Tomie dePaola

Each year Tomie dePaola chooses a story he'd like to see illustrated. This time round it was a passage from  Chicken Licken -spoof off of Chicken Little. I had a hard time imagining this illustration any other way; insane adults squawking to sane lucid child. It all makes perfect sense.

Jip

This piece was inspired by Jip, His Story written by the marvelous historical fiction author Katherine Patterson. I hoped to get a little life into a scene that struck me as hard as a tin lunch pail as soon as I read it.

Off to the SCBWI conference in New Jersey tomorrow! This is another pastel I'm taking along. Still a part of Bread and Roses, Too. A great piece of work written by Katherine Paterson.

Sleeping

 Another illustration for Bread and Roses, Too

Work for the SCBWI NJ conference in June, a spread for a story titled 'The Big Warm Barn'.
This is multi-layered pastel - a medium I've fallen in love with.

Cover art for Come on Seabiscuit! If only I could have been at Pimlico when this horse was around!

Bologna fair

One  of the interior pages to Hetaliye (Rice Pudding) that with a little luck will be going to the Bologna Book fair. While staying in Ramallah there was a lovely donkey who visited the base of our hill in the early morning and whose braying became my alarm clock.

One logo idea for the SCBWI conference. Color would be removed and figure would be in white.

This is the cover art for Hetaliye (Rice Pudding) due out this month through the Tamer Institute. Working with the little model was half the fun.

New Book

Here's the cover for Tazeen Ahmend's book:
Ali's Special Cure

13pgs in all

The inking stage before color.... It's an old one but this is when I discovered just how much  I loved working with inks.

This is a funny old sketch intended for a story called Tilda...Who could the model have been?