What’s Up In My Studio

Inside My Studio

This is what my creative work week looks like at a glance:

A lot of behind the scenes work is going on at the moment. As many of you are aware, my first YA novel Queen of the Godforsaken will be published this fall 2015 by Thistledown Press. I’m giving my five cents on the cover design options. As an artist, I am grateful for any input on the cover design. Any time visual aesthetics are involved, I am passionate and committed to achieving the best image possible. I am excited to see what the final result of cover design will be!

I am also working on a few other projects (slowing making their way through the creative system). In the mornings I continue to paint the illustrations for my first picture book: A Pug Named Pru. This is slow going as I am painting little by little early in the day and then I write in the afternoons—editing another novel.

I hope things speed up on the painting front—I admit, sometimes digital painting slows the creative process down to a crawl. On occasion, technology glitches take me hours to solve. I get frustrated and think, if this were paint and a brush on canvas, I’d have wrapped this up yesterday! However, I soldier on, believing that in the end, somehow, digital painting will prove to be faster than traditional painting (that and I cannot bare to subject myself to all the toxic oil painting chemicals ever again).

* The illustration is of the protagonist (and pug) Pru, attempting to be fierce. It is unfinished. The book is set in the 1970s. I am having fun researching all the groovy textiles from the seventies era.