Blast me for a marlin spike—tomorrow is Talk Like A Pirate Day! I’ll be yarning away the afternoon watch with the young scholards at Colfax Elementary School. Never fear, you can talk like a pirate, too. Just click over here for a glossary of pirate words. You’ll also find some coloring sheets and the lyrics […]
Too much rain today! Maybe we can try again next year.
Come join me this Saturday in Frick Park (in Pittsburgh, Pa) at the big blue slide! I’ll be the one in the bunny ears, reading Henry and the Buccaneer Bunnies and painting pictures.
I will be appearing at Franklin Public Library tomorrow at 7:00 pm. I’ll read Let’s Have A Tree Party and paint a picture. See you there!
Sorry about the lack of posting recently—I’ve had some family business to attend to. Here’s some news: if you are handy to Oil City, Pa this August/September, I am offering a six-week children’s illustration workshop. It’s Thursday evenings 6:00 – 9:00 starting August 2nd at the National Transit Building, 206 Seneca Street, Oil City, Pa […]
Brandon writes: Hey John, I noticed back in 2010, you said that you paint all your backgrounds first and then your characters to get a consistent look. Does that mean you have 16 masonite boards with paper taped to them throughout your studio? Or are you reusing masonite or doing something completely different? Thanks. Your […]
I saw Brave on Friday. As usual with Pixar, the animation was fantastic. I had a problem with the story. Here’s the big rule of storytelling: your audience must care about the characters. I didn’t have any particular reason to like Merida. She’s pretty but self-involved. The story has a subtext of ‘girl-power’: Merida is a […]
The new edition of PSInside just hit the newsstands!
Here are close-up scans of the color studies I created for Jack and the Giant Barbecue. They’re shown here individually, but they were created together on one big piece of watercolor paper as a color script. Each study is roughly 6″ x 4″. These studies will be framed and for sale at the Giant Barbecue […]
Today’s Barbecue Fun Fact from About.com— When the first Spanish explorers arrived in the new world they found the indigenous people of the Caribbean preserving meats in the sun. This is an age old and almost completely universal method. The chief problem with doing this is that the meats spoil and become infested with bugs. […]
