Oh dear, sorry.

It's been rather a long time. I've been a bit consumed with the other blog, and this one has become the overlooked sibling. The homely one, just quietly getting on with its algebra homework, hoping that maybe if it perfects that little curlicue on its letter Y, that someone might one day notice. And be really impressed.
Anyway, I don't have much to offer, except photographs of my apartment on Design Sponge which most people are finding really, really creepy. But the picture of the unforgivable pile of shoes is making everyone feel a lot better about themselves. I consider it a Community Service.

The Collyer Brothers

This is an illustration which accompanied a review in yesterday's Boston Globe of E. L. Doctorow's Homer and Langley. I don't remember when I first read about the Collyer brothers, whose Harlem home was a bulging receptacle for their hoarded belongings: tons of newspapers, literally, broken umbrellas and perambulators, at least nine pianos and an entire Model T Ford... Trapped by their possessions, in 1947 they met their grisly demise and their story has always captivated me.
I think of them particularly when I come home from holidays weighed down with a pincushion made from the hoof of an indeterminate animal, say, or a jar of doll limbs, or a Victorian child's orphaned shoe. I don't need these things, not really. And yet, I find it hard to walk away from that shoe which has survived over a hundred years, separated from its pair, no longer useful (for the purpose it was designed at least), with hundreds of secret journeys imprinted on its sole.
At the same time my desk, where I am trying to illustrate three picture books, is a mess of teetering piles and my work space is less than 15% of the available surface. I can't help feeling I'd be more efficient without all the hooves and boots and miniature limbs.
But you should see that pincushion...
Sigh.

Shop!

In response to a truckload of requests (or a snoodful at least), I have made prints available for purchase. I have started with images from the Missed Connections project, but now that the machinery is in place, anything is possible. You have only to ask, provide an address and part with a modest sum.

When You Reach Me

This is the cover for Rebecca Stead's new novel, When You Reach Me, and a couple of the alternative early stage sketches. I'm always curious about the ones that were left on the floor... Gone With the Wind, for instance, was nearly called Tote the Weary Load. The Great Gatsby was almost Incident at West Egg, and my brother narrowly escaped being named Peregrine.
All that aside, this is a really, really good book.

Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Here are two posters I illustrated recently for Piper Theatre productions of Hamlet (top) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (above). If you live in traveling distance of Brooklyn, the performances are free! and the schedule is here.

From Yesterday's Observer

Many Observer-reading friends sent me a link to this article about pop star Mika last night, with the following fantastic tidbit:
"Waiting outside afterwards is a gaggle of 100 fans, including two who have dressed up as Lollipop girls, after the song. That sort of dedication is apparently typical of his hardcore followers. On his website, Mika recently started a dialogue with the illustrator Sophie Blackall, who posted a drawing of a girl in an ingeniously designed dress. Last night in Berlin, one fan - a man - turned up dressed exactly as the girl in the drawing. "I don't know if other artists get that sort of attention," he says, "because they laugh when I speak to them about it." "
I haven't felt so honoured since a Mexican fellow had a full back tattoo done of my drawing for Tim Burton's Big Fish. Sadly I never got a photo of that.

Here is Our Surreal Scroll

More than twenty surreal children turned up at the library yesterday to shuffle nouns and verbs and adjectives and elbow each other (ever so politely) for their bit of the scroll to embellish. It was SUCH FUN! Some of my favorite lines were:
The noisy trumpet laughs at fire
You gave an elegant ribbon
[to] A running confident monkey
The jumping round ear
is stealing a tiny moon
in embarrassing pointed waters.

Please excuse the bumpy video...