I first heard about the One House Project from a Blackrock Center for the Arts email last fall. The Art Watch website described the collaboration as a powerful visual statement of the strength of diversity and the common elements of our shared humanity. A timely theme, and in our neck of the woods. I mentioned to my DC illustrator friend that I was considering taking part. So, I learned, was she. “OK,” I said. “Now I definitely need to follow through on this.” Since my 2017 m

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 degree of artistic freedom and doesn’t take too much time away from other commitments. And it has to be fun. This season I’ve been doing graphics and publicity for an amateur production of Covenants; The Nativity, an adaptation of Medieval English mystery pageants written and directed by retired theater professor Roland Reed. Here’s some of

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 gathering here in Maryland: Betsy Bird’s entertaining and insightful rundown of current trends The chance to reconnect with illustrators I haven’t seen since last year Senior designers Mallory Griggs and Jess Tice-Gilbert’s illustration intensive The last included an inside peek at the rebranding of one of my favorite childhood series. It w

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 writing and illustrating is a solitary endeavor. The phrase “herding cats” came to mind. And so my entry featured a cheerleaders’ pyramid of felines, joined by one intrepid dog. It was the winning design. Fast forward to last weekend. Some of us from this region and the Mid Atlantic Chapter went out for the dessert discussion following the pict

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 YA novel that has been eating up much of my creative time. The summer my husband and I discovered Quebec has a fjord. The summer I fell off my bike on the C&O Canal, which led to a broken fourth metacarpal and four weeks in a splint. And the summer I drove out to Annapolis for my first MD/DE/WV SCBWI sketch crawl. I caught this impression o

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. For years my cycling was a work in progress. Lots of scraped knees and white-knuckled wobbling, then short coasts, and finally that exhilarating moment when the bike takes off and you feel like you are flying. This blog has also been a long time coming. I agonized over whether I could find anything fresh or meaningful to add to the glut of