Pillow Billy Reaches End Of The Line (And Start Of The Hue!)

As of this very moment (this very moment being Sunday, 7:40 AM, approximately sixteen hours after the ACTUAL MOMENT), I'm one page away from being through with the illustrations for Pillow Billy. That's when I get to take on the task of coloring the pages, which I'm really excited about. As I've mentioned before, I'm going for a very childlike, somewhat messy look in the illustrations, which in terms of color means very bright hues, lots of scribbly marks and going outside the lines aplenty. There's an art to intentional messiness, and I hope I've got it mastered. This isn't like coloring in Photoshop, where you can go to your history and erase any mistakes you may have made. In the realm of color pencil, the mark is a permanent thing that commands respect. So let's see if I still have what it takes to tame the savage beast of the Prisma colored pencil!

In other news, I recently got contacted by Interlude Magazine (a Bay City-established periodical focusing on the tri-cities of mid-Michigan) to illustrate an upcoming article. I had approached them way back in December of '05 about doing work. They seemed interested in my stuff at the time, but given the lack of communication in the ensuing months, I figured it just wasn't gonna happen. But I got a call from the editor yesterday (ironically, I had a cold and sounded lousy) and she set up a meeting for us on Tuesday of next week to discuss the assignment. The funny part to me was when she said, "But just so you know, we don't have much time. Only two weeks...", and I'm thinking, "I've whipped out double page spreads in two hours. Two weeks is practically a vacation!" In other words, I'm fast. And good. Hopefully this assignment will lead to more work with them.

And speaking of more work, here's another reminder that Yenny #4 hits stores this Wednesday. Check my last blog post for info on known places that will carry the book. I'm uber-excited to see the published work, and as always, I encourage you guys to get your hands on it if you can.

And lastly, I've been trying to work with my webmaster, Jeremy "Foco Ono" Foco, to revamp my blog so as to allow me to post artwork, photos and such. He claims that he's well underway to making it happen, and I'm inclined to believe him. I guess the best evidence of his completion will be when you next visit this blog and see artwork and photos. So keep popping back to see what happens!