Fireflies in a Lantern

When Jill and I were Artists-in-Residence at the Children's Museum of Denver, we were involved in every aspect of creative planning and implementation. The projects were always diverse, and always loads of fun.

A Story Room was a natural fit for the Museum's mission but it was a plan that needed to be done in several phases, so as to raise money before proceeding to the next phase. The 'easiest' way to start would be to paint a mural on the long wall of the room. With only a verbal okay for a verbal idea pitch, we started in on this slightly fanciful nighttime scene of fireflies flitting to and fro and gathering in the lantern to shed some light on the kid's book.

This was one of those paintings that just flowed onto the wall, with no pencilling or guidelines of any kind. I don't remember where it began and where it ended, but it was alla prima and all at once all the way. It was started and completed in six hours or so, with lots of stepping back to view from the far wall to get a sense of scale. It was a satisfying day's work.

The next phase was to be a 3 dimensional fanciful tree that would reside in a far corner that kids could play in and around during scheduled birthday parties, and other times have a storyteller sit at the base of the tree and have some puppet work back her up. For this phase we did some careful designing, creating a number of studies and a finished elevation painting for committee approval.

Eh, the next phase funding never came through. One more project plan to file in the archives.

The Great Magical Record Book of Glinda the Good

A decade and a half ago we were commissioned to create a mural on canvas—celebrating L. Frank Baum's original Oz books for a children's museum, where we were Artists-in-Residence. It was to be the centerpiece for an exhibit promoting illustration as a 'Gateway to Literacy'. 

We had an 8 foot wide canvas stretched in an arch shape (not an easy shape to get just right), had it primed and ready to go. We did a comprehensive design that displayed most of the prominent characters, using the John R. Neill drawing style as guide and inspiration. We started creating finished color studies,  and were all set to start transferring the design to the canvas . . . when the project cancelled for various reasons.

We kept the blank canvas in storage for several years, finally deciding to go ahead and paint the image to sell or donate to a worthy cause for kids. Feeling excited that we could finally create this piece to live and prosper, we went to get the canvas out of storage only to find a huge rip right down the center of the fabric. Talk about taking the wind out of our sails.

We kept the sketches in our archives, along with the one finished color study painted in watercolor,  (which we posted on our Pictorial Arts Blog) for several more years. We recently received a nice note from the Executive Director of the Lyman Frank Baum Foundation asking to display a color photocopy of the Glinda study during a fundraiser event.

Feeling like this was a perfect home for the watercolor we offered to donate the original to the foundation. Happily accepting it, the director plans to place it in the Baum House after the event, where I'm most happy to have it reside.

Below, another study that fell just short of going to color.

I hope someday we still get a chance to redesign and create this Oz tribute in some form.

Snippets & Bibbets — REBOOT

Hello and welcome to Snippets and Bibbets version two point zero. 

My name is Thom and sitting over there is Jill, my studio partner, who's not saying a word at the moment, but she IS smiling and waving. She may be a 'silent' partner literally, but oh so active creatively. We've been doing projects for kids for years so we have a lot to share with you. The image above shows how our work sometimes comes together, ol' Will by me, background by Jill. 

This blog has been up for some time, but then we got really busy doing all kinds of fun things so that we hadn't posted anything in over a year. 

We thought we should start this blog over, more or less from scratch, so that we can organize our posts by our projects, some of them recent, and some of our favorites from our archives—and be a little more regular about it.

This blog is themed around the work we've created for children specifically, but also for the children in all of us. That sounds like a cliché, but we all know it to be true that some portion of each of us yearns to be ten again, on a comfy bed with a flashlight and a wonderful book, with pictures that help make the words come alive.

Of course you know to click on any image to see it larger.