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

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.

“To me, it’s not work. When I draw and I write, I find it relaxing. It’s not like 9-to-5, where a man goes to a job and he isn’t really interested in the job. Luckily, I get paid for doing what I’d do for nothing.” – Bob Kane, Creator of Batman

This… is… awesome! Today on Treehugger I stumbled across Saatchi & Saatchi Switzerland advertisements for the World Wildlife Fund’s “Give a hand to wildlife” campaign. How awesome are Guido Daniele’s uber-realistic body paintings… at first glance I thought they were painted rocks, like the fad in the early 90’s (or maybe I was the only one painting on rocks as a kid?) Love the use of alternative surfaces for illustration. Doubly love how apt they are for this campaign.

“Fantasy, if it’s really convincing can’t become dated for the simple reason that it represents a flight into a dimension that lies beyond the reach of time.” – Walt Disney

This animated short film I came across on CRAFT is really beautifully done… love how Yves Geleyn animated this gentle character with only stitching & stop animation. Click to watch Kotori here.

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams, Creator of Dilbert

“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.” – Roald Dahl

I’ve been catching up on archiving my projects from the past year, and had fun looking over the 157 illustrations I completed in 2007 (clicking on the image above will bring up a bigger picture!)

Was a busy year for me, with illustrating 6 children’s books (Good-bye Baby Max, My Best Worst Sleepover Party Ever, Little Land Adventures, Spotty & Eddie Learn to Compromise, Bookie and the Scoliosis Diagnosis, and The Brotherhood of the Stinky Underpants); 10 signs/banners for Parks Canada; a brochure for the Library of Parliament of Canada; a chip bag illustration; a couple Threadless t-shirt contest entries (Kantina and Twisted Sister); 4 seashell mosaics; 10 greeting card illustrations; and several personal pieces.

I’ve focused on improving my illustration skills by experimenting with painting in acrylics, and being more attentive to the human form in my children’s books in particular (the fruit of which you’ll see in my current projects…) But most significant for me this year has been expecting our first baby, and discovering all the challenges of illustrating while pregnant :)