If da Vinci Painted a Dinosaur Launches

"If da Vinci Painted a Dinosaur", the follow up to last year's hit "If Picasso Painted a Snowman" is now printed and we received advance copies a few days ago. This one was also a collaborative project written by my talented wife Amy Newbold and illustrated by yours truly.

Opening up a box of new books and holding one for the first time is always a satisfying experience. I hate to make an unrealistic comparison, but it's a bit like the illustration equivalent to holding your newborn baby for the first time. It's magical and you love it in spite of the pain it took to get it there.

This new book follows the same premise as our last book, posing the question, "what would a dinosaur look like if painted by (fill in the name of a famous artist)"? We really beat ourselves up this time by increasing the number of artists from seventeen to nineteen.  I bit off a little more than I wanted to chew from a work required standpoint, but I got it accomplished and visually it works well.

Our guide Max the hamster makes a command performance as we tour how a new crop of famous artists might have depicted a dinosaur. Included are imaginative works in the styles of well known artists such as Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Henri Matisse and Edvard Munch.

We also found several lesser known artists that were no less worthy of recognition, such as Aaron Douglas, Alma Thomas, Lois Mailou Jones, Qi Baishi and Marguerite Zorach to include in the mix. Of course da Vinci bookends the tour with playful depictions of "Vetruvian Microraptor" and "Dino Lisa".

Both of our books are an invitation for kids to make art without the constraints of what someone else might perceive as the right or the wrong way. All the artists depicted became famous for their own unique ways of seeing the world and creating art. If da Vinci Painted a Dinosaur is a celebration of creativity and an extrapolation of individual style that we hope gives kids permission to express in art what they see and feel in whatever way they choose. That's what art is all about.

COME JOIN US!
Our first official book signing will be Saturday, September 29, 2018 at the Barnes & Noble Authorpalooza event from 2-4 pm. The store is located at 330 East University Parkway in Orem, Utah. If you are in the area, please join us!

If Picasso Painted a Snowman

The following is an interview I did with Howard Lyon for  Muddy Colors regarding the creation of our new book If Picasso Painted a Snowman. Thanks Howard for permission to repost it here!

My friends Amy and Greg Newbold have recently collaborated on a book called If Picasso Painted a Snowman. I think this is the first children's book that I have ever reviewed on Muddy Colors (I hope it isn't the last, there are so many great picture books out there). I happened to stop by Greg's house on the same day received pre-release copies of his book (I was there to pick up some black walnuts, he has a GIANT giving tree that I believe, without exaggerating, will let me produce about 30 gallons of ink).

This a wonderful book! Many of the readers of MC have kids or are aunts and uncles. This book is for you and yours (I'm including an Amazon link here and at the end of the interview). It is a great introduction to a large variety of artists and their work, but also opens up the imagination to all the possibilities of different artists paint, but also how different thinkers might approach the same challenge.

I asked Greg and Amy if I might interview them for MC. Here goes!


Where did the idea for the book come from?

It all started several years ago when my wife Amy visited Paris with her sisters on a girl’s trip. During a visit to the Picasso Museum she asked the question “What would it look like if Picasso painted a snowman?” She envisioned a book that would teach kids about significant artists and art movements in a fun and engaging way. Honestly, it was to be the book that we could never find for our kids in all the years of taking them to museums. For several years she polished the manuscript, we showed it around and reworked it. Nobody caught the vision of what we wanted to do until Tris Coburn at Tilbury House Publishers in Maine bought our pitch.

What was the most challenging part of creating illustrations in the styles of such a variety of artists?

Since I was young, I have always enjoyed the challenge of learning new styles or techniques. Like most budding artists, I started by trying to copy other artists’ work. In high school I did Prismacolor replicas of album covers and copied drawings from guys like Frank Frazetta and the Hildebrandt brothers. I sold some of them for ten or twenty bucks. Once in college I had the legitimate option of creating an old master copy painting instead of writing a paper. My professor told me my Van Gogh was the best copy she had ever seen because I tried so hard to get the materials and surface texture correct.

Because I like to experiment with new materials and processes, I also find it very instructive to paint these master copies. Studying and trying to recreate the works of great artists allows you to deconstruct and learn from the masters and it’s something I have done on and off over the years. This book gave me the opportunity to learn about the materials and processes of seventeen different artists. Some of those chosen for the book were quite familiar, as I had studied the likes of Grant Wood and Van Gogh. Others Like Jacob Lawrence and Sonia Delaunay were previously unknown to me.

Grant Woods Snowman - The stern coal mouths are perfect

I dug into their processes online and tried to find books that described the way they worked and what materials they used. My goal was to mimic each artist’s materials and process as much as was practical. Of course there are new materials available today and the time crunch I was under forced me to make some adjustments. For instance, the Roy Lichtenstein piece was created digitally as I had neither the time or inclination to figure out where to screen print it and there was no way I was going to get the Ben-Day dots right painting it by hand. Also, scale was sacrificed on a number of pieces.

Roy Lichtenstein Snowman - I love this one!

The J.M.W Turner painting I made is a miniature compared to most of his other pieces as is the Georgia O’Keeffe, who also typically worked much larger than I could justify. Sometimes materials had to change. For instance I painted the Grant Wood in acrylic rather than oil. It was a speed issue and I rationalized that Wood painted his oils using layers of crosshatch anyway, so the result was very similar.

Georgia O'Keefe's snowman is beautiful.

Is there one that you enjoyed the most or least?

Honestly, this entire project was a dream to work on. It was just so fun to try new things. I learned how to make a direct drawing monoprint for the Paul Klee piece, played with gold leafing for the Gustav Klimt painting but the most fun was probably the Jackson Pollock painting. I went all in to figure out what he was all about. I had previously read Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock by William Taylor Adams and I was totally intrigued by Pollock.

As a young artist I scoffed at Pollock thinking that it was just a bunch of random drips on canvas, but as I dug deeper, I began to understand what his “action paintings” were all about. Also, watching the ten-minute documentary filmed in 1951 by Hans Namuth was helpful. In the film, Pollock is seen painting outside and his voice narrates the process. I purchased a large-ish piece of raw linen and several quarts of Pollock-esque colored latex paint for the painting, forgoing the oil enamel Pollock preferred in the name of practicality. I used sticks and hard brushes to drip and fling the paint while walking all around the perimeter just as Pollock did in the film (minus the cigarette and discordant music). It was a little windy and I even had some grass and sticks get embedded in the painting. It was so much fun, there are plans for a Pollock party to let some of our friends create their own “Jackson Pollock”.

What is your hope/goal for this book?

As I mentioned at the outset, this is the type of book we wished we could have found for our kids at one of the many museums we dragged them to. We tried to put across the idea that the possibilities are endless when creating art and that you should not be intimidated or limited by what some people perceive as “rules”. There is no right or wrong way to create art, simply techniques that either allow or prevent you from achieving the vision you have for your art.

We have tried hard to make it more than just an overview of different art styles. With it’s simple text, it also reads as a nice bedtime story, hopefully appealing to fans of snowman books, gift books, or art books in general. There are enough inside jokes to appeal to adults as well. At the end of the book we have also included expanded bios and art making tips. We hope that parents, teachers and children embrace this book as permission to explore art with freedom and joy.

After reading the book, I want to draw a Caravaggio/Bouguereau/Waterhouse/Watterson/Frazetta snowman!

Are there artists whose work you didn't imitate but you would have liked to?

There are too many to count. Luckily we are in negotiations with our publisher to create a follow up book, so hopefully I’ll get to play with another batch of styles with that project.

How did you decide what artists to include?

With so many artists to choose from, it became a question of which ones would be recognized, which ones would add variety and touch on major movements and also which ones whose styles I felt confident enough to try to mimic. We also tried to choose artists that we were fairly sure never painted a snowman. Some artists did not make the cut for one or more of those reasons. We also tried to include a variety of artists including women and ethnically diverse painters. Knowing the overwhelming majority of dead white European artists that crowd the annals of art history, we knew it was impossible to give any sort of equality of diversity to the group, so we did our best and focused on the overall variety in the book.

Gustav Klimt Snowman. Beyond the theme of the book and Klimt's style, this is a touching painting!

What other books or projects would you like the audience to know about that you have been part of?

This year was crazy in that I have never had two new picture books released in the same year, let alone create all the art in that same year. I did all the art for If Picasso Painted a Snowman from January to March and then all the art for The Little Match Girl (coming from Shadow Mountain October 17, 2017) from April to mid July. In the past, I would have shied away from both of those time frames, but I’m at a point now where I have enough confidence to just say yes and figure out the logistics later.

In my twenty plus years as a full time artist, I have worked for most of the large New York publishers and have been fortunate to have my work accepted into all the major juried illustration shows over the years including, Society of Illustrators, Communication Arts, Spectrum, AIGA and Society of Illustrators, Los Angeles. I’ve also done quite a bit of advertising work for clients like Fedex, American Express, Smuckers, Heinz and the like.

If Picasso Painted a Snowman- Progress Update

If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram (yes, I have finally joined the Insta crowd) you have already seen some of this work, but for everyone else, here's a little update. If Picasso Painted a Snowman was written by my wife Amy after a visit to the Picasso museum in Paris where she wondered what a snowman painting by Picasso might look like.

Picasso's Snowman- By Greg Newbold

That thought generated the idea for the book and expanded to ask the same question about more than a dozen other artists. What might all these snowmen look like? Well, this book answers all those tough questions! At least it will answer the question of how I might paint a whole bunch of snowmen, attempting to do so in the style of each of the artists mentioned in the book. It's been so much fun to work with Amy to make her vision of this book a reality.

Mondrian's Snowman- By Greg Newbold

If you don't like snowmen, we have thrown in a cute hamster to act as museum guide. This book has been a blast so far and also a lot of stress. The timeline for production has been compressed to just over two months painting time. I did all the sketches in early December and then had to bust out a big project that took the better part of a month. I'm scrambling to get all the paintings done and hopefully do them justice. You can't imagine how challenging (and fun) it is to change stylistic gears every painting unless you have attempted it. Switching gears each piece has required a lot of homework. I have studied up on the materials and techniques of each of the artists before painting each piece.

Pollock's Snowman- by Greg Newbold

Some concessions have been made for each piece for practicality or necessity. The time crunch is a factor here. For instance, Jackson Pollock used an oil based house enamel called Duco for his paintings. I opted for  a more affordable and faster drying latex house paint.

O'Keefe's Snowman- by Greg Newbold

Georgia O'Keefe created her works at a monumental scale. Covering so much real estate was not in the cards on this deadline, so I painted my version about fourteen inches high rather than four feet.

Lichtenstein's Snowman- by Greg Newbold

My version of a Roy Lichtenstein snowman was created digitally. I saw no other practical way to create the Ben Day dot patterns by hand and I think the digital version looks adequately passable. The cover and all the little hamster character spots are black Prismacolor drawings. I then scan them into Photoshop and color them using some awesome watercolor Photoshop brushes from Brandon Dorman.

I'm pleased how much these brushes and textures look like hand done watercolor. I continue to be impressed with the increasing pace of digital artists' ability to make pixels look and behave like natural media. Click in the photo to see the texture a little closer. and click Brandon's link above to get your own set. I am now over halfway done with the project but the next few weeks will be a real challenge, as I have a couple of other assignments in the hopper also. I'll post more as I get closer to finishing this.

The book will be released this fall through Tilbury House Publishers, just in time for Picasso's birthday and all your Christmas giving!

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Scuffy in 3X3 Picture Book Annual.

Last week I received the great news that pictures from  my personal project "Scuffy- A Scarecrow's Tale" have been accepted into the 3X3 illustration Annual. I've been trying to get the story published ever since I started the book as part of my MFA project back in 2009.

Finally, a picture book annual that had an unpublished category has come along and I am gratified to finally see at least part of the book in print. There was a snag in the process when I read in the submission guidelines that even unpublished entries needed to be submitted as "published" spreads and include the "cover".

I enlisted the help of friend and fellow artist Val Paul Taylor to give my spread mock ups and cover a nice type treatment. I am super excited with the wonderful type treatment he came up with for the "book". Scuffy is currently being shop by my literary agent, so hopefully I will actually get to finish the book at some point. Fingers crossed!

Butterfly Book-1

Here is the opening two spreads for the butterfly book I just finished. I will post them all in sequence over the next few days. As I showed earlier, these were all sketched out full value and then painted in the computer using Photoshop. I think the hand texture from the drawings combined with the hand done scanned texture adds a real organic and hand done feel to the digital painting. This was a fun project. Stay tuned for the rest of the paintings.

Agent Announcement

After a comprehensive search, I am pleased to announce that I have accepted an offer of representation from Jennifer De Chiara of the Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency. Jennifer will represent my self authored picture book projects to publishers. Since this is a niche I have not yet been able to exploit (having my own picture books published) I am very excited to venture in this direction. Over that last few years as publishing houses consolidated and the imprints became less open to unsolicited manuscripts, it became apparent to me that I needed a literary agent if I was ever to have a hope of getting into the big publishing houses. This opens new doors for me as far as children's books go, but I will continue to represent myself in all other illustration markets outside of picture books as well as in the gallery and fine art markets. The first book that Jennifer will be sending out to publishers will be Scuffy- A Scarecrow's Tale. Long time readers will recall previous posts about this project since I have been working on it on and off for several years. I am excited to finally be getting it in front of publishers and look forward to finding a home for Scuffy. I will keep you updated on any exciting developments as they come along. Hopefully the book will sell quickly an I will be finishing up the paintings for this book in the near future.

Maurice Sendak - 1928-2012

The world lost possibly the most visionary of all picture book artists today with the passing of illustrator and author Maurice Sendak.

Born June 10, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York, Sendak was a sickly child. He spent much of that youth inside drawing and creating. His first published illustrations appeared in 1947 and he continued painting until his death.

Maurice began illustrating books for other authors before breaking out with his own effort with the Caldecott winning "Where The Wild Things Are" in 1963. That classic tale is perhaps the most memorable of his long and storied career and has inspired countless authors and artists to reach for their dreams. I remember being mesmerized by both the the story and pictures.

The simplicity of both the story arc and text are deceptive. The book The Art of Maurice Sendak details the journey that the artist went on in order to create the masterpiece. The seeds for the book were planted as early as 1955 and then underwent drastic changes over dozens of drafts before it crystallized in the form that we know and love today.

Many people were disturbed by the book claiming it was too scary or even that it encouraged defiance of parental authority. In spite of the naysayers, "Wild Things" sold over 700,000 copies in its original hardcover printing. Through 2009, the book has sold over 19,000,000 copies.

Though Sendak went on to write and illustrate over twenty picture books and illustrated over fifty other books, he never quite matched the success that "Where The Wild Things Are" achieved.

This is unfortunate since many of his other books such as "In the Night Kitchen" are every bit as magical and brilliantly crafted.

A posthumous picture book called "My Brother's Book" is scheduled for release next February.

Read an excellent tribute to Sendak in the New York Times here.
Buy Maurice Sendak and the Art of Children's Book Illustration

Swamp Sunset

Swamp Sunset by Greg Newbold- 8" x 16" acrylic

I just got an email today from a mother telling me how much her children loved Spring Song, the book that includes this image. It's really nice to hear from readers and parents of readers since, for me at least, I don't often get that kind of feedback. In part it read:

My children and I enjoyed Spring Song today and I wanted you to know how much we enjoyed your illustrations.  I've seen your work before and should have recognized it...Thank you for sharing such lovely work.

This reaction is one of the main reasons why I enjoy making a book so much. In recent weeks, I have pulled out and revised some manuscripts that I have written and am gearing up to get another book in the pipeline. Finding a publisher is the hard part, so wish me luck.

Moonlight Serenade- 8" x 16" , acrylic

Here's the companion piece to this one. I think I may have posted it before, but couldn't find the link.

I Made the Recycling Bin!

The highlight of my walk the other day (other than chatting with my dear wife) was to come upon a piece of my art in the recycling bin. Some might think this strange, but I was excited to see my painting poking out of the blue can waiting to be dumped and eventually shredded into oblivion. I rescued the box so that I could reenact the moment for this post. So this begs the question-  is Illustration precious? My answer would be NO, nor do I think it should be considered as such. Don't get me wrong, I love having a painting framed and hanging on my wall after the fact , but the nature of illustration creates art that is transitory and temporary. Magazines are read and discarded, newspapers even more quickly than magazines. Paperback novels are rarely read more than once by the same person before being passed along or discarded. Packaging is torn open and tossed, posters and playbills serve their purpose and go the way of everything else in our disposable society. So, to find my art in the recycling bin got me a little giddy. First of all, I had never seen how the box art turned out and second, I was surprised to see that the client was still using my art  ten years after the fact. I admit, that I did not always feel this way about my illustration. I had the mindset that my art WAS precious, that heaven forbid anyone should ever alter or crop my work to fit their needs and worse yet, That someone should create a new piece of art by cobbling together parts of different paintings in some demented artistic Frankenstein experiment.

Part of this painting filled the bottom of the box design

But this is exactly what happened on this project. I had a client in California contact me with a rush job that did not allow time to create new art, but the client loved a mock up that combined the fields of one painting and the lake and mountains of another. Would I be willing to allow use of my work in this altered state? I admit I had a moment of horror followed by a moment of hesitation. How dare anyone ask me to compromise my artistic integrity this way? How could I allow the monstrous grafting together of two of my favorite children's book illustrations? Then I had a pause. The money being offered was decent. More than decent considering that there was no work to be done on my part. I said yes and sent off the scan and the invoice.  I have since decided that this was exactly the sort of thing that illustration should be used for- to decorate or illuminate a moment in our lives. I am proud to know that so many of my pieces of art have served their purpose and, like that yam box, have made their way into a recycling bin. I'd love to see even more of my art poking out of those blue cans on my walk.