princesses for sale!

I'm pretty pleased to tell you that this week you can get the digital version of my book, Twelve Dancing Princesses, from the iTunes store for $1.99!  $1.99!!!  Do I need to explain to you that that is like two bucks?  

One penny shy of two dollars for this:

And this!  Not one princess, not two, but TWELVE. For a couple bucks.

All that aside, I'm very happy to be included in a group named "Beautiful Kids Books".  It's a pretty fantastic compliment.

Plus I get like...I forget how much exactly...like 5 cents for every digital book that's sold. (Just kidding. It's probably less than that.) 

This particular promotion lasts until the end of this week.  If you should happen to buy it, I'd really love to hear how it translates to the iPad!  I don't have an iPad myself, so I've never seen my book in that format.  

An addition teaser for anyone who is already a princes fan: I'm working on s'more 12 Dancing Princesses themed goodies with Chronicle books.  Stay tuned for more about that later!

happy holidays

I know it's kinda early...but is it?

This is the holiday card I designed for 826LA, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center in Echo Park, Los Angeles!  They are super great and awesome.  

I never ever ever work for free (if you ask I'll say no) but when they inquired as to whether I'd be willing to donate some time + energy to illustrate a holiday card for them I said yes.   I just really believe that what they do is fantastic.  

If you live in the area, you can visit their Time Travel Mart store front (the front of the space is a little store, and the back of the space is a big giant room where they tutor the kiddies).  The store is very silly, and very very fun.  If you live in San Francisco you might be familiar with the Pirate Store, it's founded by the same folks.  

Read your kid a book!!!  And happy holidays.

flavia sabina de luce

This is my piece for the Book Show!

It's based on the Flavia de Luce novels, specifically The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  I like the part when she melts down her sister's lipstick and infuses it with poison ivy.   Oh Flav, you vengeful little creature.

For those of you who haven't read the book (or books...there are 4 total with another one on the way and I've read em all wooooo!)  Flavia is a really interesting gal, not just because she's an 11 year old chemistry whiz/girl detective/British aristocrat/lives in the 50's, but because there are so many contradictions in her character.  Her mother died when she was a baby, so she doesn't remember her, yet she is obsessed with her.  She wonders why her sister's don't like her yet she goes out of her way to terrorize them constantly.  She's scary smart and sneaky and yet monumentally naive.  She's kinda bitchy and manipulative but supes vulnerable at the same time.  I love her and hate her alternately when I read the books...she's all complex!

She lives in a big old rotting English country house, where she has taken the Victorian-era chemistry lab as her own.  I wanted to show her in her natural habitat, among the chemicals and books.  The story takes place in the 50's, but the lab is totally old school and kinda mad-scientist-y.  At least that's how I picture it.

She talks about chemistry a lot in the book(s). I tried to take chemistry, but bounced out of the class when I realized that I had no idea what the &$%# was happening and had no hope of catching up (it was a city college class, so you could kinda do that).  Flavia certainly makes it interesting, compelling even, but I was so completely lost in that class.  Much like John Cusack in this particular movie clip!

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. 

CHEER!

I told you I had a lot of stuff to share, and I wasn't kidding!

About a year ago I was asked if I'd be interested in illustrating a series of books about a teenage girl.  That sounds kinda cool, right?  BUT, her primary interest in life, besides boys, and clothes, was cheerleading.  I know most of you don't know me personally, but perhaps you can tell by the overall impression of moi that you get from this blog,  that I could give a care about cheerleading, or school spirit, or anything remotely involved with liking high school at all.  I didn't enjoy high school one bit, myself, and I was about as far from a cheerleader as you could get.

It sounded like such an un-ME project that I almost said no.  But then I said yes.

And now those books exist, in the world, and my name is on them!

The first two books (in a series of five) are out now, and although they're chapter books they are riddled with illustrations.  I plucked a few of my favorites out to share with yous!

The illustrations are meant to be doodles and sketches by the narrator/star of the book series, a teenage girl named Maddy.  She wants to be a cheerleader SO BAD which I SO CAN'T relate to, but she is also an artist, and I CAN relate to doing silly drawings of things!

            Like wishing your nerdy best friend would dress cuter...

...or your best friend making faces at you...

...and getting dagger eyeballs from mean girls!

  It's a trip to see my own handwriting in a book.

 Ultimately, I'm really happy that I decided to jump into this book series.  The sketches are fun I make a point of forcing them to be interesting by inking them with a brush pen.  That way I can't noodle them forever (like in photoshop) and you get little spontaneous surprises sometimes.

  Plus they are supposed to be kind of wiggly and sketchy.  It's hard for me to avoid making them all clean and nice sometimes, tho...

So that's what I've been up to.  I wish I knew more tween-age girls, cuz I love to know what the intended audience thinks of the books.  

Now, back to work!

the book is out of the bag

This is the cover of that book that I made! You can see it on the Chronicle Books website right HERE!

You can take a peek at the Princess matching game, too:



AND the stationary set. It's a mid-century dress shop, and it comes with STICKERS!:




I've been a busy, busy bee. The book & game don't come out til February, and you gotta wait til April for the stationary. It's crazy and surreal seeing my work on a website all professional-like. But it's also awesome.

Book sneak peak!

Where have I been all this time? What've I been up to? Well I haven't been lounging next to a pool working on my suntan (although I've wanted to). I've spent the majority of my summer on a project which is very important to me, and which may be the most important thing I've done yet, as someone who draws pictures for a living: a book!

I got the OK to put a few teaser images up here. They are not full pages, just little snippets to give you an idea of what the book will look like. Enjoy!

science!

Some character studies for incidental characters in my book. They are meant to be intelligent, learn-ed, men of science from the 1830's. Typically, dudes like this would have had outrageous hair-do's and jackets adorned with medals of a mysterious nature.


I haven't done any character designs in a looooooong time...perhaps that's obvious, but I liked how they turned out!

BIG news!

Okay, first I'll give you the small stuff and then we can work our way up to the big one. Here's a drawing I did for some freelance recently to accompany the nooz:



NEWS!

-I received a shining endorsement on the Publishers Weekly blog! Thank you, Alison!

-The paintings from my last post are for SALE on the Bear and Bird Gallery site! Buy 'em up, make my day!

-LOTS of the paintings (and some prints) from my previous show are up at Una Mae's, a really cute boutique in my neighborhood. Support a local institution and a local artista, and go peruse their stylish duds and take home a painting.

-I'm going to be at Unique L.A. this weekend! Come by and visit! Me and my tiny pink X-mas tree will be happy to see you. I've got paper dolls to peddle!

-And finally: I'm going to be both writing and illustrating two books for Chronicle. They are awesome folks. I can't give any details yet, but I'm super excited. For anyone who ever doubted that their biggest craziest wildest dream could come true, let me tell you: if you keep hammering away at it, someday it WILL. And on that day your heart will explode into stardust and sprinkle itself all over the universe, covering all those who know you in a glittering blanket of AWESOME. No seriously, that's how it works.

SO, I've been busy, to say the least. Hope all you's Thanksgivingses were grand!

Miss Lib + it's almost Halloween!

Here is Miss Librarian. I think I've still got some finishing touches to do, but you get the idear.



ALSO, please watch this cartoon. It's almost Halloween, and nothing gets me in the spirit more than watching a nice seasonal cartoon. I particularly like the part when Donald's feet get hexed and go crazy. Oh YouTube, how you enrich our lives...




Last year I didn't get a chance to dress up on Halloween. BOO to that! This year I think I'll just play it safe with a nice low-key kinda costume, like a bearded lady. That way I can wear a preposterous false beard but also have an excuse to get extra prettied up. This was always the conundrum of Halloween costumes for a little girl: be something pretty, which is fun but not very effective, or be something gross/shocking/gooey, which is VERY effective but not at all pretty. I think my all time favorite costume is still the big yellow bird I made a couple years ago. It was fun to be something so friendly looking and pointless.

Plus I got a few compliments on my legs. I also thought about being a librarian, but that seems a little obvious, doesn't it?

The Glamorous Librarian

Here is an image that seems so obvious for me to have conjured up that I'm surprised I haven't before. There is only one problem: I can't settle on what colors I'm going to paint her up in. I was really smitten with the blue-grey and pink scheme, because a librarian with pink hair was just so charming and cool, but Sean said he liked the green and red better because it just works better for the subject matter, and I think he may be right.

So folks, it comes down to a VOTE!


Make it blue n pink...


Or!


Make it green n red...



Well??