Cover Reveal for THE BREAKING NEWS

My debut picture book, THE BREAKING NEWS (Roaring Brook/Macmillan) comes out in April 2018, but you can see the cover for the first time today!  Tara Lazar, author of lots of great books and the leader of the Storystorm challenge, graciously offered to reveal the cover on her blog. Here are some early sketches below – to see the final cover and to learn…

The Art of Taking a Break

I’ve reached day 70 of my second run at #the100dayproject … and I’m taking a breather! Over at Writers’ Rumpus I wrote a post about the balance of creating everyday and then periodically taking a break. If you’re on break from whatever you were just doing,  check out the article here!

#100daysofdrawingonphotos is back!

It’s been a year since I began the #100daysofdrawingonphotos project… and I’m doing it again! Inspired by #the100dayproject coordinated by @elleluna on Instagram, I’ll be taking a photo each day and drawing on it (mostly in Photoshop, but sometimes using the Procreate app). I’ll be posting daily through the end of July on Facebook & Instagram (follow along @thereul, #100daysofdrawingonphotos). As of the writing of this…

The Making-Of the NESCBWI17 logo

I recently had the honor of creating an illustration to represent the theme of the New England Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators 2017 conference (also known as NESCBWI17). I just posted about the making-of process on the Writer’s Rumpus blog – check it out here!

#tinydragonpaintings

Finally had the chance today to compile some of the  #tinydragonpaintings I did last fall! Check out the updated page here. Hoping to get a post up soon about the Museum of Science Forest Animals mural – was super fun to see it in person last month!

#100daysofdrawingonphotos

Update on my 100days project, #100daysofdrawingonphotos! I’ve compiled them (all 102, due to counting errors:) to a new page on the website.  Hoping to have some prints available soon, so definitely contact me if you have any favorites. It’s been busy over here with under-wraps book projects and some other fun stuff I hope to be able to share at some point.  New posts…

Hogwash

Been working on some handlettering projects! I’ve found skillshare.com to be a super useful way of learning more about new topics. There’s more about my process for these pieces up on the project page for Martina Flor’s “Golden Secrets of Handlettering” course.

The Extraordinary Adventure of NESCBWI16

  I just got back from the fantastic whirlwind of NESCBWI16 (the New England conference for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) and I’m still pleasantly reeling. There were tons of inspiring workshops (led by fabulous authors, illustrators, editors and booksellers, including Nancy Castaldo, Deborah Freedman, Dan Moynihan, Brian Lies, Anne Sibley O’Brien, Calef Brown, Celia Lee, Elizabeth Bluemle and so many more), as well…

#the100dayproject

As you might already know, I’ve jumped into The 100 Day Project inspired by Elle Luna, attempting to tackle #100daysofdrawingonphotos. At the time of writing I’ve made it to day 10 and have been posting drawings each day on my Instagram account @thereul (and cross-posting on Facebook) – here are a few favorites so far:   More info on the project in my recent Writer’s Rumpus Post: Instagram &…

New post on writers’ rumpus

Wrote up a new post on observation for animation illustration & writing on Writers’ Rumpus – the final installment of the 3-part series. Includes notes on how I use reference from Pinterest, like this pinboard – one of my favorites: