Looking For Treasure

I hope everyone's enjoying the Holidays! I'm staying out of town, without cable or Internet and have resurfaced in order to run some errands. I brought a stack of work with me as well as a bunch of books and I'm enjoying myself immensely. I'm reading Uri Shulevitz's Writing With Pictures, as recommended by Annie Patterson. I can't believe I haven't read this 1o years ago. My Christmas was great, Julie bought me books, which is the best thing to get me. The above picture is from the upcoming Pirate book.

A Fine Style

Recently A Forest For Christmas was reviewed in the Montreal Gazette. Susan Mitchell of Sweet Pea told me about it as the Gazette isn't available here. I was really happy about this, in Canada, Montreal is really the cultural centre. In the article one of the pictures from the book was published next to two well known, accomplished illustrators. I found my work looked a little shabby. I thought my picture looked really good, but shabby. I started thinking again about that Maurice Sendak quote that I posted some time ago : " The more styles you have, the better. So develop a fine style, a fairly slim style and a rough style. " Whenever I finish a big project I start thinking about what needs to be done about my art work, what needs to be improved, things like that. I think I need to work on my fine style more. And my other styles. That's my new book resolution ; to make all my styles better. Shabby's not terrible, but I could stand to clean things up a bit. The above picture is from Mr. Sendak's unfinished version of the Hobbit, by Tolkien. Sadly this book was never finished as Mr. Sendak became quite ill at this time. That would have been a great book.

White Christmas

I finished the pirate book last night. I feel really good about it and I really enjoyed doing it. I'm glad it's done though, it's a good feeling to finish up a project and start thinking about what's next. Today is my first real day off in four months. It's taken four months each to do the three picture books I've finished. I'm relaxing today, between Christmas parties I have a bunch of stuff I'd like to do. My next book, Sandcastles and Snowmen is scheduled to be done for May so I can breath easy for a while.

My Etsy Shop

I've finally set up an Etsy shop. I had been meaning to for some time but have been so busy with my contracts that I kept putting it off. It was easier than I thought. I was inspired by the article in in the New York Times Magazine by Rob Walker, Handmade 2.0. I only put a few prints up but will be adding stuff as I go along. The pirate book I've been working on for the past four months is finally coming to a close. I only have a few spot illustrations left to do. I think I should be done by Friday and I can take a few days over the holidays to work on my own stuff before I begin the book for Raincoast. I have a short comic strip I'd love to do. Speaking of Etsy, I recently received a print I had purchased from Anne Julie Aubry. Her stuff is so beautiful. Please check out her blog: Ma Petit Theiere ( on my blog roll ) . As usual I've been into all sorts of new stuff. I have a couple of new books on my shelf. Cherry and Olive ( "Cerise Griotte") is written and illustrated by Benjamin Lacombe. I hadn't heard of him before and my cousin who lives outside of Paris emailed me about him. Really great stuff. The other book is Edward Lear's complete book of Verse and nonsense. What an amazing book. My friend Julia Schuckel introduced me to the work of Friedensreich Hundertwasser. I can't believe I wasn't familiar with his work. His architecture is amazing. My friends Ambera and Oliver are spending Christmas in Oliver's home town of Lichtenstenstein and will be making a trip to Vienna where they will check out some of his work. I hope they buy me a Stieff....

The Movies!

I've been tagged by Angela Matteson to post a list of my top twenty five movies. It actually took me three days to come up with this list. I know there will be some embarrassing omissions but it can't be helped. In no particular order:
1. La Strada
2. The Iron Giant
3. Wallace and Grommit ; The Curse Of The Were Rabbit
4. Finding Neverland
5. Sleepy Hollow
6. Princess Mononoke
7. Labyrinth
8. Brothers Grimm
9. The Muppets Take Manhattan
10. The Corpse Bride
11, 12 and 13. The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy
12. Howl's Moving Castle
13. Pan's Labyrinth
14. James And The Giant Peach
15. The Dark Crystal
15, 16 and 17. The Original Star Wars Trilogy
18. The Nightmare Before Christmas
19. Spirited Away
20. The Secret Of Roan Innish
21. Amelie
22. Truly, Madly, Deeply
23. Citizen Kane
24. The Third Man
25. The City Of Lost Children

The above drawing is an old pen and ink.

Coloured Pictures

" Stand up and keep your childishness;
Read all the pedants, screeds and strictures;
But don't believe in anything
that can't be told in coloured pictures" Chesterton.
This is another detail from the pirate book. To me it's very much a typical image of my home province, seen through rather romantic eyes.

New Contract

Yay! I got a new contract yesterday. I can work for another few months... I'm so busy I'm afraid I'll miss Christmas this year. That's not too likely though. The contracts a good one, it's with the biggest publisher I've worked with yet and the author is well known. Well, I knew her work. The contract is with Raincoast. I'll post more stuff on this later. Reviews of my first book, A Forest For Christmas have started to come in. I've noticed a few things ; reviewers pay more attention to the words than the pictures. That's fine, I was a bit surprised by it though. Another thing is papers outside of my province are giving me better reviews. I don't know what to make of that. I don't want to give the impression that I'm getting bad reviews, the reviews have been very nice, I just don't know what to make of them. Should I even read them? How does everyone else deal with reviews? The above painting is a detail from a pirate book painting.

Book Launch !

My first book launch came and went and it was a lot of fun. The launch was for A Forest For Christmas, which is the first book I illustrated. The launch was held in Lunenburg, a town not far from Halifax at a cool little gallery and shop called The Black Duck Gallery. They had a cool toy section, I bought a King Kong flip book. I couldn't believe all the people who showed up. There was a constant stream of people and we actually ran out of books and food. It started with a speech by Michael Harris, the author and then we signed for a few hours. The book is about a girl, Emily, who has to rescue her favorite patch of forest from a greedy business owner. I had prints and Christmas cards made and sold a bunch of those as well as a painting. I had another signing the next day, which also went really well. It's pretty exciting right now but I'd really like to be quietly painting. It's been on the news and the reviews have started appearing in the national papers. Pretty strange. I feel very grateful to have been able to do this. This is a great job. I hope everyone is doing OK in all the snow. I think it's snowing everywhere.

The top paintings were taken by Diane Faulkner, who works at Nimbus my publisher. The bottom three are by Keram Pfeiffer, please check out his photos at http://fotouristen.de/user/KPf/fotos

The Penguin Of Happiness

Busy week. There was the book launch and signings and the new book and teaching. On top of everything my computer stopped working. And my digital camera. As a result I haven't been able to post lately. I have a back log of posts but I thought I'd do an interim post to keep things going. Here is a list of my top 5 albums right now: 1. Elizabeth Cotten, Freight train and other North Carolina Folk Songs and Tunes. 2. An English Ladymass, Anonymous 4 3. Elizabeth Mitchell, You Are My Little Bird. 4. Feist, Open Season 5. Dvorak, Cellokonzert and Tschaikovsky Rokoko-Variationen, The Berlin Philharmonic with Rostropovich and conducted by Von Karajan.
By the way, the penguin is based on a Stieff toy and is in my first book, A Forest For Christmas.

http://www.steiff.de/