One way I get to travel is when I follow my artwork. So far it’s lead me to New York and Texas. Now I’ve just shipped off 5 themed illustrations for consideration to Bolognafiere 2012, held in Bologna, Italy. It’s the “Sundance” for children’s illustrators. Last year, no one from the United States was chosen. But if these make the cut, I’ll go. I’ll go!
Those with generous overflowing imaginations and heart, can you picture them there?
Thanks!
Terri
It’s been a sweltering summer of mishaps...with no end in sight. In July alone we’ve had record breaking heat and rain, a tornado touch down, a nearby tree explode by lightning, a neighbor who discovered 80 beehives in the walls of her house, power outages, a flood...and I’m waiting on the locusts and frogs...
Above is a full page illustration I created for this month’s Ladybug issue. The art director wanted animals to convey “hot” in this poem so I chose these arctic looneys vacationing in the tropics. Here’s a close-up detail on the fox...
Still wringing out from the flood, but the air conditioning is working and so am I, on character sketches and a layout design for a new picture book due out in March 2012. It’s by the same author and publisher of my last book, Dance Y’all Dance...Kelly Bennett and Bright Sky Press.
I love the beginning stages of a picture book. It’s like making a movie! I’ve got the screenplay and am in the middle of a casting call, sketching forth all sorts of characters to bring the author’s words to life. Some don’t make the cut. Others do, but have to be tweaked...and still others are fully formed the moment they hit the page. These character kids, fourteen of them, will live with me, shaking me in twilight dreams, directing me as much as I direct them when I consider expressions and body language, pacing, camera angles, mood and lighting, and visual story arc.
I mentioned designing a mural in the last blog. If you have a facebook page and want to see the results, here is a link to the album. Friend me, if we aren’t friends already... :o)
“Be the change you wish to see in the world”...that is the theme for a mural I am honored to be designing for Park Manor School in Chicago. It will be painted in one day, by volunteers who may or may not have artistic skills, on June 11th. Though I will the there to direct and assist...and paint...it will also be a good exercise in letting go, and trusting, and knowing. A big thanks to my artistic friends in SCBWI for their excellent comments and critique as this drawing progressed.
Every day there is magic, there for the taking.
~Terri
What else I’m working on: a magazine illustration, my book dummy, an Illustrator Intensive assignment and a summer college art camp for kids workshop.
Time to dance!! Again! Spider Magazine’s March 2011 issue features my illustration with Eileen Spinelli’s poem “Pajama Polka.” A delightful weave of imagination that shows the effect “of March wind’s sudden music.” Nightclothes fly with dayclothes for an eleven city block parade!
I played with perspective on this one, wanting to show a close-up pajama couple as well as suggest a parade and an audience. I played with texture too. Before I started painting, I laid a brushy undercoat with light molding paste. You can see better evidence of it here:
Currently working on another magazine piece for LadyBug Magazine, their July 2011 issue. Can’t divulge anything yet, except that it’ll be hot hot hot. Nice project for the cabin fever blues...
Also working on a website update... Coming soon.
;o)
Terri Murphy
Creating art...it's a solitary endeavor. It is a leap of faith, that we connect something true in us to something true in others. My friend Chris and I have been talking about collaboration for a while. We had our first taste this weekend.
Drawing from imagination and dreams, our session spanned seven hours within two days, producing several paintings. Fueled with caffeine and occasional carbs, a real sense of play transpired as we experimented and learned from each other. We talked about technique, color theory and touching the archetype in dreams...interspersed with music and Chris’s theory of heartbreak economics 101.
A beautiful thing, painting alone...and a different beauty, painting together.
Creating toward a child’s initial exposure to universal language...priceless.
I’ve got Halloween fever. It started back in April when I was assigned a double page spread in Spider Magazine...an “Old Ogre” deck of cut-apart playing cards.
And as always, I try to stick a little humor in.
Illustrating monsters, ghouls and halloween characters is great fun. It’s the little girl in me, playing dress up....except now I’m fashion coordinator for Frankenstein, a witch, or a skeleton. “Old Ogre” is a matching pair game, so I wanted each “pose” to be distinct from the other, yet have them engaging in an action to show personality. A pirate touts his found treasure, a flower unravels the mummy, a ghost falls in love with a distant moon.
Just finished another illustration for Spider Magazine, which will be in their March 2011 issue...art for a poem called “Pajama Polka,” with flying dancing nightclothes.
Some other exciting things in the works, but too early to talk about them now. Stay tuned...
Terri
It was the mood. An ornery one. And so... I wrote a picture book story. Now the healthy thing might have been to confront the source of my angst but nope... I had fuel, I wanted fire...I lit a match.
It’s a story of Stella, a blackwidow spider...dangerous, diabolical, and darned cute! Writing her misadventures into a picture book is a fine balance. If the black humor carries too much darkness the reader builds no empathy for the main character; doesn’t invest in the outcome. Not enough darkness, and there’s no tension to pull the reader in.
So it is in the creation of Stella. Drawing a cute spider was not the challenge. Drawing “Stella” was. She needed to have just the right blend of threat, vulnerability, whackiness and charm in order to be invited into a reader’s acceptance. She is to be feared and loved simultaneously. The first attempts at Stella in clay and sketches were “too cute.”
Once I was satisfied with the body and legs, her face was a matter of sizing and placement of features to create the right look and expression. I kept drawing until she made me laugh and I fell in love. And as with all my characters, I see a bit of me in her, a bit of you. Or should I say, a bite of you. Chomp!~
Invite her in. Could you? Would you?
“Tree of Life” is a popular motif in many cultures...Mexican, Hebrew, African, Celtic. Last weekend, our SCBWI Illinois Illustrators Network held a benefit auction for the Art Creation Foundation for Children, a children’s charity in Haiti. This organization provides education, meals and medical care for impoverished children while teaching them the native arts so that can become self sustaining adults. Eighteen illustrators donated their version of “Tree of Life” for silent auction at Ridge Art in Oak Park, Illinois. All pieces were sold, and we were honored to provide a sizable donation to ACFFC. Here is our forest of trees: http://www.flickr.com/photos/13397053@N02/
Above is my Tree of Life titled “Night Lights.” From the beginning I knew I wanted to convey a magical night scene with the moon, birds and mythical creatures. Much of this illustration was carefully planned...the perspective, the play of light and shadow, the simplicity of the leafing. Other parts happened spontaneously during the painting of it, the top branches releasing hearts that find other hearts and become butterflies, the creatures that wear camouflaged hearts. In this painting I hope you climb the branches, search for the story, find magic.
You can see a larger version of “Night Lights” here: http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2203/2532773/5363393/387378690.jpg
Working on: a Halloween spread for Spider Magazine
facilitating an artists’ retreat in June, in Texas
************
In Everything
Do you hear the night birds sing?
"Believe," they sing, "in everything."
In the thick as well as thin
Can you feel the dawn begin?
The sweet, together with the sour
the idling boredom of the hour
In a quagmire on our knees
or flying past the midnight trees
In your eyes, reflecting sparks
of buried treasure in the dark
Yes, dear heart, in everything
the thorny branch, the silken wing
Then by some untimely clock
Wind lifts one, and then the flock,
Kaleidoscope jewels, circle and fly
Rainbow dancers across the sky
I love connecting with children.
For the past year and a half I’ve been holding art workshops for kids at area libraries...sometimes a single session and sometimes a series of workshops. Each workshop focuses on either a theme, a technique, or an artist. I try to make work environments creatively stimulating, with work stations in the round, selected music in the background and an open casual format. And right when we think it can’t get any better, I break out the Oreos!
In the photo above, the theme was Op Art Portraits and the artist presented was Victor Vasarely. We focused on hot and cold colors and how to make colors pop, or recede if you so choose, just by their relation to each other. Each workshop lasts 90 minutes. The beginning is a short power point presentation introducing the artist or technique, and a step-by-step demonstration of the project.
Above is a power point presentation on a workshop called Print Station. Kids drew an image, transferred it to a styrofoam tray, and embossed it with a pencil or wooden dowel. They applied black or white paint with a roller and pressed the styrofoam to paper to form their printed image.
Here are the Young Artists Workshops I’m currently facilitating...and I’m always adding!
Under the Sea Batik
Aboriginal Dream Painting
Woodcuts
Op Art Portraits
Print Station
Mexican Sun, Embossed Foil Art
Creating Mood with Sculpture
The Peace Quilt
Mondrian Animals
Street Scene Collage
Up-Close Portraits (art of Chuck Close)
Currently working on: writing a Valentines Day picture book story
a drawing a day (a New Year's resolution)
I had a book launch party for the release of the picture book Dance Y’all Dance. A little nervous...the remote mike kept throwing me off. Had some olde timey country dance music playing...the soundtrack from the movie O Brother Where Art Thou?. Prizes for any spontaneous dancing (glass boot mugs filled with M&Ms) were offered and we had some takers! A PowerPoint presentation included a Where’s-Waldo-type search of Texas symbols I planted in the book with more prizes for that.
I talked about inspiration, about how much of the time an artist’s head is in the clouds, searching, while the deadline looms nearer, and the design planning, character fleshing and topical research that goes on before pencil hits paper. There was a little Cinderella story segue about me riding off with cowboy Russell Crowe as he showed me the ropes in an old Old West Dance Hall. What? You just go with the flow when then muse hits! One of the best compliments I got was from a man who said “I never realized it before... you’ve built a whole story in pictures but you start out with just words.”
Reminds me of a favorite quote by the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ... See with your ears and hear with your eyes. ~Ken Kesey
Working on: promotional material for a new venture
experimenting with a new art technique!