Earth Day 2020: Flora & Fauna

Happy 50th anniversary, Earth Day!

I'm late, I'm late, but I'll still celebrate!

It's that time of year again... baseball's back, and with it, my annual illustration in honor of pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training camp. Unfortunately, my go-to online resource led me astray, so I missed my favorite team's actual official "Pitchers and Catchers Report Day" this morning.

Nevertheless, a tradition is a tradition, and I did have a piece underway, which I can now proudly present! Happy 2020, sports fans. Play indoors as winter wraps up, sure, but try not to break any cacti.

[Memory lane:  2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019]

It's been a while!

I don't post here much anymore, but I'm still making art! Some catching up...

I did a few pieces in response to illustrator Lily Williams's #KidLitSummers illustration prompt. I drew some childhood summer memories, like running through the sprinkler:

And listening to baseball on the radio:

(And then I bought an iPad and an Apple pencil and did some experimenting in ProCreate to update this one in color!)

And soft serve ice cream, mmm: 

I was commissioned to illustrate a postcard for a Kickstarter campaign for a short film about baseball legend Jackie Mitchell: 

And had some fun with idioms:

This piece will be featured in my local SCBWI chapter's 2020 calendar:

And I channeled my inner Maurice Sendak for a family project:

Whew! That's a wrap on summer and fall 2019!

Rally caps! (Spring training 2015)

Pitchers and catchers report today to Goodyear, Arizona, kicking off spring training (and therefore the 2015 baseball season!) for my favorite team.  Since 2008, I've marked this day by sharing a baseball illustration.  After several years spotlighting players for this annual illustration, this year I want to celebrate fans.

(I'm also using this an opportunity to play around with some character design for a picture book manuscript I have in the works.  This devoted baseball fan is named Ruby, and she's my protagonist.)

So let's hear it for the fans.  Fans who care about the game way more than is reasonable, who cheer on their team through good times (1999! 2010! 2012!) and bad (2000-2009), who follow hundreds of games over 6+ months, and who (like Ruby here) put on their rally caps in critical dramatic moments because they can't stand to not do something to influence the game they love so much.

[Memory lane:  2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014]

Jabberwocky

Just scribbling around with pencil and colored pencil on a favorite poem...

Daydreaming.

I did a little digital collage work in the illustrations for that last post, piecing together bits from old pastel illustrations of mine. Exploring that more in this one by almost exclusively using collaged pastel textures to paint an old sketchbook piece.

A story in six panels, based on real life

A Day at the Zoo

Rally caps!

Rally caps are more effective when everyone participates, right?

Worked on this one for a while this spring, but forgot to post when it was finished!  It's the first illustration that really let me play around with my Wacom tablet (though it's still mostly traditional hand-drawn pastel work).  My next promotional postcard:

Two Kites

Work in progress

From the sketchbook

Working on something.

"I loved standing under the towers--choose any one, depending on the time of day--looking up and farther up, until the back of my head rested on my shoulders."

The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place by E.L. Konigsburg

[Portraits of People Who Aren't Real, the much belated #4]

Victory is hers.

Fine art print available.

A river to forge, a serpent to slay.

Another book cover illustration

I finally got around to reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn last year, and I loved it! Now working on my take on a cover illustration to do Francie Nolan proud.  Most recent sketch:

My first, quick, scribbly draft:

Kids!

I've been drawing an awful lot of adults lately, mostly for Every Reds Hall of Famer. Which is cool and all, but it's time to draw some kids.  So I took to Facebook to see what my youngest relatives had been up to lately and gave 'em the old pencil and paper treatment.

 

Happy summer!

A Walking Mama

My friend Heather has a blog called A Walking Mama.  As the title suggests, it's all about living simply and car-free as a parent of two young kids (and in Washington state, too, not DC like me-- impressive!)  It inspired me to get to drawing, and what I ended up with was a new header for her:

Yay!

The Westing Game

I'm no designer, but I wanted to see what the illustration would look like if it were used as intended. And look, there are even a few different places to slap a shiny gold Newbery medal!