New Book!

Jenny Cote's new book is out ready to ship. I did the illustration for this one also. If you scroll down this blog you can see the original sketch I did for this cover. Take a look and let me know you're thoughts. Thanks! You can also purchase the book on Amazon.com

Snowman Style

A friend asked me if I could draw in the same style as the children's book The Snowman. So here is my first attempt at it. I think it needs to be refined just a bit, but not too bad for a first go around.

Notes

Again, more notes from a meeting. I love meetings.

Strategery

Here are my notes from yesterday's Strategic Planning meeting. Highly in depth, yet concise.

Church Art Numero Dos

I was sitting in church yesterday "listening" and found that we all got a blank canvas on the back of our sermon outline! I had a green pen. My friend Natalie had a pink pen. I used the pew pen to do the shading.

Church Art

I listen better when I doodle. I've always thought that. So finally I saw on the Today Show a study that was published in Applied Cognitive Psychology that, on average, people who doodle actually recall 29% more information as opposed to people who don't. This is a drawing I did in church one day before last Christmas. I don't remember what the sermon was about. ;-)

New Book Cover

Here are a couple of versions of the new Max & Liz book I'm illustrating. I'm not feelin' either one of them. This is not the layout I would have chosen but whudaya gonna do? I'm not the art director of the project so I basically draw the direction that I'm given. That being said, it makes it very difficult to conceptulize when I don't think it's a strong concept in the first place.

Sorry about making this a gripe session. I just wanted to get that off my chest. :-)

New Tattoo

I'm thinking about getting another tattoo. I currently have a Celtic cross on my back. I was wondering if I should work from that, maybe accentuate it or if I should do something in a totally different area. I was also wondering if I should continue with the whole Celtic theme as well. I dunno. Anyway...here are a couple of ideas. Not sure where I want it yet.

Unused Cat

Here is a drawing I did for one of the cat characters in Jenny's book that I didn't use. This image was a little too thin and mischievous looking (which hard NOT to portray on a cat!) to be used on the cover.

"Don't Ever Sit Across From Me"

My friend Jamie told me to never sit across from her in a staff meeting because she doesn't want me to draw her. I say NO ONE IS SAFE! Hahaha!!

Book Interior

I've been working on some interior drawings for Jenny's book all weekend. This project is a beast! No pun intended even though it is a book about animals. ;-) I'm pretty tired of drawing animals though. Not my favorite thing to do with all that fur. And animals with black fur like the two main characters of the book, are the WORST!...takes forever to draw them!

Anyway, here is one of the animals I drew over the weekend.

Photography

One thing I love to do is photography. I haven't been able to get to it much this summer but I really love doing it. I would love to travel around and just take pictures as a living. But that would require me selling the pics to someone and that takes a salesman...which I am not. I'm not great at selling my work. Even the freelance stuff that I do is hard for me to gauge. I can say I will do something for a certain amount per hour but then sometimes I end up undervaluing my work. Then sometimes I feel like I'm overvaluing it. I dunno. Aaaaanyway, here is a shot I took in Puerto Rico. It's an HDR image which means I took 3 differently exposed pics and combined the exposures into one image to get a High Dynamic Range image. I might post some of my pics on here too...since I do actually take pictures more than I draw. But, fear not! There are more drawings coming soon.

Napkin Art

We had a staff meeting to go over our insurance here at the office. BORING as anything that has ever been boring in the history of boredom! Anyway, so I just did a quick sketch on a napkin while we were in the meeting. I also wrote some notes on it, but they weren't important enough to keep.

Advent Illustration

OK, so I don't have the official cover yet, but I've finished the Advent book cover illustration. Now I'm in the process of doing a second book cover in this series about Easter. So, I will post that soon as well. I really like how this drawing turned out!

Rampant Lion

Every now and then I will work on this little tribal-looking sketch. I usually get around to it when I travel because it's in my little travel sketchbook. Anyway, it started out as a totally different kind of drawing. I had intended it to look similar to a traditional Scottish rampant lion but then I just didn't like it. So, I changed it to look like a tribal one. Here's what I have so far.

Exciting News!

So, I have some really great news! Jenny Cote, the author of the book I illustrated just returned from a symposium where she networked with all kinds of media companies. She's been in talks with Walden Media and some other companies as well. The book is set to go into production in 3 weeks and a new animation studio with former Disney animators at its helm wants to produce the movie for The Ark, the Reed & the Fire Cloud! This is huge! The book isn't even out and the movie is already set to be produced! INSANE I tell ye! I'm not sure what this all means for me but it's pretty exciting...especially since Jenny told me they got really excited about this project once they saw my cover art for the book! I will keep you updated on this progression.

Staff Meeting 7.15.08

Just a random little drawing from our staff meeting. I'm not sure how I got to this one. haha! It just sort of developed this way. Even though it's kinda weird, it's interesting to me because this is one of the few drawings that are sort of helping me break out of my style. It seems like everything I've drawn over the past has looked the same and now it's changing. So, there you have it. I call her Spitunia. :-)

My First Book!

This was my first book cover! I'm so glad it's finished. It took forever but it's finally done! This isn't the final version, but this was the one that my friend Jenny posted on her site. It was an interesting process. I had never worked on a drawing as long as I had this one before. Everything about this illustration was a learning experience. I had to learn how to use different tools, how to better manage my free time and how to draw animals. Drawing animals has always been more difficult for me than drawing anything else. But I think it turned out pretty good.

While Sitting in Class

I did this sketch of the Intro to Physics professor one day in class. He would explain the laws of physics using his dog Rusty to illustrate.

Book Cover

So, I'm working on illustrating a book cover. It's taking a while because I'm virtually painting it. However, I've completed parts of it. My friend Katie modeled for this part. Thanks Katie!

It's my second book cover and I'm really excited about it. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks!