Dusting off the ol' Blog

I feel like I'm in confession.....I'm sorry, it's been months since my last post! I've been working very hard on several books and have also been posting on the PBJ blog every Friday, so unfortunately my own blog has taken a back seat. Hope to get up and running again soon on a regular basis.

By the way, the Picture Book Junkies are celebrating all this week with the release of Alicia Padron's latest board book "ABC Baby Me." Be sure to check it out. Leave a comment on the PBJ blog and you will be included in the book giveaway!

What's on My Desk

©2010 Deborah Melmon

Boy, it's been a long time since my last post! I've been very busy illustrating a couple of books. In in the midst of all that I lost my beautiful Airedale, Gracie, to old age and kidney disease. It has been a tough couple of months, but I'm happy to say that I've adopted another dog! You can check him out on my Friday post at PBJunkies along with a preview of what I'm currently working on.

Friday Already??

©2010 Deborah Melmon

Sorry I've been missing in action with my blogging. Working on several different projects right now which are keeping me pretty busy. Can't wait to share them with you!

You can check out my latest post at Picture Book Junkies on a beautiful book that has just come out called "The Quiet Book" illustrated by Renata Liwska.

Illustration Friday: Dip

Oscar just loved to dip his little bunny nose into beautiful flowers....Happy Easter!

We've Got Winners!!

Thanks to everyone who entered my Birthday Giveaway!

The two lucky winners are Linda Jenks and Kathy Weller!!!

Your books will be in the mail soon and delivered to you in time for Easter!

Linda is a good friend of mine and Kathy is a member of the Picturebook Junkies!

You can see Kathy's fabulous artwork here.

Illustration Friday: Expired

©2010 Deborah Melmon

Whenever Henrietta sings in the hen house,

you know time with the karaoke machine has expired...

Goodnight everyone!

Birthday Giveaway!

Well, today is my birthday. I've decided to start lying about my age. It's just a number right? Why can't I just make up the number I want? Besides, when my mother called to wish me a Happy Birthday and I reminded her how old I was, her response was one of disbelief...she had to calculate it in her head to make sure I was telling the truth!! So if my mom can't remember and she gave birth to me, then why not just be the age I want to be? So, Happy Birthday to me as I'm feeling pretty darn young today!

And because I'm feeling so good, I thought I would give away of two of my "It's Easter" board books that came out last Spring. Each book comes with dye-cut eggs and the book is attached to a felt bag to hold the eggs. Definitely a book for a young audience....like me :o)

Leave me a comment, no later than Monday, April 22 and I will enter you in the drawing. I will post the winners here on Tuesday and will mail out the books in time for Easter. Each book comes with a personalized card and autograph by the illustrator, me!

You can also check out my post on PBJunkies today, all about dogs. Happy weekend!

Lucky

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! I do have a wee bit of Irish blood in me...just enough to make me thick-headed my golf instructor says....:o) I've been working away on a couple of books, one of which is about a dog. This is a revised version (names have been changed!) of a reject sketch.

I'll be posting more reject sketches and talking about the process of character development for this book on Friday's blog at PBJunkies. Now go drink some green beer!

Illustration Friday: Brave

©Deborah Melmon

It was unclear who was more brave....the elephant who decided to take his first high dive into the pool, or the innocent bystanders who would to have to deal with the aftermath of an elephant possibly doing a belly flop on a cold, foggy morning.

Illustration Friday: Perspective

Dogs are obsessed with being happy.....a good perspective to have!

More PBJ's

Here's my post at the Picture Book Junkies for today.

I will be posting there every Friday.

Stop by and say hello!

Picture Book Junkies

I'm so excited to announce that the Picture Book Junkies are back in business! Alicia Padron, Roz Fulcher, Gina Perry and Kathy Weller are fabulous children's artists dedicated to everything picture book. After a well needed hiatus, they have decided to start up their blog again. And the best news is that I've been invited to join this creative group. I will be blogging on the site every Friday. Check us out!

Happy Birthday!

Can't believe it's been two years of blogging. It's sure been fun making so many new friends!

Something Fun!

Today I attended the Golden Gate Kennel Club Dog Show at the Cow Palace, just south of San Francisco. It's a benched show which means the dogs are on display with their breeders and available for hugs and photo ops. Here are a few photos that were somewhat in focus. A little tough taking clear shots with all the excitement.This little guy is a wire-haired dachshund. Oh so cute! Something to think about for the future, although I'd never breathe a word of it around here with my little old lady Gracie getting on in years.

This Standard Poodle was looking pretty confident that he had the win in the bag.

The Irish Wolfhounds were done and done.

How handsome is this Great Dane and what expressive ears!

And of course I couldn't help posting a picture of my own Best in Show, with her own set of extremely expressive ears, my little baby Gracie. She's a real stinker when I point a

camera at her. She just won't crack a smile!

Illustration Friday: Focused

As part of his New Year's resolution to reduce stress, Arty spent considerable time each day focused on his breathing which helped him experience a sense of inner peace and relaxation.

Illustration Friday: Pioneer

When it came to trailblazing, Marcy's dogs were the best.

Happy New Year everyone!

More Fun at Lowes

If you've been following my blog, you might remember these guys from last Christmas. Well, they got licensed to Lowes for the 2009 holiday season as art flags. I've had so much fun finding them at my local stores. And I just got back yesterday from a trip to Maui to get a little R&R and guess what....they have Lowes in Hawaii! And, of course, I had to go in a check it out. Sure enough, there were a couple of flags left. :o)

Owl Fabric Preview!

My pesky little owls have found their way onto fabric! Robert Kaufman will be producing this collection of owls and coordinating fabrics which will be sold through Hancock Fabrics sometime next year. Hooty Hoot!

Illustration Friday: Music

Bobby was one cool dog....and the bongos were music to his ears.

Look what I found at Lowe's....

Here's something fun I worked on over a year ago for a company called Southern Patio. They saw my designs at Surtex and asked me to draw front, side and back views of specific designs that they liked. Prototypes were made in China and this polar bear is currently selling at Lowe's for the holidays. Very light weight and made out of resin. I had so much fun buying one for myself and trying to explain at the checkout counter that I had designed this bear.

I have four more sculptures that will be in Lowe's after the Christmas rush. Here is the prototype for Snail Stackers and the drawings that I did of the different views.

Order My Products Online!

Thought I'd share with you a link where you can purchase my whimsical owls directly from Gallery 19 which is the online store for Design Design and M. Middleton, who license my artwork. A versatile design...can be used all year round.

This birthday card has turned out to be really popular! Design Design always does such a nice job with their cards. Artwork on the inside too. Click here to order.

Click here for the "It's a Hoot!" Medium tote with a die-cut handle...super cute!

Click here for the "It's a Hoot!" continuous roll wrap.

There is also tissue paper to match which can be used inside the tote bags.

Illustration Friday - Fast

Lucy knew that Jack was trying to pull a fast one....offering her a dog biscuit when she knew darn well there were sugar-coated treats in that box!

Illustration Friday: Flying

The little mouse couldn't help herself. Once she strapped on her tiny little skis, she just went flying down the slopes.

Watercolor Class

Have been super busy these last couple of months with the development of new marketing materials and the redesigning of my website (finally!) It's been so fun, but very labor intensive. My new website will be up towards the end of this month. Through it all, I've continued with my watercolor classes with Guy Magallanes. This rose was painted from a photograph I took in my garden. The actual painting is quite large (18" wide). I had a great time painting big and learned so much about washes. Thank you Guy!

Illustration Friday: Pattern

Haven't posted for ages, but this topic reminded me that I have tons of patterns in my collections that I use for licensing. This one was created in photoshop. I love using the chalk tool to give it a "stamped" look.

Illustration Friday: Idle

"There they are again.....those blasted, four-legged varmints and their idle ways...." cursed the little hen.

There's a Dog in my Gym Class...!

More experiments with technique...a digital sketch and color comp and a traditional painting with watercolor and acrylic. I only painted the characters and scanned them into my computer and added the shadows and background in Photoshop. Tight, but clean. And since everything is painted separately, I can use the characters for other fun stuff!

Wacky Days of Summer

Spent part of the day working on different techniques for my portfolio. I did this sketch in Photoshop using my Wacom Tablet. I printed out the sketch and using my light table, I inked it onto Arches 140 lb. hot-press watercolor paper with black india ink and a crow-quill pen. I then painted the characters, cast shadows and grass with watercolor and a little colored pencil for texture. I scanned the illustration back into Photoshop and knocked out the white background. Working in layers, I added flowers which is a pattern I pulled from one of my digital surface designs. Behind that I added a digital blue background and added the clouds.

I like being able to combine traditional illustration with digital. Saves time, for sure, but also gives you freedom to really play around without destroying any original artwork. I just noticed how many dogs I've posted on my blog lately. Can't help it....one of my favorite animals to draw!!

Illustration Friday: Hollow

Illustration Friday: Worn

Kayla was over the top with happiness that her auntie's big 'ol red dog "Misty" was going to spend two weeks with her and her family while she went on vacation. However, Kayla's dog, Jax, was not so thrilled and decided that Misty had worn out her welcome fairly early on in week one......

Bluebird of Happiness

                                             ©Deborah Melmon

With all the work getting ready for Surtex, I missed 6 weeks of my watercolor class that I take on Tuesday nights. I'm finally back at it and here is my latest attempt that I finally finished last night. Initially it was just going to be a study as I wasn't painting on high-quality paper. But as I kept working it, it started to take shape and it seemed like a waste to repaint it. So I finally finished it! I like painting birds. May have to do another one. :o)

Illustration Friday: Craving

Buster knew he was not supposed to be anywhere near the cake, but he just couldn't help himself.....his craving for those little pink buttercream frosting rosettes was going to get him into heaps of trouble. 

Back from Surtex

It's been a long time since my last post, but I'm back from the Surtex show in NYC. Whew! What a trip. So much energy involved getting ready for it. We had a very successful show. Got to meet the clients I have been working with all year and lots of fabulous artists. So fun to see Jannie Ho who was just a couple of booths down from us. 

We had four artist in our booth this year. My banners are on the far right and far left of the photo. We had all the artwork pre-printed this year and it sure did make the set up easy. 

The National Stationery Show runs simultaneously with Surtex, so I got to see my artwork on actual products. Speaking of which, if you look closely in the bottom left hand corner of the photo, you'll see the ice-skating dog and kitty I painted last year. I'm so excited to announce that both images have been licensed as garden flags for Lowe's and will be coming out this winter!

So now back to following up on all the contacts I made and sending out samples of work that various companies requested. Almost as much work as getting ready for the show!

More Surtex

This is our third year at Surtex, and each year we have made buttons on Cafe Press and used them as promotional give-aways in our booth. Here are my buttons this year....well actually they are refrigerator magnets. Thought the magnets would be a little more user friendly. :o)

Oh, and my very creative sister is coming to town for the next few days to help me get ready. Woo hoo! Can really use the extra set of hands and some fresh eyes to look at everything. 

Surtex

Since Surtex is rapidly approaching (May 17th in NYC), I thought I'd post one of my banners that is going to be hung in the booth. I'm sharing our booth with three other talented artists, and we each get two panels to show our art. Can't tell you how complex it is to design your own panel and then also have it work with all the other panels in the booth. Each artist was allowed an "everyday" themed panel and a "winter holiday" panel. The panels are 38" wide and 85" tall. Always fun to see your artwork blown up really large! If you look closely at my panel you will see characters that I've posted in earlier blogs during their various stages of development. The panels are being printed and will be rolled up and shipped to New York, making our step up fairly easy. The panels are merely attention grabbers for the buyers to stop and look at our books full of designs available for licensing.....which is what I'm madly working on now!