storytime magazine

I must say, over the past year, I have been extremely fortunate, having some wonderful opportunities just land in my lap. An illustration job for Storytime Magazine is no exception.  Truthfully, I had never seen this magazine before, mainly due to that fact that it's new and does not get US distribution (hopefully that will change!) It's soooo gorgeous, filled monthly with lovely illustrations from many of my favorite artists, printed on a quality matte stock, and NO ADS! It kind of reminded me of the old Ideals magazines that I remember reading with my Gramma, growing up.... full of full bleed pictures and wonderful stories and poems. Right now, there really is no other periodical like it here in the states that I know of. 

just look at that gorgeous cover illustration by Chiara Nocentini!

I was contacted by them back in January. I was super swamped at the time, but really wanted to do it, and they were kind and flexible enough to accommodate me. I have always wanted to get into editorial, so having my first job in this area being with a kid mag, really made it ideal. The story was so sweet...an ABC poem. It was just so old fashioned and cute, I knew right away that I wanted to give it a retro limited color palette. I had to hide all 26 letters of the alphabet within the 2 main illos (can you find them all?), plus design a simple alphabet that corresponded to the poem. Actually, in the back of the issue, they used to letters to make a board game. Fun! 

If you live in the UK, it's definitely worth subscribing to, whether or not you have kids. I was super honored (and completely surprised) to be included.

finally at long last… the letter Z!

Well, if you've been following the progress of the happy happy alphabet that I have been contributing to, we finally made it to the finish line! We started this project nearly a year ago, last winter and all six of us have been plugging away at the letters, 2 artists at a time. We decided that for a grand finale, all of us would do the letter Z. You can check them all out over at happy happy! Let's just say, there was more than one zebra involved, but a few fun surprises!

the dreaded letter X

Anybody that decides to take on an alphabet, knows it's there…lurking at the end, the possibilities far from endless. It's just a crappy letter. Here's the laundry list of possibilities:

1. xylophone - the obvious choice… kid friendly and potentially colorful. Nobody is surprised at that choice.

2. x-ray - gives you a few more possibilities in terms of settings, characters, etc. My friend and fellow happy happy artist, Lauren (Minco) Lowen did a fabulous job with this (yup, she got stuck with this crap letter, too)…check it out here

3. somebody named Xavier - yeah.

4. Xerox machine - this may have worked better for kids back in the 80's.

So there you have it. I may have missed a few obscurities, but as far as the english language goes, that's about it. Sooooo, I decided to loosen up the interpretation of the letter and include words that have an X somewhere in them. Muuuch easier. There's a few not so hidden X's in there, can you find them? 

Check out the entire collaborative gallery of our happy happy alphabet right here!

happy happy W and alphabet bloopers

Well if you follow happy happy art collective (and if you don't, why don't you?!?!), you know that we are at long last, nearing the end to our collaborative happy happy alphabet (check out the entire gallery of letters so far right here!). It's been a really fun project, seeing what cleverness my happy buddies come up with week after week. This month, I was assigned the letter "W" and I thought, great, no biggie…should be lots of good possibilities, it's not like "X" (which happens to be my next letter, ughhhh), or so I thought. For my contributions, I've continually tried to do something a little unexpected, i.e. not your typical kid's alphabet letter images, so doing a whale was not in the cards. But maybe it should have! I kinda struggled to come up with something clever and believe it or not, here are some of the things I considered doing. Let's call them bloopers:

1. My first stupid thought was to do Washington. As in George. Standing on a map of…..wait for it…Wisconsin?! hmmmmm. Seemed so cool at first. Moving on, but keeping with the same theme…

2. Washington as a witch. Seasonal, right? errrrrrr, yeah. No.

3. Washington eating watermelon…"Ever wonder if Washington wolfed watermelon with his wooden teeth? ooooookkkkkkkay. Maybe not.

4. A witch eating watermelon. Not a horrible idea, but we have a predetermined palette we have all been using for this alphabet, and with no green at my disposal, I wasn't sure I could pull it off.

5. Something involving waffles. Hey, I like eating them, but drawing them, not so much.

6. A woman wearing a giant white wig, with lots of W words stuck int it. I was intrigued, but wasn't sure how it would immediately look like a wig vs. just a crazy white hairdo? hmmmm… which brought me back to…

7. WASHINGTON WEARING his WHITE WIG!!! With WOODEN teeth!! With a WOODPECKER WHITTLING away at it! And a WORM sticking out!! GENIUS, right?!?!?!? Well, I thought so and actually worked up several sketches. And then, I showed my art director. One look from my 14 year old daughter and aspiring designer, and she said, and I quote, "You have lost your mind." Completely serious and walked away in silence. Crap. Do over.

So this is where I ended up. I took the woodpecker and thought about who he could marry in the wintry woods and who else could be in attendance. I thought about a woodchuck, but I don't think everyone has a visual picture in their heads of what a humanized woodchuck looks like, so I went the worm route. I thought this might be kinda cute considering he might be in the bird's food chain, plus he could be small, letting the happy couple be the stars.

So, there you have it. How I got from point A to point W. Now on to the cursed letter X. I still think I should have gone for Washington… what do you think?

happy happy alphabet R!

I was happy that I got assigned the letter R in our ongoing group alphabet project over at happy happy, because, that's right…I got to do a bunny (rabbit…) Kinda made up for the sulkiness that was the letter "I", ha. Don't ask me why I thought of a rickshaw and I seriously have no idea if they are used in Rampur, but it sounded kinda exotic, so, with no further research, I went for it! Of course, someone has to be a passenger, so I thought a snooty, uppity raccoon lady was the perfect answer. Rico reminds me of some character that Indiana Jones might bump into on the streets right before some boulder starts chasing him down. Be sure to check out the rest of the alphabet here!

happy happy alphabet... M!

I have no idea why I thought of a milkman and a mailman, but it seemed like doing some humans would be a nice change of pace from all the animals that I contributed so far in Happy Happy Art Collective. By the way, CLEARLY I am not a copywriter! But somehow this one turned out with kind of a mid-century children's book feel, and I thought adding the copy was somewhat appropriate. Here below, you can see my rough sketches. I really don't do much more than this before taking a pic (on my phone, no less) and redrawing in illustrator. I hate tracing paper, so I usually keep erasing and redrawing until I come up with the basic gesture and look for the character. Be sure to check out the entire alphabet in our gallery over at happy happy!

L is for lion... and liverwurst!

Here is my little contribution to the happy happy art collective alphabet project. Lola the lioness is serving up some luscious liverwurst laced ladyfingers! Why? Because kids growing up today, need to know what this nasty stuff is, haha! You can read the entire limerick here and don't forget to check out all the other letters the girls have done!

After the constraints of the letter "I," I was happy to have a letter that offered more possibilities. Actually, I had planned to make the main character here a lamb (Lulu...) but I had the hardest time trying to draw one that I liked! Maybe that's why most alphabets use lions...who knew? I also thought about having the lamb as the guest, but ultimately decided it was funnier to have it be just a tiny ladybug. It also allowed the lion to be the main focus. I played around a lot with the background color... lighter, darker, pinker, bluer, until I arrived at this. Probably could separate better from the character, but I liked the overall feel. Did you pick up on the "lattice" reference? ;) I kind of liked how this one worked out in terms of making the letter a larger focus of the overall piece. 

Have you had some liverwurst today? :P

happy happy alphabet... time for the letter I!

If you've been following along, the wonderful artists of the happy happy art collective have all been working on a group alphabet project. We have a set palette, and each letter is being interpreted by 2 different artists. I was assigned the letter I. I didn't think much about it at the time, but it turns out that it's a pretty limited letter, word-wise! In fact, I'd rank it right up there with the letters X and Z. To make it more fun for myself, I've been writing little alliterative descriptions for each letter I do and with this one, I had to rely on some verbs, because the noun selection was pretty thin. You can read my little ditty here. Actually, I was going to do an inchworn pushing her ice cream eating infant on an island in front of an igloo, but when the super talented Emily Balsley did her letter I with an inchworm, I had to rethink. I think you'll agree, she did a fabulous job! Don't you just love those sneakers?

I've never been a huge fan of iguanas but, it was about the only animal/ character that I thought would be at least semi recognizable, so I went with it. Of course, despite the fact that it's a lizard, I had to try to make him cute! This piece evolved a lot from my initial little sketch. I really had to move elements around and play with scale to try to make it work. You can check out the progress of our alphabet so far right here in our happy gallery!

how many f-words can you find??

ok, so that didn't come out right. So much for my career as a children's book author! This is my latest contribution to the happy happy art collective's alphabet series. Head on over to the blog to learn more about Frantz, the fox and see the rest of the letters so far! Here's the link!

happy happy alphabet...D!

As you may or may not know, last month, I was fortunate enough to join a collective with 5 other uber talented artist friends (Denise Holmes, Lauren Minco, Tammie Bennett, Emily Balsley and Muffin Grayson) called Happy Happy Art Collective. Our first ongoing group project is to all contribute to and alphabet series. We have a defined palette and each letter will be done by 2 illustrators. We are up to the letter D, which is my first crack at it! This is just a sneak peek, so to see the full piece, head on over to happy happy! I decided to turn my letters into tongue twisters, so this one involves danish ducks, donuts and dandelions... of course! I've always wanted to do an alphabet, but 26 letters seemed like so many to do, so I'm happy to get my feet wet and give it a go. It's really interesting to see how our different styles all come together in a group effort. Be sure to scroll down and see the previous letters and check back in later in the week to see Lauren and Denise's letter E's!