Frequently Asked Questions 2

Can I get you a water?

No. Thank you, but no. This is my fault–I have a bottle of water already, and I should have put it in plain view. I understand from past appearances that if I don’t put my water in plain view you or someone else on your staff will continue to offer me some every couple of minutes until I either leave or say yes. You’re just trying to be hospitable, I know. You want to do something for me. An author in your library/bookstore/school is an apparition that’s equal parts magical and awkward, like a whale on a beach. And, like a beached whale, I am presumed to be vulnerable and in need of constant hydration.

I didn’t like how much bottled water I was drinking, so I bought this reusable bottle. Yes, it is shaped like a flask but no, it’s still water. The flask shape just happens to fit the pouches of my bag and if necessary, of course, my hip pocket. But isn’t it playful? Seeing this flask out in the open and so close to your children? It says that I’m one of you, that I do not spend every moment of my days in a child’s garden of verses–that I’m less Fred Rogers and more Shel Silverstein, but without all the whoring.

Frequently Asked Questions 1

Is there anything special you need during your visit?

I’m usually thankful for an easel and a big pad of paper. If the event in question is the sort of thing at which I could show slides, I like to have a digital projector on hand. Sometimes I’m asked about less practical things, however. Sometimes I’m asked if I have any sort of weird, non-negotiable contract riders like a certain thread count to my hotel sheets or a single ostrich feather for book-signing.

I got on this topic once with a library that was hosting me for a reading and signing on Dr. Seuss’s birthday. I no longer remember if I was just trying to be funny and broached the subject on my own, or if maybe the library started it by asking if I needed a bowl of all-green M&Ms or a bowl of everything but green M&Ms or whatever. How did green M&Ms become the yardstick of celebrity dressing-room excess? I Google it and find the legend attributed to Van Halen on one website and Aerosmith on another. Probably neither is true. Anyway, to the library I believe I answered that color was immaterial but that I wanted M&Ms with the “m” on each candy to be replaced with the Greek letter “pi”, and also a dozen live doves.

These kinds of events are generally booked weeks or even months in advance, so by the evening of Dr. Seuss’s birthday I’d forgotten all about the conversation. They anticipated this and had a copy of our last email exchange attached to the bags of custom M&Ms they gave me. It seems Mars Incorporated could not, at the time, put the letter “pi” on an M&M, but they could print “3.14…” They could print it on each and every green oblate spheroid.

It was all a very nice gesture, but it made me sensitive to where these sorts of careless jokes can lead. So now I just ask for the doves.

New Book

Who's on Captain Gluebeard's shoulder?
Gold is gold. That feather's golder.
Got a guess? It's time to share it.
It's Polly! She's the pirate's










Mother.

From Guess Again!, written by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Adam Rex. Available September 15th.

Mail Call 2: They Make the Totally Difference Quality Taste

Got a package recently from Team Boov (previously) in Florida. They actually sent this stuff to me a while ago, but they unknowingly sent it to my old address, so I hope they all decide to check up on my blog eventually and see this post.

Included was a "really classy shirt," an artistic interpretation of a Boov in Philly, and a flyer for what they presume to be a Boovish restaurant. I give my full endorsement to all of these claims.

Chicken Nugget Lemon Tooty is 3

And to celebrate they've put up a lot of art. Those of you who've visited CNLT before know that it's a blog kept by four kids of various ages (Elijah, Lily, Gracie, and Isaac) and their dad (Aaron Zenz), as a place for the kids' art. A fair amount of the art they post is inspired by books they read, so for the blog's third birthday Aaron thought it would be fun to ask some illustrators to create images inspired by the kids' art. CNLT fan art.

I'm proud to say those kids have posted pictures inspired by at least one of my books in the past. I've already blogged about it before. But I thought it would be overly self-indulgent of me to create fan art of their fan art of one of my books. Because what if one of them decided then to create fan art of the fan art of the fan art, and then the universe collapsed into an infinitely dense referential singularity. So I chose this one instead, by Gracie:

Click here to see more.

Early Work 3

Another bit of early work–another Santa, even, drawn two years after the last one. Again presented with editorial comments.

Click to enlarge.

Alaska Again

Okay, so I know you don't come here looking for photos of my recent trip to Alaska. Or maybe you do. If you do, go here.

But I don't want to drop the subject entirely without showing a group who came to see an evening teen/adult program I presented. They arrived wearing homemade Boov t-shirts and brought me one as well.

I present them here, along with some of the librarians who made my trip possible.

Click to enlarge.

And for those of you who're wondering when I'm going to get back to posting some art, here are some people I sketched while sitting in a Seward, Alaska coffee shop called The Sea Bean:

Mail Call

Interesting things I got in the mail recently:

Douglas Florian sent me a Frankenstein's Monster head he recently found on the streets of Hell's Kitchen (a neighborhood in New York City, not Hell's actual kitchen). Because I now hold the curious position of being a person of whom people are reminded when they see Frankenstein. It's so rough on the outside because it's actually a mold, once used to make some kind of soft-headed monster toy. Look at that detailed face inside.

I also received my first finished copy of Guess Again!, my next book with author Mac Barnett (who also wrote Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem). This book is going to make your head bleed rainbows. It was wicked hard to put together but worth it. I'll be posting art from it soon.

Land of the Midnight Sun

Actually, most of these outdoor photos were only taken around 10pm. I beg your pardon.

But I saw a moose! It was right on the shoulder as we were driving home. And after taking a half-dozen terrible photos I realized my lens was foggy with condensation. Hence they have an ambiguous, Sasquatchy quality to them. But this was totally a moose.

Earlier in the day I visited a library and got a hundred and twenty-odd kids to blow me a raspberry. Then I proceeded to take a bad picture of that as well, but these are totally human children.

Look how pretty Alaska is. That's glacier running down those mountains.

Pretty soon I'll get back to posting some actual art or something.

I Can See Russia From My Hotel

Other things I saw during my run this morning, in chronological order:

–Mountains hemmed in by snowy, languid clouds
–Plants with perfect little clusters of white flowers like they're boutonniere factories or something
–Fuchsia flowers like fireworks
–Violet flowers so intense you could wear them around your neck at a rave
–Mud flats!
–Fishing trawlers!
–Quietly still, heavy water
–Waterfowl!
–Instructions for what to do if I meet a moose
–A small prop plane AND a beautifully refurbished old blue and gold passenger train (slogan suggestion to the Alaskan Board of Tourism: Anchorage–Where the Twentieth Century Comes Alive!)

I had a great morning. This afternoon I have my first library visit, at the Z. J. Loussac branch. Pictures tomorrow.

7-Imp

Mac Barnett and the good ladies at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast and I are all talking about Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem today. There's a ton of art over there, including two or three pieces that can't be seen on this blog.

But I'd be remiss if I didn't give you something to look at. This is quite possibly my favorite piece from the book. Click to enlarge.

Citizens of Alaska!

I will be visiting the Anchorage and Seward areas in the coming week, talking about my work, reading, drawing on command, and signing books. Just look at all these events:

Tuesday, July 28th, 2pm at the Z.J. Loussac Public Library.

Wednesday, July 29th, 2pm at the Samson Dimond Branch Library
and 7pm at the Scott & Wesley Gerrish Branch Library.

Thursday, July 30th, 10:30am at the Muldoon Branch Library
and 6:30pm at the Z. J. Joussac Library again for a program aimed at teens and adults.

On Friday I'll be traveling to Seward.

Saturday, August 1st, 2pm, I'll be at the Seward Community Library.

Early Work 2

Another bit of early work, this time a drawing I did when I was three (EDIT: four, actually. I seem to have learned little about basic math since then). Again, presented with editorial comments.
Click to enlarge.

Misc. Department

This is apropos of nothing, but I had lunch at an IKEA the other day–doesn't "elderflower juice-box" sound like a lyric from an early nineties Beck song?

Early Work

Since moving back to Arizona my mom has dropped by some old drawings and stories of mine that she'd kept. I wrote this when I was seven. I present it now with editorial comments.
Click to enlarge.

Doodle

I little digitally painted head from last night, drawn and rendered with my Wacom while I was waiting for my wife to finish something up in another part of the house. I thought I'd been at it a while, but apparently the whole thing took twenty minutes. Which is telling me that I may be over-thinking things in my work as a whole.

Come Along and Ride on a Smektastic Voyage

I mentioned a while back that the paperback edition of The True Meaning of Smekday is out in paperback, and features a new 2-page story that didn't appear in hardcover. Naturally, I wanted to entice people to buy the new edition. But it's been out for a couple months, so I'm now willing to give the new short story away to readers of this blog. I want those people who were kind enough to read Smekday in hardback to read these two pages, so if you know such a person, please send them here.
Click the image to enlarge.

Finally.

I haven't posted anything in over a month. I was moving from Philadelphia (my home of eight years), back to Tucson, AZ. We're still living out of boxes, but I feel like I can finally take the time to blog again. And wasn't Freedom to Blog one of those Rooseveltian freedoms that Norman Rockwell illustrated all those years ago? I'm pretty sure it was, so there's no need to write me any letters about it.

Anyway, I'm remiss in announcing that Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem by Mac Barnett is now available! I illustrated it! If you've been following my posts about it, you may remember that Billy's mother has been threatening to buy him a blue whale if he doesn't shape up.
One morning, Billy's sure he can feel something watching him:

Well, maybe Mom can buy him a whale, but there's no way Billy's bringing it to school.

The finished painting.  That's me, basically, as the Fedup delivery man in the foreground.

This is, once again, from my new book Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem, written by Mac Barnett, available next month.

If They'd Gotten Two Whales There Would've Been Free Shipping.

A sketch from Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem by Mac Barnett, available next month.

Nick Cave

Every now and then I try my hand at caricature, usually just while sketching in front of the television. I don't have any particular gift for it, and I really admire those who do it well.

Tonight I was watching some Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds videos with my wife, and suddenly got the urge:

These don't usually work out this well on the first try. Then again, Cave's face is a bit easier than most. I might as well be bragging at having drawn Groucho Marx.

Here's the finished painting of that sketch I showed last week from my next picture book, Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem, written by Mac Barnett.  You'll notice this image has a much wider composition–between the sketch dummy stage and the final painted stage the book got lengthened and rearranged somewhat, and this illustration needed to turn into a two-page spread.

For the illustrators out there, this was painted in Photoshop with a Wacom Intuos tablet.

Another Billy Twitters Preview

Preliminary sketch from Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem, by Mac Barnett, in stores this June.  I'll show the finished painting soon.

Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem

Previously, I've shared a little bit of my forthcoming picture book, Billy Twitters and His Blue Whale Problem (written by Mac Barnett).  In the coming weeks I'm going to be showing a lot more, starting with this post.  First off, the cover again, this time with type in place:

Regular readers of this blog, and people who have seen me speak, already know that I like to use as much reference as possible for my illustrations, from photographs to...models:

Turns out it's really difficult to find good pictures of blue whales.  I guess they're to big to photograph.  There are a lot of good illustrations of them out there, and those were helpful, but what really helped me on this book was a nine-inch-long plastic blue whale toy.  I think you'll understand why when you see more illustrations from the book.

And, as I often do, I sculpted a little model of the titular character, Billy.  He's made out of Sculpey and painted with acrylics.

More soon.

SMEKDAY NOW IN PAPERBACK

The day you probably haven't been especially waiting for has now arrived: The True Meaning of Smekday is now available in paperback. 

AND!  

It contains a two-page, NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN story in the back.  Now it can be told.  The tale of how J.Lo revealed his alien identity to the world.

I don't want to say too much more about it at this point, except that it contains the following image:

That's all for now.