I am fortunate. A self-publishing author has contracted me to do a book of folk-tales from her native Kerala, a beautiful and fascinating area along the southwest coast of India. The first story in the collection is about the beach friendship that develops between Bananaleaf and Mudpie. In the image shown here Bananaleaf encounters her own mortality on the way to Varanasi when a windstorm blows in. She fears that she will be blown away forever and starts to bid farewell to her friend mudpie, who- though short and stout - comes up with a brilliant solution to the difficult situation. Stay tuned for more details and images.

So then it was on to the Jurassic, Triassic, Quaternary eras. Had fun with the backgrounds and the colours. Who knows what the hell the colors were of these beasts anyway. I don't think carbon dating and archeology can track that kind of ephemeral phenomena. I'm posting my personal favourite, the Plateosaurus. I went back to traditional paint for this. The dinos themselves are painted in watercolour on hot pressed Arches paper, after printing directly the line work via my Canon Pixma 3000 inkjet. The backgrounds were painted in watercolour on rough Arches 300 gsm so they have that grainy look...works for the mossy trees in this one. Stay tuned for a new book on the foltkales of Kerala. I'll be working most of that on Arches 300 gsm cold-pressed, my favourite surface of all time.
Man do I want to change the above into a fiction piece, with a warrior child riding on the back of the Plateosaurus and two huge eyes of a Tyrannosaurus peering through those trees on the horizon. Stay tuned in I may do it yet.

I know it has been a while since I posted. What is it about blogs that make you feel guilty? Perhaps it is the informal nature of the relationship, sort of like not bothering to call a buddy to see how his day went or how his sick mother is feeling. But let's be realistic, this blog is as much for me as it is for you. It's a diary of sorts, a creative history, a series of musings, reflections, hopes and aspirations. It's a chance to speculate, to ruminate, to exacerbate...OK I see where this is going.
It IS fascinating to see the evolution of the art over the past few years. Since the Christian Hans Andersen Tinderbox tale I completed illustrations for The Tortoise and the Hare of which I am posting one of my favourites. Somehow it reminds me of myself...though I rarely lie down in the daytime. This book was done entirely digital on the Wacom tablet, in oils.

Since I have been away from my studio in the Himalayas for the past 6 weeks I have been sketching digitally. On a Wacom 9X12 inch tablet it is possible to simulate a good sized sketch pad with various media. I am posting a drawing done for Santillana USA, a sketch for "What the Trees Have Seen" a book about Savannah Georgia. That's the drawing on the right. This particular drawing was not used in the final book. Also posted on the left is a sketch for The Tinderbox, a Hans Christian Anderson tale to be included in an anthology by a UK publisher. This was created entirely digitally using the 2B pencil tool in Painter 10. Can you tell the difference? The digitally generated image has no smudge marks you might note...but of course they could be added digitally.

I fell in love with India in the late 1970s after being introduced to Indian thought and philosophy from a Psychology Prof in my first year at Architecture school in Ottawa. In 1979 I came on my first trip, met many friends, saw a lot of the country and finally met the meditation/yoga teacher that I was seeking. I have made at least a dozen trips since then…throughout maintaining a career as a free-lance illustrator…and a meditator.
India has been good to me, wonderful people and culture. We in the western world have much to learn from such ancient wisdom. Our society is so young and, in many ways, so naïve. One day I came home and these fellows (below) were working the street outside my studio. The charmer with the Beem (gourd-flute) was excellent (it is very difficult to play) and they were gathering quite a crowd alongside the highway. They stayed long enough for me to do a quick sketch that later developed into this painting. It is the cover image for a book I co-wrote called The Cobra's Gift which is currently seeking a publishing house.

Well it is always nice to see your work finally going to press, a small nibble of eternity perhaps but satisfying none-the-less. The Mountain that Loved a Bird has gone to press in China by the Hunan Juvenile and Children's Publishing House. I developed a new cover for this edition I hope will replace the cover for other editions around the world. The Chinese title actually says The Promise of Joy an adaptation of the original title. Also Katha books in New Delhi told me the Pokiri Parrot and the Magic Pearl is supposed to go to press some time in February. I'm looking forward to seeing that in print as well. They produce beautiful books from their quaint little office on Sri Aurobindu Marg in Delhi. It feels like a Tamil Nadu ashram. I visited in 2005 and it took me a while to figure out why they were all looking at me strangely when I walked in speaking Hindi ...they all spoke Tamil. Fortunately they also speak English!

Well it HAS been a long time since my last post but I have been one busy little 'hired hand'. In the fall I was working on a science project for SRA McGraw Hill that ate up a few months of my life. That and a stint as an artist for the testing program of the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington left me with only a few hours of sleep per night. The "holiday" season saw me doing two readers for SRA McGraw Hill (The Pond & They Landed One Night), a reader for Zaner Bloser (The Rat Race) and a picture book for Santillana USA on the history of Savannah Georgia entitled What the Trees Have Seen (in progress).

It's amazing when you think of it, a writer has an idea, an editor helps to smooth it out, an art director puts together some art specs and out of nowhere sketches appear and work there way into final art with the help of all of the above. Where does all of this come from? Is there an end to it? Is there a beginning? Or does creativity just go on and on? Or did it ever begin at all?
I'll leave you with this. I'm going to work on the Himalayan Counting Book which is on its way to Bologna Italy to the Children's Book Festival, if I ever finish it that is.