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Listening with my whole heart...
My life has a way of running away from me. John Lennon said it best, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. I love writing and illustrating for children. I have (what I think) some great projects. Good enough to win some pretty great scholarships (Chautauqua 2004 and the Picture Book workshop with Eric Rohmann and Lisa Jahn- ( Read more... ) -
National Dog Day!!!
I celebrate the life of my beloved BoBo, the Sharpei, who died a couple of weeks ago. He's seen here in his prime, doing what he did the best, attend to me, while MR, a teenage pup is attending some bug or bowing to Boris Karloff Darling's pedigree. I miss him so, but you know my life was so rich and happier because of him. He was a true friend and ( Read more... ) -
Belief, Tolerance, Faith, Donna Marsh O'Connor and privilege...
They are not ideals, values or faith unless they are tested, and still stand. I put those things in a particular order, because they are intertwined, and faith often times is what someone else tells us should be, values and ideals more personal ( Read more... ) -
To scrap or not to scrap... that is the question?
Annie needs to interact more with the customer, but have I actually achieved that media in res, a young girl with an interrupted moment of conversation? It's been fun imaginining this anyhow (and I've seen the house and it's interior, a bit different, but still, and I knew Ann and have a photo of her as a young girl, as well as a few photo ( Read more... ) -
The beginning of the second Annie Spread...
I'm liking this so much MORE. Thanks goes to my wonderful friend and crit partner, Sarah Brannen with helping me with the perspective. This is still very rough and needs tweaking, it's the beginning of the French Grey underlayment for the grisaile.
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Just have to tweak the yellows...
and clean up the lettering, but I think I like most of this. Feel free to tell me what you think!
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three (or is it thirty three?) times the charm, hopefully...
Still in progress, I've had to restart this three times. I'd been on a roll, the first got ruined, with the maddening details of my life (hubby broke his shoulder, sick baby, hurting sister, grouchy hot kids, don't ask, that should be enough, eh?). The second the cat walked on it giving me her opinion of the effort. Perhaps she's a wise cat, ( Read more... ) -
It is better to be (insanely) busy...
I'm redoing the illustrations of Duke Day for Annie (a few friends are taking a look at the text, so it's a good thing it's slow going, as some of the spreads will change). I'm doing the illustrations in a technique called grisaille, essentially the art is drawn twice. First in gray tones, and then color over it. I think it looks a lot like the ( Read more... ) -
The Race THANG and Malcolm Gladwell...
I ADORE MALCOLM GLADWELL. There, I got it off my chest. I've been driving my family mad with efforts of trying to get them to read his work: Outliers ( Read more... ) -
I hate myself for loving you...
I keep thinking I'm doing this all wrong. I'm a children's writer with definite aspirations. It'd be wonderful to accept the award for my effort in the field of my endeavor for sure, especially if I had the credentials where others would say "hells yeah, she's a kid's writer, haven't you read her ( Read more... )
