May 7, 2008

A brief history of wolves

Wolf encounter

My ultimate goal when I was a student at Rhode Island School of Design was to create a book of illustrations. After a few years of traveling and pounding the pavement in several cities, dragging my portfolio from one art director to another- I decided to write my own book.

The subject I wanted to write about was wolves. The animal had always fascinated me and after I spent a great deal of time watching them at the zoo in Rhode Island I realized that most people know little about the animal.

After about 3 solid years of painting, writing and research I created a 144 page fully illustrated book about wolves, their natural history, our myths about them and a history of our relationship with the animal. 

I signed on with a publisher who was keenly interested and I waited for a contract. Discussions continued about the title of the book, he suggested “The Communication of Wolves” that was the first sign… Then a few weeks later the publisher and publishing house seemed to disappear off the face of the earth. I was totally heartbroken, how could this be happening with this book that I had poured my heart and soul and life into?

Enter my husband to be who lived in San Francisco at the time, he had a family friend who was a literary agent who found the PERFECT publishing house for my book “Neither God nor Devil: Rethinking our Perceptions of Wolves”





April 23, 2008

Love thyself!

I thought I would talk a bit about process. My illustration teachers at RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) taught me that there is no point in illustrating only the story that appears in the text. They suggested including details and character development that was not in the spare text of the picture book format. So this cover image serves as a good example. How do you create a cover for a book about a python snake that is always falling in love with the wrong things (garden hose) because he is nearsighted? I decided that if he is THAT nearsighted then he might fall in love with his own tail. Here is Pelle falling in love (you can tell because of the hearts) with his own tail. Silly snake!

falling in love again





April 13, 2008

The zoo at home.

These zoo prints can be found here.

monkey clothesline