I love painting pictures

  I just shared my sketches for the MATS Bootcamp class I'm taking

on Monday, but I wanted to show these painted versions on wood. I like them a lot!

Hope that doesn't sound bad, but somehow simply switching to the round format

feels * Fun* Fresh * Fabulous ;D

Our final assignment is to create a piece of wall art on a round wood panel.

Several years ago I had bought a bunch (too many) of 5" and 7" panels for prints I was creating.

I'm glad I held onto these, they're even notched on the back for easy hanging.

These are on the 7" diameter size. I wish they were larger, but they're sweet.

I have to go back onto a TV job tomorrow, so we'll see if I have time 

to make more before the end of the month.

I feel like I could keep going and going.

And now 

onto some (pretty awful) photos from a pretty great 

event at Society of Illustrators Tuesday night.

Nate Williams spoke about his process for creating art 

and discussed his 1st two picture books.

Afterwards there was a Q&A with a fun informative panel-

James Yang, author/illustrator

Giuseppe Castellano, Art Director/Penguin Young Readers

Jim Hoover, Assoc. Art Director/Viking Books

and the lovely Kirsten Hall, Agent/Cat Bird *(website, a work in progress)

She baked chocolate chip cookies for the whole audience.

They were delicious, too!

Nate's talk was funny and full of some gems to consider when working on story ideas.

I attend a fair number of talks about creating picture books, but this was better 

than most, in part, because the audience had good questions 

and the panel was straightforward in their answers.

I also learned that James Yang is quite funny!

I received an original print for being one of the first 15 to arrive.

Friends may find this funny, since I'm often running late.

I bought Hank & snOliver and a couple of journals.

Nate is incredibly nice. I know a lot of you illustrators know him

from Illustration Mundo, I'm not really clear if he's still running it or not.

I know he had featured my friend, Kristine Lombardi's work there

and they had had phone conversations about the industry in the past.

I was happy to report that she was busy meeting a deadline

for her 2nd book to be published by Abrams.

The best part of the night was when the panel all agreed that this is a 

"Golden Age" in children's book publishing, not only in terms of numbers

of books being published, but for the sophistication of images 

being created for them. 

Hmmmm, if I can't break into this now ...

 well, I'm gonna leave on a high note!

Have a great weekend!

xo, A