Diane & Rich Cantrell just passed this review by Ernest Dempsey onto me for our book, “Good-bye, Baby Max:”

“Many children books are printed each month to amuse kids of varying ages. This colorful, hardcover children’s title Good-bye, Baby Max (Bridgeway Books, Texas, 2007) by Diane Cantrell & Heather Castles is special in its purpose of teaching an invaluable lesson: that of properly saying the final farewell to a loved one who is no more. The book tells the story of the unfortunate baby chick Max who doesn’t make it into life while his twins Dora and Spiderman appear healthy out of their shells. The kids, eagerly awaiting the birth of the chicks, are heartbroken over the death of Baby Max and so their teacher uses her wisdom and care to lead them toward the appropriate way of showing their love and expressing their grief.

The importance of involving children in mourning is increasingly being acknowledged by developmental psychologists since children do sense the loss no matter how much they are coaxed into believing that ‘everything is ok.’ By being left out with the ‘mystery’, their wee minds are inclined to conclude that something terribly wrong has happened; something that is not worth speaking. This sows the seeds of fear and detachment in their mental development. Being a Licensed Professional Counselor and former KG teacher, Diane Cantrell has created a very purposeful book for children-one that is at once a story, a poem, and a healthy course of helping children get over grief. The book’s illustrations by Heather Castles are very appealing to a child’s imagination. There is a good deal here in Good-bye, Baby Max to learn for children ages 4 to 8 years and the 32-pages book is a must read for all kids of this age category.”

I just finished painting the last of the illustrations for Tom Krause’s “The Little Boy’s Smile” Not a day too soon as I’m taking some time off for maternity leave tomorrow! I will to leave you in suspense as to how the rest of the illustrations turned out until they are all approved & sent to the printer… but in the mean time, here are a couple of my favourites from the book  :)

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! I illustrated this card last July for Hazy Jean’s 2008 Valentine’s line. I always like illustrating whimsical fairy tale castles… could have something to do with my last name, who knows. I used mainly watercolour with a smidge of coloured pencil, then added the linework in Illustrator afterwards to tie in with the font Hazy had chosen.

Came across the Design Police website (though How Design Blog) and got a kick out of their Visual Enforcement Kit. Really it’s the perfect office accessory for any designer… download the kit for free and print a set of stickers to help “bring bad design to justice.”

The New Yorker has an interesting article on how homes have adopted the “paperless” mentality much faster than businesses have. I know this is true for me at home, which includes my art studio… I use an online phonebook, don’t print out my emails, download my bills as PDFs, do my banking online, create backups for digital files online rather than printing them out…
But the article reports that while homes have adopted a paperless mentality, they are also starting to use more energy with the increasing use of their electronic devices (computers, scanners, printers, digital cameras…) It brings up a good point to consider for the home-based art studio… while you have gone paperless, have you increased your energy use as a result? Are there ways you can reduce your increased energy use? (Such as unplugging electrical equipment when it’s not in use.) I’ve posted some ideas in my Green Tips for Designers & Illustrators… if you have any more ideas let me know!!!

“Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.” – Claude Monet

Yipes! My colleague Crystal Driedger did a little digging into Facebook’s terms for uploaded User Content (photos, illustrations, videos, text, etc.) and what she found wasn’t encouraging for creatives who post their work on Facebook! While I love Facebook for keeping in touch with friends & colleagues, I was pretty dissappointed to read in their Terms that they can use any of the content I’ve uploaded for their own purposes (commercial, advertising, derivative works…) without owing me a dime. Check out Crystal’s post on Faceboook & Proprietary Property.

Yippee, another one of my children’s books has hit the virtual shelves… The James Family’s “Little Land Adventures” is now available online at Amazon.com! Book 1 features the adventures of Little Bird, Little Iguana, Little Racoon, and Little Pig… four of the many characters that live in Little Land! These illustrations were a lot of fun to do…. illustrated entirely with a plain old HB graphite pencil, then tinted with a little colour in Photoshop (check out my Photoshop tutorial here.)

I actually had time last night to just doodle a little fan art in front of the tv (being nine months pregnant has its perks!) Thought I’d share with the world that I just love Michael Cera… fell in love with him when he played awkward teenager George Michael Bluth in Arrested Development (best… show… ever…) and have enjoyed following his acting career since. From the web series Clark & Michael to the lovable flick Juno, the Canadian actor brings an adorable man-child sincerity to his characters.

I was listening to Just One More Book podcast today, in which Jane Ray talked about In The Picture, a project aimed to encourage illustrators, authors & publisher to include disabled children in their books for young readers. As written in their 10 Guiding Principals, “The point is not that disabled children should be the prime focus of stories or pictures: simply they should be there, a natural feature of every child’s landscape.” The program encourages the inclusion of disabled children in children’s stories and picturebooks… it is not aiming to create a seperate strain of books for disabled children, but to acknowledge that disabled people are part of our society.

I appreciated Jane discussing how some illustrators feel unsure of how to portray disabled children in their illustrations in a way that does not offend the disabled children themselves. To help encourage illustrators to include disabled children in their works, the In The Picture website has an Image Bank which has a variety of photographic resources illustrators can draw upon. There is also an Inspiration gallery where illustrators have posted their works of disabled children to inspire & encourage other illustrators to do the same… my favourite childhood illustrator, Quentin Blake, contributed 3 works, one of which is shown above.