Insomnia Zombie

Jack and Jill‘s March/April issue is out, and here is one of the illustrations I did for it.

All the illustrations were for an article about going green for Earth Day (April 22). I painted one big illustration (the one here), and a bunch of smaller ones (I’ll post those over the next few days).

I’ve added a couple new illustrations to the extras page of the site today. Two empty slots are left, and once they get filled up and I’m ready to upload more I’ll start removing the ones there now. Not sure yet if I’ll repost the removed ones somewhere later or not, so look while you can.

Crocuses snuck out of the ground while I was watching the snow melt and flood the yard.

Less than a day after this picture, our local bunnies ate every one of these down to the stem. It looked like a baby lawnmower went through.

I’ve only gotten so far as a sketch for my next “Read” illustration, but here it is.

The idea was mostly for the teachers and librarians who are using my previous “Read” illustration in their classrooms and libraries. I wanted to gear this one toward those “reluctant reader” types (boys).

I’ll be painting the whole thing in Painter, and uploading it for posters and note cards on Zazzle and CafePress when I’m finished.

Ha!

I had a nice, long drive to Erie on Monday, and wrote my first (and maybe only, we’ll see) poem for the book on the way up.

It started as one of those first thoughts in the morning before you’re really awake kind of things about a week ago, and I already had an illustration sketch drawn and revised before I ever started on the words. But I knew I wanted the poem in a syncopated kind of rhyme like jazz, not in a steady rhythm like rock, if you know what I mean.

It’s a little different than the rest of the stuff I’ve finished so far, but still funny and keeping with the whole “twisted” theme. Macabre was the word that was used when I read it aloud to the only person I’ve read it aloud to. And he laughed when I finished.

By the way, it’s called Cleaver Overachiever.

Yeah, it’s a little twisted. And funny. And a little bloody for all my carnivorous friends.

I’m just finishing up some illustrations that will put the page count for the book at 66! That’s about one-third the final length I had in mind, but it seems to be coming together quickly enough.

I’m planning on writing about 225-240 pages to send off to a few hand-picked and trusted friends to read and evaluate and provide feedback. Once I hear back from them, I’ll be editing and whittling until everything is the best it can be before I send it off to editors, which might require hacking off a few pages.

Maybe I’ll use a hatchet.

A machete?

As you probably know, those of us in the northeast got wolloped three times (so far) this winter with buckets of snow. It’s always cool to get up in the morning and see what’s been in the yard overnight. Because we try to keep our property as natural as possible, we tend to attract the wildlife that used to call this area home. And the neighborhood’s domesticated life seems to find it attractive, too.

This time I took a few shots of some of the tracks our visitors left behind.

A friendly bird made his way the whole way up to our back door stoop. We’ve seen a bunch of different species at our bird feeder this winter:

• Northern Cardinals
• Black-capped Chickadees
• Bluejays
• Mourning Doves
• Dark-eyed Juncos
• Tufted Titmouses (Titmice?) and
• House Finches

One of our many bunnies who make their summer nests in the bushes in our front yard.

We also have a lot of white-tailed deer wandering through all year long. They like the crabapples and any new tree or plant growth we have going. When we find a sapling we’d like to keep, we have to protect it with a wire fence until it’s big enough that the deer won’t destroy it.

This is likely our neighbor’s cat. He’s black and a very funny hunter; he never catches anything. He does the crouching down and wiggling his butt thing and then he pounces. Within a few seconds he emerges from the tall grass and walks away as if he meant to miss.

This one we’re still working on. We do have skunks, but they would still be hibernating right now. We’ve seen a weasle run through the yard once, so we’re expecting this was him (or possibly a friend). The track was about the size of a cat’s track, but the five toes makes it very distinctive.

We’re not too sure about this one.

I’ve finished a couple more pages of the graphic novel, The T Rex and the Hare, which is set to be included somewhere in the new book. Both pages are available for viewing on the illustration page of the Hairy Eyeballs site.

I’m planning on finishing all of the images in the book with powdered graphite along with artist’s graphite pencils so the illustrations stay unified. By using powdered graphite, I’m able to put down something similar to a watercolor wash before I go in with pencil on the details. I can cover a large space quickly without pencil lines or variations from the paper tooth. Also, by using the powder I’m able to paint a thick coat of super heavy blacks in places where I need them.

This also means I have to go back to a couple of the early, early illustrations I had finished and redraw them with the graphite. I’ll post the graphite drawings on the site when I’m finished with them, and I’ll post the before and after versions here on the blog.

I’ve been working on a lot of graphic design projects for Adventure Foods (based in Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania) including Firefly Chocolates, their shop at Westmoreland Mall in Greensburg. We wanted their business cards to reflect the same look and feel we’ve already established for this arm of the company, specifically the posters and signage I had designed for previous projects.

These images show the front and back of their new cards.