Cover Girl

Happy Memorial Day Everyone. Here's a little something:



That's Right! A little sneak peek at the cover of Book One of the Zita the Spacegirl set! The book will be out in stores this winter. I’ll post a pre-order date soon and I may even get so excited that I’ll put up one of those fancy little counters to count down the days. Still, here at the beginning of summer it seems like a looong wait.

Comics, creatures and candy after the jump.

Monsters in Miniature

Where did these guys come from? Well, last week I created an illustration for an article in upcoming issue of Mothering Magazine. I decided to do the piece on really nice heavy watercolor paper. It's nice stuff, and really a joy to work with compared with what I used to use as a watercolor surface. The way I cut it left me with a strip that I cut into little squares. Then the squares started whispering to me. Each square was asking for a creature. What's a guy with pile of pens and a brush to do?

After the Jump: another monster, a flawed watercolor, and some media recommendations...

Turtle Lights the Way

This little guy has been popping up from time to time in my drawing for years:



Ever since I was a small lad I've loved to go canoeing and one of the best parts was always spotting turtles sunning on a log, bringing in the paddles and floating silently closer to them -seeing how close you could get before the nervous little guys plopped off into the water. But the turtle character above, he's not nervous at all because he's wearing a jaunty hat.

So. To sum up: I am staunchly pro-turtle and pro-jaunty hat.

Watercolor Days

I’ve posted before about my developing admiration for the Swedish artist Carl Larsson. He is most well known for his collections of watercolors depicting the day to day life of his own large family. Many of the paintings show his children doing every day things -watering flowers, playing games, hiding under a table.

So this week I bought a big sheet of 300 pound watercolor paper and decided to try my hand at a watercolor of my daughters. Here is the first of what I hope might become a set (click for the larger better version):



By the way, I’m sorry for the lack of posts lately. It’s been a tremendously busy month!

Up With the Sunshine

I think I'm overdue for a comic. Unfortunately I don't have one to post. All I have is this ballpoint pen sketch of sleeping Angelica:

Floater

This guy is going to start off our week.



And if that's not enough, here's a beautiful and inspirational example of personal home building: The Woodland Home of Simon Dale. (link courtesy of Mike Hichborn).