I’m so excited for our next book, Little Mouse Finds A Friend, to come out in October. I’m counting the days!

Here is a little glimpse of one of the turning point images, from sketch to finished painting.

From the Little Mouse Family facebook page:

Psst! We’ll let you in on a little project we’ve been working on: a descriptive audio recording! We love audio books, and Jeni has planned to record a read-along version from the moment we decided to publish her story. We want everyone to enjoy the story to it’s fullest, so for our visually impaired friends, Jeni is working on an audio recording with image descriptions. (You should see how excited she is! It’s ridiculous!) Huge thanks to Erin Jepsen and her daughter Abi for the professional consulting, Bartholomew Budwig​ for recording, and Jessica Linn Evans.

There is nothing quite so cheering as receiving a thoughtful handwritten greeting in the mail. Even more fun is a whole manilla envelope full of hand-made thank you notes from third graders. Here’s a sample of the notes I got from the students at Franklin Elementary expressing their thanks for the school visit I did with them at their library time in late spring. I think some of them are future illustrators!

I participated in a live artist event at New Saint Andrews College during the 13th Annual Artwalk in Moscow, Idaho. It was a lovely time with other artists and chatting with folks in the community. The city-wide event included a block party downtown with live music, food stalls, a giant chess board (as well as more traditional sized chess boards), and local art in many of the downtown businesses. The weather even cooperated… sort of. It really a very lovely event that improves in size and scope every year. I was thankful to be a part of it.

Be wise with your time. Instead of being on your smartphone while you wait, do something productive. You never know how much time you have.

While I was waiting for my car to be serviced yesterday, I started sketching a bird from a photo taken by my talented friend Hannah (you can find some of her beautiful photography here). As I say, I started sketching, but as time went on and my car wasn’t finished, I kept refining the sketch. Soon the sketch graduated to the status of ‘drawing.’ By the time I got home I was able to put in about 20 more minutes to finish it up. Then I slapped it in a frame and Shazam! Wall art!

I think I’ll offer it for sale at the Artwalk in my town this weekend. If no one buys it, I like it well enough that I’ll put it on my own wall.

So there you go. Time not wasted.

I’ve got my illustrations framed and ready to display at the 13th annual Artwalk 2017 in Moscow, Idaho. My work will be displayed at New Saint Andrews College, where I’ll be participating in a live artist event. I will be joining other artists at NSA, painting during the opening reception June 16, starting at 5 pm.

Join us!

This Friday, I spent a lovely morning with the approximately 75 third-graders of Franklin Elementary during their library time. The students had already gone through a series of projects and lessons planned and organized by Franklin’s Rock Star Librarian (the principal’s own words, and I agree!) about the genres and production of books. They had created some wonderful book covers for one of their projects. The students had intelligent questions and demonstrated well the book knowledge they acquired.  I told them about my own processes for creating characters and illustrating stories and really enjoyed my time.

Thank you Franklin Elementary for the wonderful visit!

I’m very pleased to introduce the cover for my next book project! Little Mouse Finds a Friend, by Jeni Leidenfrost, is slated to be published at the end of August by Jovial Press. After several years of tweaking the text and painting and painting (and repainting), Jeni and I are excited to get Little Mouse and his family and friends into your hands. Keep an eye out for more announcements in September!

I’ve finished painting the illustration for the final page of the upcoming book, Little Mouse Finds a Friend, by Jeni Leidenfrost. This will be a fun story with some very cool information about Atlas caterpillars and moths, a gargantuan branch of the insect family well worth getting to know.

I’m excited to reveal the cover of the next book I’m illustrating. Solar the Polar, by Kim Constantinesco (author at Purpose 2 Play) and published by Maclaren-Cochrane Publishing. (Release date to be announced).