pale male

a spread from the children's book Pale Male

Yesterday just before I left for my (little seafood diner place a short drive up the coast) lunch out with my friend Helen Customer Uno called. She frequently calls on Fridays and often late in the day on Friday - with another (potentially even two) new children's themed photo frame project(s). Yeah !! Stop working on your tech/production drawings please and switch to new sweet and cuter than ever new thumbnail sketches. OK Boss Lady I say with pleasure.

For inspiration I am constantly cruising the amazing (couldn't do this job without it) world wide web and Google is one of my best friends. I plunked children's book illustrators - into the blank search bar, hoping to find inspiration- new illustration styles and/or to possibly discover new themes or subject matter and I came upon this link to the New York Times 2008 10 best illustrated children's books. And amongst those 10 best - this book Pale Male the story and romance(s) of an urban NYC red tailed hawk who caused quite a kerfuffle by building his big beautiful nest high atop one very expensive 5th Avenue apartment building. He eventually won the hearts of the city and has become a much loved avian celebrity. His story is one that I was familiar with as I watched an amazing documentary on the PBS series Nature about this dashingly handsome hawk a few years back. He now has his own web site here.

A perfect lunch out and for those enquiring minds I had a fish burger (a battered piece of haddock on a squishy toasted white bun with lettuce and a tomato slice, a thick smear of mayo and a side of spicy fries). Wink. Helen gave me an early Christmas gift of homemade preserves (the best kind of gift) spiced crab apples and a jar of both black currant jam & jelly (my favourite) made from currants from her own garden. Back to the teak topped desk, where yet again inspiration mysteriously and magically bonked me on the head like a 2 by 4. I quickly put fav red mechanical pencil to tracing paper, sent 4 little thumbnails out into the ether and received the call back early in the evening. 3 new groups of frames each group consisting of 5 or 6 new frames. So potentially 15-18 new frames. Uh huh ! Uh Huh !

Oh darn ... that big day of housecleaning I had planned is gonna have to be postponed once again. Where is that team of invisible, mute valets when you need them. Wink.

other noteables
- I won a 50.00 gift certificate from our grocery store earlier this week. Every time you use cloth bags you get to fill out a ballot and I always use cloth bags ... so I fill out a lot of ballots -this is actually my second win).
- the yellow throated warbler boy is still hangin' around the Black St. Bird Buffet
- Miss D wants you to know that (yeah !) it's a golf course day.
- while rooting around yesterday in the infamous crawlspace trying to find the ever elusive twinkling, sparkling string of Christmas tree lights I happened upon a previously stowed (and long forgotten) bag filled with fleece What-Not-to-Wear attire all purchased at my favourite clothing haunt - Francoise. Bonus !
- and here's a little video that best girlfriend and designer gal MLou sent to me earlier in the week that so perfectly illustrates our (she's afflicted as well) penchant for planning rather than actually doing. Happy Saturday y'all!



* had some technical difficulties avec blogger early this morning so my apologies to any of you who may have stopped by early and had to read accidently posted very rough and full of typos first draught. Oops. Hate that.