You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April 2008.
I draw my family a lot, and they’ve all gotten pretty used to it and don’t grumble much, although my husband has objected to the number of sketches I’ve drawn of him holding a beer. But that’s when he tends to hold still, when he’s done working in the garden and comes in for a refreshing beverage and to check on the ball game. As for kids and pets, they’re most easily drawn when they’re asleep.
I recently had the opportunity to do the cover illustration for the Graphic Artists’ Guild national newsletter (March/April 2008). The subject I was given was “Trademark”. I of course looked for any opportunity to integrate cute and cuddly characters into the illustration. This one worked well using these funny dogs to help tell the story. Hope you enjoy!
Visit danijones.com to see my latest artwork!
Included are several new personal pieces I made recently for last weekend’s NE-SCBWI conference (you can read about my adventures here), and a few images from my picture book The Best Mariachi in the World, which is set to be released this fall by Raven Tree Press.
People always ask me where ideas come from, for stories or illustrations. I usually give a variety of answers based in fact or fiction, but the real answer is ideas come from everywhere, and from nowhere. What makes an artist an artist, what gives them vision, is that they have trained themselves to investigate the nowhere to see and hear from all that surrounds them, to absorb it, and translate it back.
Suspense writer Stephen King, in his book “On Writing” says that ideas are constantly flying around in the sky, and it’s the writer’s responsibility to reach up and grab them. To illustrate that point further in terms of sketching characters to life, I had drawn a character called “Sister Cat” for one of my picturebook manuscripts about kid ghouls. Sister Cat is a sister to the main character, Velma the Vampire, although the biological conjuring of that relation is left a mystery. They are ghouls after all, and anything is possible. At first, Sister Cat looked like this…
Cute in pink, but a little too cat-like to be a real sister. So I waited for something to fly by..
Right before Valentines Day, during a break from the drawing board, I scanned a picture of a swan into photoshop, and did a little conjuring myself. The end result shown here is 2 swans forming a heart….and if you look long enough, a cat appears in the middle, a cat with wings. On Stephen King’s advice, I reached up and grabbed it…
And Sister Cat in action with Velma the Vampire…
Sister Cat came from nowhere, but there she was, staring at me all the while, waiting.
An aMUSEd vision…it doesn’t get better that that!
Terri Murphy
This is the weekend of the annual New England SCBWI conference!! Hooray for two whole days of ‘creative watershed’ moments, hand-cramping-but-totally-worth-it note-taking, starry-eyed “fan” moments (book signing hour – always a personal favorite), intense artistic inspiration and, by the end, utter exhaustion!
I’ve posted a few photos (with notations) of today’s events here. Please enjoy!!
I enjoyed this article by Mike Reiss – a Simpson’s script writer and picture book author, multi-award winner and all-around funny guy. His article reminded me how the industry is evolving and changeing month to month and year to year. And as for content, well, it knows no bounds. He’s a facet on ‘perception’ of the industry and his words and body of work (after a little research) inspired me.
Find article here:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6543968.html?industryid=48383
Check out these updates that just went live on our site:
- Brand new portfolio page for Don Tate, one of T2’s newbies – http://www.tugeau2.com/dtatmain.html
- Art update by Kathy Weller – http://www.tugeau2.com/kwelmain.html
- New portfolio page for Natalia Vasquez – http://www.tugeau2.com/nvas02.html
- Books by CA Nobens – http://www.tugeau2.com/cnobbook12.html
- Books by Terri Murphy – http://www.tugeau2.com/tmurbook04.html
- Art update by David Lowe – http://www.tugeau2.com/dlowmain.html
It’s taken me awhile to get used to this technique — transparent color layers over greyscale images — but it’s growing on me. These paintings have depth, more so than any of my previous works. They possess a 3-dimensional, jewel-like quality. It’s like I could reach right into this painting, grab a plate off the table, and sit it down on the counter behind Ron. This happened by accident. Believe me, I didn’t plan it that way.
On the downside, finishing this book is going to take longer than what I’d anticipated — at least another month, which will take me into mid May. Having spent so much time on the underpaintings, establishing values and form, I figured it would take no more than one day to color each image. That. Nada. Gonna. Happen.
If I had it to do over, I’d use acrylic paint instead of oil. I love oil painting. No other medium can touch it’s luminous quality. But acrylics dry almost immediately, where oil paint takes it’s time. Even though I’m using alkyds — fast drying oil paint — I still have to wait at least a day for the paint to dry before I can paint over it again. Grrr.
OK, gotta go.
P.S. About the bald head. It’s an accident. I cut my own hair, and last week in a hurry, I forgot to clip on the little plastic accessory that prevents the clippers from going too low. Took a bite out my ‘fro the size of an apple. So, I had to cut it all off.
On the upside, the wife says it’s very sexy attractive, so I’ve decided to keep it.
Writers talk about their inner critics a lot—you know, the stern/unforgiving/hypercritical/cruel persona who is always up close and personal when they try to write. Inner Critics are jerks, and they pretty much never shut up. They inhibit and intimidate. They’ve undoubtedly derailed many talented writers.
Inner Critics don’t discriminate on the basis of race, creed, gender or creative predilection. Writers haven’t cornered this market. I’m an illustrator, and my Inner Critic has had an extremely fruitful career hanging out in my head. She’s really mean, and it affects my work. But then again, I sometimes think I can write, so I guess my anti-muse has a lot of material to work with.
You’d think that there would be some sort of relation between the horribleness of one’s life and the impact of the IC. You know–the worse your own life story is, the more accusatory, negative and nasty the IC will be, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Maybe the opposite tends to be true—if you’ve come out basically intact, you know how to fight it, and you don’t let it bother you. At any rate, Inner Critics find their way somehow, and once an Inner Critic takes up its post, it’s hard to ignore.
In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott talks about how she fights inner critics and it’s pretty hilarious. She has a whole squadron of them. One technique involves envisioning the critics as mice, dropping them into a glass jar with a volume control knob, putting the lid on, and turning the sound waaaay down.
Well, thinking of the IC as a mouse didn’t work for me—in this line of work “mice” and “cute” are almost always a pair. So I took a slightly different approach, drew my inner critic and named her Miss Meanypants. You want a mind game? Think about what your inner critic looks like and why. It’s hours of fun, alone or in a group! My husband and I pondered it over lunch one day, and there were some interesting gender differences, but that’s probably another post…
I scanned Miss Meanypants, shrunk her, and printed her out. Then I made her into a stick puppet, because stick puppets are silly. And besides, if it’s on a popsicle stick, who can take it seriously? I put her in a glass jar and closed the lid. (Harry Potter fans—I guess this is my way of saying “Riddikulus.”) Having Miss Meanypants right there in front of me will, I hope, make it easier to ignore her.
I’ll keep you posted.
Handy Dandy
“Hands are so hard to draw!” said my friend Cyd. She was ready to throw her easel through the window, and I hoped she wouldn’t. It was snowing. I’d need another sweater.
“So do what Charles Schultz did—he drew hands behind peoples’ backs,” I told her.
I would know. I cut my drawing teeth on Peanuts. Hours and hours of drawing Charlie Brown’s head, over and over again, those eyes enclosed in parentheses, that funny little curl of–I guess it was hair—on his forehead. The zigzag stripe on his shirt, the little legs, the cigar-shaped shoes. Then there was Linus. His head had a different shape than Charlie Brown’s, and his hair was on top. And Lucy’s dress was easy when you studied it—just a couple of simple shapes, really. I didn’t know anyone else who spent their time that way, but hey, whatever—the other kids thought it was cool that I could draw Peanuts.
Then I grew up and started hanging out with other illustrators, and wow! Many of them had their favorite characters to copy when they were kids. Garfield was a popular choice, but there were plenty who were drawn (yeesh!) to Peanuts. A few Spiderman and Calvin and Hobbes types, but to copy Watterson…
Last week, Laura, my 14-year-old, wondered why there were suddenly 8 discs of Kimba the White Lion on our Netflix queue…
Even when you put something at the top of the queue, you still have to wait until it arrives. Peanuts got me strolling down memory lane, and I wasn’t ready to start the return trip. So I ambled over to YouTube, and found enough to continue my walk—at least until the next Netflix delivery. I watched a couple of truncated episodes of Kimba, and remembered how much I looked forward to watching it, since I could only watch it when I visited my grandparents in NJ. I liked to draw Kimba. I was into early anime, so after Kimba, Grownup Me watched Astro Boy, another of my kidhood watch-and-draw favorites. It came on around dinnertime, and I always hoped dinner would be before or after Astro Boy. Sometimes I was allowed to eat and watch, and that made me happy.
After an episode or two of Gigantor (even as a child, I really just liked the theme song), it was time to get back to the present, but it was fun to remember how me-the-kid looked forward to, hoped, was happy. As a children’s book illustrator, it’s central to what I do.
The Internet makes it so easy to stay in touch with your inner child! Amazing.
I think the mail’s here.
