Being a for-hire artist means that you work when you get work. Weekends and holidays are not always time off. You may take your Sunday break on a Tuesday and you may celebrate Christmas sometime in February. It’s part of the life.

I’m not complaining! Recently a query landed a fun job with an educational publisher that publishes early readers. My contract doesn’t allow me to divulge much about it, but I am permitted to show the illustrations. I had to write eight stories and produce eight final cover illustrations in about a month. The rest of the illustrations, 80 double-page spreads, are due in early April. I’m still not complaining!

Here is one of the covers. I decided to use the style I used for my pop-up books – which is line-art that I scan and color/texture using Illustrator. This method is easy to make color decisions and changes and much faster than brush-to-paper or collage. I would love to have tried collage for these books, but there simply isn’t enough time.

Thanks for looking and happy holidays! I AM going to take a break on Friday to celebrate with friends. Saturday I’ll be back to work.

But I’m not complaining.