A Puggy Piggy Bank

Last spring, the folks at Parnassus Books of Nashville, Tennessee, asked over 100 writers, illustrators, and celebrities to decorate plain, white, ceramic piggy banks for an auction to help Stephanie Appell, the store’s manager of books for young readers, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

After getting my piggy bank, I experimented with pencil and paint, but my pencil smudged and my paint peeled off.

Then I found that the bank’s surface was very nice for carving, so I scraped away my false starts and began to sand and scratch and ink-in some features.

Before long, the pig had turned into a pug - I think because it reminded me of Toches (a.k.a. Tuckus, Tookus, etc.), a fat and funny, snuffling and snorting little dog that had belonged to my friend Madeleine, who I lost to breast cancer last year.

When I liked the way my piggy puggy bank looked, I burnished him with butcher’s wax (which will protect him from getting grubby, but which also gives him a warmer, Toches-like tone), and I sent him back to Nashville.

He and many of his new friends, both ceramic and Parnassian - and even another pug! - were featured on Nashville’s WSMV-TV News. Take a look!

Here’s a link to the whole auction.

And here’s a link to my guy’s page. Why not bid - and bid! and bid! and bid! - for him, or for one or more of his companions? The auction starts today and ends Friday, September 30, 2016!

I think he likes you.

Characters from a Lost Novel

I confess: the “lost novel” was never lost at all because it was never there in the first place. This page of character studies was more or less a doodle: just me trying out a combination of ink and acrylic paint on a piece of bristol board with no real plan in mind.

Fishing Pig (after George Caleb Bingham)

I love pigs and I love George Caleb Bingham, so I combined the two in this painting - which is still in-progress, though I confess I haven't touched it in a while. It's acrylic and ink on Strathmore Aquarius II paper (when it was still good, fine-grained, non-buckling paper - not the rougher, thinner, wrinklier paper it became, alas).

These Pigs Could Be Yours

It's time once again for the 19th Annual Children's Book Art Silent Auction. It'll be held Wednesday, May 29, 2013, 5.50-7.30pm during BookExpo America at the Javits Convention Center in New York City. Above is this year's contribution: my reworked/revamped family portrait, which I featured here a while back...

New, Old Pig on the Block

Going to the ABFFE’s (Mostly) Silent Children’s Art Auction and Reception to Support Free Speech for Young People at BEA tonight? If so, you can bid on - and maybe even bring home with you - this little piggy.

He looks sort of familiar, eh? That’s because I took a color xerox of a painting I did a dozen years ago, mounted it on illustration board, then started to retouch and, I hope, improve on my earlier work. I had based the original on a photograph of Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie, but thought the proportions needed adjusting to make him less human and more pig-like. I also fleshed out his surroundings, gave it all a warmer tone, and pretty much repainted the whole thing.

Irritable Fox and Annoyed Pig

An experiment for the sake of experimenting - in this case in ink and watercolor. (I wanted to see what could be done using a limited palette - specifically one recommended by Beatrix Potter - but I’ve since mislaid the list of colors.)

“...all the way home to BEA”

Give this little pig a good home, please. He’ll be waiting for you later this month at BookExpo America (a.k.a. BEA):

BEA Art Auction to Benefit Free Speech for Kids

Attendees at BookExpo America will have an opportunity to support the free speech rights of young readers when the children's art auction and reception that formerly benefited the Association of Booksellers for Children (ABC) is relaunched as a fundraiser for the new American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) Fund for Free Speech in Children's Books. The event will be held on Wednesday, May 25, in the Javits Convention Center from 5:00 to 7:30 p.m.

The ABC Auction has long been one of the most eagerly anticipated events on the social calendar of the children's book industry, attracting booksellers, authors, publishers, illustrators, and others. This year's auction is chaired by author Laurie Halse Anderson, whose novel Speak has been challenged in schools by people who object to its exploration of sexual assault. More than 100 artists have donated work to the auction. A preview is available online.

Tickets for the auction and reception, which are $69 for bookseller members of the ABC Children's Group and $89 for all others, can be purchased here. If the tickets are not sold out in advance, they may also be purchased during a preview of auction artwork in the Javits Center's Crystal Pavilion on Tuesday, May 24, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets purchased onsite will be $79 for ABC members and $99 for non-members.

You might recognize this pig. For the auction, I took a color xerox of my painting, mounted it on illustration board, then did a fair amount of repainting - beyond just turning the oval into a rectangle. He comes framed, too.

Jolly Flatboatpigs in Port

Here's a painting I did, inspired by the "Jolly Flatboatmen in Port" by the wonderful Missourian artist George Caleb Bingham, who has unwittingly provided me with lots and lots of raw material over the years.

The Pig's Eating a Sandwich!

In plumbing the depths of my portfolio, I found a pig eating a sandwich.

Happy New Year!

Sing, Piggy, Sing

Another Bingham Pig

Another pig drawing generated from a painting by the great George Caleb Bingham.

Family Portrait

It's my grandmother's 113th birthday today, so how better to celebrate than by...turning her family into pigs? The source photograph was taken in 1906 or 1907 and shows most of the Braun brood of Rudna, Banat, a Donauschwaben village then in Hungary and now in Romania. My grandmother is in the middle row, far left. I made my painting some time ago and confess that I didn't quite catch my great-uncle Dominik's bewildered expression (middle row, far right), though the frown of my first cousin once removed (Gyula Bank, dead center) translated pretty well.

A Congressman is a Hog!

"You can't use tact with a Congressman! A Congressman is a hog! You must take a stick and hit him on the snout!" said a member of President Grant's cabinet to Henry Adams. In this case the hog, or, rather, the model for the hog was, again, the unwitting Senator Stephen A. Douglas (1813-1861), as photographed by Mathew Brady.

Young Pig Lincoln

In addition to re-imagining my favorite paintings (as seen in this and that post), I also enjoy adapting old photographs for my own purposes. Here, for instance, I turned Abraham Lincoln's son, William Wallace Lincoln (1850-1862), into a pig. Sorry, Willie! This one falls into the Tentative Ventures Into Anthropomorphism category, though, as I more or less just stuck an animal head (and some cloven feet) on a human figure, sort of the way ancient Egyptian artists often did. Since making this painting, however, I've found that I prefer my anthropomorphizing to be a "full-body experience," so I try to transform the whole person into an animal. I think the results are more convincing.

Everybody Pukes

Go West, Young Pig

With apologies to Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who was not a pig.

And This Little Pig Cried, etc. etc...

Poor creature. Is it the relentless rain? Weeks in steerage?

Emmett's Pig

One of my favorite books was (and still is) Emmett's Pig by Mary Stolz and Garth Williams. So when I found out my friends were going to name their son Emmett, I decided to honor both boy and book with a painting. I made it with acrylic and ink on paper and scanned it before adding salutations in the banners. Oh, and the pig is holding a playing card because Emmett's middle name is Ace.

The ABC Not-a-Dinner and (Mostly) Silent Auction

I usually don't have the heart to part with my originals unless it's for a special occasion or a good cause. Well, here's one:

Each year the Association of Booksellers for Children asks illustrators to donate a piece of artwork for their Not-a-Dinner and (Mostly) Silent Auction held during Book Expo America (BEA). This year's event happens on Friday, May 29th, at The New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge.

Elizabeth Bluemle, president of the ABC, gives a sneak peak of what's in store on Publishers Weekly's website. She also provides a handy link to an album of all the pictures.

I made my painting with ink and acrylic on paper. For some reason, I thought the contributions were supposed to feature a letter of the alphabet, but I must have been following a directive from a prior year. Oh, well!