TWO CHILDREN'S BOOK CONTRACTS SIGNED!

I am excited to announce that I have finally signed not one, but two children’s book contracts. I am illustrating books for Sky Pony Press (“Sophie’s Animal Parade", written by Amy Dixon) and Boys Town Press, both to be released in Spring 2015.

It took 4 years of constant work developing my portfolio, characters, and stories, networking, trips to NY to see publishers, trips to conferences, desperation, inspiration, taking paid illustration projects that weren’t necessarily fulfilling or moving my work forward, being both encouraged and discouraged by the success of my fellow illustrators, finding mentors, art directors/editors and illustrators who believed in my work and urged me to continue, frustration, leaving an agent who didn’t have the same vision for the direction of my work and artistic development, almost quitting many times, but coming back to the drawing board because of the pure love of illustration and story-telling even when it was hard to have any hope.

It feels good to finally be here.

Stuffed Animals + Kids

Planes

A Little Bit of Gossip

Not-so-Ballet-Behavior

Fabriano, 140 lbs soft press watercolor paper 

Snow Fight, 3 sequantial illustrations

Walk to School

Study # 2. Walk to School. For this one I tried SOFT PRESS watercolor paper (Fabriano). Less texture than cold press, white of the paper is brighter, as well as colors. So far, no problems, pretty happy with it. More experimentation is required.

Lost Dog

 I used hot-press watercolor paper, I usually use only cold-press.  I might explore hot-press direction more.

Illustration for Ladybug Magazine November/December 2013

Museum Sketches - Harvard Museum of Natural History

Raccoon Character Design - Part 2

Raccoon Character Design - Part 1

I'm leaning towards the first one with the red hat, less cute, more personality.

Sketches below were done first, I tried to figure out the colors and textures for this character, but I didn't like his softness and cuteness. So I decided to do some more studies. 

Museum Sketches

Petting Zoo

Sketchbook