Gaaawd, I love books! All kinds of books! I'll bet you never would have guessed.

I like having an open picture book next to me when I'm working. Sometimes it's for reference, but more often than not, I just like looking at them. Sometimes I turn a page a day - an image a day to savor.

Studio companions...day and night. You'll see --- below.

Paints in drawers - lots of drawers, lots more paints, lots of other supplies in more drawers - you get the idea.

When I'm painting, this old, beat up little thing on wheels gets rolled up near my drafting table. It's handy.

This piece of furniture started out to be a computer table, but somehow it didn't work out that way.

The bowl of spaghetti that keeps everything working.

My room may be small and cluttered. Freelancing and working at home may be a mixed blessing. BUT, I get to be employee of the month every month! Life is good!

Summer Art for PBAA

Here's a sneak peak at my summer art for the Picture Book Artist's Association (PBAA) Summer Edition. New art is featured four times per year on the PBAA website.

PBAA Poster

Tah Dah!! This poster represents the work of the members of PBAA, PictureBookArtists.org. PBAA has a wonderful website. And, behind the scenes, we have an equally wonderful listserve so that we can schmooze and exchange information. This provides a welcome relief from what can be the very isolated life of a freelance illustrator.

The creation and distribution of this poster also represents the work of our Promo Committee: Melanie Siegel, Peggy Collins, Susan Havice, Terry Taylor and Rebecca Thornburgh. Thank you so very much, Promo Committee, for all your work on our behalf.

Adventures in Scanning

I've been trying to improve my scanning skills lately. I discovered that scanning as Lab color was giving me the best results, at least as far as I could see. But, I had some worries about how it would show up on different browsers. Fortunately for me, I got some great information from fellow illustrator, Mary Peterson. This is what she posted to our online illustrator's group:

"My husband owned a color separation house for years.
In a commercial environment, images are first scanned in LAB. As Marion learned, this is the largest color space available, very close to what our eye can see. My husband archived his client's work in the LAB color space and considered it the "original". From this "original" he converted to RGB, sRGB, CMYK or grayscale, depending on the need.
Adobe RGB is the next largest color space and the appropriate scanning mode if you don't have LAB option.
sRGB is best for web (its a much smaller color space than Adobe RGB and intended for reproducing web safe color)
CYMK and grayscale for offset printing."

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mary! In case you missed it, have a look at Mary's fabulous illustration here!

And, to see what this is all about, have a look at my experiments below.

Lab color converted to grayscale and saved for web

This seems like the best one yet!

Lab Color converted to RGB Mode in Photoshop

This image was scanned as Lab color, then coverted to RGB mode in Photoshop. Seems good to me! But wonder how it looks on other people's monitors. HHhmmmm.

Lab color scan

RGB scan

Looks terrible to me on my scanner and on my monitor.

The Tortoise and the Hare - Finished!

I made a lot of changes in this painting. Most are probably too small to see here. I simplified the leaves on the trees, softened some of the facial lines and darkened the dark side of the hare. The biggest change though - I think this is just a better scan!

The Tortoise and the Hare - almost finished painting

I've noticed lately that when I post things on my blog, sometimes it helps me to see things I'd like to adjust. So, here's an almost finished painting of The Tortoise and the Hare. I see a few things that I'll adjust. One obvious one is that I nicked the rabbit's ear in this scan. Have to fix that! And a few other things! BTW, in case anyone checks the dates here, this is NOT the only thing I've been working on. Though I absolutely DO identify with the tortoise. Yup! That's for sure!

The Tortoise and the Hare

This is a pretty polished sketch. I really should show how many it takes to get to this point - the much looser, sloppier ones.