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It's crazy to think it was warm enough for short sleeves this past weekend after it had just snowed the Tuesday before. I was grateful for the warm weather though. Between work, chilly weather, and allergy season, it seems like forever since we've spent any meaningful time outdoors. So taking advantage of the pleasant weather before it changes again, we got in a long-desired and much-needed hike this past weekend, this time at Good Water Trail in Georgetown.



The trail is apparently a whopping 25 miles long and encircles Lake Georgetown. Being much out of practice with hiking and in far less than tip-top shape, we did only a very short segment of the trail. The trail follows along the edge of the lake, but at enough of a distance that we couldn't see the water during most of the hike which we found a bit disappointing. Even so, the weather could not have been more ideal for a hike. I'm hoping for more of this perfect weekend weather in the coming months...

It's been so long since I've lived anywhere that gets regular snow that I can't help but get excited when we have even a little. Yesterday I sprang out of bed when my husband said, "Hey, it's snowing!" I threw on some clothes, grabbed the camera, and ran out into the cold to take a good long walk around the neighborhood. For the first hour or two, this snow-storm was pretty steady with those big tissue-paper flakes. After it tapered off we had a sprinkling of flurries throughout the afternoon.





The unusual weather seems so strangely appropriate to me since the painting I'm working on at the moment happens to be a snow scene. I'm grateful for the reference and inspiration (and that I didn't have to drive anywhere in it)!

The rains finally came to quench our parched land here in Texas. The air cooled, and by the time the weekend rolled around I thought how wonderful that it's finally cool enough to go outside and do a little hiking. So on Saturday, which was quite cloudy in the morning, we drove down to McKinney State Park to finish up the trails we hadn't yet hiked. After about ten minutes on the trail, the sun came out from behind the clouds and that nice cool hike I'd been looking forward to for so long became a hot, sweaty hike. Even so, it was good to get outside for a while.


The longer trails were a bit ho-hum, walking through the same landscape for a long time without many points of interest aside from the remnants of an old homestead and grist mill. But the trails around the water were quite picturesque.







It seems that the butterfly migrations are beginning again. There were so many butterflies fluttering along the trails, especially this kind. I'm not sure what type it is, but they were everywhere.

It's been a while since I've posted anything, much less a new piece of art, but I'm finally back with a new illustration. This painting was a private commission. As I worked on it, I was reminded of one of my old favorite picture books, Owl Babies in which three baby owls await nervously for their mother to return home. I love the simplicity of the characters in the book and am amazed at how much expression the illustrator was able to convey almost entirely through the eyes and subtle gestures. I'm hoping I was able to similarly capture some of the sense of relief and recent distress the two little lost squirrels are feeling as they run toward their mother's outstretched arms:


On a personal note, a dear art school friend came to visit last week and we took a few days to explore Austin and get in a dose of adventure, trying out some new activities, among them river tubing and ziplining through the trees. Following are a few pictures of our hike around Hamilton Pool - we first hiked along a trail that followed a creek all the way to the Pedernales river:
Due to drought conditions, the river was quite low. I'm quite tempted to go back and hike along the dry parts of the riverbed to see what there is to see before the rains come and fill the river back up.



We then took the short trail to the pool itself which is partially sheltered in a large grotto. According to texasoutside.com, "The preserve's pool and grotto were formed when the dome of an
underground river collapsed due to massive erosion thousands of years ago." It was such a striking and unusual setting, that it almost looked like a man-made resort. The water looked so inviting on such a hot day, but sadly, we didn't have time to go for a swim. Perhaps another day...

More art soon...

Okay, I may not be heading to SCBWI but I am, in October, going to the VCFA event in the Lone Star State.

Anyone else going?

I am registered and now entering the "how do I decide which hotel to stay at" phase. This phase is soon to be followed by the "ohmygosh how am I going to get from point A to point B and everywhere else phase" which is also known as the typical (for me) transportation panic phase. Other phases soon to follow will include the "what if I have forgotten how to do the chit chat in person networking phase," the "everyone will be younger or skinnier or more talented than I am phase" and then of course the "is it too late to change my mind and cancel phase." Oh, and let's not forget the "I have nothing to wear phase" which I'm sure I will pass through several times.

I kid you not.

Yes, I am an introverted wimp but I am really going to try and break out at least a little bit.

I think I am going to go a day early on the chance that I can have some time to meet some local friends. So if you live in the area, please let me know because otherwise I will go early and then sit in my hotel room playing the stupid bubble game on my phone until the battery dies.

They say everything's bigger in Texas - and when it comes to the local bugs, they weren't kidding. This little (or not so little) guy was hanging out in front of my neighbor's front door for about a day:He's a giant stick insect. It's probably hard to tell from the picture, but he was about 5-6 inches long. Seems he wandered a little too far away from his forest home where I'm sure he's most excellently camouflaged. Hopefully he's since found his way safely back to the trees following his little adventure amongst the man-made.

Realizing I hadn't posted anything in such a long time, I scrounged around a bit for something and came up with this drawing:
This was an unused drawing for a private commission. We opted for something larger and with more characters, which I'll post in the near-future. I still like this drawing and I've got the color well-visualized in my mind for it, so maybe I'll come back to it some day...

The wildflowers are still exploding here and the blues and pinks seem to have given way to yellows and reds. I don't remember them being quite so spectacular last year. Perhaps the weather conditions are more favorable this year? Or maybe I just wasn't getting out much around the same time last year. On a morning walk, I stumbled across a steeply sloping field of Mexican Hats:
Indian Blankets quite literally blanket the ground along my husband's drive to work. He also located another large field of the flowers on a different road much to my delight:













I can't think that I've ever lived somewhere where I could walk through such a picture postcard flower-scape until we moved here to Texas. Scattered throughout the dominant Indian Blankets are various other flowers. I think these are coreopsis:

I'm just wrapping up on the tail-end of my book project, so hopefully I'll have some art to post soon. In the meantime, more photos...

It's wildflower season here again in central Texas and although I really haven't had much time to get outside lately, we did take a quick jaunt a couple of weeks ago to shoot a field of pink evening primrose. Chris happened to spot this distant field as we were driving on the elevated highway you can see in the background and figured out how we could reach it using back-streets.





















The ground was a bit marshy, but well-worth the mud to take some good reference photos.

Hopefully we'll get outside for a bit this weekend before the summer heat sets in. We've already had some uncomfortably warm days this spring - just a prelude to what's coming...

For any librarians attending SXSW — which I’m gathering will be at least a few judging from the chatter I’ve been hearing — I’ll be there starting tomorrow night. Here is the short list of events I’m committed to

• Librarian meetup at the Iron Cactus on Saturday at 12:30 - more details, or here
• MetaFilter meetup Saturday at 6:30 at Mother Egan’s - more details
• The panel I’m on about community moderation — with folks from Flickr and YouTube and Etsy and CurrentTV — Sunday at 3:30
• Fray Cafe Sunday night from 8 - midnight. I’m a featured performer, come hear my crazy story.

I leave on Tuesday. Monday is an open day and I may go to the Ransom Center to see what’s nifty there.

We must be in the flight path of the monarch migrations to Mexico here in Austin because I have seen so many of them over the last few weeks! A couple weeks ago we hiked Commons Ford park which is west of the city and everywhere I looked I'd spot a monarch. They seemed especially fond of one particular type of flower which were quite plentiful in the park. I've seen a a good number of the other 'big butterflies' around too, swallowtails and such. Monarchs are a real childhood favorite of mine!

Every so often I discover that my husband has, unbeknownst to me, lent his hand to my work. Sometimes his little additions go unnoticed for days or weeks until I've come back to the drawing for reworking or reference. I always get a good laugh from these unexpected contributions:
And so I continue to labor under his corrupting influence... Read the rest of this post

Well, after a blistering summer it's finally starting to cool down around here. It still gets a bit uncomfortably warm around mid-day, but mornings have actually been a bit chilly. So the past couple weekends, we took advantage of the pleasant mornings and went out for a bit of hiking. First stop was McKinney Falls - three miles on the Onion Creek Trail ending at the falls which were more of a trickle, but with very neat rock formations.


And last weekend we hit three really small parks that all happened to be in the same area. The tower in the picture was at Mayfield Park which seemed to be a popular site for weddings. A young brood of peacocks occupied the grounds. The males seemed to revel in practicing displaying their tails which were not all that grand yet since they were still quite young, but that didn't discourage them in the least.

And the last picture is a view from the top of Mount Bonnell which seems to be something of a tourist site.















Lastly, for the sneak peek of what I'm working on - a couple character design sheets for my current book projects - a follow-up to What's Your Angle, Pythagoras?:

Octavius is only twelve, but he is very big. He's a nervous, worrying type.

Amara is nine years old and somewhat bossy. Her name means "eternal."

We spent Memorial Day in beautiful Austin, Texas at the Texas State Solo & Ensemble Contest at the University of Texas. There were hundreds and hundreds of high school kids from all over Texas there, giving up their holiday weekend to perform. Small ensembles dotted the benches and walls outside the music building. They were warming up and practicing. I got chills listening to a trumpet trio play Bugler's Holiday.

One of the benefits of an Austin excursion is fantastic food (yummm...Trudy's) and the opportunity to visit Book People Bookstore. We had acquired a friend of Entling no. 2 at the store and she cheerfully tagged along with me upstairs to the kids' section. (My own kids speed away from me in a bookstore as fast as their winged feet can fly them.) We were perusing the shelves when a Book People person came by to offer his help. He told us he had not read ALL the books ther but he had read a lot of them and if we had any questions, just ask.

Hey, I thought, that is MY usual line.

Then it hit me.

That was TOPHER!

I know about Topher Bradfield because Rockstar Rick Riordan raves about him on his blog. Topher was a force in the creation of Camp Half Blood and a children's book evangelist at local schools and literary events in our capital city and beyond.

I chased after him.

"Are you Topher?"
He agreed that he was and asked (probably nervously) who I was.

He must have decided I did not pose an overt threat because we then spent a splendid chunk of time talking books. We share a grand enthusiasm for all things Percy Jackson. He pointed us toward a table of his current picks and we were treated to a series of wonderful booktalks that had passers-by stopping in their tracks to listen (and then pick up the books to buy.)

Then he began to read the first chapter of Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing with Fire aloud to us. Wow! There is nothing like hearing a gifted reader share a book they love.
Topher performed the book with enthusiasm and a whiff of James Joyce in his delivery.

As I left the store with my new stack of books, I was reminded of the famous last words I had uttered an hour earlier, "I'm not getting any books today."

I did not know I was going to meet Topher.