Whats Up in the Coop

Its been too hot to blog! I've been:

READING:
-Giant Robot magazine with cover art and interview with James Jean. Good stuff.

-Computer Arts magazine: I splurged (import from the UK, comes with a disk. I spend $17, ouch!) mainly for the article/tutorial about creating textures with vectors. Haven't gone through the tutorial yet, I'll let you all know how that goes.

MAKING:
-Some cards for a friend who just graduated, and wanted to have custom cards to send to her professors.

THANKING:
Lisa, Tracy, Jenn and Mike for awarding me! I feel like the most popular chicken shack in town! ;-)

The rules for accepting the award are as follows:

1. Add the logo of the award to my site

2. Add a link to the person who awarded you

3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs

4. Add links to those blogs on your site

5. Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs

AWARDING:
Linda, Crystal, Sherry, Zime, Pati, Roz, Ellen

Stay cool, everyone!

Ben and Ruby Character Sketches

Thank you for all the comments on the I'm Reading Now series! Working on a big series like this, the most important thing is to have the character sketches down pat when I start. I got a short character description of the whole family, and here is what I came up with. Here, the main characters Ben and Ruby:

Ben is suppose to be 5 years old and Ruby is 4. Here they look a bit too old. Try again!

Better here. But what's up with the Elvis hair on Ben? And I was told the dress on Ruby was a bit too old fashioned (Hey, I would wear that cherry dress at 4!)

Perfect!

Ok, actually there were many more rounds back and forth with the art director and editors before I got it just right. But its better to get it right in the beginning than later.

And last but not least, a BIG shout out to Alicia Padrón's kids for their fantastic critique of my tree entry for The Wish Trees giveway! It was a gift in itself listening to their reaction (I've never heard directly from my audience before) and it truly confirms I am in the right profession! It was so gratifying and made me all warm and fuzzy inside!!! So thank you, Gabriel and Alexandra. And kudos for everyone who entered, I had alot of fun looking at everything!

I'm Reading Now! Series

I'm so excited to show these books after working on them for over a year. They are a series for Scholastic called I'm Reading Now! There are 4 sets to be published throughout the year, with the first set (shown here) coming out in September. Available through Scholastic Book Clubs.
Each set comes with 8 books, about the adventures of a 5 and 4 year old named Ben and Ruby.

I just recently finished the last set; it was sad to see Ben and Ruby go. But it was very rewarding to see the printed books for these- I'm happy with the way it turned out.

Happy July 4th to the folks in the US!

Trees

The very talented Alicia Padrón is holding a lovely giveaway of her book, The Wish Trees. To enter, she asked everyone to submit an illustration that demonstrates the importance of a tree, so here is mine.

I thought about how trees were homes to animals. Or cafes. Somehow it morphed into looking like a book cover. A possible book idea?!

Anyways, visit Alicia's blog and enter, the deadline is July 4th!

High 5!

This is a spread I did for the July issue of Highlights High Five magazine. Its like my little homage to Richard Scarry, one of my favorite illustrators of all time!

Drawings from the kids!

A wonderful package from Tracy Cundiff and her kindergarten class! The kids illustrated their favorite part of my book, The Penguins' Perfect Picnic:


I enjoyed each and every drawing and this is definitely one of the best things about being a children's illustrator! Here are a few of them:

Check out the awesome snowflakes stacked up there on the bottom! Love it.

One of the things I noticed is that the kids' drawings are so incredibly BOLD! Even in the writing too! They might not know how to spell something but that doesn't stop them. So inspiring.
AND to top things off, Tracy sent over a cute chickie kitchen towel! Thank you so much, Tracy. To receive drawings from my readers is priceless. Hugs to you and your class!

New Goodies!

I got some new goodies I would like to share with all of you! First...more Re-Ment miniatures goodness:

I love how there are raw AND cooked meat patties!!!

This was a perfect one for summertime.

So both of my siblings are going to Japan this summer (why am I stuck here?!?) Hopefully, I'll be getting more Re-Ments!!! (hint, hint.) My mom came back from Asia and brought me a bunch of goodies, including:

A chicken massager!

and the cutest kitchen sponge scrubbers you'll ever see! Too cute to use!

I'll leave you all now with a cuteness coma.