I spent the Covid lockdown hiking the park trails around our lake, trying vegetarian curry recipes, and illustrating a picture book for author and educator JoAnn Nocera. Unlike traditional publishing, where there is often no communication between the author and illustrator, working on an independently published book can be a highly collaborative experience. Here’s a glimpse of the process, focusing on how JoAnn and I developed the book’s cover. Round 1: January-March 2020 The

It's been snowing and/or sleeting for the past week. I spent much of my creative time revisiting unfinished personal projects in...

Here’s a slide from my breakout session presentation, Marrying Words and Pictures: What self-published writers need to know about hiring...

January 2019 hit hard. Winter weather and the government shutdown were driving my mad scientist husband stir crazy. So we unboxed the...

I first heard about the One House Project from a Blackrock Center for the Arts email last fall. The Art Watch website described the...

My mailer image The Hat was inspired by my father’s grandmother Maria, who came to the U.S. in the late 1880s. Times were bleak. Her...

Over the years I’ve learned to be selective about working for free. It has to be a project I truly care about. One that offers a certain...

Halloween brings out our inclination to see ourselves in the world around us. We impose human faces on twisted tree trunks, old houses,...

My latest promo card went out this month. An exercise in vintage summertime nostalgia (with a lighthearted nod at global warming), it was...

It always takes me a few weeks (or more) to process the heady experience of attending an SCBWI conference. The highlights of last month’s...

My illustration professor at Art Center College of Design once described the creative life as a sequence of plateaus punctuated by...

The new year work week starts tomorrow. But first, a look back. #video #Photoshop #digital #creativeprocess

When I read the theme for the 2016 MD/DE/WV conference postcard contest I was skeptical. Team SCBWI. Seriously? After all, so much of...

I usually describe my medium as digital. Or a digital/traditional hybrid. Or computer-rendered art with a hand-made touch. It didn’t...

The leaves are not yet turning, but fall is definitely in the air. Looking back, this was the summer I finished revising and sent out the...

Confession time: I was never a natural at activities involving large muscle skills. I didn’t learn to ride a two-wheeler until I was ten....