New web site art – cooking with Momma

01. June 2011 · Comments Off · Categories: Finished, Illustration, Thoughts · Tags: , , , ,

I’ve been hard at work painting the last few days.

Cooking with Momma is an image of two bears making chocolate chip cookies from scratch.

As with any young cook (and sometimes an older one) the batter splashes out of the bowl after a too vigorous stir.

Momma admonishes Baby bear to be more careful.

Baby bear answer that she will try.

Painting images is labor intensive for me, and as result not many other creative things make it off the back burner.

Sometimes I berate myself for not doing the Daily Doodle Challenge, but then I remember the whole point of the challenge is to make sure I am making some kind of art every day. The doodles are for the times when I am not creating something else, or when I need a playful warm-up session with no pressure. I do tend to put a lot of pressure on myself.

What I’ve been working on

14. April 2011 · Comments Off · Categories: Finished, Illustration · Tags: , , , , ,
Rox and his rabbit steed

Spring 2011 Postcard mailer

I started this a while ago and have been chipping away at it for several weeks in between other projects.

One of the problems of being a freelance illustrator is that when you are busy with paying work, you don’t have time for self promotion. Since I have taken this year off from book touring for health reasons, I have suddenly found “extra” time I haven’t had in the last 5 years of traveling across the country.

Until you are actually doing it, you have no idea how incredibly draining constant travel can be. But that is another story all together.

Since I now have all kinds of gobs of time (insert maniacal laughter here) I have ramped up my artistic output. Along with moving my coloring page schedule from monthly to weekly, I am also renewing my self promotional efforts. Part two of this plan was (and is) to create and mail a quarterly postcard.

This brave heroine on her trusty steed is the first promo piece to be completed in 2011.

There will be some black and white line work on the reverse side of the postcard. The address side. I just have to decide which of my pieces I want to include.

I had fun with this, I hope it shows!

Magic Monday: coloring page happy spring daffodils

21. March 2011 · 2 comments · Categories: Finished, Illustration · Tags: , , , ,

Daffodil coloring pageI hope the recent weather ups and downs have been kind to you.

Here in Missouri we’ve had hot and cold running spring. Just last week, the high temperature record of 116 years was broken. We reached the high of 84°F, in early March. I hope this isn’t a warning of a super hot summer.

This week’s coloring page is a beautiful bunch of daffodils. They have started blooming in my garden. I love their happy yellow faces! Have fun coloring.

You can access the pdf file here by joining my yahoo news group.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LyonMartinNews/files/Daffodilcolroingpage.pdf

I create my coloring pages every week for teachers, librarians, booksellers and parents to enjoy with their children, but also to let the public know about MY BOOKS!

Please visit my web site http://wendymartinillustration.com (or the publisher’s web site http://magicalchildbooks.com/) to see all of them!

Enjoy this wonderful spring day!

Wolf Star coloring page ready for down load

28. February 2011 · Comments Off · Categories: Books, Finished, Illustration, New Releases
wolf star by Wendy Martin

Wolf Star coloring page ready for down load

The new coloring page is ready for down load. Go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LyonMartinNews to get your print quality Wolf Star coloring page. If you’re not already on the mailing list signing up is fast and easy.

Stay up to date on what I’m doing and where I’ll be through out the year.

If you have an ereader, Google Editions has ebooks for An Ordinary Girl, A Magical Child; Aidan’s First Full Moon Circle and Watchers for sale! As always you can buy the bound books from my publisher or at your favorite book seller.

Enjoy the coloring page!

 

New look, art published and a creature

23. January 2011 · 1 comment · Categories: Daily Doodle Challenge, Finished, Illustration · Tags: , , , ,

You may have noticed a distinct lack of creatures the last few days. I had a bunch of personal stuff that needed dealing with that pulled me out of the studio about half of the week. The rest of the week I spent finalizing artwork and uploading the new look to my web site. Several people have commented how much brighter and happier the place looks now.

wendymartinillustration.com masthead art This is the new look. Well, it’s the artwork I created for the new look. You can visit the web site to see the actual new look. I know some of you read my posts at other places like LiveJournal and Facebook. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think!

One of the things a freelance illustrator must cultivate is patience. Publishing is a very slow business. Things take a really long time to happen. My first book took me 5 years to find a publisher. And I was revising and changing the entire five years!

In mid 2009, I submitted several pieces of art to the Society Of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Bulletin. It’s an international publication and in the world of children’s book publishing pretty important. I waited until this weekend to see my first piece published in the current issue. Needless to say, I am thrilled.

tear sheet from SCBWI Bulletin jan-feb 2011

And last but not least. A creature of the day (yesterday’s doodle.)

creature for january 22, 2011

Have a wonderful Sunday everybody. See you next week!

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