Theater Poster: Mark Twain's Mississippi

Might have taken this project simply to play with the "Mississippi" type. But had a great time working  Twain's handwritten manuscripts into the image

Theater Poster Sketches: Click Clack Moo

Easily one of the things I love most about working with theaters is the chance to offer my interpretation of my favorite stories. I've done many of the classic public domain stories, but I love being able to have a go at more contemporary books. I love, love(!) Betsy Lewin's illustrations for Click Clack Moo, but still had a blast giving Doreen Cronin's story my own take. Here are the rough sketches for the theater poster.

Author Sketch: Matt Phelan

Headed over to A Children's Place Bookstore on Saturday to catch illustrator/author Matt Phelan talk about his book "The Storm in the Barn" which was just turned into a theater production by Oregon Children's Theater. Matt was in town to watch the world premier. Really excellent work and a super nice guy.

Speaker Sketches: Washington SCBWI Conference

Just got back from the Western Washington SCBWI conference. Had a great time (as usual) and did my customary speaker sketches (they just really help me remember what the speaker said) Should anyone actually know the people in the drawings and feel (rightly so) that my sketches look NOTHING like them, I abjectly apologize and would like to point out that some of these sketches were done 50 or more feet away from a moving subject. I'm lucky they aren't just peanut shaped blobs with hair.

Recent Sketch: Allen Say

Illustrator and author Allen Say was doing a talk / book signing at A Children's Place bookstore this weekend to promote his recent book  "The Boy in the Garden". I headed down to listen and check out all the new titles and couldn't resist doing a drawing while the talk was going on.

Author Visit: David Shannon in PDX

Headed down to "A Children's Place" bookstore today to catch David Shannon reading "It's Christmas David!"from the latest in his "No, David!" series. Really good presentation and he did a "How To" drawing demo; to which, I dutifully followed along (although I noticed that none of the 4 and 5 year olds in the audience bothered to -- slackers)

Author Portraits: Twain

In continuing the "Who's more fun than . . ." theme, here's Mark Twain.
I'm noticing an early trend -- this might actually turn out to be all about authors with exaggerated facial hair.