Ivy and Bean Drawings

Here are a few of my delightful visitors at the Princeton Book Festival last weekend. Over 75 girls, a few boys and one brave librarian drew pictures of Ivy and/or Bean for me. It was fantastic. Incidentally, Ivy and Bean received equal love with 30 drawings of each girl. The others drew the pair, and there was one random rabbit.
Here is a selection.

A Drawing for a Drawing (for a drawing)

 This Saturday September 21st (tomorrow in fact!) I will be at the Princeton Children's Book Festival, (with an astonishing bunch of authors and illustrators, (see the full list here!)
I am doing an Ivy and Bean giveaway, a drawing for a drawing. That is, you come to the festival, do me a drawing on the spot of Ivy and Bean, drop it in the receptacle designed for the purpose, and the winner will be randomly drawn, (plucked, not sketched) at the end of the day. You get the original painting for page 62 of Ivy and Bean Make the Rules (see below), and I get a lovely bunch of Ivys and Beans. Which I will put up here afterwards for those of you who can't make it to Princeton. I'm excited. See you there!

Greeting Cards from Whigby



I am thrilled to be collaborating with the Design Company, Whigby, on a series of Missed Connections greeting cards. Whigby, in the design team's own words, "is all about pattern and paper; eccentricity and authenticity; cheap cheeriness with a dash of cheekiness; lovely uncoated recycled broadsheets and perfect printing. Whigby adds to the pleasure of giving and receiving. Whigby is about concealment and revealment. Whigby is crisp, tailored, torn and tattered. Whigby is memorable, forgettable, timeless and ephemeral. Whigby!
You can find the cards by clicking the image above, and find out more about Whigby here.

Ivy and Bean Take the Case!

Watch out, you diabolical masterminds! There’s a new detective on Pancake Court: Bean! She laughs at danger! She solves even the most mysterious mysteries! What? There aren’t any mysteries? Then Bean and her assistant, Ivy, will make some!
Ivy and Bean Take the Case hits your independent bookstore on September 24th. In the meantime, you can read a sneaky snippet on the Chronicle Books website.
And if you just can't get enough of Our Favorite Girls in your every day life, Chronicle now offers you Ivy and Beanish things to make going back to school less unbearable. Folders! Lunchboxes! Click below...

 ps I recently found this photo taken when I was Ivy and Bean's age. Ha!

Missed Connections, Champagne and Tapas in Tribeca!

If you are in New York next Monday, please come and say hello. 

I'll be at The Bubble Lounge in Tribeca, 228 W Broadway from 7pm.

Happy Summer!

The Making of The Mighty Lalouche

I am thrilled to announce The Mighty Lalouche is finally here!
The author, Matthew Olshan and I first met competing for a cool spot at BEA in 2007, the year the air conditioning failed. We began a rambling conversation, during which I mentioned that I was an avid fan of vintage boxing photographs. Matthew, who shares an interest in early photography, went looking for portraits of turn-of-the-20th-century pugilists. What he found—proud, diminutive boxers in high-waisted shorts and booties, complete with astonishing mustaches—became the inspiration for The Mighty Lalouche, in which a tiny French postman turns out to be an invincible fighter. (It’s very nice to mention an interest on a whim and have a perfect story on the subject delivered to your inbox.)

I had to wait a few years before I could begin work and it soon became clear it would be absolutely, completely impossible to do this book without actually visiting the City of Light. (Really, any excuse to visit Paris. . . .) There I wandered the streets and talked to finch enthusiasts and postmen and took a billion photographs.

Back in the studio, I fell headlong into research. But when it came to making the first sketches, I found the images to be frustratingly two dimensional. I wanted to feel you could step into Lalouche’s world. I also wanted to try something I’d never done before, and with a perverse desire to complicate things, I decided to make the book in tatebanko, Japanese paper dioramas. I drew, painted, and cut out thousands of tiny pieces of paper to make Parisian streets and boxing-ring crowds and Lalouche’s cozy apartment. Often I sneezed and lost a bunch and had to start all over again.

Once the pieces were assembled into scenes, I enlisted the help of filmmaker Alex Rappoport to light and photograph the dioramas.

Most pictures books take me around four months to complete; The Mighty Lalouche took nearly two years. I became very fond of our small, steadfast, modest hero. He may be a boxing champion, but in his heart of hearts, he is still a postman. I like to imagine he is timeless and ageless, that even now he diligently walks the streets of Paris delivering brown paper packages tied up with string.

The Mighty Lalouche!

Click on the image for the full effect...

On the Road Again!

I have been on the road a bit lately. I visited the Gates Foundation in Seattle to open the exhibit, Let Every Child Have a Name, and was at the Western Washington SCBWI conference in Redmond to talk to - and draw with - children's book authors and illustrators, and to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, to speak about measles during World Immunization Week. The first day home I visited the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn and shared pictures and stories with first, second and third graders.
I have been fed and feted, seen such sights as the gum wall in Seattle and the Emergency Control Room at the CDC, spent time with esteemed Lions and Mac Barnett, and admired the drawings of artists aged 5 to... well... it wouldn't have been polite to ask.

And now, tomorrow I am off to India. My daughter, Olive and I will be accompanying the Measles and Rubella Initiative and Unicef on a mission to Uttar Pradesh to observe routine immunizations.
I have never been to India, but have wanted to go for ever. Mark Twain called it,
India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition... the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. 
I can't imagine all the things we'll see, but we'll be documenting with camera and pencils, and I'll try to post some of it here, (and on facebook and twitter.)

So they went off together...

After a decade, ten books and around 700 drawings, I have painted Ivy and Bean for the last time.
The tenth book, written of course by the glorious Annie Barrows, will be out in the Fall and is as funny and endearing as you would expect.
It's very hard to think of Ivy and Bean not being part of my life, they've bossed me around for so long. Maybe they'll come back as eye-rolling, leg-shaving teenagers. I do hope they won't disown us.

Ring the Bell!

When anyone in the studio finishes a book, a bell is rung. We have yet to install a proper bell, so the bell in question is Sergio Ruzzier's bicycle bell. Which means that the conclusion of a book must occur on a day Sergio rides his bike to work. Fortunately he's undeterred by flurries.
The book I just finished illustrating is a middle grade novel, The 9 Lives of Alexander Baddenfield, written by John Bemelmans Marciano, who also shares our studio.
The 9 Lives of Alexander Baddenfield is a work of genius. I think you'll like it.
Here's a sneak preview of a couple of drawings.

Happy Holidays!

Just in time for the holidays, my father told me a story about Christmas in France in a sleeping bag. It's over here.
Wherever you are in the world, however you celebrate, I wish you all a very happy and peaceful time.

McNally Jackson Holiday Window

I really like glitter. It's not even a guilty pleasure, I have no guilt where glitter is concerned. I also love a Northern Hemisphere glittery, snowy Christmas, (much as I miss the beach and bush and frangipani and mangoes of an Australian Christmas). Doing a store window display was a childhood fantasy come true and I thank McNally Jackson for letting me loose behind their glass. It's a celebration of the most recent Ivy and Bean book, of books in general, of the holiday season in New York and of glitter. I even snuck Ahab in there.

Free and Open to the Public!

This Thursday, November 15, from 6:30 - 8:30pm, I will be speaking at FIT in NYC. (I probably won't be speaking that whole time. I'll make you do some of the talking too. If you come.)

This is a reprise of the (sold out! – except it was free) presentation I gave at the Met earlier in the year. With a few twists and addenda and flights of fancy. And I can't guarantee refreshments, 

although we can live in hope. 

Please come.



Thursday, November 15, 6:30pm – 8:30pm
FIT
Fred D. Pomerantz Art and Design Center, Room D211
Seventh Avenue at 27th Street

Here You Go!

Thank you all for your kind emails and comments about the whales. Since then a hurricane has come and gone in my neck of the coast, leaving thousands of people sifting through sludge, and relying on bottled water and huddling under borrowed blankets. A week later this usually resilient city is still reeling.
I have just made an edition of 50 numbered, signed prints of the 50 whales, ships and icebergs for sale in my Etsy shop. 50% of the proceeds of each print will go directly to hurricane relief through the American Red Cross.
Prints are 14" x 22" on Arches aquarelle archival paper, and are a steal at $100! Print number 1 will be auctioned at the Housing Works Bookstore as part of their Moby Dick marathon next weekend. More on that later.
And thank you!

Whales and Ships and Icebergs

Sometimes when you have multiple, simultaneous deadlines looming, when you feel like you're just not making any visible, satisfying progress anywhere, it's necessary to push all those projects to one side and throw yourself into an extra-curricular exercise. In this case, because I was having trouble finishing a single painting, I decided to make 50 paintings. Possibly in honor of Moby Dick's birthday. I'm thinking I might make them into teatowels, or wrapping paper.

92Y

Just a quick note to say I will be speaking today on a panel at the 92StY in NYC as part of the Social Good Summit.

"Held during UN Week, the Social Good Summit unites a dynamic community of global leaders to discuss a big idea: the power of innovative thinking and technology to solve our greatest challenges. This September, we want YOU to join the conversation with leaders and citizens from around the globe. The most innovative technologists, influential minds and passionate activists will come together with one shared goal: to unlock the potential of new media and technology to make the world a better place, and then to translate that potential into action."

All sorts of creative thinkers will be speaking over the next three days, and I'm very excited to be part of it. Events will be streamed live here, and you can find out more about it here.

And then tomorrow, Sunday September 23rd, I will be at the 92StY Street Fair. I will have the posters from the measles project on display and will be doing a bit of drawing with whoever stops by and hopefully that will be you. And people have asked if I'll sign their subway posters and I say YES!, I'll sign your elbow if you like, and if you donate $1 to immunize a child against measles I'll sign your other elbow too!

Hope to see you there! 

Launch of the Measles Exhibit in DC Today

In some parts of Africa, families don't name their children until the threat of measles has passed. The project, Let Every Child Have a Name is being launched in Washington DC today at a Measles and Rubella Initiative Partnership meeting at the National Headquarters of the American Red Cross. The exhibition will include illustrations based on my trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where I met families and communities devastated by measles. It can be seen online by visiting the Measles and Rubella Initiative, or by clicking on the image above.
The posters are designed by my friend Sara Gillingham, the multi-talented illustrator and designer, (also the design dynamo behind Ivy and Bean).
None of this would have been possible without the creative, innovative, passionate and untiring Christine McNab, the force behind the Measles and Rubella Initiative.
As I said in my previous post, I've been working on these illustrations most of the Summer and have the dark circles under my eyes and the callouses on my fingers to prove it. I am crossing my callousy fingers and hoping that these posters do their job; that people see them and learn about the story of measles, and even more importantly how simple it is to protect children against the disease, and how we can help save one child with one dollar. Or, you know, three children with three dollars. And how, collectively, we are really in sight of an end to measles worldwide, if we can get it together. The posters will show you how. And you can donate here! Hooray!

Measles Project

I have been working all Summer on a project for the Measles and Rubella Initiative; a series of illustrations based on my trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier in the year. The illustrations are for posters which will hopefully help the movement to eliminate measles worldwide by 2020. It has been wonderful working on these paintings and rather strange to emerge back in the world... my head has been filled with the Congo for months, with images of mothers and babies waiting in long, snaking lines outside tiny huts where health workers vaccinate one child at a time. Images of long, hollowed out canoes delivering the vaccine up the river to remote villages. Images of children holding up their purple-dyed pinky fingers to show they've been vaccinated and are safe from measles.
The project will be launched next week at the Red Cross headquarters in Washington DC. After which I look forward to sharing it all with you.

Please join me at the Met!