A quiet snowy Christmas

Normally I spend Christmas on my own, finding it easier to deal with the blues that way.  I like listening to the radio, reading, eating a few treats. This year I did a lot of shovelling.  Here is a little sketch I did after shovelling for the 3rd time on Christmas Eve day.  I enjoyed learning a new song to play at the uke circle called Christmas for Cowboys and sang along with Wylie Gustaphson on youtube.  He even has a great short video on youtube on how to yodel.  Everyone at the uke circle liked the song when I performed it at our Christmas party accompanying myself on my baritone ukulele.

Fred and Pete due out Fall 2009

Orca will be publishing Fred and Pete. After eight rounds with the editor the manuscript is now finished.  Next I completed the roughs and sent them off to the art director.  The next step is to gather all the photos for the approved spreads and start tinkering with them in photoshop. This is quite the job and includes photos I shot in film then had converted to digital files, and photos by Ron, the owner, as was, of Fred and Pete from his bewildering archives.  Finding negatives requires that he tear his house apart with no certainty that they'll ever be found.  I'm pretty sure though that we have all the negs and digital files for the story. Here is the rough for the first page.  The final art will be photo/acrylic collage.  I'm really enjoying the process of doing the first picture book that I will have both written and illustrated.