The Woods

I'm heading out for the weekend, my friend Bruce is getting married in the woods, not outside though.I've been having computer problems so I'm sorry it's taking so long to respond to stuff. At the moment I'm crouched in awkward position in the living room because this is the only place I can get in the internet.I'm also dealing with a couple of deadlines. I've been doing a short Robot Museum piece for Scholastic, I have to have sketches and an updated script done by Monday. Also, the kids I teach are in finals, throw in the book launch and it's a pretty busy time right now. Times like this I just want to sit around and read a book.I'll post more about the Scholastic thing next week. This picture is a bit of a break from the Robot Museum. It's Kathleen, a character from the science fiction book Slan by A E Van Vogt, one of my favorite books. Great epic scale space opera. He was Canandian too. Next week I'm going to relax and treat myself to an Indiana Jones Matinee. Have a great weekend.

Feebot

Originally made as a toy for children, these tiny antiques flutter about the Museum and the forest outside. The Museum originally purchased fifty but now they seem to number in the hundreds as lost and forgotten Feebots find their way to the Museum. At night the in the forest you can see them gliding about, their lit bellys casting a weird greenish glow.

Hausbot

Once the most popular model, the Hausbot was seen everywhere. Hausbot was the ultimate in brass servants. Since the Lokmek corporation has been given the full monopoly on robot construction, the day of the unique, custom robot has passed.

Catbot

Catbot is about one hundred years old. No ones knows what it is for.

Astrobot

Astrobot would wait patiently in the spaceship as it hurtled through the galaxy waiting to clamber out and fix anything that broke or got hit by meteors outside. This robot was found orbiting Pluto, no one knows how he got there.

Egbot

Created to withstand harsh conditions, Egbot has seen some of the worst environments in the Galaxy. It is outfitted with tools for any situation. Egbot is the toughest robot there is. Now it clomps sadly through the Museum. It would tell stories but it's voice systems are broken and you can't get those parts anymore.

Mimbelbot, The King's Robot

Once the robotic servants of royalty two centuries ago, there is only one working Mimbelbot known to exist and it resides in the Robot Museum. Helpful, polite and strange, you can hear it's feet clunking loudly down the corridors.

Potbot's Everywhere

Once it seemed that everyone had a Potbot. They floated along the city streets in huge numbers, they were in every office and home. They made the world seem strange and mysterious, these ornate clock-work looking robots. No two were exactly alike. Now, sadly, they are relagated to museums as the last one was made over 40 years ago. People say they still float around abandoned deep space colonies, waiting for someone to return so that it can take notes, run errands or record stories. They are best at recording stories.

Museum Tours Resume....Flobot

Here is the key holder to the robots at the Museum. I'm going to concentrate more on the Robot Museum comic book over the next few months. Here's the plan: I'm going to work on the Museum while I do odd illustration jobs over the Spring and Summer. I'll post on my progress as I go. Plus I figured out how robot brains work! Photons! I just had my first mad scientist moment. I'll be reposting some robots so you can see all the robots together.

Interview

Here's a local interview done by Aaron Harpell:

1. Your work with Nimbus' A Forest For Christmas is beautiful. Was that your first children's book illustration?

Thank you so much! I really laboured at it. I loved the story and wanted to
give something to the finished work that would add to it in a meaningful way.
This was my first published work, save some self published work in high school.2. When Nimbus approached you to work on Terrible, Horrible, Smelly Pirate, how did you come up with your characters? Did they develop by working with the author, reading the text, or just thinking about kids and pirates... How do you tackle a project?
The characters popped right out of the wonderful text. There was a certain tone and atmosphere to this story that I really wanted to capture, something fun and wild, like children running on the beach. I wanted to portray a magical place where I felt this story happened and wanted to portray characters that fit into that world. All my work is like that, the text is like a window to another place that I look through. There are things inferred between the lines in any text as well; Memories we all have of going to the beach of being pirates in our minds of the magic of dress up.

As to how I approach any given project, it's always the same. Lots and lots of sketching. If it's a book I'll read through it a few times to get a sense of place and atmosphere then I do scores of postage stamp pictures. I also do a lot of visual research which suggests other things and soon the pictures have acquired a life of their own and I'm running along with them, trying to keep up.

I love to get author input but I don't always find it necessary.If the author or authors want to collaborate more directly with me, I'm fine with that as well.
3. You teach kids how to create art (uh... I think I remember you mentioning this). Do you think that helps you create illustrations that appeal to children? Do you learn anything from watching kids create?

One big lesson I've learned from working with kids is you have to be fairly unselfconcsious to be creative. You can't be too cynical or afraid of messing up.
4. What are you working on now?
I'm working on a project with Scholastic.
5. (if you can somehow work the book fair you mentioned last night into an answer, and want to expand on the Muslim illustrators, which I thought was cool). What did you think of the Toronto Book Fair? Did you see any different illustration styles that appealed to you?
The Toronto book fair was a great experience. I met some amazing people and learned a bit about how the industry works on a bigger scale.I did a signing there, which was an odd and flattering experience. People really love illustrated books. I did my signing at the same time as horror writer Clive Barker did his. He was across the aisle from me, there were a lot of odd moments like that. I also got to meet some writers and artists who I've long admired, like governor general winner Wallace Edwards. That was a real thrill. I'm so grateful to be part of this whole thing.

An Old Picture

Because Viviane did it http://www.vivianeschwarz.blogspot.com/ and I thought it was cool, here's an old picture of me. I loved stuffed animals so much. And that couch looks like a jungle....

A Typical Day

Frank Gardner tagged me to out line a typical day of mine. While no days seem to me to be particularly typical I'll cobble to together an outline....
7 am to 7:30 am Julie goes to work on the bus, I walk down with her with the dog, Benny.
7:30 to 8:30 Breakfast, coffee and email reading and blogging stuff.
8:30 to about 3 PM or so I work or I try to, this is usually the bulk of my work day. It is interspersed with dog walks, reading breaks, food breaks, changing the C.D. compulsive email checking, phone calls, list making etc...
3:00 to 4:30 I'll often take a break here
4:30 to 5:30 Julie returns from work and the dog and I retrieve her.
5:30 to 6:30 hopefully more work before supper
6:30 7:30 Supper
7:30 till 11:00 or so is sort of a work time but very broken up by other stuff.
And I go to sleep between 11 and 12......
And I tag Abigail http://www.theodesign.com/blog/
Angela http://www.angelatoshoppe.blogspot.com/
Paige http://www.paigekeiser.blogspot.com/
and Jennifer http://www.art-words-life.blogspot.com/

Cobequid Consolidated

Yesterday I went to Cobequid Consolidated School in Old Barns Truro and had an amazing time!!!

I wish I grew up in a place called Old Barns! How cool is that? I took the bottom photo to show the landscape around there. The kids were so much fun and cool! The teachers were great too!

The top picture is from Tristan and it's hanging in a special place in my home. Thanks Tristan!

The two pictures below are from Mrs. Stewart's grades four and five. If it's not obvious I'll explain this one to you... It's a cyborg monkey ninja super hero, the robot in ropes is the bad guy.

Fun! Why can't I think of ideas like that? In another class we drew a hockey playing penguin in front of a barn. These guys know barns. Thanks for the great time everyone!

Book Review : Castle Waiting by Linda Medley

People who have been reading my blog for a while might recall that in high school I self published my own comic books. This was the late 90's and self publishing was a huge exciting idea. The two big comics of that time, well the ones that were most important to me, were Bone by Jeff Smith and Castle Waiting by Linda Medley. I found these books so exciting because they were so fresh and were doing things that only people in France and Belgium seemed to do: making cool comic books. Linda Medley inspired me to make my own comic, The Crow's Nest and sell it myself. Linda even published a letter I wrote her along with a drawing I did of her character Rackham in an issue of Castle Waiting.

I recently bought the gorgeous hard cover collected edition of Castle Waiting published by Fantagraphics and it was every bit as good as I remember. I highly recommend this book.

Anais Goldemberg http://www.anaisgoldemberg.com/ sent me this link where you can read the first few pages http://www.chateaulattente.com/#

Thanks Anais!

Draw Draw Draw......

I'm doing this post Sunday night so I can fly out the door in the morning. I have a very rural school visit tomorrow (Turo) and a ceremony to attend in the afternoon so I'll be busy for a while.I thought I'd this post in advance. Can't wait to get home and start drawing again. These are all from my last two sketch books. The stuff worth showing you. I'm starting to detect odd new influences in my work, which for me is always delightful and suprising. I've been looking at more conceptual art and more cartoons lately and all sorts of random things. I have a tonne of robot drawings to share but I want to organize everything first as I start to concentrate more on the Robot Museum. There are too many ideas floating around! That's not a complaint, mind you.

Sunday Picture

From my first book.

For Your Convenience......

If anyone has a strange compulsion to own a Smelly Pirate book that I will sign for you, please note the "Buy now" button to tour right. I've set up a Paypal service for this. Just remember to email me your address and requests. Thanks!

P.S. Terry, I appear to be having Etsy problems...I'll have to repost my widget, my user name on Etsy is Orchard.

P.P.S. My Etsy account is back on line everyone!!!

On The Run

Sorry I'm posting so much older material! I'm on the run these days, school and library visits and friends books launches and my own book launch and a few projects to work on. I thought I'd post Repunzel today. She'sone of my favorites.

Selling Stuff

I'm wondering if I should start selling things like paintings and drawings...On maybe Etsy or through a market blog with Paypal. Any thoughts? What do you guys do?

Stars

These are my stars for Jillian Curtis' star project. The stars are to teach her children about the Holocaust through compassion and acceptance. It's a huge project. This is the sort of the thing I find very difficult to approach in pictures. I find it hard to be very serious and a subject like this demands gravity and sincerity. I looked to other artists who do similar subjects for inspiration, especially Maurice Sendak and Kathe Kollwitz. I wanted to evoke a sense of rememberance and hope.

Line And Tone

Thinking lots about line and tone lately. After having a hard look at the pirate book the thing that made me uncomfortable with the art was the uncertainty of the line work. It didn't know how to relate to the tone and would disapear or get scraggly or wimpy when I wasn't sure what to do. I've been looking at artists who use line and tone a lot to see what they do, artists like J.P. Vine and Annette Marnat. J.P. comes from animation and there's a real energy and focus to his line, it almost has the quality of performance. Annette's work is more of a graphic element worked into her elegant compostions. Historically, my guides in line and tone are Rackham and N.C. Wyeth. Rackham for his intelligent, elegant line Wyeth for his understanding of line and colour and tone; a painter's line. These drawings were done especially after looking at Annette's and J.P.'s work. Blogging has made me realize how high the standard is!

The Bald Ibis

I was at a pizza party with my friends the other day and got sucked into reading a copy of the Guardian newspaper they had laying around. There were two really interesting articles. One was on the preservation of the semi colon and the other was on the bald ibis. The bald ibis is an odd and interesting bird because it seems to have evolved badly. It has a great migratory instinct but no sense of direction. Every year it migrates but can't seem to find it's way. They are also easily distracted and may end up on a beach somewhere forgetting to complete thier migration. I'm sure all this is a great metaphor for something or other.

Fish Transit

It rained here for a few days in a constant thin drizzle that was only visible if you looked at street lights or puddles. The air was so wet that you felt you were under water. And then it stopped. Drat. I love interesting weather. Just finished up a new picture which I'll post later, and I can get back to the Robot Museum today, although i could use a day off. I'd really like to get back to my series of robot pencil drawings and put together a little robot book.

Dinosaur Cowgirl

I teach a part time high school art class at a private school here. One of my favorite things to do is sit around with them and just draw whatever comes to mind. This is a sketchbook doodle started in class and "refined" on the bus ride home. She's a cowgirl because Bernstein's theme from the Magnificent Seven is on the radio, although I think it's a katana on her back. Can't stop drawing lately. Drawing's always been my strong point. My second year painting teacher said to me once, with more than a little frustration, "Just draw with the paint!" Hmm... How about I just draw. Funny thing, sometimes I think I've learned more about drawing from painting than I've learned about painting from drawing.