Category Archive

Want to stay on top of trends in the kid’s markets? I want to share a good little resource with you. Big Blue Dot is a multimedia firm (web, print and TV) devoted to serving the kids’ industry. They have a bi-monthly email newsletter called Trend Update, which tracks trends in the kid’s world. It’s a cool tip-sheet and a free, effortless way way to stay on top of what’s hot and going on at the moment. Check it out!

Many companies like BBD, plus children’s publishers, put out similar newsletters. Happy web surfing, and if you happen upon any that you find useful and would like to share, please do (in the comments)!

I’m about to admit something very embarrassing here. Recently, I’ve been feeling nostalgic. Maybe because I’m in my mid-40s, and I haven’t been home in awhile, but I’ve been thinking a lot about my childhood. So I downloaded a bunch of music last night, stuff that was popular when I was a kid.

I grew up in the 70s and 80, and mostly listened to funk, soul and R&B music. But in Des Moines, during that time period, that kind of music wasn’t played on the radio stations. We had a record player at home (and an 8-track and later a cassette player), but for the most part, we were stuck with mainstream popular music, music that I really didn’t care for. Or so I thought. Here’s what I downloaded last night, and what I listened to all day, misty-eyed and homesick:

Barry Manilow
Pains me to admit, but I loved this music. Reminds me of when I used to go camping with my grandparents in their RV trailer. Those were the days. I miss my grandma.

The Bee Gees
This music brings back the days when I used to go to the Metro Disco, a teenage disco club. Must have been about 7th grade, such an awkward time. Even though I didn’t like to dance, I loved going to The Metro. Mostly to hang out on the sidelines with my friends and make fun of the serious disco dancers, John Travolta wannabe types.

Barry and Andy Gibb
Again, this music reminds me of the times I spent with my grandparents. My mom raised my brothers and I, but she was my grandma’s baby girl. So, we spent a lot of time with my grandparents.

Elton John
Painful music, painful time. Takes me back to my little league baseball days. I hated little league baseball. It was one of those things that, as a boy, I was supposed to do, that I didn’t want to do, but I did it because . . . well, I don’t know if there was any getting out of it. Many a day, my three brothers and I, and my mom, crammed into her old, beat up, VW bug and headed to the ballpark. Elton John on the radio.

Barbra Streisand
This music takes me back to the time when my parents split up. My mom didn’t work, she stayed at home and took care of us kids and our home. So when she and my dad split up, she had to learn a skill and get a job. She went to school and learned basic clerical work — short-hand, filing, how to take dictation. I was so proud of her.

I even downloaded some Celine Dion, which has noting to do with my childhood, but,  shhh, I’ve already given you enough fodder to last a lifetime of jokes.

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Edit to original post: The wife just caught me listening to my newly downloaded music, Barry Manilow’s Mandy. She had a good laugh. Apparently when she was growing up, her family actually had records for their record player, so they didn’t have to listen to the radio. She won’t admit to listening to Barry Manilow, but I’m sure she did. Curious she knows all the lyrics.

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.  

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.

Recently, my wife and I were watching CNN. They were discussing the so-called recession. I turned to my wife and asked, “What recession? Other than the high price of gas, I haven’t noticed any downturn in our family economy.”

My wife cut her eyes at me and said, “You haven’t noticed a downturn because I handle the family finances. We are in a recession.”

I still wasn’t convinced. Long as I got a roof over my head, food on the table, and shoes on my feet, I don’t complain. But today I went to the art supply store to restock my supply of oil paint. Now I’m complaining!

A normal tube of oil paint costs in the neighborhood $8.99, depending upon the color and brand. And I buy the cheap stuff. The prices are now about $3.00 more. The old prices were scratched out and the new, more expensive, prices were scribbled in with a Sharpie. A sales associate saw the expression on my face and asked if I needed any help. I said, “Yes, you could help me to mark these prices back to where they should be. Why are they so expensive?”

“The cost of oil is $107.00 per barrel,” he said. “More expensive oil, more expensive oil paint.”

Ouch! I never considered that. I guess we are in a recession.