Little Rooster (color and sepia)

I’ve been working on new color versions of Little Rooster, mostly because I was concerned about the logistics of using analog pastel. My concerns were primarily with shipping and scanning and not being able to fix the pages before sending them out. So I’ve messed with some settings in Corel Painter, and I have two new color versions of Little Rooster to show …

Monsters at the book store

Let’s set the stage here. I’ve been receiving a lot of feedback about my illustration portfolio, mostly in that it will likely scare the children. (As an aside, I’m in the process of completely overhauling the lot of it to eliminate those things that I’ve been told make it scary.) The other day I went shopping at Barnes & Noble. …

Fairview Elementary

As many of you know, by day I’m a guide at Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic masterpiece, Fallingwater, near Mill Run, Pennsylvania. A couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of playing tour guide to some great students from Fox Chapel’s Fairview Elementary, and they were fantastic! They were telling me about organic architecture! This is us at the end …

“Yikes!” featured on Storypockets

Check out the blog for the Children’s Department of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh: http://storypockets.blogspot.com/2008/09/local-illustarator-nora-thompson.html They’ve given a little “heads up” to our “Yikes! Wow! Yuck!” book. Thanks, guys.

Em dashes and hyphens and editors—Oh my!

(Sorry in advance if I can’t get the punctuation working properly on this blog!) See, the thing I’m liking about editors—and this is coming from a Typography/Graphic Design instructor—is how they keep using em dashes properly. I’ve received two emails from editors over the past two days, and both included the correct use of em dashes. The one I got today …

Yikes! Gets Ink

The nice people at the Greensburg Tribune-Review (writer Mary Pickels and photographer Scott Spangler) gave the Yikes! book a nice little write up. Mary took the time to talk to a few other people besides me, including Celia Naranjo, the Creative Director at Lark Books. Spanky took a great photo, but it looks like it didn’t make it to the …

Yikes! Wow! Yuck!

Our new book is out! The Yikes! book became official today (even though it’s been available on the Internet for a few weeks now). It’s written by Elizabeth Snoke Harris, and illustrated by Yours Truly. It was great fun to work on. The Art and Creative Directors over at Lark (Robin and Celia) are so easy to work with, it …