I had a week after the school visit to catch up on things, so I used some of the time to keep messing with computer collage, gleefully recalling that this time last year I was stressing out over the annual SCBWI Spring Conference. Retirement is good.

Here’s the latest version of the collage I was working on to show the kids, who got a kick out of the thought of painting and then using the computer for the cutting and gluing:

It’s shaping up, but I need to add more teeth and other details. This collage is for an unpublished project I’m working on about rescuing the Pacific Northwest salmon. I also spent time working on My Dog Counts! a concept book idea that I’ve been futzing with for a couple of years. I don’t think it will ever quite work, but I don’t like to leave doors unopened any more than I like closing them.

But it’s time to switch gears again! My editor just sent back the outline for the next fiction project. Making art for a few days will hopefully help give fresh eyes to the task.

Today was the first school visit I have done in a very long time. I accepted the invitation via a fellow author because it was a writing festival! It’s always great to visit a school that is taking a break from the routine and focusing on our craft. I put a brand new presentation together and two groups of 150 kids each didn’t squirm after 45 minutes of slides and babbling from me, and they had great questions that revealed that they really were paying attention. Nice.

I also had an illustration workshop with a group of about 25 5th-6th graders. While others worked on the tasks I gave them, I let one student at a time try out my drawing tablet that they saw me use during the presentation, if they were interested. All of them gave it a try, but the boys were the only ones I had to kick out to let the next give it a try. Hmmm!

Most of my childhood memories are from the elementary-school years so being around these kids always makes me recall those years. Like how Mrs. Farber could cure the hiccups. Mrs. Farber was our 2nd grade teacher. This is a blurry photo from one of our class photos that is so unrecognizable I hopefully won’t get in trouble for posting it:

Here’s how Mrs. Farber cured hiccups: if you got a case, you want a drink of water, right? The drinking fountain was outside the class, down the hall. You had to ask permission.

“Mrs. Farber, I need a drink of water.”
“Why?”
“Because I have the hiccups.”
“Okay. Let’s hear one.”
Poof! Hiccups gone.

52 years later, I think about Mrs. Farber when I get the hiccups, and they still go away. And yeah, I’m working on a story about that. By the way, we loved Mrs. Farber very much. That’s the other thing I revisited today – the love that kids this age seem to have for their teachers. I remember that feeling. I hope these kids don’t forget it either.

I finally finished putting together a huge presentation for a school writing festival on Friday. I gave the kids a pre-festival assignment and put their art in my presentation as well. The assignment was to design a book cover with certain criteria in mind. Here’s one of my favorites:

I mean, wouldn’t you want to read this book? What’s that thing about to eat the title? The humans look serious, yet the dog is wagging his tail. Or maybe that’s a cat. Who cares? I would read this book. This is from a 4th grader.

But meanwhile, I got a bit nostalgic, going through all the books I’ve contributed to over a 25+ year career. Remember In a Cabin in a Wood? Probably not, but it’s still one of my favorites, because of the friendship that created it and face it, it was a terrific idea! Darcie took an old song and added verses. And, havoc, which has always been my favorite theme:

You can find this book on eBay for about 10 cents, or $700, depending on when you look. It is not available in digital format, hopefully, since we haven’t released it yet.

And here is a little book I totally forgot about and is also out of print. I recalled how I had such a good time because the editor loved how I depicted that poor mama chicken waiting for Something to Happen:

I’m looking forward to the the festival, happy that there are schools in Oregon that still celebrate books and the people who create them. Hopefully at least a few of these kids will be inspired to become book creators, too.

I’m putting together an illustration presentation for elementary school kids. They want to see how I do what I do. The problem is, I do a lot of stuff and they only gave me 45 minutes.

Anyway, here is a quick lesson in creating collage with Adobe Illustrator. I’m messing about with some illustrations for a book about salmon. Note that your version of Illustrator might not look the same as this demo. I’m a poor artist still using CS4.

First I draw “paths” with the pencil tool in Illustrator.

In real life, I paint a bunch of paper and scan the ones I plan to use at 300 dpi. These are placed in Illustrator outside the artboard.

Here I’ve done all the bear’s parts except the back leg. Drag the leg path over the swatch, make sure it’s in front. Then select both it and the swatch.

Under Object, choose Clipping Mask and Make it. Or just hit Command 7.

And here’s your collage leg!

Drag it to its spot and move on. If you need that swatch again, just copy the leg and paste outside the artboard. Then under Object, choose Clipping Mask and Release it. Or just hit Command Alt 7. Or, just place the file again.

I’m messing about with the fish next. I don’t like how it’s going. By the way, you can adjust color settings, etc. of your swatches using Adobe Photoshop or another program. And you can paint more paper!

The painted swatches could be done using the computer. But there is something organic about pulling out the paints and making art on paper. I’ve always thought of the computer as a handy tool and a time-saver, but not a replacement for the real thing. Here’s the most recent version of this piece. I’ll be working on it for a while before I like it!

So, that’s how I stumble along with computer collage!

Here is the cover for my first Boxcar book, The Mystery of the Fallen Treasure.
It was extra fun to receive this today because I happened to be working on the next one at that very moment and was totally in the Boxcar Mode.

So anyway, as you can figure out from the author’s credit, the original author is not the one writing these anymore. There is a team of writers who do their best to write fresh new stories while honoring the original premise and characters. I especially loved writing this book because these kids get to do pretty much anything they want! Would that not be cool or what? In this story, they don’t even check in with Grandfather before they pile into a small plane and fly around over Sunriver, Oregon. He’s off fishing somewhere anyway. But I did make sure they wore their seat belts.

This is actually a seed from the first children’s book I ever attempted to write, which I don’t think I ever submitted. It was really, really bad. I should have just stuck with illustration back then. But, the theme of the story was dog search and rescue which my friends were involved with. I never gave up on the idea of highlighting the amazing work dogs do for us as part of a story someday. So here it is.

I am currently circulating a nonfiction book about how animals help us and you bet SAR is in there too. But this fictional story for young middle grade readers also honors our canine heros. I put the amazing Watch, the Boxcar children’s adopted dog, in SAR training and got the chance to talk about what it’s all about. And of course, Watch is an instant master at it and as you can see, uncovers a fallen treasure.

So a little idea makes it into a book at last. I heard a writer recently mention that she will save a sentence she loves from a tossed out manuscript and eventually put it in a book. Ayup. That’s how it goes sometimes.

In the continuing quest to organize and box up 36+ years worth of stuff for the big move (across the road, but it’s still a big move!) I’ve had fun going through hundreds of photos. This one was a slide that took the photo place (they still exist!) about three weeks to process into a print. It was worth the wait!

This is my BFF and I sprawling across the top of our Ride, which was my 1966 SAAB that I traded a guitar and $300 for in 1971. That car was very fun. It required that the gas and oil be combined in the gas tank, which made for interesting arguments at the gas station. I remember telling one smart-guy that he needed to jump up and down on the back bumper to make sure everything mixed properly.

We named the car Kimo-Saabi and a bunch of us had some wild rides on the beaches in Virginia and Maryland. We wore out the brakes to the point that we needed to take a different route home from school that didn’t involve going down a hill. Kimo also lost 1st gear somehow so we renamed her Gypsy Rose Lee because she … wait, what? Take the car to a mechanic? I could barely afford the 30 cents a gallon for gas and the additional quarter for the quart of oil every time we filled up!

Anyway, they were great times, and I remember most of them pretty well. I would prefer forgetting a few of those memories while many others are great story seeds. But I can’t remember what was so freeking funny that day!

But hey, my friend and I laughed so much over pretty much nothing for so many years, I guess it doesn’t matter what it was about that particular moment. It’s just a thing that friends do. Makes me laugh again just looking at it.

Marvin and I both forgot that April 1 marked 36 years together, so happy anniversary to two April fools! I can’t remember what possessed us to have one of these western-style photos made, but I do remember dragging along our cat, Underfoot, to the shoot along with my banjo.

If you look closely, you’ll see that Underfoot has two heads. The camera was authentic, which meant one had to be very still for I think about 5 seconds. Tell that to a cat. Note the banjo behaved itself. This was taken in 1977.

A couple of years ago, I submitted a picture book to a little contest hosted by Smories: original stories for kids, read by kids.

While it didn’t win, my story was shortlisted and included on the Smories site. Here is the adorable child reading What If a Pig Could Dance a Jig? and stumbling over the word “grubs.” I love her pronunciation of boogie! Click here for the video.

It doesn’t appear that the site is very active anymore, but it was great to be included in a new and fun way to share our stories with the children of the world. You can download smories to your iPhone or iPad and keep a little one entertained for hours.

I’m slowly cleaning out the house in preparation for our move to the Funny Farm (seriously), and am having fun uncovering stuff I’ve forgotten! Much of my early illustration work was created for School Zone Publishing. I really miss the greatest art director ever, as he was the perfect guide for a naive artist who needed serious direction.

For about 10 years we had great fun producing a lot of flash cards and activity books. I was also the illustrator for their first ever interactive software program Alphabet Express. It won some awards and is still available today!

What I dug up today were press proofs from a set of mix-and-match flash cards that we created in 1991 or thereabouts. The cards were cut into head, body, and legs so that kids could have a blast mixing and matching, or maybe not matching – which was the idea behind the fun! The fronts were color and the backs were black and white due to budget constraints. We incorporated surprises on the backsides for the kids who thought to turn them over! Here are a few of my favorites:

I was sorry not to find Mix and Match on the Zone’s website, but feel free to print these out and cut them apart. I won’t tell! But to note, they are copyright by School Zone Publishing (and me).

I was rooting around on Ye Olde RMK Website this morning, looking for links to send to a potential client, when I discovered a page I had forgotten about! You can make your own pop-up from Up All Night Counting!

Just click on Pop-up Activity and you’ll have access to images to cut out and easy-to-follow-I-hope directions.

Fun for the whole family on a dreary day!