Octopus & co.

He's reading The Old Man & the Sea.

Dragon Party!

Just finished a project for Cricket Magazine, but since I don't think I can show that yet, here's a dragon party.

This one's from one of the weekly storytimes I do.  The week's theme was dragons, so we read East Dragon West Dragon, a new favorite illustrated by Scott Campbell, which you should read if you haven't yet.

The top one is drawn by me, the bottom is colored by a kid and his mom.  I think it's a rainbow dragon wearing a Charlie Brown shirt.

Mars Society Poster Competition

Today is the first day of spring on Earth and spring is well underway on Mars.  This summer, the Mars Society will be holding its 15th annual convention and they had a contest to design a poster.
I didn't win, but got the honorable mention and a neat certificate.

Curiosity is on its way to Mars right now and will land in August.  The central figure in the poster is obviously the rover.  The idea for the signal on the right came from an old poster design of the Voyager probe that I came up with while teaching at SCAD.  Each image in the bars to the right is a pilar of the current Mars mission - discovering the chemistry of Mars, the possible biology of Mars, and furthering Man's exploration of the solar system and beyond. That last bar is a cut out of the "golden records" included on the Voyager crafts.  The original design had the signal bars a solid light color, which probably would have made a better image, but I wanted to include the mission goals in the piece.

Wild Thing

This week's storytime is themed "Award Winners." I get to read some of my favorites - Jumanji, Where the Wild Things Are, and this year's Caldecott honor books Grandpa Green and Me... Jane.

Water(color) on Mars [work in progress pt2]

A little further along. Masking fluid off, paint on.
I knew that if you erased too vigorously on watercolor paper, it scratches the paper.  I risked it.  Turns out applying a wet layer and toweling it off before it dries makes a great stone/wood texture.

Groundhog Phil

Today's storytime at B&N was all about Groundhog Day.  I drew this little guy for our coloring activity and one of the kids left his or her expressionistic rodent for me to take home and share with all of you.

It just makes me wonder why they left it. (Kids usually take their lovely colorings home.)

Was it too avant garde for their parents' refrigerator?

Was this just a practice coloring and the final one was more refined?

Did they find the red bow tie too garish?

Well, I took it home, because I like it and it'll probably go on my refrigerator once I publish this blog post.