I’m in the middle of artwork for the final installment in the Anne of Green Gables series that I’ve been illustrating for the past six (!) years. But I wanted to pop in and share that the Salut! 8 Coaster Show at Nucleus Portland is live. Unfortunately, the above maiden has found a home, but I have two other coasters still available (here and here).

"And caught a little silver trout.."

 
 

Because this has been looping in my head all week, an attempt at a faux linocut in photoshop. Life is mostly deadlines right now, so I haven’t had a chance for any printmaking. I love carving blocks. Nothing beats the smell of ink. An ideal day for me would be cueing up an album or three and running a block through a press for ages. My biceps would be five stars if this was, in fact, my daily routine. But most of all, I love having something tangible in my hands, not just a collection of pixels stored amongst wires and uploaded to the ether. So maybe I’ll get around to turning this into an actual print, when things quiet down a bit.

But:

  • Please, someone, turn into a book this story of the 500 pounds of mystery pasta in the woods of New Jersey. I don’t want to know the real ending: all the imagined possibilities are too delightful to be ruined by anything prosaic.

  • While hunting for a reference photo, I stumbled on the Vintage Norway Tumblr and it is grand.

  • A LEGO version (!) of the Flannery O’Connor short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find.

Carte de Visite

 
 

Looking for some reference images, I stumbled on a photograph of a young man with a passing resemblance to my grandfather. So needs must and I drew this (and added in a cabinet card frame).

Above and Below

 
 

I’m packaging up some painted coasters for the Salut! 8 Coaster Show at Nucleus Portland. If you’re in or around Portland, Oregon, it looks to be a great event. If you’re from outside that area, artwork will be available online at a later date, so keep your eyes peeled.

Also:

  • I ended up on the Public Domain Review today while trying to hunt down historical images of ocular migraine visual phenomenon (which is admittedly, probably only fascinating for migraineurs). In the process though, I ended up stumbling across Kay Nielsen’s absolutely astounding images for East of the Sun and West of the Moon and oh my, just look at these gorgeous illustrations.

  • An interview I did recently, talking about the artwork for Mouseboat, over on Let’s Talk Picture Books.

  • There are pepper seedlings sprouting here. For the third year in a row, I’m growing Jimmy Nardello Italian Peppers. I was curious about the name, and after a little sleuthing, think the backstory behind these peppers would make a splendid picture book.

  • Other things that are growing: the below amaryllis is blooming after a year and a half of nothing. Those blooms all the sweeter for the never-ending wait.

 
 

It Spoke So Very Softly

 
 

Playing around with sketchbook paintings, digital brushes, gradient maps and fairy folklore last week. This week, however, is tax prep. But there has been hot cross buns from Harvey’s and glorious weather is on the horizon. So in the grand scheme of things, I’m not feeling quite so acrimonious towards the tax man as I might otherwise be inclined.

Other things:

  1. The Sold A Story podcast was my latest binge listen.

  2. I’m reading The Graves Are Walking at the moment. It’s a brutal, gut-wrenching read, yet hard to put down.

  3. The Hinterland Dress is the latest thing to come off of my sewing machine. I’ll get some photos at a later point and a breakdown of the adjustments I made.

  4. A nice mention for Mouseboat on WBUR / Boston Public Radio (scroll down for a list of book recomendations).

  5. I visited the Museum of Russian Icons the weekend before last to see the Icons & Retablos exhibit and it’s splendid (the show runs through August 2023).

Mouseboat

 
 

It’s release day for Mouseboat!

 
 

Here’s some more bits and pieces of the book making process: thumbnails, sketches, reference images and very early character ideas.

As an illustrator, I think there’s a danger in getting too close to a story: a certain amount of objectivity always helps, in my experience. But sometimes that line blurred for me while working on Mouseboat. Over the course of the book, I lost my grandmother, my uncle and attended funerals for other friends and family. While I couldn’t relate to Faye’s untimely loss of her mother, I could relate to the wave of emotions that grief hits you with: anger, guilt and sorrow, crashing over your head.

This past fall, I heard the Polish expression that in a shipwreck, all you need is a plank. Not two. Not three. A plank is all you need to keep afloat and survive. Looking at the illustrations for Mouseboat, I hope that sentiment comes through. It’s impossible to sweep away all the turmoil that grief brings and it can often feel like a storm from which there’s no possibility of relief. But sometimes it just takes one small thing to hold onto, as you stick your head above the waves. One plank.

And if there’s anything that comes through in the art for Mouseboat, I hope it’s that small bit of hope.

Not Yet

 
 

I started spring cleaning earlier this month. Then I started moving furniture. After single-handedly moving a couch, a coffee table, one chair and a houseplant that weighs more than me, things are looking up. There is far less dust and much less inertia. In the process, I unearthed a few sketches and assorted book ideas. I loosely based the sketches above on an autumnal road trip my grandparents took us on, as teenagers. The highlight of the trip was definitely eating fried chicken and brownies outside the legendary Willey House on a glorious October day.

Other things: