Animals Crafting

Some fun illos for a local crafty place, Blue House Ann Arbor. Its hard to pass up drawing animals crafting. Nice to play with a more muted color palette to go with the distinctive blue color that they use.

Here's the back of the business card:

Blue House is a wonderful place where crafters can meet up, share their ideas, attend workshops, and more. Its been a great place where I've gotten to know many local and talented artists. And lucky me, I live very close by.

Playtime

A piece for our recent mailer over at Illustration for Kids, with a theme of "Playtime." Its been a while since I voluntarily did human kids for the mailer- anthropomorphic animals are always so much more fun. But I actually enjoyed this one and liked how it turned out.

The Sketchbook Project 2012

The Sketchbook project 2012 is here! After my amazing time with last year's book, its hard not to do it again. The theme I picked is Uncharted Waters, which fits my life so perfectly right now. A great excuse to continue with my comics. Now that this is the second time around, there are a few things I would like to do differently. Also the book is slightly smaller with fewer pages. Supposedly with better paper but its still seems a bit thin to me. Perhaps I can use another type of medium instead of microns.

Looking forward to this and hopefully I can do this with the same amount of energy and dedication as last time.

Kid's Drawings using my How-to Books!

"Octo-Monster"

"Pinball"

I think one of the most satisfying things about being a children's book illustrator is seeing kids interact with my books. I've been mentoring some fine young artists for the Ann Arbor Kid's Art Fair thats coming up in July. So I thought it was fitting that I gave them a copy of my You Can Draw Monsters and Scary Things and You can Draw Zoo Animals.

I was happy to see the step by step instructions worked! Just check out these drawings. Lookin' good!

 

Its been an interesting and also a challenging experience mentoring kids. I don't normally interact with kids on a regular basis in my normal day-to-day illustrator life, even though I do "kids' stuff" all day long. But kids' art are the BEST and I've got a talented bunch. Its an awesome dose of inspiration!