Story Books

I create in a few different areas. One of these areas is in writing children’s stories. Just recently, I decided to put these stories down and work toward getting them published. To that end, I joined the Society of Children’s Book Writer’s and Illustrators at the recommendation of an old schoolmate, Robert Sabuda. He said I would learn a lot from them. Last night, I went to my chapter’s critique group and got to meet people, hear other people’s writing and read some of my own work to the group. I must say, it was a very good evening and I’ll definitely keep going.

Cinderella was always my favorite fairy tale, so I’ve posted two Cinderella illustrations. One is from Grimm’s version, the other is a depiction of the live-action Disney movie with the singer Brandy as the star.

As you can see from this and the previous posts, I have two very distinct styles to my work. What I am trying to do is find a happy medium that infuses the best of both styles. Hopefully you’ll see the changes as I go along in this blog.

TrentoVino

One of my longest running series of works is my Trento series. They're a group of paintings whose name comes from my hometown, but its a name that I turned into a story. The idea is that there is a company named Trento (The Trento Manufacturing Company) which makes anything and everything one could possibly imagine. This gave me oodles of ideas for products and allowed me to play with words like Trentine Gum (for Dentyne Gum) and TrentoBahn Tires (for the Autobahn). Get it? I had alot of fun with it and I aquired many customers and repeat customers through this series. I attempted to adapt the same idea to Bucks County Pennsylvania when I had a showing there, but it didn't seem to work as well. I'll have to see if it'll work in New York City.

Shown is one of my earlier Trento pieces, TrentoVino. Its one of my favorites. It one was sold to a disreputable poster dealer in New York. But I won't get into that here. :-(

Cafe Yeah!

This is one of the latest of my works in progress. Its called Café Yeah! It depicts a Harlem night club in 1932 complete with dancing girls. Here’s the first sketch I did of it as well as the actual painting in its early stages. It is 5’ X 6’ and one of the larger canvases I’ve worked on.

I always do a lot of doodles and sketches before a painting (probably too many). I then project the image using a simple projector and trace the enlarged sketch onto the canvas and paint from there. I find that I get really good quick gestures and feeling in my sketches that I don’t seem to get if I go straight to full-size. Its also just a lot easier and quicker.

I really feel good about this painting and I believe it will be one of my best ever.