Archive for April 2010

One of my favorite morning activities with my daughter, Sophia, is drawing and coloring. We’ve drawn and colored all sorts of subjects. We’ve illustrated favorite nursery rhymes:

…getting dinner at a well-known restaurant…

…and even rendered other fun 2 1/2 year-old activities. You know, like bubble-popping.

In fact, I now let her tell me what to draw and we then color the pictures. What I love is that Sophia will pick day-to-day moments which I then conjure from memory, as many are actions I have seen repeatedly. Like, washing your hands with green monster foamy soap:

…catching dragonflies…

…and watching dad work (I really do have the computer on a stack of books in my makeshift Florida studio. It seems to lessen neck and shoulder tightness from a long day’s work).

There is something sort of delightful to me in these. I think its the spontaneity of the sketch along with the simple tools (crayon, markers, and stickers). Anyways, I thought they were fun enough to post, now I am back to work drawing aliens and robots…maybe one day I’ll have a helper.

Greetings Earthlings!

With the release of the next two Adventure of Meno books, Uh-Oh, Sick and Yummy Trip, we’ve updated the Meno website with more goodies, including get well e-cards that you can send to a friend. How cool is that?

If you aren’t familiar with the silly series that I created with my loverly wife, Angela, let me give you the shortest summaries possible:

Book 1: BIG FUN! Meno is a space elf whose best friend is a nearsighted farting jellyfish. Seriously. Meno thinks farts are the funniest thing in the universe…and  I do too.

Book 2: WET FRIEND! Yamagoo longs for the sea and Meno summons his wish-granting friend, Wishi to create a new wet friend. Will it be plankton? David Hasselhoff? Or a talking goldfish? Hmmmm.

Book 3: UH-OH, SICK! Meno gets a head cold. Somehow Eddie Vedder shows up and ends up sick in bed with Yamagoo and an Irish setter. I’m not kidding.

Book 4: YUMMY TRIP! Meno and company go on on a picnic. Yamagoo rides on a bowling ball and Meno rides a carrot scooter through a cloud-filled sky.

These books were designed to instill silly fun while reading at a young age. All four titles are now available at your local bookstore. Please to enjoy!

Simon & Schuster has put together a little teaser using some of the early illustrations for my upcoming novel, The Search for WondLa. Check it out.

The flat two-color art style was inspired by printing processes of the late eighteenth century. You may have seen it before in the printed works of Alfonse Mucha and other artists from the Art Novueau movement. Or even the great Russian children’s book illustrator, Ivan Bilibin. Of course, contemporary illustrators, like Jean-Giraud Moebius, have used the flat color palette to great effect, especially in the comics and magazines Moebius illustrated in the 1970′s and 80′s.

I’ll share more of the art (and the process) with you as the release date draws near. With over 40 two-page illustrations opening each and every chapter, there is a considerable amount of art in this book.

Geoff Boucher of the LA TIMES interviewed yours truly earlier this week about the excitement brewing over my upcoming illustrated novel, The Search for WondLa. You can read his interview online here.