Unfortunately, I am no longer illustrating a children’s book for Tanglewood Press. The break was a somewhat unexpected and can only be ascribed, I suppose, to a difference of artistic vision. We parted ways after I had completed and submitted the final art for the cover. I was quite happy with the work, but the publisher felt it was not quite what they needed. Of course I am now anxious to see the book published and on the shelves just so I might see what sort of imagery they were shooting for.
Here I’ve posted what little I feel I can rightly reveal of the cover art work that I completed for Tanglewood Press. Yes, I know, it doesn’t show much, but to reveal anymore would not be quite fair to the author, I think.
And I must say that Tanglewood did pay me for my work and were very prompted in doing so. I can’t complain about that.
There were two blessings from this experience. The first is a new way of working which I am anxious to employ again. The second is that my schedule is now free to take up a new project which has come my way. But I will have more to say about that as things develop.
It may be quite some time before I am able to post any new illustrations here on my site. For the next four months I will be busy teaching at MICA, working on contract at ADG Creative and creating illustrations for Tanglewood Press. I suppose I might create a thing or two as I teach Intro to Illustration, but the work I do for Tanglewood won’t be seen by the outside world until it is published in 2012. Of course if the movie is correct nothing will be published in 2012. And the work I create for ADG won’t be posted here, but instead I will be posting that on Cloverfish.com as it will all be web oriented – at least I think so.
Anyway, in the meantime I plan to post videos that encourage creativity and instruct in the art of illustration. So pretty soon I should have a good resource for myself if not for any visitors to the site.
Tanglewood Books
Last week I agreed to illustrate a children’s book for Tanglewood Press and yesterday morning I signed and mailed the contract, so now it’s official!
Perhaps the most well known book in Tanglewood’s catalog is The Kissing Hand, by Audrey Penn. It’s always nice to know I’ll be in good company. Of course I can’t say much about the book I will be illustrating except that it will likely be published in fall 2012. However, I can say that upon my first reading of it I liked the story very much. I didn’t have to convince myself of that. Visually speaking, it is just the sort of story that I would like to illustrate. It will be a 32-page picture book – so there’s a lot of work to do between now and then. And while I’ve lately been experimenting digitally, I think it best if I use traditional pastel.
In other news, this past weekend I completed a Wizard of Oz poster for a charity. This morning I dropped it off and they were very pleased indeed. I will try to post it here on the site by the end of this week.
