NY Comics and Picture-Story Symposium

I’ll be giving a talk this Monday evening, August 4th, 7pm at Dixon Place on the Lower East Side as part of the New York Comics and Picture-Story Symposium. My pal, the fabulous Sophia Wiedeman will also be speaking about her process creating comics. For more information, click here.

What’s Up?

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this page with what’s on my drawing board. A lot, it turns out…

First up, I’m finishing the cover art for another non-fiction picture book by David A. Adler, called Teeth, Slides, Seesaws and Other Simple Machines, to be published by Holiday House next Spring. If you ever wondered how a small cat could push a box of bowling balls up a hill, and perhaps a few more relevant things, this book is full of answers.

I’m also having a great time painting the raucous art for The Wrong Side of the Bed, a picture book by Lisa M. Bakos, to be published by the fine folks at G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 2016.

Next up is Little Card by Charise Harper to be published by Candlewick Press in 2016, and is a book I’m super excited about.

And if you’ve every grown zucchini in your garden, you’ll understand how Zora’s Zucchini by Kathy Pryor will sneak in here in abundance, to be published by Readers to Eaters in Fall 2015.

Whew! I need to get back to work, but one last thing—in case you missed it on my tumblr last week, here’s a bit of my work for Kiwi Magazine. In the most recent issue, we learned how to shuck corn, so of course I turned the spots into a striptease. It plays quite well with any soundtrack of your choice, but I’m partial to Atomic by Blondie…

SVA Summer Residency

While you might have been focussed on the World Cup this month, I had the pleasure of teaching an intensive class in Illustration and Visual Storytelling at the School of Visual Arts Summer Residencies. It was a terrific group from around the world—a global mix to rival any international football competition—with representatives from Uruguay, Brazil, Spain, the Netherlands, and Japan to name just a few.

Several months ago, while discussing the nature of my class with the Residency Director Viktor Koen—one of my former and favorite instructors in the SVA MFAI—we decided students should come away with “a series of something.” Since the bulk of my experience is in books and narrative illustration, that seemed a natural fit to me, and would differ significantly from the other classes taught by Viktor, and illustrator/designer Paul Hoppe which were centered on editorial illustration, professional practices, and comics. I had students come to the first class with a text of their choice, and we took it from there. What you see below is a sample of their projects, a collection as diverse and impressive as the individuals themselves. It’s amazing how much great work they produced in just one month.

On a personal note, I’d like to give a big shout out to these fine folks, to thank them for making my first post-graduate teaching experience so rewarding. Bravo!

Adriana Miralles

Anuranjini Singh

Ashleigh Green

Brian Britigan

Esther Aarts

 

Catherine Liu

Ignacio Serrano

Jo Lee

Karina Dimitriu

Mai Moroe

Pablo Londero

Paola Pagano

Shane Cluskey