Last week I had the big photo shoot for Elephabet and I'm just about ready to send it off to print! I can't wait to show you the book, but I'm going to hold off and let you see what you can in these shots I took during the photography session. I used Dan Kvitka for this project--in addition to being a friend for many years, Dan is also an amazing photographer who has documented the work of many artists as well as shooting the exhibition catalogs for the Museum of Contemporary Craft. We worked together to make my visions come to life, adding a little computer magic to float my poofy clouds and ensure a great final project in general. I've been working on the typography and layout this week and it's going to be super sweet. Thanks again to all of you who supported this project!
I also have an exciting announcement! I am putting together a workbook to accompany the alphabet books so that you can design your own elephabetiphants! This was inspired by my recent visit to the Camas Ridge third grade class, where they used my simple elephant template and their imaginations to produce some fun results. In case you missed it, you can see their drawings by clicking here. The plan is to have this and the paperback edition of Elephabet available on Amazon.com, hopefully by the end of November! Here's a sample page of how it will look:
I'll send out the link when it's officially available in case you're interested in grabbing one before the holidays. (Anticipated retail price is $10.) Please note: I am using Amazon.com's on demand printing service Createspace for this book, so orders need to go through them unless you come to one of my two Portland holiday sales this December! Make sure you're on my email list if you don't want to miss out on anything.
Okay, it's back to work for me. I'll check in again in a few weeks when I (hopefully) have my first printed edition of Elephabet in my hot little hands!!
Hello Beautiful People! Today I had the pleasure of visiting my niece Alex's classroom. They have been following the progress of Elephabet, and invited me to come talk about what it's like to be an artist and how to write a book. When I walked in the door, I could see that they had been doing their homework!
Using the overhead projector, I could show them my sketchbook and talk about the development of several of the letters.
Then I brought out the box with a few of the original pieces. It was a look-but-don't-touch moment, if you know what I mean. I am happy to report that this was a very well-behaved classroom and no pieces were harmed in the presentation.
After answering many questions such as "what do you make them from," "why does the igloophant have big ears," and "how did you make that sombrero on the nacho cheesiphant," we launched into a creative exploration of what other possibilities might be out there. Here's a little video I made that shows the results:
