The Imaginary Garden, which was shortlisted for a Governer General Literary Award in 2009.

I'm still in the early stages of illustrating the book, but so far everything is coming together really well and I feel good about the direction that I'm going in. Although I have nothing to share today, I have been informed that I will be able to post about the illustrations as they unfold. I can't wait to share my process from this project and I'm so excited to be collaborating on such a great book!

new scanner / she walks like a teapot

I finally got around to purchasing a new scanner this past weekend. My previous one produced terrible quality scans. See this post to see what I mean.

I bought the Epson Perfection V500 Photo Scanner and so far it works great. Does anyone else have this scanner and if so, any thoughts? I found a lot of reviews for it in terms of scanning photography, but I didn't find anything about how it works for scanning art.

I was finally able to scan my 'She walks like a teapot' image that I painted back in July.  Here it is: