Break out the Band!

I recently had the opportunity to work with the awesome Todd Cooper at the Eugene Weekly. I created the cover and 4 spot illustrations for the magazine's education issue. You can find the articles here.

The American Honeybee

"Nearly one out of four American honeybee colonies died this winter..." and "Honeybees pollinate more than 90 of the world's flowering crops, including apples, nuts, broccoli, squash, citrus fruit, berries and melons." (Seth Borenstein, Huffington Post)

I've read the articles in the news over the past few years about the strange and sudden decline of the honeybee population, and have wanted to create an illustration about this alarming problem for a while, but could never decide on a way to approach the subject. Over the past week I finally found my visual and this is the result.

Seems that we need to do something more than talk about this issue and do it now before it's too late.

Picture Book Blog Tour

The lovely Violet Lemay an illustrator, art director, and one of my former professors at SCAD recently asked me to join an illustrators blog tour. This is a way of sharing my process and work as a children's book illustrator and then introducing you to another illustrator. So, without further ado…

WHAT AM I CURRENTLY WORKING ON?

At the moment I'm starting a new project for National Geographic Kids magazine.  I got my first gig with them through a postcard promo and working with them has been an awesome experience.  I've also just wrapped up a new picture book project with Kids Can Press that will be out in the Spring of 2015 so I can't share it quite yet, but check back then to see all of that new artwork!

My first project for National Geographic Kids Magazine, June/July 2014

HOW IS MY WORK DIFFERENT FROM OTHERS IN MY GENRE?
I used to create all of my collage work by hand and then scan in my finals, but as more and more jobs arrived in my inbox I realized I needed to speed up my process. To do that I transferred my traditional illustration style into Photoshop.  It has the same look and feel as my handmade work and my process is basically the same I just do all of my cutting and pasting on the computer now. With this transition I tried to stick to my own style rather than copy any other digital collage illustrators style and I think that has allowed my work to remain distinct.

digital

traditional

WHY DO I ILLUSTRATE WHAT I DO?

I illustrate what I love and things that interest me because I feel that makes for the best work.  I love illustrating animals, food, maps, and my work leans more towards the narrative than the conceptual so that along with my style works well for picture books.  In addition, I like getting projects that challenge me to illustrate something I've never even thought about drawing before. The challenges help me grow as an artist.

HOW DOES MY ILLUSTRATION/WRITING PROCESS WORK?

I do not write my own books…yet. Currently all of the books I have illustrated were written by authors and passed along to me by publishers; however, I'm in the process of working on a new dummy book for a story I'm writing and illustrating now.  

As far as my illustration process goes though I usually like to take the manuscript and read it over, and over, and over. And then I take some time to think about the characters and story before I even begin sketching.  I move from there to a few rounds of thumbnail sketches and then clean those up before I send anything back to the publisher for the first review.  There are always edits and a second round of sketches to resolve issues with composition or content. And then I take those final drawings into Photoshop to begin the color finals.  

Initial sketch afte thumbnails, Sassy & Troll, 2013

And that's a wrap. Many thank to Violet for asking me to participate and to all of you visitors. To keep the tour going visit the blog of…

BRIANNE FARLEY

Brianne is an incredibly talented illustrator who also attended the SCAD MFA Illustration program.  She published her first book, Ike's Incredible Ink with Candlewick Press in 2013.  To check out her blog visit: http://briannefarley.tumblr.com

NEW WORK FOR NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC KIDS MAGAZINE

Hello everyone! I know it's been quiet here on the blog, but that not to say I haven't been busy. This new piece for Nat Geo Kids was just released in their June/July issue.  The prompt was to create a maze a tourist has to find his way through from one side of the Colosseum to his tourist group on the other.  All of the details were challenging to say the least, but it was such a fun project!

sketch

final art (created in Photoshop)

final art in print

A Visit to SCAD

A few months ago I was pleasantly surprised and honored to be invited back to Savannah, GA to speak at an alumni event hosted by the illustration department at Savannah College of Art and Design. So after 5 years away I went back to Savannah last week and had a fun and inspiring few days speaking to students and participating in critiques and portfolio reviews. The level of talent and professionalism I saw in the students and their work was impressive! Thank you to Julie Lieberman and the whole illustration department for making the event a success.

And the Winner is....

Thanks to everyone who entered my second annual giveaway and congratulations to Kelly Stillwell, this year's winner! Check back often as I hope to host more and more of these giveaways as my kid's wall art collection grows.  

...In the meantime if you have ideas for themes/subject matter you or your kids would like to see on wall art, placemats, growth charts, or night lights I would love to get feedback in the comment section below. 

And if you didn't win but are still interested in this piece or others you can find them (on sale right now) at Oopsy Daisy ...it is available in prints starting at $29 and placemats along with the stretched canvas. 

Kelly, please shoot me an email - acfeagan@gmail.com with your mailing address and contact info.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Second Annual Fall Giveaway at AFI!!!

It's that time of year again, I'm hosting my second annual Fall giveaway for a new piece of kid's wall art, On the Farm! The wonderful people at Oopsy Daisy produced this as a 24"x18" stretched canvas wall art and I'll be giving it away to one winner in early December. This piece is also available as prints and placemats, so visit Oopsy Daisy to find this as well as many more of my wall art illustrations.

Entering is simple! All you have to do is post a comment on this blog post and you will be automatically entered to win.  Comments can be posted until December 1, 2013 at which time a winner will be drawn at random.  Please included your full name in the post and check back after the 3rd, I will announce the winner on the blog. 

Best of luck!

New Stretch Canvas Wall Art available at OopsyDaisy

Just a little plug for my new piece 'On the Farm' available for purchase as stretched canvas wall art, prints, and placemats at OopsyDaisy. There are also many other pieces available as stretch canvas wall art here.

The best thing about being an Illustrator

Sometimes it's hard to believe that I am lucky enough to get to spend my days drawing for a living, and waking up to an image like this in my inbox is just icing on the cake! 

The Summer of the Rabbits is the first book I illustrated which was released in March of 2012.

Lilla Rogers Global Talent Search - Competition Entry

Recently the wonderful agent Lilla Rogers announced a global talent search for the next illustrator to add to her brood of amazingly talented illustrators. Along with the fact that I love entering competitions, the chance to get my work in front of Lilla and the impressive list of judges sounded like an amazing opportunity. So I entered, was sent a brief for the first round, and immediately realized this project could be great way to push myself to take a few steps outside of my comfort zone.  

The job was to create a journal cover based on the theme 'old fashioned playground items'. The challenge I gave myself was to move away from the narrative children's book illustration I do a lot of and think about creating a flat graphic design that had some pattern and lots of contrast.  I really enjoyed the entire process and thought I would share the steps I took to create the journal cover below. 

1) After reading the brief I collected a lot of reference...I kept coming back to the comic Family Circus not because it really has anything to do with vintage playground equipment but because it epitomizes playfulness and fun. 

2) I then filled a few pages of my sketchbook with scribbles that eventually turned into this sketch which I scanned in, cleaned up, and formatted for the appropriate size.

3) I usually do not set too many rules about my color palette because I like to keep myself open to changes if something is not working, but for this project I knew I wanted to have a limited color palette that I stuck to so this is what I came up with:

4) My process is fairly simple. I build my illustrations in layers in Photoshop and then apply textures with clipping masks, so this is the stage where I'm building all of my shapes:

5) Adding textures and making slight color adjustments to colors:

6) Last steps were to add a few shadows and layout the final illustration in the required format:

Promos, Promos, Promos!

It's that time of the year again...promo time! It's a time consuming process but I actually love illustrating, designing and addressing new promos.  It makes me feel a little bit closer to all those AD's, designers and Creative Directors that can seems so far away while work remotely.  I usually try to send out a new promo 3 or 4 times each year and this round I'm trying something new.  

It's easy to do a mass mailing and hit 500+ contacts with one illustration but when you are sending to AD's in multiple markets usually only half...or less than half are actually going to be interested in the subject matter. So, for this round of promos I'm targeting 3 different markets and hopefully relating directly to each of my target audiences....guess we'll find out! 

Sassy & Troll

Just a little sneak peak at a new personal project I've been working on and playing around with some hand lettering.  More to come...

Sandwich to Sundae: Uncommon Stories Behind Common Words - World Book Encyclopedia

Last year I illustrated a Child Craft Annual for World Book Encyclopedia about the formation of the English language. Soon after the publication of that book, they approached me again about creating some illustrations for a follow up book that focused on the stories behind some common words. I jumped on the opportunity since WB was so great to work with, and this series of simple illos. turned out to be a great project as well. I've included a couple of samples below to give you a feel for the book.

New Work from AFI

Here's a hodgepodge of new pieces I've been working on lately for clients, commissioned projects, and licensing...

Tryon Elementary School Visit - Uncovering Earth's Secrets

One of my favorite parts of illustrating for children is the opportunity to go into classrooms and speak with the kids.  It's funny, every time I do it I learn something new from them and it's such a refreshing and inspiring break from the many, many...many hours I spend in the studio.  So, I was of course very excited to visit Tryon Elementary School in Tryon, North Carolina last week to talk to the 4th and 5th grade classes about the most recent book I've illustrated Uncovering Earth's Secrets: Science and Adventure on the JOIDES Resolution (which is available as a free download on the iPad here).  

Some of the kids read the book before I visited...check out their awesome drawings! 

Thank you to TES fro the opportunity and a great day! And thank you Deep Earth Academy for the posters, pencils, & tattoos fro the kids!

SCBWI Fall 2013 Conference Masthead Illustration

SCBWI Nor Cal recently hosted a contest to illustrate the masthead for their Fall 2013 conference, and I'm excited and honored to share that my illustration won! Along with free admission to the conference, my illustration will be used in all promotional material for the conference. All you local SCBWI members...I hope to see you there!!! To sign up visit: http://www.norcaconference.info  Here's my masthead illustration and some pullouts from it:

Daily Bride - New Vector Collage Illos.

I'm working on a new job for a UK based bridal website and going all vector for the first time with these spots. Here's a little sneak peek...

Uncovering Earth's Secrets eBook Now Available for free download!

I'm so excited to announce that the eBook I have been illustrating over the past six months, Uncovering Earth's Secrets, is now available for free download in the iTunes bookstore! 

Uncovering Earth’s Secrets is a children’s picture eBook about the JOIDES Resolution. Kids explore how drilling the ocean floor from this ship has allowed scientists to learn a great deal about volcanoes, earthquakes, extinction of the dinosaurs, and much more about our amazing Earth.

I would like to send a huge thank you to the National Science Foundation and Deep Earth Academy for making this project possible!