Friday, June 25, 2010

On learning not to google.

This June has been a little dramatic weather-wise. It's been extremely humid during the day and then thunderstorms-really good ones- at night. I don't like the hot humid days but I like the thunderstorms. When I was little and there was a big summer storm at night, my dad would stop whatever he was doing and he and my brother would go straight to the porch and I followed. We would all stand there and take it in.

I still have that instinct now. Maybe at my own peril. But in this new apartment, I am without a porch. When the storms start lately, I feel a little like I'm wearing pants without pockets. I have nowhere to put my hands. I park at the window and watch the storm anyway, but it's not quite the same. I can't smell the rain and I'm a little too protected.


I'm discovering that the pants without pockets feeling is also a little how it feels the first month your first book is published. I am no longer in charge of A Sick Day for Amos McGee. Almost everything that goes along with that is wonderful. Amos McGee gets to be someone else's book from the library or someone else's bedtime story or someone else's book they don't like very much. I really like that. I think the process of making art can feel selfish. But once the book is a book and not 32 separate drawings, I like that's it's someone else's experience.

Okay, most of the time. That lack of control can get to me. I have an extremely thin skin and I'm often nervous. Since this is my first book, too, I'm just not sure what to think. So this last month I have taken to attempting to spy on the book. This means google. This, I have found, is a mistake. It has only expanded my horizons to the fact that I know nothing about nothing.

So, I'm circling back to my original illustrator intent. The book is someone else's now. I hope they like it, but if they don't it's okay. Everything is oooookaay. I should get back to work.



That's it for now!
p.s. I can't figure out what the glitch is that won't allow the pictures get bigger when you click on them, but I'm working on it...

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Well, I left you in May.


Hello, again. It's June 1st now and I've been away from this blog for a while. Philip, Wednesday, and I had moved during May and then were without the internet for a couple ofweeks after that. But here we are again in the digital age. We moved into a 100 year-old barn that is still in downtown Ann Arbor (the image on your left). We live across the street from atrain station,too. This place should end up being full of inspiration. Or at least a train book.

We have a lot more space to work now, which we are happily adjusting to. Below is our desk area now. For those of you who are artists, we get northern light through those windows!



We've had some good fortune with the new book, A Sick Day for Amos McGee. Have I mentioned it yet? Did you know I drew the pictures in that book? Did I happen to mention it's now available in stores?


Also, Phil and I just did our first event for the book at Madison Square Park hosted by the park and Time Out New York Kids Magazine. It was loud and scary for me because it required talking but we got through it. It was actually really fun and I felt a little honored to be there. They wrote a nice review in this month's issue of the magazi
ne, which you can see here.

A long time ago I showed a sketch of a bunch of bears. Here is how that turned out.

That's all for now!