Here's a movie trailer of our book!

I had a little time to play as I waited for the go ahead on a project so I had fun experimenting with iMovie and created a trailer for the book that my husband and I did together. Let me know what you think. It was my first time doing something like this so please be nice. ;o)

Cruisin'

We booked a cruise in May and I am so ready for it! We are taking our 21 year old daughter with us and it will be her first cruise. We have the most wonderful, perfect , fun-loving, did I mention perfect daughter in the whole wide world!! I'm so excited. I just thought I'd warm up a few folks out there if you live in cold climates like I do with this little piece I did for fun last year.

You make my day award!

Wow! Thank you Paige Keiser who has awarded my blog with the "You Make My Day Award" from over at the Fox in Socks blog. This is really quite an honor since Paige is the one who inspired me to begin blogging in the first place.

So to continue the trend, here are the details:

1. Write a post with links to 5 blogs that make me think and/or make my day.
2. Acknowledge the post of the award giver.
3. Display the “You Make my Day Award” logo
4. Tell the award winners that they have won by commenting on their blogs with the news.

And I have chosen the following artists to receive this award, because they brighten my days with their wisdom and talent and give me inspiration to continue the creative journey I'm on.

1. Stephanie Roth

2. Grace Lin

3. Eric Orchard

4. John Nez

5. Elizabeth Dulemba

Crazy busy

I'm busy, busy with deadlines but I got a decent job from Scholastic yesterday from this sample on TheIspot. Ya just never know--what may speak to one art director, may not at all to another...

High Five

Here's a piece I did last year for High Five, the new magazine that Highlights started for the younger audiences.

Fabrics in illustration

I have been playing around with fabrics in my work recently. I painted with acrylics and then scanned in fabrics and placed them digitally. That way if I didn't like the outcome, my painting would still be intact. Here's the original sketch and then the finished piece as well.

Happy New Year!

It's time to start a new year. I have deadlines looming but I thought I'd post a personal piece I did for a new dummy.

SNOW!

The weather men are calling for snow again this weekend. I love snow but not ice!! In Missouri we get both.

Here's a picture of my home(just for you Steph) and my sweet Brandy who LOVES snow. This was a few years ago when we got a ton of snow!



Here's a photo of the ice storm we got a week or so ago. This is the view out my studio window.

Working, working

It's been awhile since I've posted. I am in the middle of a couple of projects with rushed deadlines. Unfortunately I can't show them because of being under contract but here is a little watercolor piece I did years ago for Christmas. Merry Christmas!!

Carolyn Scott and Rookie

If you know me, you know I LOVE golden retrievers, especially my Brandy girl! Just had to share this video of a very talented golden. It made me smile!

Personal projects

Here are a few rough sketches for a possible book dummy. I say possible because I have a hard time getting personal projects completed. I seem to always find other things to do that are seemingly more important, i.e. like paying freelance work. ;o) I'm going to try to stop procrastinating on personal projects in the future.

Sunset and Christmas trees

Our sunset was amazing last night! Talk about art!! But then who can compete with God's paintbrush?!


This one's a bit dark but I was trying to get the Christmas trees in the windows. I should have left the porch light off.

Changes

There are often changes from original sketches to the final painting stage in a book. I thought it would be fun to show the original sketch along with the final cover to show the changes on Kate's Surprise's cover.

To grandmother's house we go...

Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go...I always loved that song and it always reminds me of Thanksgiving so HAPPY THANKSGIVING ALL!

Small world

This past weekend my husband, Brad and I went to the Missouri SCBWI conference where he was asked to speak on a "First Books Panel". He and I did a book together called My Brother and I. It was his first book and my favorite project thus far, for obvious reasons.

The keynote speaker was Cheryl Klein, an editor at Arthur Levine Books(an imprint of Scholastic). An interesting side note...Cheryl graduated from the same high school as our daughter, about eight years prior. Her home town is where we've lived these past 18 years. Is it a small world or what? I have often had this silly perception of NY editors as these unapproachable people who only wear black. Well, I was wrong. Cheryl was very sweet and approachable and she was wearing brown.

Dancing elephants and birthdays

I really enjoy doing black and white illustrations with washes. They're quick and you get to see instant results without having to think so much about color!

Here's a couple from an educational job I did a couple years ago.

Brrrr!

The temperature is supposed to be down in the twenties tonight. Brrrr!

This cold weather made me think of the art I did last year for Kate's Surprise, a Rookie Reader. Here's the cover and a couple inside pages. Kate's brother is stuck indoors because he's sick. Poor little guy can only dream of sledding while his sister Kate gets to go out and play in the snow. Kate tries to cheer him up with a surprise.

Robert's Snow

I can't believe it's already November!! With November comes Robert's Snow. If you haven't heard of it, please go check it out. It's a wonderful story and for a wonderful cause. I can't wait to join in on bidding at the auctions, the first starting Nov. 19th.

I didn't get the opportunity to create a snowflake this year. Somehow I regretfully missed the deadline to get involved in the 2007 fund raiser but I did have the privilege the two prior times. I thought I'd go ahead and show my past years snowflakes. The polar bear was done in acrylics and the skating bears were watercolor. I also show the back of the skating bears snowflake where I used salt to mimic an icy look.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Working with publishers overseas

I have worked with a couple publishers overseas and both experiences were luckily good ones. One was a publisher in Korea and then the other was a publisher in New Zealand. The NZ publisher all started with kind of a crazy story.

Several years ago, actually more like seven years ago...my husband and I were lucky enough to get to visit the beautiful country of New Zealand. While I was there, in Auckland, I decided to try and contact a publisher while I was in town just to touch base and possibly set up a meeting. The meeting didn't work out but I was able to chat via email with the nice art director. It was 5 years later but that same art director contacted me to do a project with him. It just proved to me that any contacts we make, whether it's by email, direct mail, etc. is never a wasted effort although so many times it feels we are sending our mailers and promotions out into a deep dark hole with no return. It may take seven years to see a result but we gotta have faith, right?

Here is the cover of the reader I did for the New Zealand Publisher, Sunshine Books/Wendy Pye Ltd. I wasn't crazy about the choice of type used on the cover but overall it was a great project and the art director was a dream to work with!