New Book and Lessons Learned

 I recently had the wonderful opportunity to Illustrate and design "A Girl Named Gitta,” a series of stories about the childhood of Brigitta Straumer Clyde.

I will be writing more about how I got the job, and why I chose to illustrate a self-published book in a future post. Here I want to share something I learned about the process of illustrating a book and meeting deadlines.

Yesterday, while discussing procrastination and burnout in one of my classes, a student of mine shared the idea that we should do the vanilla first and then make the banana split. As I thought about this profound statement about getting the basics done and then if you have time, you add the topping, I realized that is how I approached this book. 

In order to meet deadlines at a very busy time of my life, I got out the basics first. For example, in the image below I got the idea out. 

I wasn't happy with it. I knew it could be better, but I had to get something done. At this point I didn't know how to fix it, so I submitted the preliminary black and white image. At this point this was one of my least favorite pages. The authors were happy with it, but I knew it could be better. 

Once I was finished with the line drawing for the whole book, I went in and reworked my least favorite images. This was the result.

I then went on to the next image I was not happy with and found a better solution. I used this process until each page was at a point I could be happy with. 

So, if you are overwhelmed with too much to do, do the basics first. Then if you have time, add the good stuff.

 

Vermont Animation Festival

On March 25 and 26 Northern Vermont University will be hosting the Annual Vermont Animation Festival. You can find out more about the event at vtanimationfestival.org

I also found out that one of my animations was accepted into the festival!

Henry VI posters

I love Shakespeare. For a few years now, I have been reading all his plays with the goal of creating a poster for each. It has been a challenging process. With Henry VI part II I started figuring things out. In act 2 scene 3, after Gloucester is found dead, Suffolk is accused without evidence. The Earl of Warwick gives the following reason:

Who finds the partridge in the puttocks nest

But may imagine how the bird was dead,

although the kite soar with unbloodied beak?

Even so suspicious is this tragedy.

This image of the kite hovering over a nest struck me. It seemed to say so much more than just the murder of Gloucester. I replaced the puttock's nest (a bird of prey like a kite) with the crown to emphasize the idea of the impending coup. I chose the black-winged kite because of the blood red eyes gave the illustration a more menacing foreboding appearance. From there, it started to click as I read more. For consistency among all the History Plays I would keep the crown and the Background the same. Then I would change the things around the crown depict something about the particular play. For Part I the War of the Roses started. For Part II, I referenced a line from Queen Margaret comparing Edward, George and Richard to wolves. In each poster there is also a small amount of red to depict the battle for the crown.

Now that I have a format for the Histories. I have a plan for Richard III and I will need to go back and read the prior plays to determine what to do for them.

This is also part of my current 100 somethings project to create 100 play posters.

 

The Play's the Thing: Gallery Exhibit

On Wednesday, September 15 from 5 to 7 I will be exhibiting my work at the Satellite Gallery in Lyndonville, Vermont. I will be showing over 25 years of theater posters as well as other examples of me playing around.

Here is a description of the show:

My work is all about play, whether it's a poster for an actual play (I love theater), or it is me playing around with my bow tie guys, recording my travels with on-sight sketching, or illustrating children’s books and coloring pages; it is me having fun. It is me trying to bring that sense of joy and fun to others.

Happy Holidays!

 

Happy Holidays from Barclay-Studio!

I realize that this has been a difficult year. One of the things I have been reminded of is the importance of gratitude and how it can help get us through anything. I recognize there are many who have had it much worse than me, but my finding something to be grateful for and sharing it with others daily has helped me get through the possibility of loosing my job and other difficulties at work.

Starting a New 100 Somethings

A few months ago one of my past theater directors reached out to me and other friends and cast members to do a 25th anniversary reading of Charlies Aunt. We did a performance via zoom. It was a joy to work with these people again. Many of us had not worked together in years.A month later we did a reading of Present Laughter by Noel Coward and A week ago I had the pleasure of reading the part of Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey.

I have fallen in love with this play and now have added Elwood as one of my dream roles. Others include King Arthur in Camelot, Charles Condomine in Blythe Spirit, Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors, and The Narrator from Into the Woods.

While Doing these readings, I was inspired for my next 100 Somethings project. I am going to illustrate and design 100 Play posters. I currently have a list of 55 plays and musicals (Including all the Shakespeare plays) that I will work on over the next who knows how long. I am not putting a deadline on this. I am counting the poster for Henry the 6th part 2 as my first.

Harvey, the Pulitzer Prize winning play of 1940 is the 2nd of 100.

Up next is Charlies' Aunt.

If you have any play suggestions, send them my way.

More Coloring Pages fro VPR

Here are two more coloring pages that were illustrated for the VPR's But Why? A Podcast for Curious Children. This is  for the episode “Do Animals Get Married?” 

In addition to listening to the episode, I did further research to find that in addition to rats and chimpanzees, dogs laugh as well. I also found a way to include a bow tie for the hornbill wedding. It just made sense.

“But Why” is a podcast that take s all types of curious children's questions from all around the world and then spends about a half asking experts to answer the questions.

The coloring pages are now available to be down loaded and colored at their blog here. In the future they will be available at the actual site of the pod cast.

 I will be coloring them myself soon.