Fractured Fairy Tales Show

Hey! My friend Sandra invited me to participate in a group show full of AMAZING people this weekend. Its a Fairy Tale themed group featuring work by:

Roque Ballesteros  Brigette Barriger  Lorelay Bove  Megan Brain  Drake Brodahl, Becky Dreistadt  Anna Chambers  Joey Chou  Sandra Equihua Sadie Figueroa, Genevive Godbout  Helena Garcia  Rex Hackelberg  Alex Kirwan  Dan Krall, Amanda Kindregan  Leticia Lacey  Brittney Lee  Deanna Marsigliese  Annette Marnat, Rhode Montijo  Leo Matsuda  Martin Ontiveros  Pete Oswald  Jorge Ramirez, Israel Sanchez  Don Shank  Ann Shen  Gabe Swarr  Becca Stadtlander, Joel Trussell  Nate Wragg  Johnny Yanok and myself!

I dropped off my work yesterday and definitely felt humbled / privileged / intimidated to hang with such massive talent. 

My piece is called "Wolf Grove", its 18 x 24 inches watercolor and ink... Below is a hackily assembled scan of the whole thing and some crops of it...

The opening for the show is 7:00 this Saturday, July 7th at the WWA gallery - 9517 Culver Blvd, Culver City, CA 90232

35 Years as a Mormon Boy

Its my birthday and I am grateful.

Grateful for a loving Father in Heaven who has given me 35 years of life surrounded by so many kindred souls living varied and wonderful lives. Grateful to have a place in this wide world as a proud Mormon at a time when stupefyingly dull haters help me appreciate more completely the unique tradition of outcasts and dreamers that I was born into. Grateful to be a husband and a father. Grateful for honesty and kindness, beauty and truth. Grateful for frailty and foolishness, stumbling and hope. Light attracts light, good comes from good and nothing bad lasts forever.

35 Years as a Mormon Boy.

Amen

Scanner, I love you.

It scares me that so many people use wacom tablets to "draw"... I just can't get excited about how "real" the textures and brushes are or how "responsive" the stylus is. Drawing with a stylus isn't drawing.

The Chronicle Crush and My First Review

I love Chronicle Books. I can't express that enough. I'm sort of in shock that I get to work with them at all, I have felt that way since I was doing Paul Frank titles for them at my old job. Person after person that you meet is just rad and it starts to become an assumption. You're like, oh, I'm going to definitely like this person, just because they work there. That has continued to be the case in every instance.

I, of course have a shortlist of people there that I owe EVERYTHING to, starting with Andrea Menotti, a brilliant editor, former ballet dancer and current author turned MBA student at Cornell (possibly the most eerily well rounded human being I've ever met) who headed up the PF titles while I was there and absolutely pushed for me when I started doing my own thing, becoming my first editor and a total mentor. Amy Aichaibou, a design director that took me under her wing and made my early projects run waaaaaaaay smoother and look much more awesome than they would have without her, editor Naomi Kirsten who pulled Sports Matching Game and Around the World Puzzle over the finish line when Andrea moved on from Chronicle to begin her studies at Cornell. That's sort of my Chronicle Trinity. There are so many other amazing people that have pulled for me and I continue to make new friends in that mythical San Francisco Office all the time. That's my short list, but I have to keep adding to it!!! Julie! Lara! Amelia! Seriously, its like one adorable name after another. The radness is so common its almost radundent! Okay, sorry about that one...

Then, the catalogs show up and I get to see the list and all the incredible illustrators and authors I get to have as listmates. This review, my very first review EVER!!!, for Chloe, Instead (my first picture book ever!) is amazing because it says some great things about my book along with great things about so many other books previewed with mine at the same time on the Chronicle list!

I was in a band all through college with my best friends and I remember the feeling of it being such a privilege to be seen as a unit with these people that I loved and that made rad music together. I've missed that feeling. I feel a little bit of that these days about the Chronicle Books label on Chloe, Instead.

Here is that review, check out Chloe and all the rad books coming out this spring from that little office in San Francisco.

http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/afuse8production/2011/12/05/librarian-preview-chronicle-books-springsummer-2012/

Catching Up and Lately, Lily

Well, its been quite awhile since I last posted and alot has happened! Soooo excited about a couple of projects going on right now. In addition to working on some new picture books, I'm in the process of launching a little girl's teeshirt line with my friend Erin Nichols of Elm Style and Design. We started talking about this last year and the whole thing just, yes I will say it, snowballed. And not the cold icy kind, either! The sweet delicious kind with coconut flakes and sugary filling! Before we knew it we had started a brand new company called Lately, Lily!

It went like this... Erin (who was a new Mother of an adorable little girl named Ava) called me last September and said, "Hey, I can't find any teeshirts for Ava that I love... Have you ever thought about making teeshirts for little girls? I want to make teeshirts for little girls!!!"

I was like, "That sounds awesome!!!"

So she was like "What would you do if you could come up with a tee line for little girls from scratch?"

That is the kind of sentence that is tailor fit to assure my involvement in anything.

First, a bit about Erin.

Erin has an amazing eye for fit and color, she worked for years as a head merchandiser at HSS. We were introduced by a mutual friend, Jillian and hit it off from the start when she hired me to brand her new company Elm Style and Design. At the time, I had recently left Paul Frank Industries to devote myself full time to my own illustration and writing (a life long dream of mine has been to write and illustrate picture books) and Erin had stepped away from HSS to work on event design. We both agreed that Apparel was fickle and it was nice to be working on design projects that could last beyond a season, independent of trend watching and sales forecasts, etc. After years of designing graphics for teeshirts (me) and buying and selling them (her) we were excited about doing other things.

There's something funny about Apparel. It doesn't go away like that. I had never really anticipated how much fun it actually was to see kids wearing my designs. Having something from my sketchbook become part of their little life. Its a medium that literally moves. Even more than animation, teeshirts come to life when they're worn.

At Paul Frank I became fascinated with building simple stories into my designs for tees and devoted much of the time I spent as Creative Director chasing that idea, weaving stories in separate tees so that they connected to each other in a season - spanning arc. When I left, I knew I wanted to keep exploring that way of working in some way. I love characters. I get obsessed with how their stories can weave through drawings and music and words... and of course teeshirts!

So, when Erin asked me what I would do, I immediately thought of a brand that would follow a little girl who is always doing something new. Always thinking, always exploring. Always observing. My own kids shock me with their perspective and insight into very simple things. They notice. So... I wanted to create a character that notices.

Erin knew she wanted international elements in the line, and I was in the middle of working on the Around the World Puzzle for Chronicle books so that concept was fresh in my mind as well. we both loved the idea of encouraging curiosity about the people of the world.

So this girl's curiosity would be directed at small things across a huge canvas. She would travel the world, looking it over from an unafraid, adventurous perspective.

The name hit me soon after, Lately Lily. We would try and keep track of all the things that were going through her mind, the new sights and people of whatever place she was in lately... "Lately" because she would be moving on soon to more adventures and the next chapter of her story.

From there, we tried to imagine parents whose unique circumstances would have influenced Lily and set her situation in motion. Educated and curious people that were working hard and bringing their extraordinary daughter up across the world.

As a kid, I loved looking through issues of National Geographic, dreaming about distant places and imagining what the lives of the people writing the articles must have been like. It was natural to give Lily's parents the raddest job I could think of. A writer (Mom) and photographer (Dad) for our version of Nat Geo, The International Exposition.

Now Lily, who was developing into a thoughtful, somewhat careful observer (dutifully recording her thoughts and facts in a neat little note / sketchbook), needed another side to her personality. Something that would encourage her to take risks and have adventures for the fun of it. A friend that would jump first and worry about the consequences later, pulling Lily along for the ride and directing her critical eye toward its next subject.

I'm a giant fan of the Hundred Acre Wood, Peanuts and Corduroy. Stories where children have close friendships with impossible best pals, with no real explanation given as to how. Charlie Brown and Snoopy, the little girl that has complete conversations and interactions with Corduroy the stuffed bear. Christopher Robin and all his friends. Calvin's close relationship to Hobbes, which was a massive childhood favorite of mine.

So, Zeborah was born! Lily's fearless and impulsive stuffed Zebra who is very much alive, even if she does sometimes sleep in her best friend's sunny yellow suitcase. Who wouldn't want a perfectly loyal best friend you can keep in your pocket?

Already, I feel such a love for that tiny, rambunctious Zebra. I was stoked when at our photoshoot, my friend's 3 year old daughter literally refused to take off her Zeborah shirt. Which of course, came alive the minute she put it on. Teeshirts! I'm telling you, they get stuck in your soul.

Which brings me back to Erin's teeshirts, which are perfect. She has designed THE little girl's t-shirt body. Manufactured from scratch in LA, its soft, just slim-enough, and drapes perfectly.

Russ at InkWright is an incredible local screen printer and worked with us to apply the hand drawn graphics with a feel so soft you can barely sense where the images start by touch. At a time when so many tees are blasted out of giant mega - screen houses in enormous sand paper piles it makes a huge difference who prints your shirts.

Well, after a year of bouncing ideas around in our office and burning through sketchbooks, Lately Lily is almost ready to launch. Its an ongoing project and a chance to to daydream about far off places. I really hope people will enjoy following this traveling girl, and her pint sized friend, as much as I do. Our website goes live tomorrow at www.latelylily.com

People People People!

I love People. Most of the real ones, but I'm talking about drawing here! All my life, I've drawn little People (and robots, but that's a different story and goes without saying, I mean, who doesn't like drawing robots?!) and followed their little adventures. Maybe it comes from a childhood spent moving around alot and always feeling like the new kid. Maybe it has a tiny bit to do with my giant, rowdy family of brothers and sisters, but I generally feel like all people everywhere are up to something interesting possibly all of the time. By that, I mean, more interesting than me. So, I draw People. Usually smiling or a little blank (so that the rare frowners really stand out!), basically looking around at other things. I like putting them next to eachother so they look at eachother sometimes... Or away from eachother if that is more interesting. Drama! Awkwardness! People are mysterious and wonderful.

I love to draw People. Made up ones are the best because they can't say "Hey! I don't look like that!" They just DO look like that. A few years ago, I started drawing People holding hands and really liked the experience of switching them out so they held hands in a random chain. It was comforting, and a little unsettling at the same time. This is a combination which I super like times a thousand. Comfort and Nervousness. That's what you feel when you hold a stranger's hand. Or even a friend's hand for the first time. A comfort in the connection, a nervousness in the vulnerability and realization that they feel like you do. That skin is skin and warmth is warmth. Holding hands is powerful stuff.

So, I started drawing that alot. I sent those drawings to my friend and publishing mentor, Andrea, at Chronicle Books. She liked them enough to contact me later and say, "Hey! Why don't we make a big floor puzzle out of this! You know, for kids!"

I got to spend a few months drawing People from "Around the World". Some of them in folk costume for visual flair, some of them dressed for the everyday life of that country. Its impossible to "represent" something as diverse and complex as an entire nation so I didn't really try. I just drew People. People that came to mind as I looked at pictures of local People. Or read articles about countries that are so beyond my personal experience that they can't help but feel like magical places. Of course, they are not fairytale realms but honest locales made of dirt and stone and concrete and glass. Places that are in some cases harsh. Places that are the depositories of some of this world's great cultural masterpieces. Places where People live real lives and do everyday things.

People that have skin and warmth and whose hands feel exactly the same as mine.

Chronicle and I went back and forth and really collaborated on what would become the final project which was an amazing experience for someone as green as me to the whole publishing world.

Well, they just sent me the results of that process in the mail and I'm so excited. I've never made anything that I'm so proud of in my whole life.  I just absolutely love it. Thank you thank you to Andrea, Naomi, Amy and Aimee. Your work and skill paid off masterfully and it looks beautiful.

This is the first time I've ever had my name on the front cover of anything, which is perfect because its about People that don't know eachother holding hands like friends. That is my super most favorite thing times a thousand.

Getting That Feeling

He fell into the black. Lights drifting amongst the great shapes that hid in the perilous deep. He fell until he rested on the soft mattress of death and refuse at the ocean floor. For a long time, he didn't move at all.