Two Days Late

Happy 83rd birthday, Maurice Sendak!

I'll be looking forward to his new book coming out this fall, Bumble-Ardy.

Sendak, Picturing Mortality

A great little interview with Maurice Sendak forwarded to me by an uncle. My favorite part:

He knows kids respond to this darkness. "I take kids seriously," he says. "They have a lot of things wrong. They protect their parents. Children are brave little creatures."

How to Steal Like an Artist

A good, inspiring post by Austin Kleon (via Mark Mitchell). I especially like 8 and 9:

Kurt Vonnegut said it best: “There’s only one rule I know of: goddamn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

...

As Flaubert said, “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

Tomie dePaola's Birthday

Today was Tomie dePaola's 76th birthday.

Maurice Sendak on what being an illustrator means

"When you hide another story in a story, that's the story I'm telling the children."

I found this via Mark Mitchell at How to be a Children's Book Illustrator.

June 10, 1928

Maurice Sendak turns 82 today.

Frank Frazetta, 1928-2010

Frank Frazetta died May 10 at the age of 82. Here is a post for him at Drawn.

We have this Leaping Lizards print above our living room couch.

May he rest in peace.

The Page 100 Project

This is an interesting idea.

Ryan Peltier

Very cool work. I like beards.

Dr. Seuss

Today was Dr. Seuss' 106th birthday!

Illustration Directories

Excellent advise from Mark Mitchell and Jo Ann Miller: Should you advertise in an illustration directory?

...there are always people — right now especially — looking for that nostalgic, hands on feel in the art. Watercolor, draftsmanship, the simple pen and ink line have a more important place than they had three years ago. Everybody’s been touched by someone who’s lost a job. People are going through a tough time. They want an emotional comfort level. That means images that strike an emotional, warm and fuzzy feeling, that appear hand-made rather than in your face and MTV-like.

...

There’s always a need for the humaneness in visual images —  particularly in an economy that’s struggling. And it’s often found in pictures done in the very traditional mediums like watercolor and  pencil. I think artists of that old school style have shied away from promoting themselves when they should be embracing opportunities to showcase their art.

Pope Meets Artists in Sistine Chapel

Click here for the whole article:

He added: "Faith takes nothing away from your genius or your art: on the contrary, it exalts them and nourishes them."

...

Benedict, himself an accomplished pianist, said Saturday: "The experience of beauty does not remove us from reality, on the contrary, it leads to a direct encounter with the daily reality of our lives, liberating it from darkness, transfiguring it, making it radiant and beautiful."

He told the artists: "You are the custodians of beauty: thanks to your talent, you have the opportunity to speak to the heart of humanity, to touch individual and collective sensibilities, to call forth dreams and hopes, to broaden the horizons of knowledge and of human engagement."

Wild Envelope

Cool!

Tomie dePaola

Today is Tomie dePaola's 75th birthday.

Tomie is a great and prolific illustrator who came from a loving, supportive family. I too had a very good childhood, and am encouraged to know that that isn't a hindrance to being a successful illustrator!

From Elizabeth Kennedy:

Tomie came from a loving family of Irish and Italian background. He had an older brother and two younger sisters. His grandmothers were an important part of his life. Tomie's parents supported his desire to be an artist and to perform on stage. When he expressed an interest in taking dance lessons, he was immediately enrolled, even though it was unusual for a young boy to take dance lessons at that time. (See Oliver Button is a Sissy.) The emphasis in Tomie's family was on enjoying home, school, family and friends, and embracing personal interests and talents.

dePaola received a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from the California College of Arts & Crafts. Between college and graduate school he spent a brief time in a Benedictine monastery. DePaola taught art and/or theater design at the college level from 1962 through 1978 before devoting himself fulltime to children's literature.

DePaola's picture books cover a number of themes/topics. Some of these include: his own life, Christmas and other holidays (religious and secular), folktales, Bible stories, Mother Goose rhymes, and books about Strega Nona. He has also written a number of informational books like Charlie Needs a Cloak, which is the story of the creation of a wool cloak, from shearing a sheep to spinning the wool, weaving the cloth, and sewing the garment. His collections include Mother Goose stories, scary stories, seasonal stories, and nursery tales. His books are characterized by humor and light hearted illustrations, many in a folkart style. DePaola creates his artwork in a combination of watercolor, tempera, and acrylic.

Something I would love getting invited to

From the Holy See press office:

A press conference was held in the Holy See Press Office this morning to present Benedict XVI's forthcoming meeting with artists, which is due to take place in the Sistine Chapel on 21 November.

Among those participating in the press conference were Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture and of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Patrimony of the Church, and Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums.

Archbishop Ravasi explained how his dicastery is promoting and organising the meeting, which will coincide with the tenth anniversary of John Paul II's Letter to Artists of 4 April 1999, and the forty-fifth anniversary of Paul VI's meeting with artists of 7 May 1964.

"The aim of the meeting", said the archbishop, "is to renew friendship and dialogue between the Church and artists, and to encourage new opportunities for collaboration".

For his part, Antonio Paolucci explained how the artists invited, their numbers necessarily limited due to the space available in the Sistine Chapel, come from all the continents, "They are", he said, "men and women of different cultures and languages: ... painters, sculptors, architects, writers and poets, musicians and singers, directors and actors from cinema and theatre, dancers".

On the evening of 20 November, before their meeting with the Holy Father on 21 November, the artists will visit the Vatican Museums' collection of modern and contemporary art, which was created at the express wish of Paul VI.

The Sistine Chapel is quite a thing to behold, but how cool it would be to be there with the pope!

Hidden N.C. Wyeth Painting

Interesting! From Fox News: X-Rays Expose Hidden N.C. Wyeth Painting Under Another.

I'm Back

Sorry for the long absence. It's been a big summer! We spent a couple of weeks in Italy, then my twin sister and brother in law moved down to Austin this past weekend. Sad for us, but we're happy for them! Jay Long, one of our favorite artists, is based in Austin.

Color Wheel

With the good help of Mark Mitchell over at How To Be A Children's Book Illustrator, I am working on improving my color skills. Or rather on gaining some color skills. I think it has been one of my weakest points.

Here is my color wheel, which was more difficult that I thought it would be. I went a bit heavy on the warmer colors, and my yellow-green could use more yellow, but it was a great exercise. I really look forward to working through his other color sessions.

The Line Game

From Anthony Browne, children's author, illustrator, and laureate:

My brother and I used to play a game that we thought was our own invention, until realizing that it is played by children all over the world. One of us would draw a shape and the other would turn that shape into a picture. I think all children should play it to encourage drawing.

I worked from home when my children were growing up so was lucky I was around to read to them. I spent time drawing with them too, and yes they played the game I 'made up' with my brother.

This struck me because, well, my three siblings and I played this game when we were little, and I too thought we were the only ones who played it. We called it "The Line Game," and would continually pass around the paper with each kid drawing a line until the whole thing turned into a picture. Or until it turned into a fight ...

Read the whole article here.

Maurice Sendak Turns 81

A friend reminded me this morning that it is Maurice Sendak's birthday today:

It's the birthday of the children's author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, (books by this author) born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1928. His parents were Polish immigrants, and as Maurice was growing up, many extended family members died in the Holocaust. So his parents were constantly grieving for their family back in Poland, and they were worried about Maurice, who was a very sick child. He almost never went outside — most of what he knew about the world outside his bedroom came from visiting family members, from the view through his window, and from books. His dad read to him before bed every night, and his mom was constantly hovering around, making sure he was all right. So when he eventually became an illustrator, he oftentimes painted a moon in the background as a symbol of his watchful mother. He started drawing, got a job in high school drawing the Mutt and Jeff cartoon strip into comic books, and went on to art school. When he was 19, he illustrated a physics book, Atomics for the Millions (1947). Then he worked for years designing the window displays for FAO Schwartz while he took night classes at art school.

And eventually he started writing and illustrating his own books for children, books about normal kids who end up in surreal settings where strange things happen, books like Where the Wild Things Are (1963) and In the Night Kitchen (1970). Maurice Sendak has illustrated more than 90 books. He said: "You cannot write for children. They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them."