Bedtime story from the Elderly Fairy

Fairy House

Last night Edie and I made a couple of fairy houses.  I was inspired by the pieces of bark that I found in our yard waste pile.  We used a piece of scrap wood as the base and some birch bark for the walls.  The other bark was used for the roof, with a pine cone as a ridge beam beneath.  Moss that we found added the perfect woodsy feel to the house.  It looks like someone may have already taken up residence!
*one note of caution: glue from glue guns is like molten lava and can burn you very badly.  Ouch!

old photos

I have been organizing photos and found one of me when I was about six.  I had just been given a sea otter stuffed animal for Christmas by a family friend.  We were visiting my grandparents in New Hampshire where there were often white Christmases.

oops

Look what I did subconsciously. 
(I do think it's a little bit funny)

Meanwhile. . .

Painting tidal pools for an educational job is making me miss Rhode Island. 

Tick Bait's Universe

Great news!  The app I have been working on is now for sale on iTunes.  It is a great children to learn about science by zooming in to explore at a microscopic level and zooming out to explore the universe.
If you have an iPad, I would definitely recommend checking it out.  Kids curious about science will love it!

Heart Monkey

 

After seeing all sorts of beautiful art at the Kindling Words conference I just returned from, I decided that it would be fun to play around on the computer.  Here's a little something I sketched out for Valentine's Day.

More on the icon

So I am close to finishing the art for the app, and the programmer hopes to publish shortly.  Here is a more recent version of the icon.  Apparently Apple reserves the right to round the corners themselves. ??

Who are you?

Working on the story behind this character. 

Juggling

When I first started as a freelance illustrator, I had an idea of myself working on one children's book after another in a quiet studio somewhere.  I have worked on many great children's books over the years, but instead of a manageable linear progression of books, my work looks more like a juggling act of several different types of projects at any one time.

On my plate most recently:
This past year I have been working on a science app with a local education engineer/programmer.  This has been an interesting job with lots of little illustrations.  I am currently painting a sun and have painted viruses, dna, and nebulas, among many other things.  Stay tuned for more on that.

  
I have just finished illustrating an educational reader about two Indonesian villages.


I completed sketches for another reader about tidal pools in Northern California a week ago.


I finally finished layout for a magazine I design, and have just turned it over to the printer.


When I have free time, I work on some of my own ideas for stories.

When working in a creative field, it is important to be flexible and see opportunity in all that you do.  In magazine layout, there is an opportunity to learn more about design.  In educational jobs, there is an opportunity to improve painting skills.  In app creation, there is an opportunity to learn about the subject you research and about technology. 

There's lots for me to learn, and I hope for continued opportunities to learn on the job in the future.

icon design

There is a fine art to logo and icon design.  All of the importance and meaning of your brand distilled into 72 x 72 pixels??  I don't quite have the hang of it, but I needed to give it a try.  This is for a yet-to-be-released project I am working on.  It will be great once it's out.  Something to use on your ipad!

The Story of Christmas

This video is so sweet. . .

From start to finish

Pin It

I just finished a painting that I will use as a mailer this winter.  I thought it might be interesting to see the evolution of the final product.
This was my first sketch:

 not much to look at, but shorthand for my idea: a little girl and her friend bear buying roasted chestnuts on a snowy New York street.

My next sketch is a little more developed:

After I had sort of mapped out how I wanted the layout, I transferred it onto my watercolor paper.
I tried to keep my colors muted and the background loose, to give the atmospheric snowy feel I wanted and to keep the attention focused on the interaction between the characters.  There was a definite awkward stage, that I am sorry to not have scanned.  It would have been nice to see that I was able to push through (I hope) and get it to where I wanted it.
Here's the painting before snow, and final details:

I needed to add some higher contrast and detail in the foreground to help create depth, and it needed to snow.

So here it is, snowy and chilly.  Now off to the printer!:

 

Well, almost.  One more change suggested by my husband.  I changed the streetlights so they weren't quite the same as the twinkle lights.  While I was at it, I straightened out the buildings.  Now it's time to put it down.

Marcel is back

My favorite line is "Oh God, I can smell his face."

snowflake for auction