Sketchbook dogs

Here's one that really made me laugh. I open one of my old sketchbooks, and at the bottom of the page are these two very talented dogs...



Then I turned the page, and this little guy was stealing the show!



These were drawn in a book of recycled paper. Enjoy.

Watercolor Elephant

This is another of the watercolor drawings that I was posting over the summer. This is, by far, my most successful piece.
I feel that the movement, color, looseness and the line are all working on the same level.

School Visit Flyer

Here's my new 2010/2011 school visit flyer. If you would like me to visit your school, or your child's school, print
this out and bring it to the school's librarian/media specialist. If you would like a high quality version of this sent to you,
contact me at mikerex2@aol.com.

Click on the image for a larger, printable version.

Bedtime Conversation

Here's a quicky comic I drew last night about 10 minutes after the actual conversation. Clicking on the image will make it larger.

Marching Band 2

Here’s more of the lost marching band. On this page there’s a duck that, I believe, was going to lead them astray. Looking at this idea made me think of when I was in high school. I was in the marching band for four years, even though I never really learned to read music. If you weren’t an athlete, marching band was one of the few other social activities that you could get involved with. Anyway, every year on Homecoming we had to march through town to the big Pep Rally (jeez this is corny stuff).

Anyway, one year it was rainy and cold and really unpleasant, and my good buddy and I kept daring each other to ditch the parade. Our plan was to run onto a side street, and take a path through the woods that would lead us right to the High School and the rally. The idea was that in the rain and fog and excitement of a parade (!), no one would notice that the trombone players were missing. We chickened out. We didn’t feel like getting in trouble the way the bass drummer did the year he bolted an empty beer can to his hat, and marched in the half-time show.

Marching to the beat of a different drummer...

This was a silly story idea about a marching band that gets lost and wanders all over the place, but never stops playing music. This never made it past a few quick sketches. It made me laugh, but I never found and end for it. Who knows, maybe they wander off the parade route, walk all over the world, wander back onto the parade route the following year, and are never missed.

Dodo

I came across this one and decided to post it. I had never written straight non-fiction, but I worked on, and even submitted a draft of “Dodo.” I don’t think that the manuscript was that bad, but thinking about it now, the extinction of the dodo is just such a miserable story that maybe it just turned my editor off. As I look at it today, it could be done, but maybe it needs a more interesting point of view, or a different voice, and it might work. Into the “maybe” pile it goes…

Launching...

I’m going to start a new project today and see how long it will last. Now that I’m no longer teaching full-time, I have had some free moments to dig through my old sketchbooks. Back in 2004, when my wife was pregnant and we were buying, and fixing up, our first house (and I had started Grad School) I began to feel that I had lost some of the “idea time” that I was used to having.

The truth is, I’m never short of ideas, but I feel that for a while, I was unable to develop my concepts far enough so that they became strong enough to turn into books. While going through these sketches, I’m finding many ideas that I really never did anything with. Hopefully, as I dig into these images, something of value will be found.

2010...The Year We Make Books!

Happy New Year! I am finally up and running for 2010, and have a ton of work ahead of me. First up, is completion of the artwork for “My Dog Jack is Fat” written by Eve Bunting. While working on that, I’m writing the first of my new three book series for Putnam. I can’t really talk about the content yet, as contracts have yet to be signed, but they are going to be very fun, and feature this guy---



In May, “Furious George Goes Bananas” comes out, again from Putnam. It’s my third, and what may be my final, parody. I’m really happy with it, and, like “Goodnight Goon” it’s a simultaneous send-up and homage. My Goal is to post out here at least once a week! Have a great 2010.