An interview from the Hatchette Book Group with Patrick McDonnell about his new picture book biography Me…Jane.

Patrick McDonnell tells the story of the young Jane Goodall and her special childhood toy chimpanzee named Jubilee. As the young Jane observes the natural world around her with wonder, she dreams of “a life living with and helping all animals,” until one day she finds that her dream has come true.

You must have noticed a distinct lack of daily doodles the last few weeks. I can explain.

I have been working diligently at perfecting my digital watercolor painting technique. As always when learning a new tool, I tend to get severe tunnel vision and monkey brain. I think it’s worth it though. Once I learn the new tools, I can make marvelous arts. The piece I am working on is the fox and hare I posted rough pencil sketches on a few weeks (okay more than a few) back. It’s nearing completion, but still has a way to go. At the rate of my current time, I estimate a solid 8-10 more hours of concentrated work.

I am hopeful that with familiarity with the new tools, both the program version and the stylus, my speed will increase so it no longer takes me weeks to finish a single image.

Here is a sneak peek at the fox.

Hope you love her. Do let me know what you think.

Have a great weekend everyone!

With spring busting out all over the robins have been very busy at our house.

My husband turns the compost heap several times early in the season. Usually, the first turning is about the time the robins are building their nests and are pretty hungry little birds! They line up as close to the compost pile as they can safely be and encourage my husband to dig out the fat juicy worms for them to snatch up and eat.

In their honor here is a coloring page with a pair of singing robins along with their more quiet friends. Enjoy coloring!

To down load a high quality PDF for coloring please visit my mailing list and sign up. You can get this page as well previous Magic Monday coloring and activity pages.

Robin Duet for Illustration Friday.

This year’s Children’s Book Week Writing contest is being sponsored by bookemon and runs through April 22!

The Children’s Book Councel has partnered with bookemon to host a 2011 Children’s Book Week writing contest for kids. View the contest tab on the Book Week site here. Check out the beautiful sample book put together to explain the contest rules.

This originally started out as a pair of jeans, an old favorite skirt and 4 fat quarters I never used. The skirt has been hanging in the closet of a dress dummy that was my size back in 1981 before kids, husband and age. The hem had come down and I was going to fix it “one day.” And never got to it, and now the skirt no longer fit.

There are three shots because I couldn’t fit the result all into one frame. The shots are a close up of the front, a close up of the back and a side view taken in the full length mirror in my daughter’s room. Optimally, finding found someone to take pictures of me in the skirt – twirling – for full effect.