marginalia

Happy New Year! My 2012 Calendar for you to print...

2011-12-26T13:18:00.000-05:00

Happy 2012!

Here's my calendar, free for you to download and print! Hope you enjoy it!

(To print the calendar, open it in Adobe Acrobat, then select print "as booklet." Print "front side only," first then flip the pages over, and with the top of the pages at the opposite side, then print as "back side only." Bind at the top with ring binding at an office supply store like Staples or Office Max. (Or do it yourself if you have a Rubicoil ring binder machine! See Bonnie's Best Art Tools for one of these groovy and handy tools.) I love mine!

Three Fairies at Tea -- all finished!

2011-12-12T16:01:00.000-05:00

Just finished painting the "Three Fairies at Tea" fantasy portrait. Here's how it turned out!

Now on to painting some more fairies. Seems to be a theme these days...

Three Fairies at Tea -- basic color added

2011-12-05T15:31:00.000-05:00

Here's the "local" color added to the painting. Next, I'll outline the key elements with van dyke brown, using a tiny (size 00) brush. This will help me to see what areas need more color and/or contrast. I'm looking at Cecily Mary Barker a LOT to see how she painted her lovely little flower fairies. Mine couldn't possibly approach hers, but they're wonderful inspiration!

Three Fairies at Tea -- color study

2011-11-05T18:26:00.000-04:00

So here's a VERY rough colored pencil study of what the local color might be...

Three Fairies at Tea

2011-11-03T16:53:00.000-04:00

I'm starting a new fairy painting -- this is a fantasy "portrait" of three little girls I know. Here's the tight sketch.

And here are two views of the drawing, printed on watercolor paper and stretched on masonite board. Time to start painting!

Announcing new church drawings blog!

2011-10-19T09:49:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to let folks know that I'm officially launching a blog dedicated to my pictures drawn in church. I've been posting them here, but from now on, they'll show up on this blog: drawninchurch.blogspot.com. I hope you'll visit!

Also, coming very soon, a chance to buy a book with over 200 pictures, drawn (tee hee) from over seven years of choir singing and pencil sketching. Hope you'll take a look at that when it's available -- should be within the next few weeks!

What I Drew in Church This Week: Out in the Garden

2011-10-16T14:01:00.000-04:00

What I Drew in Church This Week: Uncomfortable Conversation? Plus Monster with Cocktail

2011-10-09T13:35:00.000-04:00

What I Drew in Church This Week: Dragon, Trapped

2011-09-18T21:01:00.000-04:00

What I Drew in Church This Week: Untitled

2011-09-11T12:14:00.000-04:00

What I Drew in Church This Week: A Departure

2011-08-07T13:53:00.000-04:00

What I Drew in Church This Week: Fishy Misery

2011-07-24T12:24:00.000-04:00

What I Drew in Church This Week: Wrong Way

2011-07-17T13:27:00.000-04:00

Only 217 Days until Valentine's Day!

2011-07-11T09:22:00.003-04:00

Get started on your Valentine's cards with this new coloring page: "hearty" meese!

See other coloring pages here.

Start with a polar bear; finish with a wall

2011-07-07T13:30:00.000-04:00

In 2006 I painted this 9-foot polar bear bench.
His name is "Seemore" and he is covered with eyeballs and eyeglasses.

This past May I created a mural to provide Seemore his own world,
in his new home at the Eye Institute of Philadelphia.
Here's a slideshow of the mural process (complete with creepy music.)

TEI Mural from Rebecca Thornburgh on Vimeo.

New black line pix

2011-06-15T09:49:00.000-04:00

Just sent ten little pix off to SCBWI for consideration as illustrations in the Bulletin. Elves and mice in, um, creative situations. No, no, no -- not like that. Holding pencils and brushes and hanging out around coffee cups and computers. All themes suitable for the "WI" in SCBWI. Hope they like a couple of them (even one!) Fun to do, in any case.

New Mouse House: Summer Teapot!

2011-06-06T12:41:00.000-04:00

A new mouse house project to color, cut out, and add to your Mouse House wall. Here's the link to the pdf you can download. Send me a picture of your finished Mouse House and I'll post it here!

NaPiBoWriWee starts tonight!

2011-04-30T17:13:00.000-04:00

Thus begins picturebook author Paula Yoo's third annual National PIcture Book Writing Week, starting tonight -- or, well, tomorrow, May 1st at midnight. Not a complicated project (though not easy either). Quoting Paula from her blog: "In a nutshell – just write 7 picture books in 7 days! " It's not a contest, and you don't have to submit any of your writing. In fact, all you have to do is write, and if you like, visit her blog to get great writing tips from a terrific lineup of accomplished picture book writers. And (I think this is how it works), if you comment on any of their posts, then Paula puts your name into a competition for cool books and other NaPiBoWriWee swag.

http://paulayoo.com/napi/?p=11#more-11

It's a very cool idea -- inspired, I think, by National Novel Writing Month (which happens in November each year: (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) and in which I've participated (but not finished) twice.

I meant to try it last year, and so even though this coming week is totally crazy, I'm gonna try it again. And this time, for real (tra la). I'll be spending almost all of my days working on painting a mural, so maybe those long hours of concentration will allow my subconscious to cook up some good stuff. Once a day. Seven times.

So we'll see. Gonna jump in and try out the writing chops, if any.

That Fairy Painting Finally Finished!

2011-04-03T19:38:00.000-04:00

Well, here we are, a mere eight years after I first did the sketch for a painting to give to my daughter's friend (aged 13) as a Bat Mitzvah present. Now the lovely and talented Ari is not only a Bat Mitzvah (still), but at this point she's also a junior in college, and just a tad past her majority (as in, she turned 21 in January). Gee, how time flies when you're working on a piece of art...

But the good news (I think) is that I've finally finished the painting, really and truly! I've been posting images of the work in progress over the past coupla years (I think I started the actual PAINTING of it in, what, 2008 maybe?) and so now I will post the Big Finish.

Changes between the last post of the piece-in-progress and the truly final and forever done with* result are lots of washes. Lots and lots (and LOTS) of washes. To try to get the contrast and the lighting effect I was going for. For which I was going, I mean. And I did have help, in that I got some very good and very helpful advice from One Who Shall Remain Nameless, but who, let's just say, knows a thing or two about watercolor, lots of washes, and ultramarine blue (not to mention raw umber and payne's gray.) It was great to have This Person weigh in at the moment when I was feeling somewhat stuck, not knowing how to move forward. This Person was further kind enough not to comment on (the many) cringe-worthy drawing errors, which I'm quite sure he noticed.

[*I had cut it off the watercolor board and even scanned it when I decided that the foliage in the foreground was too light, so back I went to add more washes -- oh boy, ultramarine blue and that green mix I love -- and some more payne's gray outline. Then I realized that I simply had to Stop and declare it Finished.)

So -- back to Point the First, above -- here we are, eight years later. And I think it's an okay painting. I mean, I am in fact pretty pleased with the result (though I want you to know that I do see and can tell you Every Single Thing that is wrong with it, but only if you email me privately. What the heck, you can see 'em for yourself in any case). But it was a labor of love, and I think I learned something about painting, as I was doing this on my own time (hah!), rather than on a deadline for a client.

Next thing is to get it framed and present it to the Bat Mitzvah Girl. At this point I have my doubts as to whether or not she still has any interest in fairies, but oh well. I do hope she doesn't mind how, um, late the gift is.

My poster for a local bookstore's Kids' Literary Festival event

2011-03-31T10:43:00.000-04:00

Thought I'd share the poster I just did for this year's Kids' Literary Festival presented by a wonderful independent bookstore in my neighborhood. The Big Blue Marble is one of those rare and very special bookstores with a fantastic selection, a great little coffee shop, and the most informed and interesting bookselling staff you can imagine.
And check out the terrific lineup of cool folks presenting at the Festival! If you're in the area (Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia), be sure to stop by to meet one of these amazing authors.

The Toy Society: Sweet and random whimsy!

2011-03-10T11:05:00.000-05:00

I just joined the Toy Society -- a wonderful, quirky project which involves homemade 'softies' dropped in random locations for people to find. If you find one, you can either keep it or pass it along via another 'drop.'

Here's their description of the project: The Toy Society spreads love throughout the streets of the world. Nothing to it -- really just a bunch of handmade toys looking for a nice home. What started as a small street art project in Australia is slowly spreading around the world. http://thetoysociety.blogspot.com/

Don't know if I'll ever have time to do this, but I love the idea. On a related note, check out this link to a street art project done by a dad with his kids after they watched a movie about street artist Banksy. <http://isaacgracelily.blogspot.com/2011/03/rock-on.html> Very cool. Another idea I'd like to copy (because I am shameless and have no ideas of my own -- hah), should I ever find the time to wedge it in. There's just something about that randomness of fun and whimsy -- world needs more of it!

New book -- with fairies!

2011-02-18T10:10:00.000-05:00

I'm working on a new book these days. Text is a poem and the imagery features fairies and other "Little People." I am SO happy. Here's a glimpse of a little scene from the cover art.

'Valentine Castle' Mousen Housen

2011-02-09T11:17:00.000-05:00

This month's Mousen Housen is a Valentine Castle -- a color and cut out project for you to make for your Valentine or for your favorite mouse friends. Click here to download the pdf.

Drawing Expressive Expressions: Great Advice and Examples via Lackadaisy Blog

2011-01-18T16:34:00.000-05:00

Recommended to me by the constantly drawing daughter Alice, Tracy J. Butler's Lackadaisy blog has really excellent tutorials in drawing strong and expressive expressions. The characters demonstrating her points are often felines, instead of humans, but the anthropomorphic cats don't make the lessons and examples any less compelling. Humor abounds. And boy, can Tracy DRAW!

I would've copied one of her illos here, to show you just how cool this page is, but I don't think it's cricket to copy, even with full copyright notice. So you've gotta visit her blog to see that fantastic drawing. I like how she shows her drawings in sepia, too -- nice retro look.

Check it out: http://lackadaisy.foxprints.com/exhibit.php?exhibitid=333

Two New Fairies

2011-01-10T15:08:00.001-05:00

These two little fairy children decorate a notecard I designed for a young friend. It was fun making the spots on the red toadstool -- lifted out the color a la Michael Hague. Woohoo.

What I Drew in Church This Week

2011-01-09T15:27:00.003-05:00

A fairy paper doll, maybe?

'Winter Birthday' Mousen Housen!

2011-01-01T12:42:00.002-05:00

Introducing Mousen Housen -- a coloring project for mousen lovers everywhere! Download the pdf to color and then hang your mousen housen on the wall, so the mice can get to the birthday party on time!

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite things was to draw and color little mouse-sized houses, and then stick them onto the wall where the mice could find them. Now I've created Mousen Housen, a series of little houses to color and cut out. Every door and window opens to show something fun inside!

Annie was the first birthday girl to color a Mousen Housen. Here's her Winter Birthday Mousen Housen, proudly displayed on the baseboard in her living room.

More Mousen Housen will come along once a month! And I'll post any finished pictures that you email me, so everyone can see YOUR mousen housen.

What I Drew in Church This Week

2010-12-06T10:41:00.000-05:00

Fairy Painting -- progress update!

2010-07-31T12:56:00.000-04:00

here it is, just as it's painted

This summer, I've actually had some time to work on this fairy painting -- now well over a year in the making (if you don't count the five years I hung onto the sketch...) It's so much larger than I usually work (about 12" by 13"), and I thought about trashing it and starting all over, in a smaller, more manageable size, but now that I've put in a few more days' work, I'm beginning to think I might be approaching the end. And it's looking pretty okay to me at this point.

Here are two versions, the one below with the levels tweaked in Photoshop. I do want to get to an effect with the flower lamps really creating a glow in an otherwise dark scene, but I don't know if I want to take it as far as this tweaked version shows. Meanwhile, ultramarine blue glazes just go on and on and on...

I'm happy to have begun to deal with the wing detail. Don't know if I'll do any more (add a butterfly wing pattern, maybe?) or just leave well enough alone.


and here it is, with levels tweaked (don't we just love Photoshop?)

What I Drew in Church This Week

2010-06-13T13:42:00.000-04:00

Bedtime for a little monster

2010-06-07T14:52:00.006-04:00

Here's a sample picture that I did this past winter for a potential book project. Didn't get the assignment, but I loved doing this picture. Painting fur is my new love -- especially if it's green.

Half a Calendar for 2010

2010-06-06T10:33:00.004-04:00

I made half of a calendar for 2010. Just for kicks.

Half a Calendar for 2010 from Rebecca Thornburgh on Vimeo.

What I Drew In Church This Week

2010-02-28T13:12:00.005-05:00

The 23/7 demands of The Day Job have kept me from doing much drawing of late, but at least I managed this during today's sermon (on "Forgiveness," a good Lenten kinda topic). Back in the choir after a month's hiatus (I was keeping busy finishing two books and putting together four grant applications...)

I did tear myself away from The Day Job mid-week to attend a fantastic lecture at my daughter's school by the brilliant Scott McCloud, author of "Understanding Comics," "Reinventing Comics," and "Making Comics" (among other titles, including his own comic "Zot!"). And that really made me want to draw more, more, more. Excellent dissection and explanation of comics as sequential narration. Best powerpoint presentation I've ever seen -- and 700 images in a little less than an hour. You can see a version of the same lecture I saw here on Ted.

Plein Air paintings exhibit on Tuesday, November 3

2009-11-01T17:20:00.006-05:00

This summer I actually painted outside, for an entire afternoon! It was the first annual Plein Air at Beaver Farm, an all-day marathon of outdoor landscape painting to benefit Camphill Special School’s Transition Program, organized by my wonderful and talented friend Nancy Bea Miller, who is a painter and parent of a son who attends the Camphill School. About forty area painters participated, and most of them are fine artists who came with their French easels and field boxes and created gorgeous paintings over the course of the day. It was very cool to look across the beautiful farmland and to see here a painter, there a painter, everywhere a painter, painter.

I found a lovely little shaded spot next to a cheerful stream, and sat in a folding camp chair with my paper and palette balanced on my lap. (Though I took along a brand new portable easel, it ended up staying in its nice zipped holder all day.) I painted four teeny-tiny pictures (2.5 by 3.5 inches -- the 'aceo' size that I guess is a new trend for creating art to swap and/or sell). I painted strictly from observation, and it was pretty difficult to paint fast enough to capture this little dryad getting her feet muddy in the stream.

So on Tuesday there is an exhibit and sale of the works created that day at the Rosenfeld Gallery here in Philadelphia. I saw the work this afternoon when I dropped off my little tinies, and it's really a stunning array of gorgeous and varied art, all for sale, and all with at least a percentage of the sale going to Camphill Special School. Stop by if you happen to be in the zip code (which is 19106, btw)!

Art Nouveau of long ago, revisited

2009-07-25T17:51:00.003-04:00

I just finished the art for the t-shirt for this year's RSCMA King's College Course, which is the wonderful choir camp I go to, almost every year, in Wilkes-Barre. (And I finished the art just in time, too, because camp starts on Monday.) I started with an image from my Art Nouveau Abstract Designs book (published in, gasp, 1983). Here's the picture from the book.

I reworked the proportions in order to allow for type and added some music notes for a more choir-like picture. And then I colored it! Since the Art Nouveau book is all black line work, it was really fun to turn the image into a colored version. This is watercolor, a bit of inkline (to serve as the leading in the 'stained glass'), and then lots of colored pencil. Here's the finished art.

You can see the actual t-shirt design, with the type in place, at the King's Course cafepress shop. And tomorrow I'll be making a bunch of t-shirts and tote bags here in the studio (via my fabulous heat press) to take with me to camp on Monday! Tra la!

Colin Thompson's marvelous art: now appearing...

2009-07-24T12:47:00.009-04:00

...on all of my pieces o' tech.
I am such a fan, you know? Colin Thompson is one of my favorite illustrators, and his "Bookshelf" picture is one of my very favorites. -- I've had a print of it stuck on the side of my studio bookshelf for ages.
But then I found the Bookshelf picture appearing as a selection on the Gelaskins website! (Where there are also a whole lot of other very very cool images from which to choose. Hieronymus Bosch featured on top of your laptop? Yessss.) After noticing how I was drooling over it, my sister went ahead and bought me the version that goes on my little mini computer. (Isn't she the thoughtful one?) Here it is:

(She got the "Underworld" typewriter image for her ipod, which looks quite nifty as well.)

My now-embellished mini computer was so cool to look at, and made me so happy, that I found I was impelled to acquire more. So I did.
So now my ipod and my laptop look equally cool and very very bookish. (You can see much better pictures of each type of hardware decked out with their gelaskins at the company website, but I just felt I needed to share my own pix of my own stuff...)
Here's my ipod:

Here's my laptop, which I generally despise because it runs the terrible, awful Windows Vista software which is slow and annoying in almost every way, but for which I now feel new fondness, because of what it's wearing. Turns out clothing can make the, uh, machine, after all.

I am so happy.

It's a bird! It's a plane! IT'S SUP... nah, it's just a coloring book...

2009-06-30T11:01:00.007-04:00

That is, I mean: Woohoo! It's a COLORING BOOK!!
Announcing Silly Pictures to Color! -- a book which needs no further explanation. Silly. Pictures. To Color. It's all there.
But just in case you're feeling more need-to-know-y than usual, here's the back cover with even more incredibly obvious information.

Further stating the obvious, I'm excited indeed (YES!! EXCITED!!) about having made this book o' mine to send out into the world, where I hope it will fall, many times, into countless eager hands clutching markers (colored pencils also welcome.)

Check it out and let me know what you think. I'm almost finished with another one, a coloring book with all/some/okay, most of the scenes from my extremely densely pictured polar bear bench, CHillie.

Chestnut Hill Book Festival

2009-05-20T09:23:00.006-04:00

Meet Chester T. Bookly (created by me), who is the official mascot for the upcoming Chestnut Hill Book Festival on July 10, 11, and 12.

Here's a look at a promotional bookmark which has a bit more info about all the cool stuff that will happen as part of the event. I'll be there, doing a signing, selling books, and possibly participating in a panel about writing for children. You can visit www.chestnuthillpa.com for more info (but give it a little time, as they don't have anything posted just yet...)

What I Drew in Church This Week: Call Your Mom

2009-05-10T23:00:00.003-04:00

One of those imperative holidays. If you called her, hope she picked up the phone....

RGB vs CMYK: battle for the better blue

2009-04-10T14:58:00.006-04:00

First picture is RGB, second one is converted to CMYK, with the blue sky tweaked a bit to try to get closer to the original blue (the RGB to CMYK conversion made the sky almost gray.) I've had to convert RGB to CMYK a few times before when submitting art digitally, but wow -- I never noticed such a marked difference in color before. Seems as if CMYK just doesn't care much for ultramarine blue. See how gray the shadows on the tablecloth are? That was the sky, too, before some major tweakage. Anyway, if I hadn't seen the RGB version (and hadn't painted the original), I guess the CMYK version would look just fine (post-tweak) to me.
The real question is just what kind of news is that glass of milk getting ready to spill?
I think it's a bit more sensational than "Dinner is served."

What I Drew in Church This Week: Distressed Bunny

2009-04-06T12:03:00.002-04:00

Runaway eggs distress the French-speaking bunny.

Fairy Painting Progress, Again

2009-04-05T08:00:00.005-04:00

Here' s the latest view of the work in progress. I added plant life in the foreground, and I'm working on getting the sky dark enough. Not there yet. Lots of glazing -- payne's gray (not too much) and ultramarine blue. Still not dark enough. I need to figure out values for the stuff in the foreground, which prompted the current foto. I'm gonna fool around with this image in Photoshop to see what values I value. Tra la.
Meanwhile, what I'm really working on is fixing up my website. Just reworking the layout of the pages and creating actual working navigation links, so not all that much is changing, but still, it's taking forever. (As opposed to this picture -- hah! -- which has been in progress since November. Okay, actually since 2003, but it didn't wriggle out of its sketch stage until last November.)
More painting to take place today. I hope.

Your Name in Books

2009-03-30T17:12:00.004-04:00

AmazType. "A typographic book search."

I saw this web site a couple of years ago, and just came across it again in looking through my bookmarks for something else. How cool, right?

You type in the name of a book (or, as shown here, the name of an author/illustrator -- in this case, me), and you get a whole bunch of titles all spelled out for you. Tra la. You can click on a book cover and, accompanied by a series of adorable little beeps and boops, up pops an enlarged view of the book along with publishing data (including price and sales rank.)

The dialog box wouldn't handle my entire name, so typing in 'Thornburgh' also yielded books by my father-in-law (his autobiography, chiefly) and by his niece Bethann, a wonderful person and incredibly talented illustrator who died a few years ago, sadly, and way way way too soon. So of course I love seeing their books there as well. 'Rebecca' resulted in a lot of copies of the Daphne DuMaurier thriller. When I typed in 'McKillip' (now my middle name, and my first last name, if you know what I mean) the search still came up with a lot of my books, titles for which that name isn't even included in the illustrator credit. So, hooray (I think) for the brilliant technology! Pretty scary -- um, I mean, pretty cool. Now go and spell something yerself!

What I Drew in Church This Week: the Cutesy Kitty Creature and the Snake Thing

2009-03-30T16:41:00.004-04:00

I have no idea where these two came from. Just one of those extremely random days...

What I Drew in Church This Week: Sleeping Tree

2009-03-16T13:20:00.003-04:00

When the family asked to see what I drew in church yesterday, I displayed this and said, "It's just a sad little tree, floating." (Because I was feeling sad as I drew it.) But Alice said, "No, it's only sleeping." So there. Not sad. Just sleeping. And floating.

The Shelf Elf Returns!

2009-03-13T10:54:00.003-04:00

Got this catalog from Upstart Books, publisher of the Shelf Elf books, in the mail yesterday. Woohoo -- one of my illustrations on the entire cover! This was mighty exciting, for sure.
The picture is from the Dictionary book in the new Shelf Elf reference set called "The Shelf Elf Looks It Up." It's one of the more, um, whimsical interpretations of the text, which is about how the dictionary offers a pronunciation guide for each word listing. Since the sounds in the word were compared to banana, key, and trip, well, I mean it's pretty obvious that this is what the picture should be. Right?
The first two Shelf Elf books are traditional picture books -- hardcover with dust jackets -- but this boxed set of three are soft cover and (I think) saddle stitched. So I wanted to use a different approach for the pictures -- a little more cartoony. Most pages have a border (with patterns, of COURSE), and there are lots of little vignettes, presented in a sort of multiple frame, comic book layout. The format was great fun to play with, and it gave me even more scope to throw in all kinds of random silliness in the pictures. And each book has the same "find all the weird things in this book" on the final pages -- so kids will be able to look for ears, echidnas, talking carrots, Sasquatch, Shakespeare, and oh-so-many other objects.
Can't wait to get my copies of the books!

What I Drew in Church This Week: Eyeball Creature

2009-02-22T12:14:00.003-05:00

I want to make alien paperdolls. I would love to see this guy in a Hawaiian shirt and birkenstocks. Possibly sunglasses as well, although he has a lot of eyes to shade...

Illustrated Initials

2009-02-17T10:06:00.005-05:00

A recent promo piece. Watercolor. The art's about four and a half inches, squarish. The assignment was to do one's own initials. I left out the "McK" (for McKillip) because, well, I needed to get it finished pretty quickly and the idea I had didn't really allow for all those extra letters. (Although now that I think of it, my original sketch had a clothesline stretched between the house and the tree -- I coulda hung those extra letters on the line. Well, maybe through the miracle of Photoshop, I'll complete my monogram at some point...)
I love illustrating letters, so this was fun. My senior thesis was an illustrated alphabet. Here's one of those letters, done in pen and ink, just a bit earlier in my career.

What I Drew in Church This Week

2009-02-15T12:43:00.004-05:00

Note Valentine reference, via the tail. Plus the homage to coffee, my one true love...

Cricket Magazine's Very First Issue

2009-02-09T13:55:00.004-05:00

I just got my copy of the very first issue of Cricket magazine, published in September of 1973. (Back then I was actually in their target demographic, more or less. Of course I've never stopped being a Cricket fan...) This is an incredible treasure. Full of illustrations and handlettering by Trina Schart Hyman, who was Cricket's first art director. Lovely full color covers, front and back (art by Trina), but the interior is printed in only two colors -- bet the art was hand-separated, too. (Fun with rubylith and an exacto knife -- woohoo.) Contributors to this fledging publication include Arnold Lobel (it's a Frog and Toad story!), Isaac Singer, Uri Shulevitz, Walter Lorraine, Astrid Lindgren, Nonny Hogrogian, Sid Fleischman, Quentin Blake, Lloyd Alexander, Julius Lester, Wallace Tripp, Jean Craighead George and Nikki Giovanni. And there's a good luck message from Snoopy (drawn by some guy named Schulz). Some little gathering of talent, eh?

One of the things I love about the magazine are the little illustrated asides offered by the little cricket and his (her?) buddies. Some of them help to explain the text, or offer more info about something in one of the features, but there are also all these little remarks that are clearly just Trina talking. Like when the little cricket asks "Isn't Nonny Hogrogrian illustrious?" and the ladybug replies "No, she's Armenian." And little cricket always offers a comment when citing the illustration credit "Bonnie Whitman drew these two pictures. (She's very pretty!)" and then a few pages later, the ladybug says "Who drew these pictures?" and little cricket says "Wallace Tripp, who deserves a bear hug!" Hey, no wonder I always loved these little extra pix -- they are marginalia. My fave, of course -- hence the name.

Anyway, this premier copy of Cricket is just a wonderful thing to have. When you visit my studio, you may look at it--if you're very, very careful turning the pages.

One Year -- A Whole Lotta Books!

2009-01-28T11:04:00.001-05:00

Yesterday three giant boxes appeared on my front porch. In them were my contributor copies of the 26 books I illustrated this past year. This picture shows all of 'em in a stack. Wow. That's a lot of books to paint in six months.

This is a new edition of "The Sound Box" series, written by respected author/educator Jane Belk Moncure. I think the books turned out beautifully -- very handsome design, beautiful binding, lovely paper. Inside are friendly (and quirky) little stories featuring alphabet kids and the things (beginning with their favorite letters) that they collect in their 'sound box' . Perfect for beginning readers. (Oh, and also the illustrations are kinda nice. :-})

Here they all are, spread out on my dining room table. I just keep walking around and around (accompanied by concerned dogs), looking and looking at all of them. Wow again.

Isn't this a cute cover?

Fairy Painting Progress

2009-01-13T09:39:00.001-05:00

Finally got back to the fairy painting yesterday. After graphite outlines, laid down a few washes for the underpainting, and put in some of the local colors. Now on to more painting -- I love this part.

I did this rather weak color study in Photoshop a week or so ago. I wasn't feeling patient enough with my skills in digital coloring to take it any further, but I did decide that I like the night sky above the grasses, with the glowing blossoms to give light for the writer. (The stars turned into weird ovals when I stretched the sky layer.)

Kindergarten Elf

2009-01-13T09:14:00.000-05:00

Just finished coloring a little elf girl that I drew with three kindergarten classes in November.
The girls created a little sister for Skoob, the Shelf Elf. While I scribbled a sketch on a white board, they specified her hair style (braids -- the green was my idea), her pointy elf hat with stars, and her snazzy dress featuring a practical overalls top, complete with pocket for mousefriend, and a lovely ballgown skirt. A lion purse, pointy shoes with wings, and a magic wand are key accessories. Then the girls gave the elf her fancy name: Emily Hope Spring Elf.
I did the picture in graphite and watercolor pencils -- my first time to play with these flexible critters.
Now Emily Hope will be popped into a frame and delivered to the school later today -- hope the girls will be happy with our joint creation!

My Fairy Name

2008-12-31T09:18:00.000-05:00

Fire Elfglitter

A cheerful sprite.

Lives where fireflies mate and breed.

Only seen in the light of a shooting star.

Dresses glow with fiery colours. Has delicate green wings like a cicada.

(Here's where to get your own fairy name)

Thanks for the fairy link to NB, whose fairy nature suits her.
I'm not sure that I agree with what these nice folks conjured up for me. Maybe more like this creature. Though this clearly isn't a fairy.

Fairy Painting Stretched on Board

2008-12-13T11:46:00.000-05:00

So now the drawing, printed out onto watercolor paper, is stretched on treated masonite board. When dry, the paper will lie completely flat, and will dry flat no matter how much wet paint I slosh on there. The stretched paper will probably be dry and ready to paint on in about an hour. But with two concerts to sing in today, I don't expect to get started until tomorrow. Of course, I have two concerts to attend tomorrow, so maybe Monday...

Writing Fairy: ready to paint

2008-12-09T12:35:00.001-05:00

This is the finished drawing, scanned in and pieced together in Photoshop (actual size is about 12 by 16 inches.) I lightened the line considerably, got rid of smudges and stray pencil marks, and then recolored the gray pencil line to a very light sepia. This is ready to print out on 140-lb. cold press watercolor paper.

A Fairy Painting

2008-12-05T10:24:00.001-05:00

August 19, 2010 update: I've created an entire page that shows the progress of this painting from start to its (ahem) current state (nearly finished). Click on the link to "The Fairy Painting" under "Pages" over on the right side of this page, and you can scroll through the painting's history, tra la.
And now back to December 5, 2008...
After a pretty intense year of work (29 books!), I'm taking a break from assignments for a little while. Lots of R and R -- reading and recovering.
But also having a lovely time working on some projects of my own. This one, LONG delayed, was meant as a bat mitzvah gift for a friend of my daughter. She is now about to celebrate her 19th birthday. Maybe I'll finish the picture in time for that!
Thought I'd show the work as it progresses.
First is the sketch I did five and a half years ago--supposed to be the fairy version of Ari, who was a voracious reader (still is.) I hope she also still likes fairies. (When they were leaving for college, she and my daughter gave each other identical copies of 'The Fairy Rebel,' a book they both adored when little girls. I just love that.)

So then I did another drawing on trace to add more details in the floral background.

Then I decided to turn Ari the reader into Ari the writer, now that she is a college freshman and working hard at her craft. So I gave her a fairy scroll and a fairy pen, along with new arms to hold them.

And so here's the new sketch with all the elements. I'm gonna clean up the pencil sketch, scan it, and print onto watercolor paper for painting -- today!

What I Drew in Church This Week

2008-11-23T12:39:00.000-05:00

Decided I'm gonna put my church bulletin pix up on de blog, as well as on my website. (Why not?) So here's the one from today. A Thanksgiving kind of theme. Except that the caterpillar-ish creature appeared when Cindy (our minister) mentioned in her sermon that caterpillars have 228 separate muscles in their heads. This is something to be thankful for.

Election Night: in the First Person

2008-11-18T13:46:00.000-05:00

Election Night. It was her first time to vote in any election. And she was there at Grant Park when history was made. This is a wonderful glimpse of her experience as part of a crowd of awestruck, joyful people. Wow.

What I Did This Summer (among other things...)

2008-08-07T22:18:00.000-04:00

I painted a nine foot fiberglass polar bear, of course. Meet CHillie, who doubles as a bench! Her pictorial theme is "Bearly Chestnut Hill" and shows lots (and lots!) of weird, somewhat familiar little scenes -- creatures, shops, houses and vehicles -- of this neighborhood...and beyond.

She's the featured piece in my community's AbZOOlutely Chestnut Hill 2 project, and she'll be unveiled officially (there was a sneak preview on July 24) on September 13. Then she'll take up permanent residence on the sidewalk of the main street in Chestnut Hill.

This short photo film shows the work in progress, and some views of the finished bear. (I'll take some better pix after the unveiling next month.) The work on CHillie stretched out over six months, though most of the intensive work was done April through July. I am incredibly indebted to my assistant painters, Sarah and Alice, who did wonderful work for long hours. Without their great help, CHillie probably never would have been finished!

I painted my first polar bear, Seemore, in 2006 for the first AbZOOlutely Chestnut Hill project. You can meet him and see the the work-in-progress here.

Alphabeasties!

2008-03-31T12:17:00.001-04:00

I've finished pencil sketches for all of the letters in my Alphabeasties series, and I'm now working on the numbers. Guess I'll have to do all the punctuation marks, too. This process could be endless... (And yeah, you'll see I even have a website for them, but it is absolutely boring and empty right now. Soon come, mon, soon come.)

But yes, o yes, I am excited about these little guyz. The idea has been in my head for two or three years, and until Nancy Bea gave me the 'Fifteen Minutes A Day' talk, I kept thinking I would never find the time to finish even drawing all 26 letters. (This lack of optimism is ironic at this point, since I am even as we speak working hard to finish sketches for 26 entire BOOKS (32 pages each) featuring each letter of the alphabet! Makes drawing a single creature for each letter seem like nuthin'.)

I have already printed out the pencil sketched versions, cut them out into little individual figures, and now I have them all arranged on black fome core board. I intend to glue them into place, but right now I am having much fun arranging and rearranging them into an endless variety of names and words. David thinks I'm totally insane. Which is, of course, true.

So I need to figure out how I will apply coloring to the Alphabeasties (definitely watercolor -- the real question is to ink or not to ink, and then whether or not a soupcon of colored pencil would be nice...) and then start applying my Fifteen Minutes/Day to doing the finished renderings of each beastie. And then someday the day will come when I can proclaim "Let there be swag! There shall be Alphabeasties swag of every kind, for every kid in the kingdom!" I'm thinking shirts, bags, wallpaper, placemats, calendars...the works.

When I start frothing at the mouth with an idea like this, David says "I think you get more excited about this kind of thing than anybody else does." This is most certainly true. But I would be content with even a modest amount of excitement coming from other people -- say, small children who don't know any better than to express their enthusiasm for something unimportant yet pleasantly silly.

Monsters Night and Day

2008-03-31T12:09:00.000-04:00

Here's a look (in several views) at an egg I just painted for the Open Fields School's Great Goose Egg Auction. Great fun, and a great little holiday from the ever-popular art specs. Media are watercolor, colored pencil, india ink, and -- of course -- eggshell.

I'm hoping to do at least one more egg this week. I did two eggs in 2004, and then never managed to pull one off for their 2006 auction, so I'm feeling as if I owe them at least one more!