Life can be become a whirlwind!

It takes an innocuous comment sometimes to open the world and--- WOW! Life can become a whirlwind! When my cyber friend Margot said she thought much of my art and wished it was possible for me to illustrate her book, all I could think is why couldn't I? The answer of course is I can! I've loved and admired Margot's warmth and humor for many years on the web, and personally love animals, exotic (for me!) countries like Australia and, well just ALL of it: illustrating for kids, researching new things, and being a part of this life's adventure. It's ALL GOOD!  I thought it would be fun to talk about how characters come to be and the process of bringing a book to life. I understand Kobi and Oscar are over at Margot's blog as I write (and draw) arguing about who's story should be published first, and all kinds of things (Oscar may be a nice Tasmanian Devil, but that means he doesn't EAT his friends, but he's still a TD!) if you want to check their argument du jour (that's exotic for TODAY) you can bop over to Margot's blog to eavesdrop: http://0zfriends.blogspot.com/ Till then I'm posting some of the drawings I did in Photoshop of the Kookaburra, Koala and TD. In the next few days I will do more studies, and refine all of them into the characters that will populate Margot's stories! But it starts with reality (and the fine art is making the characters LOOK like who they are and still be able to tell their story to the kids!

I'm learning to use Photoshop (not half bad for a newbie's efforts, methinks!) and figure out the character's shapes and personalities. Next it will be figuring the environment. I have some more "real" drawings to make of my new buddies, and then bashing them over the head with the "magic cartoonify wand" Oh and I want to color them all in the style of Margot's original (talented) illustrator! A tall order, it's a great thing I'm so excited and happy about this, and I hope there will be people along the way who share this journey and love the results!