MTV LOVE

Nice review at MTV HIVE of the latest two LP covers I did for Cultures of Soul records. Flattering to be mentioned in the same breath as Mingering Mike. Stay tuned for a giveaway of these very same LP's. Go here to read the full review.

YESSSSSS

Dope Evans Pyramid tees from Cultures of Soul, super limited, get them here, while you can.

YOUR NEW SHOES

Summertime has come and gone, my oh my...

AERODYNAMIC

Oskar with Plane Design #1

We are deep into the dog days of summer here and Oskar and I are starting (and hopefully finishing) projects left and right. Some of them are picture books in a day and others are slightly more esoteric.
On Lydia's birthday we took a day trip to Lambertville without the little guys to sniff around some old junk and bookstores and Lydia found this great book of Paper airplanes.

Oskar with Plane Design #14

 It has designs for 20 planes that were winners in the first International Airplane Design competition. They are usually entered by engineers and aerodynamics types, often on graph or tracing paper. They are beautiful and some are quite intricate. Oskar and I are going to attempt to build everyone of them before summers end. We started with Plane #1 and Plane #14.

I will post more as we make them this week.

SO NICE, THEY NAMED IT TWICE

(LtoR Front row: OA Advisor Laurent Linn, Carson Ellis, Carin Berger, Leonard Marcus, OA Chair Sophie Blackall, and OA Assistant Chair Brian Floca

Back Row: Me, OA Advisor Marcia Leonard, Christy Ottaviano, Raul Colon, and Dan Santat)

This past Wednesday I had the privilege of joining ten other amazing children's book professionals at the Society of Illustrators in New York to form the jury for the 2012 Original Art Show in October. With 550 books submitted we had our work cut out.

Stacks of 25 books on each table. We voted from 10am after much coffee until 12:30 when the Society prepared a delicious lunch for us. It was interesting to have so many books to look at at once. After a while you could detect mini-trends and patterns emerge from the mass. At 1:30 we were back at until the final medal decisions were made at 6pm.  

I did some record shopping to wind down and saw my Evans Pyramid cover on the wall at Academy Records.

Then it was on to Greenpoint for a surprise 40th/moving to LA party for Grady McFerrin (See photo below when he was 35) with the rest of the current and former Pencil Factory crew.

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE ONE

New album cover I finished last month for Cultures of Soul. This is an amazing underground, Atlanta disco record by Tommy Stewart. Can't wait to get my copy of this on wax.

I've done a few covers for these guys now and funnily enough a pattern is starting to emerge, last time it was Ancient Astronauts, this time the book of Genesis re-thought, lots of interesting myths and theories with a disco back beat.

Here are the labels I designed for this 2 record set.

I will be doing a giveaway or two when these couple records come out, so stay tuned. And apologies to people who won posters on the last giveaway, they are finally going out this week. Promise!

UGGH AUTHOR PHOTOS!

I always cringe when I'm asked for an author photo, especially since it's for kids picture books and you don't want a photo that looks too creepy or sinister. I usually go for pics of me where I'm not smiling, have sunglasses on and look quasi-criminal.

Thankfully my wife Lydia is a good photographer and after taking about 100 photos we go this one, and I like it as much as I'm able.

The best part is that the background is made of spreads from my new book before they got sent off to the publisher.

ANCHORS ASTRAY

Need to catch up on posting some recent work, here is a job for the Improper Bostonian about a young persons experience on a cruise. I've never been on a cruise, so I learned about many cruise things. Like those towel animal things. And that you can buy a book on how to make those animals, but its only for sale on the ship!
 Below is a spot that shows those creepy little towel animal things.

SWAP ME

Cards are inevitably the bits and pieces of new ideas kicking around my brain that are born as a result of the impending deadline of a holiday. Or sometimes they are just a picture of life at that moment.
This is Lydia's Mother's Day card.

SWAP ME is how AWESOME comes out when Lydia types with her Blackberry. It has now replaced the word itself when something is truly awesome.

I love that Oskar made her a "really hard maze, with lava balls in it" which is, come to think of it, an apt description of parenthood.

PET MISHAPS

Still recovering from the PA One Book tour. Lots of amazing memories and photos to sort through. Also, just gettting back into the swing of working in the studio. This is a detail for a job for Cottage Life about Pet Mishaps on your family vacation.