ETSY STORE

My first two self-published children's books, "If I could be anything" BLUE and PINK editions, are both now up in my Etsy Store! Buy the Family Fun Pak and save $2.00! Can't beat that!

Click HERE or click on the Etsy Store link in the side bar.

Character Designs

Here are some character designs of a character for a book that I'm working on. The top pic shows the old version on the left and the new version on the right. The bottom are some facial studies. I'm really liking this character. Maybe it's because she's a redhead and I'm married to a redhead, so I'm a little bias. Enjoy.

Illustration Friday - "Adrift"

Man, I'm so late with this one. My internet has been down this whole week. Submission for Illustration Friday. The topic this week is "Adrift."

So, Bad Luck Becky here is adrift on the ocean in a bad situation that is about to get worse. Enjoy.

Slight Change of Plans

Let me explain. After much deliberation and exploration I've decided to give nerd girl a face lift, almost literally. I was having a hard time with finding a name and place for this character. My wife suggested a really good name for this character, but it didn't match. So, I'm changing her up to better match the name she came up with. The new name I think will fit my objective to use the same character for the Illustration Friday topics.

I won't reveal the name just quite yet, because I feel a story brewing here with this character. So, for those of you who may have liked this red-headed nerd girl, don't worry, she's not dissappearing, she's just being put on the back burner while this new brunette version takes over. This new one is no longer a nerd. She just has terrible luck with things. So, from now on this new girl will take over as the topic appeasing one. Enjoy.

Bad Day

Nerd girl (man, I really need a name for her) just can't catch a break. It's a good thing that she's not real because I'm being REALLY mean to this poor little lady. Enjoy.

Illustration Friday: "Muddy"

Illustration Friday topic this week is "Muddy." I already had the pic of the nerd-girl on a postcard that was all wet, so I just changed to color of the water to brown and added a background story to it. This nerd-girl is sortof my "fall guy" who takes the brunt of everything. I think I want to use her to illustrated every I.F. from now on if I can make it work. I think that would be cool. Enjoy.

The Apple iPad

There's already been a lot of positive and negative comments made toward the iPad. If anyone cares, here's my opinion:

I think the iPad could be the beginning of some great things for self-publishers and 'Indie' creators (like myself).

It would be so great to have my books embedded in an app. So many possibilities with extra content that just isn't out there right now. With an app there is the possibility to push a button and see the rough sketches of a page, push a button and see the final linework, push a button and see a video of the artists drawing that particular page that you're on, push a button and hear some audio of the author and/or illustrator talking about a particular page, push a button and go to the author/illustrator's website, and so forth. I'm getting geeked out just thinking about this stuff.

So, before you dismiss this as just "a big ipod", think of the publishing possibilities that can come for "the little guys" with the apps and the distribution of the app store.

Now, I do need to give credit where credit is due. I didn't think of these ideas. I'm paraphrasing from a podcast called Art & Story. Jerzy Drozd and Mark Rudolph go into depth with the ideas I'm talking about, so give it a listen and get juiced about this thing and it's possibilities as a publisher.

Illustration Revised

Here's a revised illustration of the below one for Illustration Friday. If you didn't notice I added three more ants, a carrot, and a sandwich of some kind. Maybe it's a BLT. Mmmmm....BLT. Haven't had one of those tasty little things for a while. Maybe I'll have one tomorrow.