Things That Float at the White House!

You might have heard of the White House Easter Egg Roll that takes place on the South Lawn each spring. This year, in keeping with the theme of First Lady Michele Obama’s “Let's Move” initiative, the event focused on health and fitness for kids. Imagine my delight to learn that Things That Float and Things That Don’t was one of the science books featured! 

Many thanks to my publisher Holiday House for donating books, and for SB&F Online for tweeting this fantastic photo. In the words of a friend, “these girls know where it’s at!”

And this just in…
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) posted more information and photos from the event here.

Earth Day and everything…

HAPPY EARTH DAY!

I hope fans of Ornithoblogical aren’t too disgruntled, but I haven’t had much time for birds lately. However—lucky me—on this Earth Day, I’ll be painting a bucolic setting for an upcoming picture book full of mountains and trees. I might even go out and hug a tree for real later, before the rain starts.

I’ve also been working on a few new pieces for Kiwi Magazine’s regular “Cooking with Kids” feature. Last issue, we learned how to prepare an artichoke for slaughter…

In the next, we learn how to shuck corn, or in my anthropomorphized version, perform a cornhusking striptease. You’ll have to wait a few months to see that full frontal, but if you want a little teaser, I do share details and sketches of what I’m up to over on Instagram.

Speaking of Instagram, here are two sneak peeks at some details from the same book I’m working on today (sorry, Facebook and Twitter friends—old news to you)…

Okay, it’s back to the picture book trenches for me. I hope your Earth Day is full of sunshine and daffodils.

Teaching at SVA’s Illustration Summer Residency

Since graduating from the masters program at the School of Visual Arts in 2009, I haven’t given 

much thought to teaching. Primarily, I’ve focused on my own illustration career in the children’s book market, with a bit of editorial work. So far so good, I’d say, as this year has me working on more books than ever. But when my favorite (and toughest) instructor in the Illustration MFA, Viktor Koen, asked me to join the faculty of SVA’s Summer Residency, I jumped at the chance.

The Summer Residency brings together students from around the world to spend a month studying in the discipline of their choice with professionals working in New York City. Here’s a quote from the website on the illustration program:

“With guidance from award-winning illustrators, participants will complete a body of work comprised of images created for assignments, as well as personal projects, aiming to showcase their individual style and aesthetic direction. The goals are to advance to the next level of artistic practice and to attain an enhanced position in the illustration marketplace.” 

For my class, students will create a series of images to accompany a narrative text, to be encompassed in a book or visual essay. If you’d like to read more about the Summer Residencies and for information about applying, visit the School of Visual Arts website here.

It will be a high-intensity month of June. I look forward to meeting this group of international professionals, guiding, and watching their work evolve. The Residency culminates with an open studio exhibition, a few images from which I hope to share here in a future post.

BIG NEWS: I have an agent

There are certain milestones in every career that serve as a kind of validation for the course you’ve chosen. I reached one of those this week, and am proud to announce that I now have a literary agent: Marcia Wernick of Wernick & Pratt.

Just shy of five years ago, I finished graduate school, switching careers from design to illustration. It has been a whirlwind getting it all going, but despite my twenty-plus years in children’s publishing, I’ve learned a lot managing it all on my own. This year promises to be my busiest year thus far as an illustrator, and also marks the moment when I realized I needed some help. 

Wernick & Pratt has a great reputation in the industry, and represents some of my favorite artists of the moment, including the brilliant Mo Willems, and recent Caldecott Honor winner Aaron Becker, among others. I could go on and on, but if you want to learn more about them, visit their website here. Meanwhile, for all book inquiries, please contact Marcia. Now, back to the drawing board!

MICA and Charm City

At this stage of my career, I don’t get the opportunity to take many business trips. The occasional subway ride to an art supply store in an outer borough of NYC is as close as I get, and the majority of 2014 will see me chained to my drawing board. So when Shadra Strickland invited me to speak to one of her classes at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art), I jumped at the chance. 

Shadra is the illustrator of several picture books, including Bird, for which she won the Ezra Jack Keats Award. She’s also an amazing and generous teacher, as I observed in her Advanced Book Illustration class last week. We began with my hour-long talk about my journey into an illustration career with some (hopefully) helpful tidbits about how to help students establish trust in themselves and with art directors, and continued with a critique of the students’ character studies for their book projects. It was such an impressive and talented group; I hope I will be able to see more of their work as it develops.

Just a quick note about Baltimore—also know as “Charm City”—with its excellent museums, deliciously inventive restaurants, and gorgeous architectural gems. Sure, there are some enormous economic and social problems, but it’s a place whose history and potential has really charmed me. With that in mind, I leave you with a photo of one of my favorite spaces in Baltimore, the Peabody Library. 

the story of a groundhog

When my friend, editor Tracey Keevan, asked if I’d like to help her with a belated holiday card to send to her authors and colleagues, I really wasn’t sure if my schedule would allow. 

Then she described what she wanted, and I was hooked. It had been a few months since I’d sent out any promos of my own, and with a small window in between a few large projects, I knew it would be even more months before I’d get my act together for a mailing. I decided if I could figure out a way for the piece to serve me as well, I’d do it.

On the surface, Tracey’s idea was simple: a groundhog in winter, at work on his home typewriter, composing letters. But she wanted a way to personalize the cards with a note of her own. This would be in the form of a separate piece of paper emerging from the typewriter that she could compose, cut out, and affix to the card for mailing. 

I also knew in the interest of time management, I’d have to collage some of the more complicated elements—namely the typewriter and wallpaper. I haven’t done that much in my work, and but it seemed like a really good solution in this case. For Tracey’s version, I added a little holiday card on top of the bookcase which reads “Keevan’s Greetings.” Get it? Here’s the sketch...

I love a puzzle, and this one seemed to satisfy my designer and illustrator brains. But I knew I wouldn’t have time to compose and assemble letters for my entire mailing list of 100 plus children’s book editors and art directors. The card also had to function as a simple two-sided postcard to suit my time-crunched needs.

Lately when I’ve been sending out mailings that aren’t associated with one of my books, I like to tell somewhat of a story with the images. I remembered a painting I did around the holidays of a little village where I could imagine this groundhog fellow vacationing or something. Here it is...

And below is the final product, dummied up with a letter. This was such a fun project, I wrote a really long process blog entry for it. And I think there’s potential for a complete story for this little guy too—I do seem to like painting rodents.

If you’ve read this far, thanks and here’s hoping the little guy doesn’t see his shadow—this winter has been brutal. Happy Groundhog Day!

A look at the year to come

Happy New Year! I hope yours it getting off to a great start. For me, 2014 is already shaping up into a busy year. 

As I mentioned on this page a few months ago, I’m in the process of sketching 2 new picture books that will be released in 2015: The Wrong Side of the Bed, by Lisa Bakos, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons; and Simple Machines, another non-fiction picture book by David A. Adler, published by Holiday House. I look forward to sharing a few teaser images as I get further into the painting process.

And great news! It looks like I’ll be illustrating another book for Candlewick, my World Rat Day publisher. I’ll share more details at a later date. 

My work for Kiwi Magazine continues. If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to eat more leafy greens, then the current issue’s “Cooking with Kids” section is just what you’ll need to learn how to clean and prepare kale, minus the army of industrious green peas, of course. 

If you were unable to see the Original Art Show at the Society of Illustrators over the last few months, you might be able to catch the traveling show. For more information, click here. I was very pleased that my image from World Rat Day was included.

Here’s to a happy and healthy 2014!