Ilustratour (one 'l') part 2

Day one of our week long workshop. We played exquisite corpse straight away and the results were stupendous. Then we introduced ourselves and the students showed me some of their work, (fantastically diverse and so good, I threw my hands in the air and told them to go home), then we stopped for coffee, all crowded in a nearby bar, then because many of them had said they were afraid of color, we all painted feathers and fish scales, and we made one bird and one fish and their feathers were so varied and beautiful... There are twenty one women in the group and they naturally separated into fish and bird and arranged the feathers and scales lovingly by hue and then in an extraordinary feat of cooperative glueing, stuck them all onto the respective backgrounds. I admit I was almost teary with the results. My battery faltered so the bird dominates in the video, but you'll get the idea...

They also named their colors. Some of my favorites were: Dust of the Wings of the Dragonfly, Oxidized Maize, and He Ate Something Bad Earlier.

Class finishes at 7, and it's so hot that you can't emerge for dinner until at least 10. I am enjoying drifting along behind a group of extraordinarily kind Spaniards who know how to order tapas and who feed me revuelto de morcilla and force to me to agree to its deliciousness before telling me it's a concoction of eggs, blood and pine nuts.
Oh and when I returned to the hotel the restaurant next door was on fire! It's all go in Valladolid.

Illustratour, part 1

For the next week I am in Valladolid which is a small town North of Madrid, for Illustratour, an international children's book illustration workshop. I will be teaching 20 Spanish students. I sincerely hope they speak English because my Spanish is "flojo". I am in excellent company; there are illustrators from Spain and France and Argentina and Japan, and last night over dinner, when language failed us, we resorted to pencils and paper napkins and found our common tongue.
So this is my course description:
Foxes, Handkerchiefs and Storm Clouds"
In this workshop we will explore Style and Character and Setting in Children's Books. We'll play games like "Exquisite Corpse" and "Beast, Bird, Fish" and "Foxes, Handkerchiefs and Storm Clouds" and we'll make big drawings together and then cut them up and share the pieces. We'll tell stories and draw pictures from them and share techniques and cake. We'll describe things from our lives and laugh a lot, (hopefully), and draw a lot, (definitely), and be surprised by all sorts of things in ourselves and each other (almost certainly) and at the end we will each make one beautiful, serious painting, and take home the seeds of a hundred more.
I am going to try and document the week because I think it's going to be quite...well...amazing.
Here is my first view of Spain...
and this is my first calamari with aioli and first tinto de verano which is my new favourite drink.

I'll get to drawing soon. And storks! I mustn't forget to tell you about the storks.

Long Time, No Blog

I'm sorry it's been such a long time between drinks, and you might be forgiven for thinking I'd gone all lazy, but in fact I have been at my desk night and day for the last several weeks. I have a callous the size of Gibraltar on my middle finger to prove it, and two finished picture books. The first (above) is Edwin Speaks Up, written by April Stevens for Schwartz and Wade. It has the two things I'm terrified of drawing: cars and supermarkets. The story is hilarious and despite my illustraphobia where cars and aisles of groceries are concerned, I had so much fun with it. And those are ferrets. Not dogs. Or racoons.
This was my inspiration:

The second book I just handed in was a Once in a Lifetime kind of project... Aldous Huxley's only children's book, The Crows of Pearblossom, for Abrams. I still can't quite believe they let me do this. It was an honor and a joy and worth sacrificing my career prospects as a hand model.
Chad Beckerman, self-confessed mild-mannered art director, documented the art handover very nicely on his blog.

Small, embroidered children

My very dear friend Nick has made these funny and beautiful (my favorite combination) embroidered silk scarves and linen pillows. You can buy them on Etsy. Quick, while stocks last! Perfect for Mother's Day. Or Cranky Pants Day. Though you couldn't be cranky for long, festooned in such a scarf.

Finally! My eBay obsession is justified.

The delightful Lexi Green has written a piece for The Inside Source linking my work to my eBay purchases, thereby giving me permission to spend future hours trawling for treasures without guilt. It's work, I tell you!
Happy Spring! (My daughter took this picture of our newly emerged basil seedlings.)

Featured Seller on Etsy!

I am very happy to be the featured seller on Etsy today and am using the opportunity to clean out some paintings from my studio, and turn them into something I need more. The last time I did this, it was for my daughter's braces, (and lots of you can take credit for individual straight incisors and neatly aligned molars); this time it's in the name of Summer Camp. Who'd have thought my children would want to go far, far away from me into the wild woods? And that it would be so expensive? (In case you're curious, they want to go to BEAM, which looks truly amazing, and I'm sure they will come out better human beings for going there.)
10% of proceeds will also go to our two public schools in Brooklyn, which along with many others have suffered sudden and severe budget cuts. I know it's minor compared to Haiti, but they can't actually afford paper anymore, let alone music or art or visiting authors.
A click on either of the pictures above will take you to Etsy...

Finishing Lines

I have finally, finally delivered Spinster Goose, Twisted Rhymes for Naughty Children (written by Lisa Wheeler to be published by Atheneum). At the first production meeting about two years ago, I looked at my feet and muttered nervously that I wanted to set these pictures in a Victorian workhouse and for the pervading atmosphere to be bleak. Ann Bobco, Namrata Tripathi and Ginee Seo were dreamy collaborators... The proposal was met with hearty guffaws and slaps on the back and free reins to go forth and draw a world of mean geese and dunces and urchiny urchins. Ahh... what fun I had.

When You Reach Me

I mentioned Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me last year, but I'm thrilled she just won the Newbery Award (which is all to do with what's inside the book, you understand... the jacket could be covered in easy-wipe peel 'n' stick plaid vinyl and it would still win).

Moving House is Exhausting

Moving house around Christmas time was stupid, but moving while I have six books either due, nearly due or overdue was insane. This picture is not to be relied upon as accurate or even representative. It implies that my house was not heavy, that I had time to iron clothes and that I was smiling. Even the red door is a lie. The neighbours have a red door though, and I have promised the children that one day we too will have a red door. Our door right now is painted "Refried Beans".

My Brain is an Unwieldy Mass of Dryer Lint

I think I might be mad. I have three (or is it five?) picture books now officially overdue, I'm moving house in ten days time, I haven't given a thought to the impending "holidays" and yet somehow I find myself volunteering to draw five minute portraits all day this coming Saturday to raise money for my son's elementary school. So if anyone is in Brooklyn this weekend, and wants to come by PS29 in Cobble Hill, and sit for a five minute portrait for $15 (a bargain!) it's for a good cause. I'd come early in the day though. I have a feeling the quality might decline as the day wears on.

Doomed to Dance

The new Ivy and Bean is out, book 6, Doomed to Dance. If anyone is in New York this Saturday, in the vicinity of the Brooklyn Museum, between 12 and 4pm, I will be signing copies. And hands. And foreheads. I will be in the rousing company of at least thirty other Brooklyn authors and illustrators. We have all promised craft activities for the wee children, and in return they have promised us coffee. It will be spectacular!

ps I know there must be a way of showing this clip without the right hand side being lopped off, but I'm stymied as to how. If you'd like to see the unclipped clip, you can here. Don't laugh. I really did try.

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...

Exquisite Corpse in the Library

If you happen to be in New York this Saturday, in the vicinity of the Mulberry Street branch of the Public Library, around 2pm, I'm going to be playing a version of my favorite game with thirty feet of paper, a bunch of Surrealist children and fistfuls of nouns, verbs and adjectives. It should be fun. Click on the picture for more info. (Incidentally I found this picture in my desk along with sheaves of others, from many late nights, with many (obviously) talented friends. Unfortunately I can't remember whose work this is. Feel free to claim credit if you recognize your limbs.)

Book Expo America

Yesterday, at BEA in the cavernous Javits Center in New York, Annie Barrows and I handed out hundreds of these Ivy and Bean cookies. I was rather hoping they'd be Ivy and Bean shaped cookies, and possibly Ivy and Bean flavoured, but at least they'd have mutant icing cross eyes and wayward smiles. But they were professional cookies and looked almost like... books. Mm. Tasty.