Robert's Snow

I'm proud once again to create an original, snowflake-shaped painting for The Jimmy Fund and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The snowflake, and many others decorated by fellow kid's book creators, will be auctioned online to raise money for cancer research this fall. I'll post this again when the auction is underway in November, but here's a preview:

If you'd like to see the snowflake I painted for the last auction, click here.

Character in Search of a Story #2

G.I.(tract) JOE, THE CUDDLIEST TAPEWORM
Click here to see Character in Search of a Story #1.

Home.

Got back this afternoon, after 28 hours on airplanes and in airports and sleeping beneath an escalator with a beach towel under my head. Here are a few pictures from Kauai. There are chickens everywhere on the island, roaming free, getting into all kinds of chickenbusiness.

Kauai Turtle

I'm still on vacation, but I thought I'd post this sketch. It's of any one of the big sea turtles I've been snokeling with here in Kauai–they all look the same to me. That's not an ethnic slur, it's just the truth.
This was drawn strictly from memory, so I'm not claiming a high level of accuracy here. But I'm happy with it.

On Vacation

I'm on holiday as of tomorrow, but I'm leaving behind a simpsonized version of me to watch over the place while I'm gone. See you in about a week.

Character in Search of a Story #1

CHIMPANZEKE

Book Recommendation

Last night I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, the seventh and last book from a series by a Mr. J. Rowling. They follow the adventures of an English boy wizard at magic school. I recommend the whole series to anyone interested in stories about magic, boys, schools, or England. They were originally published in Great Britain but you can get them here, too.

The True Meaning of Smekday – Making the Cover 3

So here's the cover we selected and I painted again, in case you didn't see it the first time. This is what the jacket will look like when the books ship in September:

But, waste not, want not. I still liked the flying car cover idea, so it became the book's title page:

And, finally, I used another of the concepts on the book's case–you'll have to lift the dust jacket to see this "alternate cover."

Incidentally, if you'd like to learn a little more about The True Meaning of Smekday, click here.

The True Meaning of Smekday – Making the Cover 2

So here are four cover ideas that I sort of settled on as my best bets. The story features, among other things, a road trip in a flying car, a theme park with the Snow Queen's castle at its center, and large spaceships that have fish bowl-like tops and hose-tentacled lower halves. This is hopefully enough information to understand why I liked these images.

The True Meaning of Smekday – Making the Cover

Here are a number of thumbnails and sketches of potential covers for my fall novel, The True Meaning of Smekday. I sketched out more ideas for this cover than I do for most–I was just really excited about this project, and the story is such that it didn't suggest an obvious solution to me early on as some do.

I had high hopes for something like the setch below, but on paper it didn't seem to work as well as it did in my head. In fact, I wonder if anyone other than me can even tell what's going on.

More soon.

Useless Quiz Dept.

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Studio Tour

My studio is actually sort of clean for a change, so I thought I'd post pictures. I always like seeing where artists work. Like in this flickr stream by Brian Biggs.
Anyway, here's my decidedly less impressive studio.

A 2-part panorama of the whole deal:


Closeup of my workstation:

What's left of the paper steamboat model I made whilst working on Ste-e-e-e-eamboat A-Comin'!. See the "BOOKS" link at the right for details.

7 Impossible Things

Check out this post on the kids' lit blog Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. You can see a page from my fall picture book, Pssst!, as well as a painting of the alien star of my fall novel, The True Meaning of Smekday. Then keep reading the blog for all kinds of great interviews and reviews.
In the meantime, here's one of my favorite panels from Pssst!

Super Models, But Not the Good Kind.

Just a quick post to show this photo of a few of my models for Pssst!. In the center is a Sculpey head I made of my human character, Zooey, and she's flanked by a couple of nice little toys from Schleich. These, in conjunction with a lot of photos of real animals, helped me paint.

Pssst!–Making the Cover

Here's a potentially embarrassing look behind the scenes at the making of the cover of Pssst! (see previous post for the final cover).
My first finished sketch was theatically similar, but with a completely different composition ang title design. The thumbnail:

and the finished sketch, with some digital color:

Harcourt didn't like it. I can't remember why. But I like the final cover better, so they must have been right. Here are a few subsequent stages:

That last one turned into the final cover you can see below. The title changed a bit–typographical artist Judythe Sieck helped me redesign it into something a little cleaner and easier to read.
That's all for now, more in a few days.

Fall Preview–Pssst!

Here's the jacket of my fall '07 picture book, Pssst!. It's to be released at the beginning of September by Harcourt. It's the story of a day at the zoo, and what happens when the animals start asking for favors. And it's got penguins in it, which I understand the kids like. More images from the book to come.

BEA Thanks

Thank you to everyone who ame to see me at Book Expo America last week in New York City. I had a great show, and a couple of great signings with Harcourt and Hyperion.

Special thanks to the guy inside the gorilla suit at my Harcourt signing. I wish I could remember his name. The Javits Center was hot enough for the rest of us without wearing black fur. And I know he was dripping sweat at the end, because he accidentally flicked some of it on me when he waved goodbye. Goodbye, talking gorilla. Fare thee well.

Another Oldie

Here's another sketchbook page from about seven or eight years ago. I want to stress that most of my sketchbook pages do not look like this. This was the product of one of those perfect days, when it seems you can draw no wrong. This was before I got into kids' books, and I was trying my hand at celebrity caricature. So that explains most of the page. And the age of these drawings explains why I thought it was relevant to caricature Marilyn Manson.

Seven Year Sketch

It was late 1999 as I huddled in my secluded mountain compound, awaiting Y2K and drawing this sketch. It was intended as a Magic: The Gathering card, if you can believe that. I was only meant to draw an automaton, but I had this urge to put him in a tree. The Art Director rejected the concept, and I was sort of relieved. I liked this guy so much I wanted to do something with him myself.

I've tried to insert the poor little robot into a number of projects over the years without success. One such project was a poem. After a number of false starts I realized that the only thing in the poem that really wasn't working was the robot, so I took him out. The poem became my first book as both author and illustrator, Tree Ring Circus. Here's a detail from one of the paintings. Someday, little robot.

Book Expo America!

There's something about that name that's always sounded like a theme park to me, or a World's Fair–ride the river rafts of Twain Town! Tilt at windmills in Quixote Junction! Get carried helplessly through the soul-crushingly confusing waterslides of Kafka's Splashocracy!

And so on.

Anyway, Book Expo America is only sort of like that. It's the big annual book industry convention, and this year it's in New York City from May 31 to June 3. If you're attending, I'll be signing copies of my next picture book, Pssst! at the Harcourt booth on Friday between 11:00 and 12:00, and signing copies of my first novel, The True Meaning of Smekday, at the Hyperion signing area between 3:00 and 4:00.

I've also donated some Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich art to the ABC Annual Secret Garden Silent Auction that takes place Friday night at Copacabana. If you're going, look for me there. I'll be the guy who looks like me.

I'm really mad at Iron Man right now.

There, I said it.
It feels good to get that off my chest.

Sketchasaurus Rex

3 fellas I drew in my sketchbook today:

Shoe

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. In half of a duplex, really, a matching pair of shoes on a block lined with other matching pairs. She wished people would call them shoeplexes, but no one ever did.

Her shoe was one of a pair of old lace-up boots, very tall and stately and elegant, and she was proud of this. It had its drawbacks--the leather needed oiling constantly or it would crack in the sun, and the sole leaked sometimes when it rained. Still, she'd have hated to live in a tennis shoe, or in one of the endless pairs of nearly identical loafers that had cropped up during the baby boom.

Not that the baby boom hadn't happened for her as well. Not that she hadn't had her own baby boom of astonishing proportions.

She had, in fact, so many children she was a bit at a loss. Where had they all come from? Well, men, she supposed. So many men. Returning soldiers at first, their fresh faces unspoiled by the war, but then it was just any kind of man who could make her feel for a while like she was a woman, and not just the mother of a hundred and three.

One hundred and four. She forgot to count Mary. Why did she always forget Mary?

Had she learned somewhere that it takes nine months to make a baby? Well if she had, she thought, she'd learned it too late. Too late to do her any good. That showed what came of having an education, she thought. If you went to a proper school perhaps you didn't have to have so many babies. She looked for a pencil and paper, finding the former beneath Brian and the latter stuck to Jane, and tried to work the figures. Nine months, times one hundred and three, no, four babies. Nine hundred thirty-six months. Or seventy-eight years.

Hmmm, she thought, that sounded about right. Perhaps she had taken nine months to have each child. How clever of her. She smiled and gazed out the window in the toe of her home. She wished people would call them wintoes, but no one ever did.

"Look at this," said a voice.

The old woman turned toward the voice, and found a round little face that was unfamiliar.

Oh, it was Mary. It would be Mary.

"Look at what they're saying about us," said Mary. "About you."

The girl thrust a frayed piece of notebook paper under the old woman's nose. It smelled like children. But didn't everything?

"Can't read without my glasses," she said. "You know--"

Mary read it for her.

"It says, 'There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she was a burden on the welfare system.' This was taped to my locker, Mother. They're taped everywhere."

The old woman turned over the paper she'd used to do her figures and held it at arm's length. What do you know, she thought, they are taped everywhere.

Plymouth Meeting Friends

I had a great school visit the other day at the Plymouth Meeting Friends School in Plymouth Meeting, PA. Are you a school? Do you know someone who is? If you're interested in having me come visit, draw, show slides, and share my SEVEN SURE-FIRE WAYS TO LOSE WEIGHT NOW, I may be available to do everything but the weight-loss stuff. Drop me a line.
Here's a great welcome poster some of the students drew. Check out the portrait of me in the corner!

Final Spectrum Preview

I've been putting off posting the last piece of mine to make it into this year's Spectrum annual. It's the cover of my first novel, The True Meaning of Smekday, which won't be published until September. So I though this post could be better timed to the release of the book, but oh well. I'll be posting more about Smekday and my other fall release, Pssst!, in the coming months, so please visit often and remember to tip your waitress.

Incidentally, if you'd like to learn a little more about The True Meaning of Smekday, click here.