Happy Birthday

To me! LOL
Seriously, I had an amazing birthday this year… because it lasted like, a week. And, most importantly, I didn't get the flu (like last year—literally, on my birthday).

My friend, Mike, held his annual White Elephant party a bit late this season… and my friend Lynn arranged to combine it with a surprise party, for ME! I usually hate surprises, but this… was totally awesome! Check out the handmade birthday card from Lynn and the awesome colored pencil frame!

My friends Lynn and Vicky also treated my to an evening tea at the St. James Tearoom. The Tearoom had an artist theme this month, including my favorite tea, Van Gogh Smiling. Look at all the goodies we enjoyed, do they not look amazing?! And that's the gluten-free menu!

Vicky took me to the same tea back in 2012, here is a page from my morning pages, on which I drew the entire menu. So good! (the food specifically, but I like the drawings too)

SCBWI-NM Illustrator's Meeting, January

Our local SCBWI-NM Illustrator's group kicked off 2014 tonight, with several events. 

At 5pm, we started with dinner and socializing at a local cafe. Our SCBWI Schmooze is held on the same night (a new schedule that gives writers and illustrators have more options), so writers and illustrators got to mingle a bit while we noshed and hung out. 

At 6pm, the illustrators headed over to one of local indie books stores, Alamosa Books, for our first official meeting of 2014. It was informal; illustrators brought recently finished pieces or works-in-progress. We're hang a group show called Enchantment this year, and pieces are due at the end of the month—many members brought their already finished show pieces. It's going to be an amazing show!

At 7pm, a couple illustrators stayed to chat at Alamosa, while several of us headed over to Alamosa's Reading Room (another location across the parking lot—where they sell YA and cross-over adult books)—for our monthly Schmooze meeting. Former SCBWI-NM RA, Chris Eboch, did a lovely presentation on voice in anticipation of a voice workshop she has coming up on Feb 1st.

Overall, I was super excited by the evening. Being the SCBWI-NM Illustrator Coordinator AND the Newsletter Editor for our region, I've been a bit back-logged—I'm still finalizing our illustrator calendar for the year and I only sent out a reminder for this meeting yesterday! We had 8 illustrators in attendance, that is excellent for our group!

Happy New Year, Let's Celebrate!

So, it's the new year! Yay!!
And a new season of Downton Abbey is about to start. It's a wonderfully entertaining show with amazing art direction—costumes, sets, you name it, it's just great visual inspiration.
Last month I had the opportunity to attend a Downton party of sorts. It was like a second Halloween for me. Doing my hair Edwardian style was a highlight, here are couple pics just for fun.

Happy Holidays!!

To all my Interweb friends and followers – have a happy, happy Christmas and merry New Year!!

I hope to post process images later… I was all over the place with ideas this year, so there's a lot on the "cutting room" floor that I hope to use for future cards and/or projects.

PiBoIdMo 2013 - Winner!

I do solemnly swear that I have faithfully executed 
the

PiBoIdMo 30-ideas-in-30-days challenge,


and will, to the best of my ability, 
parlay my ideas

into picture book manuscripts.

My fourth year of participating in Picture Book Idea Month (#PiBoIdMo) is a success! I even tried a new approach which has landed me at the end of the month with even more than 30 ideas!

I can't believe it's been a whole month and PiBoIdMo is done once again. This whole year has positively flown by! I'm so thankful for all my experiences and opportunities this year has brought, and I'm especially thankful for the excuse PiBoIdMo has given me to daydream a little extra every day.

PiBoIdMo 2013 — “Ideas Taking Flight!”

It's almost November!?!! Wait… what?! Sometimes I feel like 2013 has hardly arrived, and now it's winding down. But it's harvest time for group projects and creative challenges! PiBoIdMo 2013, here I come!

Head over to Taralazar.com to find out more about PiBoIdMo. This will be my FOURTH year participating (and PiBoIdMo's 5th year). I'm still not much of a writer (gotta get over that), but I'm so thankful the month-long guest blog posts, inspiration, and support that PiBoIdMo provides.

I haven't made the best use of my PiBoIdMo challenges, but I have my lists saved and simmering. I'm working on an illustration right now that germinated from a PiBoIdMo idea I had back in 2011. Personally I think it's a great way to brainstorm and gather up project ideas for the coming new year (or future new years, if you happen to be as slow as I am to getting around to them).

I can't wait to get started!
Is it cheating if I start my list now?
LOL, ;)

IF: Entangled

Hey, what?! Two days in a row? No way…

So, this one's a bit of a cheat since it's from a book I worked on last year (The Zoo's Annual Piggyback Race, March 2013 - available from me or the author/publisher)… but it was just so perfect for this #iFri prompt, and it was definitely one of the more challenging pieces from the book.

"The snakes became tangled, around and around"

I actually tangled up two different colored stings for reference, and drew directly from that. Apparently I never took a reference photo of the tangled mess, but I think the result speaks for itself!

(I plan to do a new piece as well, continue with experimenting, etc.)