Creatives Procreate

I hereby announce with massive joy that Julie and I are expecting our first babe. Julie's now 25 weeks in and we just found out semi-recently that we're having a girl! Girls rule! We're super psyched, and come xmas time or so, there'll be a new addition to the Halpern-Cordell household.

Here's one of the more recent snapshots of said sweet baby girl.

Let There Be Light

When it came to prepping final art, I thought I had it all figured out. I had a three step method. (See this old blog post where I lay it all out.) 1-Transfer approved sketches to good paper. 2-Ink the transfered sketches. 3-Finish out in Watercolor. This deal worked out good enough. No need to improve. So I thought.

Recently, I needed to make a single piece of art in layers and to do this I needed to see through several sheets of paper to get everything to line up. So, I bought a light box. It worked out swell. Then, as I went to get cracking on final art for the book I'm doing now, I had a light-box revelation. I could totally bypass that whole "transfer" nonsense (part 1) and use the light box to trace over approved sketches and ink at the same time. Hallelujah, boy, cause that transfer stuff was mind-numbing.

Thereby skipping step 1 altogether.

What I'm talking bout:

Take, for instance, this approved sketch.



I print out a laser print of said sketch, get a piece of sturdy hot pressed watercolor paper, and click on the light box.



Tape the laser print securely to the back of the watercolor paper (in at least two places, so there's no shifting between sheets).



Begin inking on top of the good stock. With the light shining through underneath, you got a good lead to follow.



Finish up and carefully pull the tape off with the laser print underneath. Right on.



Why wasn't I doing this all along?

Jam On It

Last week, Julie and me and family were in Orlando, FL's Walt Disney World. It's crazy. Huge. Blown up. It was fun.

This week, I'm officially in finals for my much talked about (by me) first author/illo pic book. It's exciting. Intimidating, as well, but all quite, quite good. I'm jazzed.

Before we left for Dis. World, I got a full set of color proofs on a pic book I recently finished drawings for, called TOOT TOOT ZOOM. My first work with Candlewick on a great story written by Phyllis Root! As the book's designer, Pam Consolazio, said, there's gonna be some tweaks to the overall color for another set of proofs, but it's looking pretty sharp. Here's the cover (a bad crop, a little wonky on the color--apologies...):



And now I must jam. Gotta deadline, September 15.

Pig Droppings–You Can Win!

Dear Readers,

Below is a sketch from a picture book I'm currently working on. A pig runs, and as he does so, several choice items fall out of the bag he's holding. I'm wondering how easily identifiable those items are. Can you identify them? I don't know. If you can (first one who does correctly via "comments"--include your name), I'll send this pencil sketch, signed, to your home. Not much incentive to comment, but 'tis what 'tis. (Disclaimer: it's on standard "copy" paper. Not high-dollar paper.) If you're right, I'll post it to "comments" and have you email me your mailing address. Watch out!

sincerely,

M.Cordell

(click on image to get a closer look...)

Color Me Badd

I'm in the middle of sharpening sketches and sharpening text on one of my newest picture books. This will be my first offering as both illustrator AND author, so it holds a special, special place in me heart. I'm very fortunate to be working on this with Feiwel and Friends--the too awesome Liz Szabla, the too awesome Rich Deas, and the too awesome special guest editor Rebecca Davis. I'm in good hands here. So I just whipped up some color tests to see how the art will look with some different color scheme ideas. I'm diggin the idea of a limited color palette. I'm leaning toward the more monochrome ones--specifically the all purple/gray background right now for a few reasons. We shall see.

(click to zoom)

Sweet, sweet Comic-Con!

I'm all sad cause Comic-Con is going on in San Diego right now and Julie and I aren't there. We went on our honeymoon in 2003 for the first time (serious, serious nerds). Then, several years later, we went again in '07. It's straight bliss for comics geeks like me. Totally overblown. Totally packed (actually completely sold out this year). Totally Hollywooded and pop-cultured out. Pepper in all the great indie publishers and tons of panel discussions and artist talks and seas of crazies dressed up in elaborate, weird, costume and that's Comic-Con. I grew up on the superhero stuff, but now my tastes run more towards the indie true-to-life books. Anyhow, Comic-Con is a rare place where you get the absolute best of both of those worlds. Not many places does the great Stan Lee walk the same halls at the great Lynda Barry! Aw, man! We're not there!

Maybe next year.

Dudes like this Boba Fett are everywhere. Snapped this guy at the end of the day, walking back to the hotels last year. Just like it was nuthin. (This photo doesn't do justice to the many freak, goofy, elaborate, or obscure costumers up in this thing. But the pic's all I had. And Boba was my main man when I was, like, 8.)

Sheep Sketches

Some new pen sketches of pop and son sheep. Pre and post wool removal.

5 on the floor

I had a minute to clean up and reorganize the studio yesterday. It was in another sad state after a couple of months of working and not cleaning. It seemed to me then, a lot could be learned from an illustrator's stuff that's strewn about the floor (or just the messy ones, I guess). So I scanned 5 random objects and here goes:


This is a little 6" x 6" picture book Julie and I picked up on a recent trip to Toronto. Sweet, cool little colored pencil drawings of these two lil' sisses that are moles. One of a series by Roslyn Schwartz. They also sell these awesome little finger puppets too, which we didn't buy.



A sheet of shiny, foil Canada stickers bought on same Toronto trip–meant for our suitcase that has sticks of our various travel locales. As you can see, the stick hasn't made it to the case. In fact, til yesterday, this was still in a studio pile of Canadian souvenirs.



A copy of some songs by FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS (one of the best done shows on TV of recent times). This is not their newest album, but a bunch of songs (from a bootleg or something, I think?) that Julie's library assistant, Katie, was so nice to make for us. Hilarious.



A little work out I did with the pen one day. Always easy to whip up a round of hand drawings (immediate subject matter). Being a righty, I have to draw all left ones.



Phaidon's doing a beautiful suite of Jean-Jacques Sempé books in English translation. This is the first of the series of "Nicholas" books written by René Goscinny with drawings by Sempé. Nice cloth bound volumes with little metallic Nicholas characters inset right into the cover. Very fine, toothy, uncoated papers inside. (Only thing that puts me off is the huge PHAIDON logotype they gotta put on the cover of all their books!) Good stuff. Good times. I even joined Phaidon's "Nicholas Club" but I reckon I'll talk about that some other time.

The Steig Ball, Dropped.

Earlier this week, I noticed three original William Steig single panel cartoon drawings were up for auction on ebay (this is pretty rare). Two were kinda ragged. There were areas cut out and painted out--both, I assume, corrections made by Steig himself. But because of that, I didn't feel like paying up. Though the third was in, what appeared to be, good shape.


It's not an image I was loving, but hey... it's Steig!

Well. I totally forgot to bid on the dang thing, and it just got sold for the one and only bid of 149 bucks! (Last Steig cartoon I tracked on ebay sold for $800.) I'm kicking myself. Really.

Better luck next time.

Dang!

I just finished reading the best interview from Tom Spurgeon (The Comics Reporter) with Julie's and my favorite cartoonist, Lynda Barry. If you're not a fan, well, you gotta be!


Her newest book, WHAT IT IS, was recently published by Drawn and Quarterly. Much of the interview focuses on this, but, there's lots of stuff about her history in comics and recent hardships due to the downsizing and/or selling of the many alt weekly newspapers her comic strip has ran in over these many years. She's awesome. Read this and more here.