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The weather is crisp and the leaves are starting to change color…it must be fall! Now that we’ve made it to October, we wanted to help you plan out the month with these book recommendations and resources:

World Vegetarian Day – October 1

• Auntie Yang’s Great Soybean Picnic
• Sweet Potato Pie
• Ghosts for Breakfast
• No Mush Today
• Rainbow Stew
• Yum! ¡Mmmm! ¡Qué Rico! Americas’ Sproutings
• Food and Cooking Collection

Health and Sports Day – October 10

• Allie’s Basketball Dream
• Around the World
• Catching the Moon
• Capoeira
• ¡Beisbol! Latino Baseball Pioneers and Legends
• Baseball Saved Us
• Silent Star
• Game, Set, Match, Champion Arthur Ashe
• ¡Olé! Flamenco
• Galaxy Games
• Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds
• Louis Sockalexis
• Jim Thorpe’s Bright Path
• The Last Black King of the Kentucky Derby
• Get Set! Swim!
• Surfer of the Century
• Strong to the Hoop
• Athletes and Sports Collection
• Summer Olympics Collection

Full Moon on October 16

• A Full Moon is Rising
• Under the Lemon Moon
• Catching the Moon
• Earth Day Poetry Collection
• Environmental Collection

Make a Difference Day – October 22

• Armando and the Blue Tarp School
• Sam and the Lucky Money
• Lend a Hand
• Destiny’s Gift
• Raymond’s Perfect Present
• The Mangrove Tree
• Seeds of Change
• Holiday Season/Gift Giving Collection
• Social and Emotional Learning Collection
• Community Collection
• Books for children and educators about kindness
• Why I love to read sad and dark books to children (and you should too)

Halloween – October 31

• Marisol McDonald and the Monster
• The Monster in the Mudball
• Hammer of Witches
• Yum! ¡Mmmm! ¡Qué Rico! Americas’ Sproutings
• 13 Scary YA Books: Diverse Edition
• Marisol McDonald and the Monster Teacher’s Guide

National Bullying Prevention Month

• Chess Rumble
• First Day in Grapes
• King for a Day
• It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way
• Heroes
• Willie Wins
• First Come the Zebra
• Bullying/Anti-Bullying Collection
• How to use family diversity and family structures to teach empathy 

Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15-October 15)

• English/Spanish Bilingual Collection
• Pura Belpre Award Collection 
• Carmen Lomas Garza Book Collection 
• Knock Down the Wall: 5 Books About Mexico to Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month 

Filipino American Heritage Month

• Abadeha
• Cora Cooks Pancit
• Lakas and the Makibaka Hotel
• Lakas and the Manilatown Fish
• Willie Wins
• Philippines and Filipino Culture Collection

Also worth checking out for October:

• October Book Roundup
• Building Classroom Community Unit for Kindergarten
• Building Classroom Community Unit for First Grade 

What are you favorite October reads? Let us know in the comments!

Today is the summer solstice and the official first day of the season for those of us in the northern hemisphere. This year, the full moon known as the strawberry moon or honeymoon lands on the longest day of the year. The events last shared the same date in 1948.

What is so special about this day, and this moon?

Today the sun passes across the sky at its highest point. Likewise the moon crosses the sky at its lowest point creating a seemingly larger moon than the usual full moon. Because the summer air is humid and thick, the June moon can look like it has a yellow hue or halo around its perimeter, and possibly the reason for the name honeymoon.

The name strawberry moon comes from the Algonquin tribe, because the June full moon signaled that it was time to harvest the ripe berries in the Great Lakes and Canadian region where they lived.

Tonight the Farmer’s Almanac will be broadcasting a live high-powered telescope viewing of the moon. See that here, or just read some amazing facts about the special phases of the sun and moon http://www.almanac.com/blog/astronomy/astronomy/summer-solstice-full-moon-june.

Now head outside and enjoy the long days and warm weather while it lasts, there are only 184 days until winter!

Throughout history, the influence of the full Moon on humans and animals has featured in folklore and myths. Yet it has become increasingly apparent that many organisms really are influenced indirectly, and in some cases directly, by the lunar cycle. Here are ten things you may not know concerning the way the Moon affects life on Earth.

The post 10 things you may not know about our Moon appeared first on OUPblog.

Marilyn Singer is the author of more than eighty-five children’s books, including many poetry collections. Her works have won numerous honors, including the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor and the Orbis Pictus Honor. A Full Moon is Rising is a collection of poems that bring readers on a whirlwind tour of the world to discover an amazing collection of full moon celebrations, beliefs, customs, and facts. You can find out more about Marilyn Singer and her work on her website here.

Since April is National Poetry Month, we asked author Marilyn Singer to tell us a little bit more about what inspired her to write A Full Moon is Rising:

I’ve always been entranced by the moon—especially when it’s full.  In NYC, where I live, it can sometimes be hard to see because of the tall buildings.  But one night in Midtown Manhattan (and many times thereafter), I saw it peeking out between two skyscrapers.  I’m a big theatre-goer, and I had the image of that moon being an actor who’d been waiting to make a grand appearance.  That inspired “Broadway Moon” and “Broadway Moon Again,” the opening and closing poems of A Full Moon is Rising.

“Broadway Moon Again”

“Broadway Moon Again”

New York City, USA

On the sidewalk, the audience of one

is now ten.

“What you looking at, girl?” they ask.

“Oh, the moon,” she says. “Just the moon.”

But what a moon!

Between the skyscrapers, it takes a bow.

“Encore in one month!” it proclaims.

“Admission is always free.”

Further Reading:

Poetry Friday: Andrea Cheng & Etched in Clay

Marilyn Singer on how to read a poem out loud

SUPERMOON

The biggest full moon of the year, a so-called "supermoon," will take center stage when it rises this weekend, and may interfere with the peak of an annual meteor shower created by the leftovers from Halley's comet.

The supermoon of 2012 is the biggest full moon of the yearand will occur on Saturday (May 5) at 11:35 p.m. EDT (0335 May 6), though the moon may still appear full to skywatchers on the day before and after the actual event. At the same time, the annual Eta Aquarid meteor shower will be hitting its peak, NASA scientists say.

This was the world that I woke to this morning. A full moon, moving too quickly for me to hold it in one place.

Aren't you glad?

I'm just going to do a 'ta-dah', here it is thing:



I punched up the values in the roof, the green band and warming hut, and shadows and sidewalk...well, everything but the trees, pretty much.
I added the tile to the roof with paint, but did the details like the address, the lights, a couple other things with colored pencil.
I didn't fuss with the trees because I don't want you to look there. I left them simple, and put all the detail on the building, because I want the viewer to look past the trees and at the restaurant.

I'm happy with it, and hope the client is too!!!!

This was a very simple example of architectural rendering. The people who get paid the really big bucks take architectural floor plans and elevations and using complicated methods, construct a 3D image of the building, THEN do an awesome rendering of it after that!

My little piece didn't have any people in it, nor do most "building portraits", which is what this is. Building portraits are usually nice renderings of someone's home or maybe place of business, or maybe model homes for realtors, things like that.

Rendering by Augustus M. Higginson


More advanced architectural rendering, which is done to show a building that hasn't been constructed yet, usually shows people (but not always) to show scale and the way a place will be used.

Here are a few links to people who do this for a living. There are about a million gazillion others ~ I just picked a few I know of out of a hat.
Frank Constantino
Bay Illustration
Michael Abbott

For a longer list, go here:
American Society of Architectural Illustrators
Or you can google "Architectural Rendering" or "Architectural Illustration" and get tons more. You could spend days looking at cool illustrations of buildings! (Well, I could.)

or, "The work-in-progress blog post with really badly spliced together scans".
I figured you'd all forgive me, right?
Thanks.

OK, so you remember we're doing a little rendering of this restaurant, Table 52.

I had the line drawing all worked out and transferred to the paper.
Now its time to color!

I forgot to tell you this is being done at 8.5 x 10.5 inches, but will be reproduced roughly the size you see here (half the size I'm painting it).
So I'm keeping the rendering fairly simple. If this were for a different application, like, a formal painting of the restaurant that was going to be framed and hung on the wall, I would do everything I've done up to this point the same exact way. But I would do it bigger, and I would take much more time with the painting and put in a lot more fussy detail. I would also have better pictures to work with, and would have much more input from the owner, I imagine.

But for what this is being used for, this is how I'm doing it.

I'm using Windsor & Newton, Holbein, and Daniel Smith watercolors.
I started with the sky. Horizon Blue and Blue Grey washed on casually, not trying too hard to "make a sky", but letting the paint just flow together and do its thing.
I also did a pale wash on the sidewalk and ground all around.

Next the roof. I did the main parts with Payne's Grey and Neutral Tint, then the border bits with Moonglow and Charcoal Grey.
I also added a little color to the tree trunks and the bricks around their bases. I'm trying to start tying the colors together a bit.

The green band and the "warming hut" were done with Oxide of Chromium and Green Grey.

I did quite a bit on this step. I did the doors with Burnt Sienna and Transparent Brown Oxide.
Then I added in the window panes with Payne's Grey (hey...the panes were done with Payne's...cool!) and Charcoal Grey, kind of letting them each be a little different.
I also added layers of greys on the sidewalk and street, and around the sides of the building.
And some shadows on the building itself.

Then the trees. I used Permanent Sap Green and some Yellow Grey. Then I lost track...I just started fiddling some with the whole piece, adding more shadow, more to the tree trunks, etc.


So this is how the rendering is shaping up compared to the original photo.

Its much brighter (the photo was taken with no sun, no shadows, bad light, etc.).
I've taken out the snow and Christmas lights and greenery and replaced that with Spring trees and no snow and different greenery in the planters.

This isn't finished, obviously. I need to finish the roof tiles, add the little lights on the building, the address, a few other tidbits. But this let's me see what parts are working and what might need to be adjusted.
I'm going to let it rest overnight and finish it up tomorrow. Nothing like getting away from something for a while to see it with fresh eyes.

Continuing on with creating an illustration of Table 52 in Chicago...

I taped this photo onto my lightbox and did a first trace, establishing the main lines of the building. I straightened up the distortion in the photo (its slight, but its there... the verticals in photos are rarely all truly vertical.)

I took out all the "uglies" that I mentioned in the last post.

I moved the middle tree to the right just a bit so the pretty window would show better. This also had the added benefit of hiding a bit of the "warming hut".
Then I did a really bold thing and added a tree that isn't even there on the right side!
Before I did that I stared at that side of the building and pondered how on earth to show the fire escape and fiddly bits of pipes and all, then also how to show that whole basically dead area.

"Why don't you just crop the whole piece and take that side off altogether?" you ask. Good question. Two things: 1. It needs to be there to balance out the rest of the piece and 2. because I'm doing this for a magazine and there is a size specification, I have to include exactly what I have in the picture to make the size work.
The added tree is in keeping with the two that are already there, and I honestly don't think anyone's going to have an issue with it. This is a case where that "artistic license" we all carry around comes in handy. You just have to know when and how to use it.

So now that I have the composition basically worked out to my satisfaction, I do another trace, tightening things up a bit, cleaning up the linework and adding a few more details.


I forgot to say before that I also took out the buildings in the background. Sometimes I leave them in, it depends. If a building is flanked by others, up close, or if the surrounding buildings help establish where this one "lives", or for some other good reason, I will leave them in, and maybe fade them out some.
In this case, the surrounding architecture does nothing to enhance this one, and also, this one is kind of 'stand alone' anyway, so I decided it didn't need any company on the page.

Also, the trees will be very "light" in feeling. I don't want them to overwhelm the picture. I will be taking out the snow in the photo as well, and putting Spring leaves on the trees (and taking out the Christmas lights they currently have wrapped around them). So the overall feel of the piece will be much different than the photo.


Next I put that last sketch on the light box and transfer the drawing to my final paper.
I'm using Lanaquarelle watercolor paper. I darkened the drawing up in Photoshop to show here. In reality its much much lighter, and so is the paper. But it does have a warmish cast to it, which will work nicely with the whole feel of the piece.

The next thing to do is choose a palette and start painting!

All images and content herein are © Paula Pertile and may not be used or reproduced without permission.

And now for something completely different!

Today I want to talk about architectural rendering a little bit. I have a new commission to do a rendering of a restaurant in Chicago, so thought I'd start a work in progress series of posts about it, and also yak about rendering buildings in general some.

This is the photo I will be turning into a nice illustration:



Its Table fifty-two, and is the creation of Chef Art Smith, who just happens to be Oprah's personal chef.

Rendering buildings is a highly specialized field of art. The range of styles, techniques and applications for illustrating architecture is much too much to try to write about in a blog! What I'll do is show you a little of what I do, take you through the process of rendering this piece, then give you some links to places where you can see other illustrators' work. This will take a few posts, at least, I figure!

First up are a few samples of other buildings I've done. I vary my style quite a bit, as you can see.

Ink and watercolor

Colored pencil
Ink and watercolor

Watercolor

Colored pencil and Photoshop

Sometimes the client will ask for something specific. If not, I let the building "tell me" what style and technique to use.

For Table 52, I'm thinking I might use a combination of watercolor and pencil. Its a very elegant space, and a tighter, neater style would work best to bring out the character of the building.

I start with a series of photos my art director sends me. He goes out to the location and takes pictures of the sight. I ask him to take shots of the building from different angles, some close up details, the more the better. The main photo I'll be working from is the correct angle, but I can't see the detail in the windows very well because of the tree, I can't see what's in the planter box in front, etc. etc.


So in addition to this photo I have about a half dozen others that show a lot more information.

We talked about the pictures and discussed what was important to show, and what could be removed, and in general how to make it a good illustration.

Here is my first take on the things that need to be removed from the picture:

The parking sign out front HAS to go! I always take out signs like that. Ugly!
Also, the power lines on the left, the crane on the right, and of course the truck and some of the meters and whatnot attached to the side of the building.

We talked about the green canopy tent structure in front. That's a temporary structure put up to shelter people who are waiting to get in, from the weather, which is very civilized (the structure, not the weather). It comes down once the weather warms up. But as much as I'd like to remove it, I don't know what the window and door look like underneath, and don't want to just invent something, or "fake it". Looking at the interior shot of the place on the website tells me some of what the window does, but not the door. And since I'm not there to go look in person, and my art director isn't able to go back and take more pictures, we'll have to just settle with what we have to work with. I will include the "warming hut" in the illustration and make it look as nice as possible (luckily its very tastefully done so it won't be hard!)


Now let me go work on this, and I'll post the next steps as soon as I have something to show!

All images and content herein are © Paula Pertile and may not be used or reproduced without permission.