Book Signing at BEA 2011!!

It's time again for BookExpo America 2011!  I will be signing Mr. Groundhog Wants the Day Off books at this years book expo, held at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York, NY.

  BookExpo America (BEA) is North America’s largest gathering of book trade professionals.

If you're at the expo stop by and get a signed book! :) 

Autographing information is shown below.

New art supplies!

For my birthday I received a great present that included a cute 4x6 inch Canson watercolor block and Derwent Aquatone solid watercolor sticks. Of course as any artist with new art supplies I couldn't wait to try them out. I decided to paint a little portrait of one of my favorite pictures of Johnny Cash :) I used an Aquash Japanese Water Brush, it has a body which can be filled up with water and flows out to the nylon brush tip when squeezed. To get some of the areas darker I used a sepia Prismacolor fine line marker. I enjoyed doing this little study and trying out the new watercolor sticks. A great little set of supplies to have if you're a traveling artist and don't want to mess around with a watercolor box!

Illustrator Saturday on Kathy Temean Blog

Every Saturday the wonderful Kathy Temean features an illustrator on her blog and shows off their talents.  This Saturday I was honored to be one of those illustrators. Click on the image below to visit  Kathy's blog and see her Illustrator Saturday post.

2nd Place in Logo Contest!!!

I found out yesterday that my logo for the annual NJSCBWI conference won 2nd place and will be printed on the bags going to all the attendees!! Below is a sneak peek of the bag from Kathy Temean's blog. Visit her blog here to see other winning logos.

Saucer Magnolia Flowers

Magnolia flowers

 8.5"x 12"

 colored pencils on toned paper

 

 

A small drawing of a Saucer Magnolia tree. These beautiful and enormous flowers don't last very long but seeing one of these trees in full bloom is truly incredible.

Charcoal Portrait

 Jake

9"x 12"

black and white charcoal pencil on charcoal paper

Not too long ago I found out about a great portrait artist named David Jon Kassan. I was really inspired by his great charcoal portrait drawings and decided to try it myself. I hadn't worked with charcoal since college and something about the messy medium caused me to stay away from it all this time. After drawing this little portrait it turned out that there's something I really enjoyed about blocking in tones and being able to pick out the highlights. Click here to visit David's website and see some of his amazing work!

Vote for the SCBWI Crystal Kite Awards!

If you're a member of the SCBWI don't forget to vote for the Crystal Kite Member Choice Awards! Round 1 of voting is underway now until March 15th! 
"The Crystal Kite Member Choice Awards will be given annually for best book as chosen by the members of each SCBWI Regional Division beginning in 2011 for first-run books published during the 2010 calendar year. "