(via Coudal)

Anyway, birthdays are good for a lot of things, but especially for getting things that you are not buying for yourself. I keep my Amazon wishlist(s) pretty full, though mostly as a reminder to myself of what I really want to buy or check out the next time I am at a bookstore. However, for my birthday last month I got a gift certificate to Amazon, and I could no longer hold myself back:

Not pictured is the copy of Graphic Design by Milton Glaser (which arrived earlier and has gotten its due lovin’), but in the photo are the contents of my big box of goodies:the latest edition of the Graphic Arts Guild Handbook, a contemporary drawing collection called Vitamin D, Charlie Harper’s Beguiled by the Wild, and Dave Cooper’s (aliased here as Hector Mumbly) Bagel’s Lucky Hat.

• Milton Glaser is an icon in the graphic design world. This book is a must-have for my library, and I love to see the mix of illustration-y with the design-y.
• Similarly, I’ve well-abused my old GAG Handbook, and it was time for the upgrade to this 2007 updated version. A must-have for the illustration professional.
• I’ve perused the Vitamin D book a couple times while I was in grad school, but I had to have my own copy. It’s really a great collection of where things have been going in the contemporary capital-A “Art World” drawing field. And it’s a beautifully-designed book, as you would expect from Phaidon.
• Beguiled by the Wild is even better than I expected. I fell in love with Harper’s beautifully designed creatures and illustrations a while ago after he started getting linked up around the web, but I didn’t realize the illustrations’ titles were going to tickle my inner word-nerd: “Jumbrella” shows the big elephants sheltering the baby elephant from the rain; “Owltercation” shows a murder of crows chasing an owl away. LOVE!
• And last but certainly not least: Bagel’s Lucky Hat is so beautifully illustrated, with lush colors, inventive perspectives and compositions, and lovely details embellishing the periphery. It is a high-caliber production, as we have grown to expect from Chronicle Books. I haven’t read the story yet, and while I would guess it is a great story, I wouldn’t care if it was lamer than Howard the Duck: the illustrations already make up for it.

While I’m sorry for the movers who will eventually have to move yet more books the next time we relocate, I’m not sorry to have these in my collection. The internet is great and all, but sometimes you just need more than 72 dots per inch to view the art.

Seeing the art in-person is better yet, but as we all know, money doesn’t grow on trees. At least not in Minnesota.

While looking for the Really Rosie opening on You Tube (after reading about it on Michael Sporn’s animation blog), I found this wonderfully animated version of Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen. My only complaint is the narration by composer Peter Schiekele, who goes a bit over the top.

Last year during an art history course I was taking I discovered that In the Night Kitchen is a kind of tribute to the amazing illustration and comics of Winsor McKay, most specifically his Little Nemo in Slumberland comics that ran full-page in the Sunday New York Herald from 1905-1911. (McKay was an animator in his own right, pioneering in the medium with his performances on-stage with his animated Gertie the Dinosaur.) As talent borrows and genius steals, Sendak lifted the bed right out of Little Nemo’s bedroom and put it under Mickey at the beginning and end of his story. It’s fun to see the story come to life.

BONUS: Animated Where the Wild Things Are! This seems to be done by the same team who made the In the Night Kitchen animation, but this one works a lot better, imho.

P.S. There is much to update you about, not the least of which is that I am now living in St. Paul, MN, and teaching a class at MCAD while I keep up with various freelance projects and art shows. When the pace slows, I’ll let you know more, dear readers.

Just as I stumbled onto Tintin this evening, my introduction to him was similarly accidental. One of the people who happened to live in my dorm my first year in college was from rural Indiana, and he often wandered toward a bit of a fantasy world that was inspired by the things he read and the movies he watched. He had even given himself a new name when he got to college, perhaps inspired by Hergé who was born Georges Remi. He was the first person I had met who was really into comics and manga and Miyazaki, and his passion for those things was fundamentally influential to me and the career path I am now pursuing.

Anyway, much like I am stunned when a bookstore employee hasn’t heard of the Caldecott Medal, this guy couldn’t believe that I– an art major interested in children’s books– didn’t know about Tintin. Of course, the reason I was an art major and interested in children’s books had a lot to do with his passion for both subjects, but instead of recognizing his influence, I dismissed him as a bit of a zealot.

It wasn’t until several years after we had graduated that I first read any Tintin books, and then it was because I was waiting in a bookstore to meet up with someone. At the time I was still heavliy into children’s books, but not yet looking at comics very seriously. As I was waiting, I was done looking at the new children’s books, so I wandered the store and ended up by the graphic novel section. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but the encounter with my college friend had implanted the name “Tintin” in my head, and there on the shelf was a whole row of these stories. When I pulled one down and flipped through it, I was immediately astounded by the detailed artwork.

Hergé is known for his skilled combining of detailed, hyper-realistic backgrounds with these wonderfully caricatured characters. But my criteria when looking at children’s books (and now comics) is that is okay to be seduced by the art, but I won’t buy it if the story isn’t compelling. To shorten this lengthening story, I walked out of that store with three volumes of Tintin stories.

It’s funny to me when I think about the sequences of events that lead me from one point in my life to another. Even more interesting to me are the triggers that get me to think about those paths. As much as I have grumbled this past year (not here, I guess) about my graduate school experience, I am getting a lot of mileage out of the introspection it has imposed. Don’t be surprised to see more coming out of both the experiences I am recalling, and also the meta-experiences of how I came to recall these events. It’s all fodder for the paintbrushes.

• Your plans will be rewarding.
I’ve been saving these for a long time now. I think I got them all in a two-month period about a year ago, when I first started plowing ahead with my plans to apply to graduate school. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I was actually interested in going to school, but I was sure that I wanted to give full-time art-making a shot at some point. I began an aggressive savings plan and I started making as much art as I could in the hopes of having more than enough work to put into a portfolio. This collection of well-wishing fortunes feel like the universe’s endorsement of that plan.

• You are soon going to change your present line of work.
Right now, more than any other time so far, feels like the balance is finally tipping more towards the right side of my brain than the left. I’ve been doing web programming for the past 7 years. I love the problem-solving, and the immediacy of results when I make a change to a page or an application. It is so satisfying to spend a relatively short amount of time pushing buttons and getting something that shines and glows and computes in return. It is tactile and rewarding in a way I never expected it to be.

But my body and my being was missing something. It is tempting to say that I missed being creative, but that is simply not true. Designing a complex relational database or putting together a smooth JavaScript photo gallery requires a creative eye, in addition to the logical, coding side of things. Rather it was the more specific pen on paper. The act of moving my whole arm rather than just my fingertips. I started doodling on my notes three years ago, and it has just snowballed from there.

• Your original ideas will get you well-deserved recognition.
Today we received the July issue of Communication Arts at work: the Illustration Annual. My Altar Boy poster is in the first few pages. It is amazing to me how much positive response I have gotten since I just started putting my work “out there.”

• Nothing gets in the way of your vision of yourself in the future.
In the past week, I finished working on a pair of Circus Punks for a show in New York at the end of September. It was so much fun to make those things I could hardly contain myself at each step along the way. Also this week at work, we kicked off a very exciting project. I am on the team for this particular project not because of my programming skills, but because of my storytelling experience and my love for children’s books. And I am now working on three critters for another art show that will go up in August in Seattle. I get to spend almost my entire day drawing, writing stories, and stitching wool felt together. Seventh heaven. And I might get to make a career out of this? Insane!

• A book is in your future.
And just today I had yet another hare-brained idea for a book. Again, I don’t know if it is a comic book or a children’s book that is lurking in my brain, but it’s there. Ideas I have many of; it is the follow-through I chicken out on– but not this time: I won’t allow it. (And a more specific response to this fortune: I’ve preordered my copy of Harry Potter book 6.)

• You have much skill in expressing yourself to be effective.
I have no idea what that means.

In the meantime, I continue to experiment. I am loving this new brush pen my little brother got me for Christmas, and I used it on six drawings yesterday. I am a little scared to use it up, because the packaging is all in Chinese or Japanese, and I can’t read one character on there. I don’t have any idea how I’d replace it (unless Teddy gives me some clues, or perhaps birthday presents *hint-hint*).

Over the weekend I tried to spend some time thinking about the past year, and some of the trajectories I have launched. By extension, of course, that means I was thinking about the coming year, and what goals I might set for myself. I have learned that, in general, saying things out loud makes them more likely to happen; but by way of caveat: saying things “out loud” on this weblog does not always have the same effect. Be that as it may, here is my biggest goal for the year:

I plan to have a book submitted to a publisher before the end of 2005.

Those who have known me long enough know that I made children’s picture books when I was an undergraduate at Carleton. Two of those were of publishable length, but looking back at that work, there is a significant amount of polish missing from both of those projects. The writing especially needs work. At this point, with the progress I’ve made with my drawings in the last year, I am not as worried about improving the art as much as I once was. The biggest challenge I face with the art is deciding on a style and medium, but my theory is that the tone of the story I write will influence the art, and vice-versa. I figure I can relax and let the two evolve together.

And finally, the monkey-wrench in the mix: I really like drawing comics. I don’t know if I am any good at it yet, but I am really enjoying experimenting. I am so used to drawing with pencils that it feels like a palatable baby-step to use ink instead of graphite for a while. Using ink has made me much more confident about my lines, and the richness of the black ink is really exciting, especially compared to the gray of the pencil marks. Perhaps the book I make this year (if it is only one) will be a comic book. Who knows?

Welcome, 2005!

I love Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, and
I’m not afraid to say it! I’ve heard rumors of a movie version, which I would watch in a heartbeat, also without shame.

Oh, and I’ve never played D&D either.

Oh, and I put up a new poem on Cereal & Milk.

I’m not sure how much I want to say about each of those things, but I figure I should record something about each event, so here it goes: I will put up one post for each of these events with approximate dates, and this one will be my table of contents.

Over the river and through the woods…
Eric Rohmann
Wisconsin Film Festival
Spring League
A brief visit
The Ickaby Eight

Over lunch we talked more about the “business.” There are many ways to get into the children’s book world, and I feel like there is definitely a place for me in it somewhere, though I am set on taking my time and being patient. I want to do good work, not just get work out the door. It was also good to learn that publishers can be quite flexible about the timeline: if they know I have a day job (and I do), they can give me more time to work on things (which I will need.)

Finally, we went back up to his apartment to look at a couple things online. I’ve felt like I have been taking a lot of his time without being able to offer much in return, so I thought I’d offer some website development time, if he wanted it, since I know web development. I’m not sure he really wants to set anything up right now, but it was good for me to feel like I could offer something to him. We spent a bunch of time looking at Bear Skin Rug, which I hadn’t seen in a while. Finally, at about 5:30 we both realized we needed to be other places, and we parted.

Previously I wondered why Eric was so good at being encouraging and supportive, even after seeing the obvious gap between the quality and maturity of his work when compared to mine. But as we were talking it came out that he has his MFA, and for a time he considered taking a faculty position at some university or another. He would make a great teacher, though it would be a shame to take him away from his books. I think “unofficial mentor” suits him well, anyway.

It was a great visit, and I think the biggest thing I need to work on right now is my painting, and the style and design of the book. As a result, I have recently spent too much money at the various local art supply stores, and not enough time actually drawing and painting, but I am making progress. I think.

Then, on a different site, I found a more obvious influence. Also simple, pen and ink drawings: Shel Silverstein gave such a wonderful spirit to his poetry and stories. His work inspired me to create Cereal & Milk, and I don’t doubt that his work contributed in making me into the Sensitive Man ™ that I am today. I mean, how can you not get choked up at the tragedy of The Giving Tree?

As I have been trying to figure out a style to adopt for my latest project, I find myself trying to imagine these complicated images with textures and layers. But maybe what I really need to do is stick to what I know: simple pencil or pen drawings. A little splash of color and it’s done! We’ll see where it goes, but I suspect the simpler, the better.

B) I also got to do some new things at work this month. We do some pro-bono work for some local clients, including a series of silk-screen posters for a community theater called Broom Street Theater. I volunteered to do a poster this year, and then I got volunteered to do the first one of the season. Since I am employed as a programmer, leading off a series of graphically-designed posters was a little intimidating, considering the caliber of design work my coworkers usually crank out.

C) And I think I have a children’s book manuscript I can work with. I’ve been writing some silly short poems and doing drawings for them over at Cereal & Milk, and I took one that had started off well, and fleshed it out into something I can span over 32 pages. You won’t find it there, by the way– I kept it under wraps in the hopes of turning it into a publishable book. More to come on this one, I am sure.

Pains:
1) Getting chosen for Yahoo! Pick of the day was awesome, but it meant that the site ate up all my bandwidth. I actually had to upgrade my hosting, which will cost me more money. I was planning on upgrading eventually, but I was forced into the decision a little early. Fortunately, I had some frequent visitors and contributors offer me some cash money to help pay for the extra hosting. They inspired me to beg for more from the rest of the multitudes.

2) And if you have ever pulled 100 19″ x 25″ screen-prints with three colors, you know it is back-breaking work. Jimm L. and I coated and burned the three screens and then printed the first color on Sunday night. When I was getting ready to head back to the print shop Monday night, my back went into some nasty spasms and had me rolling on the floor in the fetal position for 15 minutes before I could get into the car. In the end, the prints turned out really nice, and C. helped my get my back to settle down after I came home.

3) Finally, there is no significant pain with the manuscript project, other than the fact that with all the other things I am doing, it is pretty difficult to find the time I need to continue with storyboards and mock-ups necessary if I ever want to submit this book to publishers. And Frisbee season is just around the corner.

Among the books honored by the Caldecott committee, I have to confess I have only read one of them: Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems. It is a fun, fast-paced little story with simple illustrations done in a limited pallette of tastefully muted colors. I read it a while ago, but in my memory it plays a lot like a book-length joke. It makes the reader feel as if he/she is in on something. Very mischievious.

I have seen What Do You Do with a Tail Like This? at the bookstore, but I haven’t picked it up. I haven’t even heard of Ella Sarah Gets Dressed. I guess it is time to go to the bookstore! (My favorite!)

One of my more favorite books that I picked up this year was MacMurtrey’s Wall, by Marc Sutherland, but it appears to have been published in 2001, and I am just behind the times. It didn’t win a Caldecott in 2001 either.

• Time Flies was his first book, which won a Caldecott Honor medal
• My Friend Rabbit won the 2003 Caldecott Medal
• Pumpkinhead is his latest book, and it is a beautiful, dark, intimate little book that appeals to my printmaking leanings
• See a more complete list on Amazon

He was a great speaker, very funny and engaging, and he made himself very accessible, especially for a man who recently won the Caldecott. After his talk he laid out a bunch of originals and some of the plates from his block-printed books. I stared for a while, drinking in the simplicity of the process. He just makes stuff the same way I make stuff: you paint something or carve a block, you fix it or tweak it or start over until you have something you are satisfied with. Then you do it again. Okay that is oversimplification, but the point is this: it is not magic.

After he was done signing books and chatting enthusiastically with each person as he did so, he took some extra time to look at some books that a man has brought for him to look at. They were his students’ books, but he thought Eric Rohmann might have advice as to what to do with them. Rohmann took a good 15 minutes to discuss things with the gentleman, and then I bent his ear for at least another 15 minutes while he packed up his originals and got ready to leave.

I wasn’t quite out of questions, so I screwed up my courage and offered to buy this 2003 Caldecott Medal winner a beer. He said sure! So he and a very cool woman named Anna (who was his contact with the sponsors of the event) and I went over to the Great Dane for some brewpub beer and more shop talk. It was awesome!

I took a few important points away from the evening. One thing that Mr. Rohmann kept saying is that there are two major barriers to getting a children’s book published: 1) not writing it down, and 2) not sending it in. I’m making headway on (1), and as soon as I have it written down in a mock-up (a.k.a. “dummy”), I’ll start in on (2).

Another important point I took away is that everyone has a slightly different process, and you have to let whatever works for you be your process. I think he was saying it was Eric Carle (it may have been Maurice Sendak) who has to write the whole story first, then work on the images. Otherwise, if he does a good painting, it may mask the some not-so-good writing. That is most likely the way I would approach a more traditional book, and it is the process I am working through right now with my latest idea. Though for my Dickies book, I think the medium (my old pants) dictated a lot about how the story would be told. The pictures and the story were tied to each other. That is the way the Rohmann said he has to work– the story and the pictures in his books are intertwined. His visuals often drive the story.

Anyway, this is a way of publicly thanking you, Eric Rohmann, for being a real person. It was fantastic to meet you, and inspiring and encouraging, and I am sure I will never forget it.