Catching up between conferences and vacation

I've been quiet for about a month as I worked like a maniac to get my picture book dummy ready for the Mid-South SCBWI conference two weeks ago here in Nashville. More one the dummy later. I also worked on an illustration for the illustrator's showcase. The attending art director, Patrick Collins from Henry Holt, supplied two manuscripts and we were to choose a spread from one to illustrate. The two he sent were Don't Lick the Dog, a story about how dogs prefer to meet kids , and El Barrio, a discovery story about Spanish Harlem. I was the only illustrator who chose El Barrio, and I chose it mostly because I loved the images conjured up by the writer's words. Here's the spread I chose to illustrate:
El barrio is
Our Lady of Guadalupe candles,
syrupy sweet churros,
ice-cold paletas,
and a lemon-yellow fire escape as
tall as a city skyscraper.


(text copyright 2009 Debbi Chocolate, image copyright Mary Uhles 2009)

All of ya'll kid's book groupies can read the entire conference blog here

A couple of days after the conference the fam headed down to Gulf Shores for some much needed R and R. I'll upload some pictures and sketches in the next couple of days. Next up is the Southern Breeze Conference in Birmingham. I hope to have a finished piece from my dummy done by then.

One of my favorite spreads

I thought I'd post some more of the Saddle Ridge artwork. This is from Jack's Busy Day, a book about the day in the life of a ranch dog and his family. This is my favorite spread. One of the difficult things to keep in mind when designing a spread for a book is where the gutter (the space where the pages are bound) falls. I don't want to put anything important anywhere near it! So even though I may be working on a long horizontal composition, it's actually two vertical images because the action has to take place on the left and right sides of the page. In this spread I decided to put the cow's body in the gutter. I wanted to give a sense of drama, because this would be a really fast paced scene in real life. So I decided to put the viewer down right in the action, in the dust being churned up, to make it seem like the cow is coming right off the page at you. Here's my process:

I did several small thumbnails, just for approval, to show where the major "players" would be in each scene:


Then i did a tighter sketch, to get the expressions right. I wanted the cow to have the most personality in the picture and I wanted her to not look too happy about this turn of events:


The final. This scene takes place in the middle of the day, so no possibility of big dramatic ground shadows. I decided to shadow the cow's body, to let the contrast between her red and white hide and the shadow push her farther into the foreground:


I was quite happy with how this spread came out and will probably use it for promos later in the year.

OK as promised....

.... a month ago I now realize by the date of my last post, I can now reveal the theme of Lifeway's 2010 Vacation Bible School series. It's a dude ranch! Saddle Ridge Ranch will ride into stores sometime next spring. Actually its still being worked on which is why I'm so behind on posting. But I'm taking a break from sketching out kids jumping through various activities to post a couple of covers:

wait for it, waaiiit for it.... the theme for VBS 2010

Every summer for the last ten summers I have had the great fortune of working with some really cool people on the Vacation Bible School curriculum from Lifeway. The themes for each VBS product is a closely guarded secret until it is released with much fanfare mid-summer. This year Lifeway has created a video blog get the hype going. Here's one of the funnier entries:


The theme is being released shortly and I will start posting some illustrations from the books I've worked on. Here's a hint about the theme.... I'm getting paid to draw horses! how cool is that!

stay tuned....

Recently overheard between Babysitter Becky and the Small Fry on a day when a pesky fly had invaded the kitchen:

Becky: "Hey Fry, where is the fly swatter?"

Small Fry: "Miss Becky, we don't give flies water"

Illustration Friday - Craving

This is an illo I created a long time ago. I still love the concept though the execution is a little dated. One of these days I may get around to re-doing it.

Has anybody noticed....

....that eyes are really freakin' hard?!

really! I just spent an hour drawing and redrawing the same set of eyes on three different characters in a book I just started. Geez louise I'd like to know how to EASILY draw the eyes of a kid turned at a three quarter angle and looking up or down. They always end up looking cross-eyed or like one of 'em should have a lazy eye patch! Anybody else out there have this problem?? what's your secret? Anyone else have a different thing that's really hard to draw? I sure hope I'm not the only illustrator who's being hung up on one annoying detail that drives my detail oriented compulsive perfectionist mindset to distraction. I've been both complimented on my eyes and advised to make them more expressive without making them bugged out. After I solve this problem I think I'll move on to something easy like settling the peace in the Middle East.

Here are the offending eyes as they were just scanned in for the art director: