Friday, July 27th, 2012
The Dragons are Coming Soon...
It's always exciting when a book's publication draws near. What began as a seed of an idea years before has been written and illustrated with care. The publisher's many meetings and plans for the book begin to come to fruition. And that labor of love will soon be presented to readers in the world. It begins with the publisher's description of the book. This is what Simon & Schuster is saying about Waking Dragons...
Wake up with a pair of sleepy dragons and
the knight who must get them ready for school!
Dragons wake up,
Dragons rise,
Dragons open
Dragon eyes.
From tumbling out of their humongous blankets to devouring a breakfast of catapulted waffles, these characters and their loveable antics fill the pages with luminous color and dragon-size fun. A joyful collaboration between two bestselling talents, author Jane Yolen and illustrator Derek Anderson, this book will make any young reader fly out of bed.
Waking Dragons will be available October 23rd.
Friday, July 20th, 2012
The Artist's Apprentice
The apprentice is very important in an artist's studio.
Making books takes huge amounts of time and energy so an apprentice has to be relied on heavily. His job is to keep the studio running smoothly. He can't sit around texting or talking on the phone to his friends. He has to keep the studio picked up, cut and prepare paper for painting, and make sure the artist stays on schedule when a deadline is looming. He meticulously cleans the artist's brushes at the end of the work day and keeps watch over art supplies, running errands to both the art store and office supply store to restock paints, brushes, pens, pencils and supplies as needed. The apprentice aids the artist in any and all ways necessary.
My apprentice, unfortunately, doesn't do any of those things. He doesn't clean anything-- in fact he leaves his things scattered everywhere. He's never once cleaned my brushes, cut paper or run an errand for me. And he's always napping on the job. He doesn't text his friends, but to be fair, it's hard to text with paws.
My apprentice's name is Louie and he's been with my wife and I for more than a year. Though he might not be the right apprentice for another artist, he's the perfect apprentice for me. He loves to play, he has a hilarious sense of humor and he's constantly reminding me to take furry breaks. And if I'm ever having a tough day, one look into those big, fun-loving eyes makes it all go away. Louie has the sunniest disposition I've ever seen. Overall, I would call Louie a pretty great apprentice. And best of all, he works for bones.
Friday, July 13th, 2012
All Aboard the Imagination!
It's Time to Take the Ride of Your Life
My buddy, Lily Penniman, is six years old. A few years ago, her family was planning a move to the Twin Cities and came for a weekend to visit. After spending a busy morning showing them around the cities, we were making our way back to the car in downtown St. Paul. It was early afternoon and we hadn't had lunch yet. I looked up at Lily, who was riding on her father's shoulders. "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse," I said. Lily paused for a moment as she considered my proposal. I will never forget her response.
"Me, too," she said. "But maybe we could take away all the bones and muscles and stuff and just eat the chicken of the horse." That's one giant superpower of an imagination.
When we're small children, our imaginations are mammoth machines of wonder. They're king-sized, well-oiled, souped-up, six hundred cylinder, whirring, humming, honking, highly polished, one-of-a-kind inventions that never stop producing grand, original, perfectly odd-shaped ideas. As we grow older and more experienced, though, we begin to develop expectations of our imaginations. We aren't kids with crayons anymore, we don't have a use for these crazy, random, odd curiosities. Rather than paying attention to the ideas our imaginations are producing, we want to control them and change them to our liking. We know what we want- all those math equations, science experiments and english classes have made us worldly and smarter. So we go in and start tinkering with how our imaginations work. We start out tightening a bolt here and there, adding filters, rearranging and changing. Until...
Until our finely-tuned, perfectly-modified imaginations seem to be humming along. Sure, they might not produce ideas the way they used to, but the ideas they do spit out are organized and much easier to work with. And they make sense! After all, who wants ideas that don't make sense? And soon we get jobs that only require certain kinds of ideas. And we're older now anyway- we know what we want. And what we want are ideas that will suit our needs. So we go back in- tightening, reducing, rearranging, changing. Until...
Until our imaginations suit our lives perfectly. The ideas aren't all that surprising anymore, but that's okay. Our imaginations do just what we expect them to. We don't have much use for those high-flying imaginings, anyway. We're sensible now and when we do need an escape, we have televisions and computer games and phones with apps to satisfy those adventurous needs. And since we don't need our imaginations, we push them off into dark, unused corners of our minds. We know they'll still work when we need them to.
And what we end up with years down the road are broken down, rusty, sputtering rattle trap imaginations that are covered with dust and cobwebs. Does your's even work anymore? "Sure," you say. "I can use it anytime." But you don't. Because you know exactly what to expect from it... tired, unoriginal ideas that are really just new versions of old things you thought up long ago.
When is the last time you were surprised by your own imagination? Maybe it's time to haul that baby out of that dark corner, dust off the cobwebs and restore it to it's magnificent original condition. It's never too late. But you have to be willing to set your imagination free- free from the tinkering, the tune-ups, and the filters you've placed on it. Free from expectations. An imagination can't grow when it's constantly weighted down by specific, structured demands. Your imagination wants to play. Stop judging it. Stop telling it that what it wants is a waste of time, it's not. Your imagination is your very own jet, race car, submarine, rocket ship, time machine and amusement park all combined into one perfect, priceless contraption that can go absolutely anywhere. Believe me, your imagination will take you places you never dreamed were possible. It just needs to be fired up first.
Friday, July 6th, 2012
Ralph Said it Best
Every artist was first an amateur.
This is one of my favorite quotes these days, but it doesn't only apply to artists. It applies to anyone who has ever dreamed of accomplishing a goal that is seemingly insurmountable. Be careful not to judge your own talents, whatever they may be, too harshly in the beginning. A talent is like a precious seedling- it doesn't arrive in this world fully developed. If you don't nurture it, care for it and give it everything it needs to grow, it more than likely won't. Always remember- you have to be willing to be bad at something before you can be good.
Friday, June 29th, 2012
A Nice Cool Breeze
We're having a bit of an on-again, off-again heat wave here in Minneapolis, so I thought I would share a nice cool breeze with you.
This is another piece from before I was published. I don't know what year I painted it, it would take some serious searching through sketchbooks to find out. But it was probably around 1999 or 2000. I was sending my work off to publishers on a steady basis then. It's important, when you're trying to get published, to show editors and art directors that you can paint the same character in different settings and hold the palette, proportions, etc. Consistency is so terribly important in books. An aspiring book artist needs to prove that they not only have the ability to be consistent, but are adept at it (among many other things).
So I sent Santa Claus on vacation. He climbed a mountain, shot photographs in a rather dangerous river, went horseback riding on a ranch and relaxed on the beach. While the composition here is bold, you can see I was still fairly unsure with my brush. The paint is laid down on the canvas in flat patches with very little depth added into the color or brushwork. But I was definitely having fun with the details. In this piece, Santa has already spent a little time building a sandman, enjoying a book, and now he's sitting back with a delicious drink and taking in a nice breeze off the ocean.
Enjoy the breeze and try to stay cool.
Friday, June 22nd, 2012
At Long Last...
Creating Book Covers
~ Part Two ~
Let's see, where was I... oh yes, making book covers is an exciting challenge. In case you hadn't heard, I had to paint a new cover for my forthcoming book Waking Dragons (written by Jane Yolen, I illustrated).
Let's take a few steps back and let me tell you a little story.
When I was working on the illustrations for Waking Dragons, I didn't want to reveal the dragons too early in the book. A boy and his dog are given the task of waking the dragons, but we don't know, yet, just who these dragons are. I love the idea of letting the readers' imaginations run wild. So instead of showing the dragons from the very beginning of the book, I chose to begin the visuals with little suggestions. All you see for the first few spreads is an oversized bed with two giant mounds of dragon curled up beneath a deep blue blanket and a white sheet. But coming out from under the bedding are little glimpses-- a huge red nose with big triangular teeth and a long green tail draping down the side of the bed. It's just enough to show this isn't your ordinary, run-of-the-mill world. This is a world where dragons exist.
With that in mind, I'd decided that I only wanted to give a glimpse of a dragon on the cover. It leaves something up to the reader. By letting that little question linger, it forces you to pick up the book and discover the rest. Though I'd initially come up with two cover concepts, I had long conversations with my editor (Alexandra Cooper) and designer (Chloe Foglia) about it and we decided that not showing the dragon on the cover was the right way to go. I finished the artwork and everything went into production. This was the original cover...
But the world of book publishing is a tricky business. While the author and illustrator are largely responsible for the content and we get to have our names front and center on the cover, there's a whole army of people working behind the scenes to bring these books into the world. The editor and designer have huge parts in shaping the work and challenging the author and illustrator to push every aspect of the story and illustrations to be the very best they can be. There are also the teams of people in production, marketing, publicity and sales. They're all working on every facet of these books.
Waking Dragons had been finished for months when Alexandra and Chloe called me one day to discuss the cover. They said they'd received some interesting feedback, not only from people at Simon & Schuster, but also from people in the bookstores. While they loved the book, they wanted to see the dragon on the cover. An artist never wants to be second-guessed on creative decisions, but you do have to listen and try to have an open mind. The job of the editor and designer isn't to make me want to pound my head against the wall. These are people I've come to know and trust. They wouldn't have made that call if it wasn't important. Alexandra and Chloe were very good about listening to my concerns. This was a significant change. But then they reminded me that one of my early sketches for the cover did, in fact, have the dragon revealed on the cover.
They gave me the weekend to consider this new direction and I used that time to step back into the dragon world and play around with developing that early sketch. I was skeptical, but as I drew it out, there was something nice about this new direction. The first cover, while interesting and intriguing, didn't have the same emotional interaction between the young knight and dragon. It couldn't because the dragon's eyes weren't shown.
They approved the new sketch the next week and I began painting right away. It took longer than I thought it would. I didn't want to make a new cover just to make a new cover. I wanted to put the time in to make it as special as it could be.
I sent them an advance jpeg and then shipped the painting to New York overnight. This is a picture that my wife, Cheryl, snapped as I was on the way out the door with the new cover all bundled up for its trip across the country.
And here's a picture of Chloe Foglia at Simon & Schuster the next morning with the new cover painting in her care.
(Special thanks to Amy Rosenbaum for providing this photograph)
And here's the final cover after Chloe added her magical touch with the title and bylines.
It isn't easy to make books. I'm faced with hundreds of decisions every single day. Some are bigger than others- like the colors, shapes and behaviors of characters. And some are smaller, like how to handle a character's expression, when I should introduce a certain detail and whether the sun will have moved from one particular scene to the next. The decisions aren't always easy, but I make them anyway. It's the price of creating worlds. It's not all that different from everyday life, really. We're all faced with challenges and choices- at work, at home, with friends, with family. You're not choosing what color the sky will be, but you're still deciding what you'll wear, what you'll say and how you're going to handle a situation with a certain someone. All you can do is make the best choices you can. It's all any of us can do.
I'm glad I changed the cover, I think it will make it a better book. I hope you like it.
Waking Dragons will be published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers on October 23rd.
