national day on writing - nytimes.com

Thursday, October 20th was the official National Day on Writing, and the Twittersphere was abuzz with writers, educators, journalists, students, and poets (to name just a few) answering the question #whyiwrite. Above is my illustrated contribution, as featured on Ornithoblogical and The New York Times Learning Network blog. You can learn more about the day, and read some fantastic quotes here.

of rats, sloths and other notable creatures...

In case you’ve been wondering why you’ve been seeing fewer birds and other such imagery up in my slice of the blogosphere of late, it’s because I’ve been hard at work on an exciting new project.

A few months ago, I was approached
by Candlewick Press to illustrate a collection of animal poems by the hilarious and prolific J. Patrick Lewis, the current U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate. As you might imagine, I jumped at the chance. The book, due to be released in Spring 2013, allows me to immerse myself into the minds of rats, bulldogs, sloths, and mata-mata turtles, to name just a few. While I can’t share much about the illustrations until publication, I will occasionally throw a little detail at you here and there...like here, in the sketch at left.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been working on two pieces for the November issue of the South African magazine Migrate. Since we’re almost halfway through October, I’ll be able to share those in just a few weeks. In the meantime, here’s a detail from one, titled Above. Happy Autumn!