Insomnia Zombie

I made it through the Women of the Page panel at the Frick Art & Historical Center without tripping, burping or falling off my chair. Great news!

My favorite illustration was the one by WPA artist George Avison called, “Bucking Bronco.” It was the cover for the book Sunflight, and the original painting was matted and framed leaving all the handwritten notes and instructions visible. The book itself was displayed in a case alongside the original.

I also want to see (with my glasses) the sketch Maurice Sendak did of Max from Where the Wild Things Are. It was so small. I really need to wear my glasses next time.

The Chris Van Allsburg one is another one that is probably going to be incredible when I finally see it. All those details. This illustration was for the book The Z Was Zapped. I’ve never seen the book, but it sounds a bit like The Gashlycrumb Tinies in that it’s an alphabet book and each letter meets an untimely demise. And, as a type geek, I love the inside joke: The book follows the “Caslon Players,” Caslon being the font the book was set in.

As an aside, I feel terrible for Thomas Taylor. He did the original illustrations for the first Harry Potter book, but was dropped for someone more established after the book became a hit. He was only out of college for two years, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was his first commission. Poor kid. You gotta feel for him.

So on my way out the door after that panel discussion at the Frick Art & Historical Center (that I told you about here), Susan Bails, another one of the nice Assistant Curators of Education there, stopped me and asked if I was going to be busy April 14. It’s a Saturday.

She said they were having a Family Day at the Frick that day with book readings and puppets and movies and book signings and would I be interested in signing my books? With my new buddy Stacy Innerst? Stacy? Stacy’s great! Of course I would be interested in signing books!

Here’s the scoop:

What: A book signing. I’ll bring hardcover and paperbacks of Twisted: Tales to Rot Your Brain Vol. 1, some prints and posters of illustrations from the book (I still have to check to make sure I’ll be allowed to sell items that aren’t books, but I’m going to try), and I’ll even give you a free bookmark with every book you buy.
Where: The Frick Art & Historical Center, in the museum rotunda (it’s a beautiful building, by the way)
When: Saturday, April 14 from 1:30-2:30

Stop in and say, “Hi!” Please! I’m hoping some people will stand in a line in front of me, not just Stacy.

Here’s that little accordion player girl in color. I wasn’t thinking of this when I drew the sketch, but when I was figuring out what colors to use, that raincoat absolutely had to be yellow which automatically required this little girl’s hair to be blue.

Don’t all little girls who wear yellow raincoats have blue hair?

The next image I drew for my Sketchbook Project 2012 sketchbook was this little accordian player.

Each year, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) mans a booth at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, and they take along a portfolio of pieces from selected members. I entered my work and was selected to be a part of that portfolio, along with just 39 other people. I’m very grateful and excited that my illustrations will be participating!

Along with the physical portfolio in Italy, SCBWI also displays a gallery of art from the participating illustrators on their Website. Here’s the link to this year’s page. Bummer having a last name that starts with a letter of the alphabet that’s toward the end and requiring a scroll down, but there you go. I’m happy to be there.

The image up above is one of the illustrations that will be included on my page in the physical portfolio, and it’s the one I chose to represent my style on the SCBWI Web gallery.

I’m starting to believe root canals have their benefits if maybe you’re a creative person. I’m starting to believe this because I’m trying to find a bright side. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve endured yet another one, and it got me thinking about pain and what in this world I can do about it.

A little over a year ago I had the root canal that gives root canals a bad name. It started a few years earlier than that with a “root canal” that I had with a different dentist that had been done very incompletely. He didn’t bother digging into the root that was curved (he didn’t want to bother, I guess) and he didn’t dig all the way to the end of one of the roots where he did bother (he must have been thinking along the lines of “good enough”). The only reason we discovered the problem was because the cap that he put on fell off one day while I was eating a salad.

A very good argument against eating more salads, I’m thinking.

My regular dentist thought the root canal I needed would be better off being done by a root canal specialist. Cause, you know, it was going to be a tough one. I didn’t even realize those people actually existed.

My zombie tooth

I went in with a positive attitude. They projected the image of my injured tooth right on the screen in front of me, and I took a picture of it when they were out of the room. I called it my zombie tooth.

The rubber mouth thingy

When it came time for the actual root canal, the first thing that got me going was the rubber contraption they attached in my mouth. I’m not sure if claustrophobic would be the feeling, but I never, ever want to have one of those in my mouth again. Ever. I spent the hour of the first visit while he was working on my tooth trying to convince myself that I could still swallow and he really wasn’t trying to suffocate me. Yeah. A little panicky. Then I spent the hour of my second visit doing the same thing. Then I figured out that stress excites my bladder and before I left the dentist’s office (on both visits), I had the longest bathroom break of my entire life. I’m not kidding.

As it turns out, the actual root canal was just the beginning.

Twenty-four hours later, almost to the minute, the pain kicked in. The prescription for pain killers did next to nothing. Also, my face swelled up like somebody beat me up. And really, they did.

Here’s the thing, though. The pain was pretty much unbearable, but look at where it took me: zombies, claustrophobia, suffocation and headaches. So I sat down and wrote, and I let my imagination take the story where it wanted to go. I wrote about how it felt like something was trying to break out of my head. I wrote from the perspective of the thing trying to break out. I combined the two and edited and rewrote.

Then I included the story in the Twisted book. It’s called “Headache,” and it made me feel better after I wrote it. And it all started with a common dental procedure.

The zombie part didn’t make it in to the story. Maybe Vol. 2.

And then this would be that little knitter guy after he got himself a little color.

One of the things I wanted to put an effort into once I got the book printed was organizing school visits to talk about it. I decided that before I started trying to put a school visit schedule together, it would be a good idea to give schools a reason to have me there.

Yeah, that would be a really good idea.

I know they are on tight budgets these days and aren’t able to bring in entertainment like they used to do when I was in school (back in the day). They need their programs to fit their curriculum or they won’t be able to justify the expense. So I’m saying hello to the Pennsylvania Academic Standards.

I wanted to do as much work ahead of time for the schools as possible, so my next step is downloading and pouring over lots of pages of academic standards. I’ve decided to concentrate on my home state to get started (Pennsylvania, duh), and I’ve downloaded the English and Art academic standards from the state’s Web site. (The pdf for the Arts and Humanities standards is “pdfarts.pdf” by the way. Made me giggle.)

I’m not looking forward to trying to decipher and then figure out how to apply some of this stuff, but you know what helps in situations like these? When your husband was an art education professor for 35 years and offers to help. Mine was. And he did. Yep. That’s a big help.