stage and play pricesses + give away!

Long time no see!

I thought it was about time I had another give-away, not just because I have a whole box of Stage and Play Princesses, but also to breath some life into this crusty, neglected old blog!

Stage and Play Princesses is based on my book, Twelve Dancing Princesses, the simplest way to describe it is to say that it's a kind of toy theater, but more toy than anything else.  It's made out of heavy, thick cardboard, and the box has a drawer on the front so that all the pieces can get tucked away when play is done.  

Pretty cool, huh??  I remember having toys sorta like this as a kid, like paper dolls and a cardboard castle, but nothing as nicely made or inviting as this.  My inner child is freaking out over this thing.  

There are a LOT of pieces, including four different back drops, a horse drawn carriage, 15 different princesses, a king and queen, a cat, a tree, a bunny, a chair a dog, a pig, a tea party...tons of stuff!!

OK OK, here's the give away part!

 GIVE AWAY!!! 

The rules: 

• Leave your e-mail address in a comment to this post.
• I'll use an random number generator to pick a winner!
• US residents only please.  Yes I know, but these things are kinda heavy so int'l shipping is not an option...this time around, at least.  International folks, don't worry...I'll have a less hefty giveaway soon.
• I'll pick a winner on March 29!!
• Yayayayayayay!

PS: Please don't be alarmed or confused when your comment doesn't appear immediately after you post it.  I have comments moderation turned on, to keep my blog free of robot spam and haters! There's no need to repost, and your comment ought to appear within a few hours. :)

OR, if you're not a risk-taker, you can get a set the old fashioned way: buy it on the internet!

They are available at the Chronicle Books website 

and on Amazon, because everything is on Amazon.

Please notice my dog is in this set.  Yep, that's Lila!

(Cat for scale.) (Also, she just wouldn't go away.)

(Cat drawings below for fun.)

where does kitty go in the rain?

It's been a looooooooong summer, guys.  

It started out great with trips and anticipation, but it ended in the most bummer-est way possible.  Without getting into too, too much detail, there was a death in my husband's immediate family and any of you out there who have lost someone close to you know how that goes...it SUCKS. 

But sucky times seem to be drawing to a close now, and we're moving forward into fall!

School is starting!  It's my third year teaching at CalArts in the Character Animation department, and it is pretty fantastic. 

Me and Sean have an anniversary/birthday trip to look forward to in October!

It will no longer be one-billion-million-jillion degrees outside!  (Those of you in Los Angeles know what I mean: it's been freaking HOT.)

I have a couple big, important, awesome projects that I get to dive into head first!

It's all good stuff!

These illustrations are from a book I illustrated for Blue Apple LAST summer.  That's one of the toughest things about working in publishing.  You have to wait THIS LONG to share stuff!

It's an e-book, for the iPad and such, but I understand that it's going to be printed eventually as well.  I didn't actually know that while I was illustrating it, however, so there's a lot of things resting in the "gutter" on these pages.  Gutter is the fancy word for 'middle of the page where the crease in the book usually is'.  A good rule of thumb for all you would-be illustrators: don't put things in the gutter.  

The story is very cute and simple: a little girl wonders where her cat hangs out when it's raining outside, and she goes out to find him, and sees bugs and worms and stuff.

This is the title page.  I really like how that cloud turned out.  

I played with color a LOOOOOT on this project.  It would have been easy, but super dreary, to make every page gray and blue and rainy looking.  Instead I decided to try making the background colors different shades of desaturated, soft color, so it feels cool and rainy but not out and out sad.

And then yeah...the sun breaks out at the end and girlfriend finds her kitty!  I think this is my favorite spread, probably because I can very accurately remember squeezing my own cat in this exact fashion.  

covers + news

Hellow out there in the bloggaverse!  Here's a funny thing about working in publishing: you finish working on something and then it usually takes about a billion years for that thing to actually BE published and released into the world.  I have a constant backlog of things that I can't share, even though I WANT to.  

So here's a couple of those things!  This is a book cover I did for a re-issue of Enid Blyton's Tales of Toyland.  Just so you know, if you happen to pick up this particular version, I am NOOOOOOTTT responsible for the interior illustrations which are...very bad.  Anyway, I finished this super long ago.  About last August.  I just got a proof in the mail last week!

This is the proof!  It changed a little bit but that's normal.  I think it looks preeeeeeetttty cool.  

I also did a cover for a middle grade novel (shown here with the bleed edge intact!) about a sassy middle child, Confessions of a So-called Middle Child by Maria Lennon.  It's not out til August but it's pre-order-able on Amazon. I had a lot of fun with this one, doing hand lettering with brush pen!  I also did all the little doodles in the bg in brush pen and then scanned them (and yes most are relevant to the story).  And I made a ton of watercolor textures for this one, too, which is also super fun.  

Covers are FUN.  It's just really low-stress to be only responsible for a single image.  Usually I've got a whole book's worth of stuff to think about, and continuity to consider, and all that!  But covers are just one picture you can concentrate on.  It's a nice change of pace. 

Other things that are fun: illustrating books for awesome children's book writers.  Below is a screen shot from Amy Krouse Rosenthal's website.  I'm illustrating a book by her about a little unicorn!  Yaaaaaaay!

Her website is: whoisamy.com

This won't be out for a LONG time, but this is a sneaky peek!

Another thing that won't be out for a while (but which I received proofs for) is a 12 Dancing Princesses themed alphabet flashcard set.  I'll post all kinds when that's done, but for now enjoy this photo of my cat using the proofs as a playground.

She does not take my work seriously.  

Or anything, for that matter.  

Some other 12 Dancing Princesses goodies are heading down the pike too...stay tuned!

And yes, I AM busy.  But I did have time to clean up my desktop and take a photo of it.  It will be fun to look back on a few weeks when it's a total mess again.  

Oh yeah...and one more little fun thing: I got a new tattoo!  A little anchor.  

meow meow kitties

It's that time of the year again: the time when I am in a bunch of gallery shows!  These two pretty kitties are for the Animal Kingdom show at Gallery Nucleus.  It opens this Saturday, February 16!  

It's been a while since I painted some kitties.  You want to know something weird?  I never feel like I really know how to draw a cat.  They're not super complicated, right?  Pointy triangle ears, loopy tail, whiskers.  But when I start, somehow, my drawings are just the most terrible, generic cat shaped blobs you've ever seen.  I tried to make these guys feel specific, and I think I managed it ok.  They're certainly different from any other kitties I've painted.  

They're not meant to be portraits of my actual pets (past or present), since I've never had a medium-haired-kinda-fluffy black cat before.  The gray stripy cat did come out looking like a cat I had named DC.  It stood for "Don't Cuddle me", since she really really hated everything and everyone and especially being snuggled upon.  Sort of like my present cat (who is gray but stripe-less).

The really funny thing about ever making an image with a cat in it is this: there is always someone who will say "OMG, that looks just like MY cat!"  

Is it YOU??

Also, notice how I resisted pink, yet again!

PS, in regards to the unicorn painting: it looks like there WILL BE PRINTS  of it AVAILABLE at the WWA Gallery!  Hooray!  They're not on the site, but I have it on good authority that they will be available at the opening.  

insta-life

Hey guys, I have a new painting to show you REAL SOON!  

In the mean time, did you know I'm on Instagram, making stylish photos appear in my iphone that I could never manage to produce with an actual camera and film?  My username is missbrigette, if you are of the Insta-persuasion yourself. 

Most pertinent to this blog, I often Instagram my works-in-progress, like so!

That one is almost done!  Just about a bazillion flowers left to paint, is all.

Ooooh yeah, there's a Beatles thing on its way, too.

 There's a lot of kitty-doggy pictures...

I can't help it.  I hang out with these two ding dongs all day and they are stinking cute.  

She was chasing a rainbow, you guys.

It's kind of handy, actually, because having all those neat filters reminds you to take pictures of places you go and things you see, with the incentive that you can make whatever it is appear up to 900% cooler than it actually was.  

But also I kind of think I go to a lot of cool places, too.  The Hollywood sign almost always looks fantastic.

Even freeways look cool through a vintage filter!!

Sometimes I just take pictures of stuff around my dusty old apartment.

Just kidding.  I take pictures of this apartment because I love this apartment. 

Also...I love my dog.  

My cat is not too bad, either.  

And sometimes I take pictures of my own fashionable choices, so I can remember them foreverrrrrr!

That horseshoe necklace broke!  Sad! 

See, it's working.  I'm remembering stuff.

It's hard to take a picture of the top of your own head.

An occasional picture of food.  Not too big on food pictures.  If food pictures is what you want, you've come to the wrong place.

Next time more art!

puss in boots

I remembered that the Puss in Boots book I worked on last summer is out now, so I can show you some pages!

Some projects you look back on fondly, and others not so much.  This is a not-so-much for me.  The deadlines were super tight and crazy, and my collaborators were, ahem, difficult.  Luckily for me, the feeling of being sleepless, exhausted, and SUPER stressed is a familiar one!  At CalArts I went through it once a year, getting my student films done.  We call it crunch time.  It's always totally worth it, but it sucks like crazy when you're in the midst of it.  

All that white space is where the text is.  I did have fun with the style and compositions as much as I could!  Some of my favorite children's books have really excellent use of white space, so I tried it out for myself.  

Oh my gosh you guys, I argued to much for the left hand side of this spread!  It's not good to get super married to your ideas, but I loved how that page looked in the sketch and it's still probably my favorite of the whole book.  On the right you have Humpty Dumpty having a spazz attack.  

Here's a weird thing: I have no idea what happens in this movie.  As a the illustrator, they don't tell you the story as it plays out in the film, you just have to glean what you can from the text and the reference images.  I guess this happens, at some point, for some reason!

I also exercised the use of unnatural and eccentric color!  huzzah

All in all I managed how to have fun with it, and I like how it turned out.  The book is on Amazon, where you will notice that the cover is a screencap from the movie.  I don't know why they do that (they did it with all the books for this film), when the insides of the book look nothing like it.  What I say to that is: whateverrrrr!  

Also, I found the following amusing:

I was surprised at the 'cats' part!  cats?  I didn't realize that was a "thing" of mine.  

Don't act like you don't google yourself, too.