The finals for my dummy

The white 9 x 12 envelope was neatly laid out on my drawing table. Already inside was the painstakingly brief and witty cover letter and dreaded SASE. Finally, last Wednesday, I slipped inside the copies of my three finished illustrations, sealed it up, mentally muttered a small prayer and threw it in the passenger seat for the drive to the post office. After a whole month of work devoted to doing my best possible work ever for these images, I was amazed at how long the last hour of preparing them to mail took.

Of course I checked to make sure everything was inside about 216 times before I actually sealed it up.

So here they are, the three images, in consecutive order as they appear in Zoo in the Tub. It's the story of a boy who doesn't really want to take a bath. Joined by his basset hound, he lets his imagination get away with him and is visited by an ever growing gang of animals. But is it really his imagination that's doing all the splashing? (so please make the splash sounds as loud as you possibly can)

What does it sound like when four flamingos flop in the tub?


flip-a-ti-plash plip-a-ti-FLOSH!
plip-a-tiFLISH flip-a-TA-PLOOSH!


What does it sound like when five bison barge into the tub?


. . . . . . . . . .
If you want to see what happens next then make your own splash in the comments

a good reason to be busy

Just posting this update because I'm about to be working hard for the next few weeks: While at the SCBWI Southern Breeze Conference this weekend in Birmingham a representative from Eedrman's Books for Young People expressed interest in my dummy and suggested I work up some finals and submit to them. Sooo I'll be spending the next few weeks knocking out some awesome final illustrations to send away with it. Wish me luck!

Catching up between conferences and vacation

I've been quiet for about a month as I worked like a maniac to get my picture book dummy ready for the Mid-South SCBWI conference two weeks ago here in Nashville. More one the dummy later. I also worked on an illustration for the illustrator's showcase. The attending art director, Patrick Collins from Henry Holt, supplied two manuscripts and we were to choose a spread from one to illustrate. The two he sent were Don't Lick the Dog, a story about how dogs prefer to meet kids , and El Barrio, a discovery story about Spanish Harlem. I was the only illustrator who chose El Barrio, and I chose it mostly because I loved the images conjured up by the writer's words. Here's the spread I chose to illustrate:
El barrio is
Our Lady of Guadalupe candles,
syrupy sweet churros,
ice-cold paletas,
and a lemon-yellow fire escape as
tall as a city skyscraper.


(text copyright 2009 Debbi Chocolate, image copyright Mary Uhles 2009)

All of ya'll kid's book groupies can read the entire conference blog here

A couple of days after the conference the fam headed down to Gulf Shores for some much needed R and R. I'll upload some pictures and sketches in the next couple of days. Next up is the Southern Breeze Conference in Birmingham. I hope to have a finished piece from my dummy done by then.

One of my favorite spreads

I thought I'd post some more of the Saddle Ridge artwork. This is from Jack's Busy Day, a book about the day in the life of a ranch dog and his family. This is my favorite spread. One of the difficult things to keep in mind when designing a spread for a book is where the gutter (the space where the pages are bound) falls. I don't want to put anything important anywhere near it! So even though I may be working on a long horizontal composition, it's actually two vertical images because the action has to take place on the left and right sides of the page. In this spread I decided to put the cow's body in the gutter. I wanted to give a sense of drama, because this would be a really fast paced scene in real life. So I decided to put the viewer down right in the action, in the dust being churned up, to make it seem like the cow is coming right off the page at you. Here's my process:

I did several small thumbnails, just for approval, to show where the major "players" would be in each scene:


Then i did a tighter sketch, to get the expressions right. I wanted the cow to have the most personality in the picture and I wanted her to not look too happy about this turn of events:


The final. This scene takes place in the middle of the day, so no possibility of big dramatic ground shadows. I decided to shadow the cow's body, to let the contrast between her red and white hide and the shadow push her farther into the foreground:


I was quite happy with how this spread came out and will probably use it for promos later in the year.

OK as promised....

.... a month ago I now realize by the date of my last post, I can now reveal the theme of Lifeway's 2010 Vacation Bible School series. It's a dude ranch! Saddle Ridge Ranch will ride into stores sometime next spring. Actually its still being worked on which is why I'm so behind on posting. But I'm taking a break from sketching out kids jumping through various activities to post a couple of covers:

wait for it, waaiiit for it.... the theme for VBS 2010

Every summer for the last ten summers I have had the great fortune of working with some really cool people on the Vacation Bible School curriculum from Lifeway. The themes for each VBS product is a closely guarded secret until it is released with much fanfare mid-summer. This year Lifeway has created a video blog get the hype going. Here's one of the funnier entries:


The theme is being released shortly and I will start posting some illustrations from the books I've worked on. Here's a hint about the theme.... I'm getting paid to draw horses! how cool is that!

stay tuned....

Recently overheard between Babysitter Becky and the Small Fry on a day when a pesky fly had invaded the kitchen:

Becky: "Hey Fry, where is the fly swatter?"

Small Fry: "Miss Becky, we don't give flies water"