An Animal Chamber Ensemble

I’ve drew my latest flyer illustration for the Lenape Chamber Ensemble’s spring children’s concert.  I always pick some cute animals to portray the musicians in the concert, although in reality they are world-class instrumentalists who play delightful snippets of classical masterpieces for youngsters, tell stories of the composers and get the children to dance to the music. These are wonderful concerts.

I had never drawn a colony of beavers before so I chose them; I placed a bunch of them on a dam for their concert, and since there were only four musical instruments to include this time I added a nattily dressed beaver couple as their audience. I started with a very rough pencil sketch, and I typed the wording in on a template I’ve made – the text always follows the same format, and I hand-letter it for the finish. It makes it easier to keep straight and space right if I hand trace the letters from this template.

I scanned the first sketch and made the characters a little bigger, and realized I had mistakenly drawn a harpsichord, but it should be a piano. Then I quickly inked & pencilled in blacks and gray values to see where I would concentrate the most color and texture in the picture. I added in a duck flying by, announcing refreshments, which they always provide to the kids at the concert. The duck was a little too large, I reduced it for the final art.

Onto a clean sheet of bond paper I traced the lettering using my lightbox, and also lightly traced the scene in pencil. Then I used a Faber-Castell fine felt-point to ink in the characters one by one, and all the little sticks and ripples of the dam and the water. I changed the backdrop from vague rolling hills to a fir-tree forest instead, with some reflections in the water. The finished art is below.

Again, I heartily recommend these concerts if you want to introduce a young child to the beauty and enjoyment of classical music!

 

New Christmas Card Illustration

I’ve illustrated dozens of greeting cards, some very specific for businesses and some more generic for broad audiences. The card I just completed rather combines the two, and gives a special nod to my hometown of Doylestown, PA.

My friend Lynne Anne Donchez has owned and operated L.A.D. Hairdressing for many years in the heart of Doylestown. She is a well-recognized person about town because she actively participates in any number of community events – one of those being the Arrival of Santa Claus to Doylestown, where Santa is driven on a fire truck to his ‘house’ in the middle of town on the day after Thanksgiving. She told me months ago that she’s heard that many little children ask why Santa does not come to own with his reindeer  – so she wrote a delightful short story explaining that little mystery. And she asked, would I illustrate it?

While illustrating a whole story takes a good bit of time, I did think of a variation of that idea, which would be doable: how about making it into a Christmas card with one illustration on the front? If the card is well received, next year I could illustrate a few more scenes.  Eventually we could make a whole book! Lynne Anne loved that idea.

There is a classic scene of Santa’s aerial arrival in her book, which I really liked – it takes place on the campus of Delaware Valley University, a well-known local school that specializes in agriculture and animal sciences. I went over there and photographed a part of the campus near the equine center. I sketched the reindeer swirling in for their landing, with students watching nearby.

I did a very quick color sketch with colored pencils on top of a scan of the pencil sketch.  I knew I wanted a night sky and the reflective blue that snow has on a bright evening. I wanted that explosion of snow as the lead reindeer touches down to be a focal point of the illustration.

I drew the illustration in ink on illustration board and painted it with acrylic paint washes. I’ve designed the card so that Lynne Anne’s story is printed on the inside of the card, and continued on the back. And we secured permission from Delaware Valley University to mention the school in the story, so we are ready to market the cards. They will be sold both in LAD & Co. and here on my website. The cost is $4.00 per card with envelope. Click here to see ordering information for this card.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bucks County Illustrators Society’s next exhibit

And the public is invited!

 

 

My Gilbert & Sullivan Artwork

I’ve just completed designing the show program for the Bucks County Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s June production, Trial by Jury and More! This production is a melange of two comic operettas and some magnificent overtures and solos from Gilbert & Sullivan.

I’ve been pleased to paint the poster illustrations for a number of these G&S shows, which I then use on the program cover as well. It’s a pleasure to get to know the witty and comical characters in these operettas – and they are truly operettas, with some dialog but a lot of gloriously operatic sung music. I really recommend these shows for anyone who loves classical music and good theatrical humor.

My illustration for Trial by Jury and More includes the characters Mr. Cox, a hatter, and Mr. Box, a printer, who unwittingly occupy the same rented flat because one works all day and the other all night; they meet unexpectedly and both are furious with their landlord for double-dipping on the rent – until they discover they are, or were, also engaged to the same lady and neither wants to fulfill that contractual obligation! Also depicted in this cover are characters from Trial by Jury: Angelina, the tragicomically jilted bride, and the Judge, who is instantly smitten with her. Together these 1-act shows make up the operatic musical comedy Trial by Jury and More!  and it is set to open in two weeks, on Friday June 16 here in Doylestown – all info is on the website here.

With my art for HMS Pinafore I shoehorned the main characters into a tiny rowboat for comic effect: the gallant sailor Ralph Rackstraw kissing lovely Josephine and Captain Corcoran carrying his sunny Buttercup, with ornery Dick Deadeye paddling them through the waves and Sir Joseph admonishing them all to be quite polite. My husband played Sir Joseph in this show locally, and friends may see the resemblance in my rendering of him.

For Princess Ida I stood our stalwart princess front and center, and in the background her bastion for women, Castle Adamant. If you look closely you can see the brave fellows clumsily scaling the castle battlements – Hilarion, Cyril and Florian – who engage the theme of this battle-of-the-sexes play. For some elements of Castle Adamant I was inspired by the design of Marie Antoinette’s Hameau de la Reine, and you may notice I incorporated male-female symbols into the castle windows.

For the Patience illustration I painted sweet, sensible milkmaid Patience listening skeptically to the florid words of poet Bunthorne. (I enjoy that G&S often chose hilariously Dickensian character names.) Meanwhile the lovesick maidens of the village cling and swoon on Bunthorne, with even Lady Jane and her cello getting drawn into the undertow. There’s a lovely small magnolia tree in my neighborhood that I used for reference in the Patience art.

In all these illustrations I painted with acrylic paint on illustration board. If you’d like to see my sketches leading up to these paintings, I wrote about my process – Trial by Jury here, Pinafore here, Princess Ida here and Patience here. Leasing of my artwork for other productions is available, and inquiries can be made through my Contact page.

 

My Work Featured on ‘Writing and Illustrating’

I am quite honored to have my illustration work featured on ‘Writing and Illustrating,’ a fun and very informative blog on publishing by author-illustrator Kathy Temean. The interview, with lots of samples of my work, is here.

Please feel free to leave comments and questions at the bottom of Kathy’s blog, I will be checking it throughout the weekend.

A hearty thank you to Kathy for her help!

 

Logo for Blue Moose in New Hope, PA

If you live in the Bucks County area and have never eaten at Blue Moose Restaurant and Cafe on Mechanic Street in New Hope, you should jot it down for your next dinner outing. It was started about 6 years ago by Skylar Bird when he was still in his teens, as the area’s first youth-run restaurant. He learned cooking skills first from his family, then apprenticed at a cafe in Lyon, France, and finally studied at Manhattan’ s French Culinary Institute. His restaurant is stunningly successful, and very reasonably priced for its farm-fresh and delicious offerings.  I can’t recommend it highly enough!

I drew the first logo for his restaurant when it opened, and my son, who is friends with Skylar, waitered there for a time.  The first logo, which Skylar wanted to look fun and bold, was this:

which was also used on signage outside the restaurant:

Over time and with Skylar’s upgrading of the menu and atmosphere, the name shortened to just ‘Blue Moose.’ With a lot of revitalization going on in New Hope and the renowned Bucks County Playhouse just a short walk away, Skylar was recently offered another opportunity to expand. His staff will create small meals for take out, for sale in shops near the Playhouse, under his new brand “Moose on the Loose.”

Skylar called me to discuss a related logo, and suggested the wonderful idea of a moose on a vespa. His restaurant partner, Kate, also thought including a hedgehog would be fun, so I sent them an initial sketch –

Skylar & Kate liked it and suggested using the colors on their website, a navy and tan, for the art. I did a quick color sketch and felt that navy, tan and a 50% of the navy would work –

With some tweaks to the drawing, we came up with the finished image, and I’m looking forward to picking up some of their great food on the go, next time I’m in New Hope!

 

 

 

 

The Bucks County Illustrators Society

A wonderful evening with renowned children’s illustrator Charles Santore will be hosted by the Bucks County Illustrators Society & the Phila.  Sketch Club on Friday March 8 at the Sketch Club, 235 S. Camac St. in Center City. Doors open at 5 PM, Mr. Santore talks & shows his work starting at 6:30, dinner right after at 7:15 – all included for only $20 (for students, $15). Call by March 4 – 215-545-9298 to reserve your seat, payment at the door.  For more info see the BCiS or the Sketch Club website.