Housing market

An editorial piece I completed a few days ago about the housing market and how every house that gets sold is another step out of the recession hole. This could either be a broker or a buyer proudly displaying the house that has just sold.

So everyone, go do your part and buy a house. Or a cup of coffee...

What we read this week

In honor of Children's Book Week, here is a collage of most of the books my wife and I read with our 3 1/2 year old son this past week. By Leo's decree, some books must be read every night (until he gets a new favorite) while others make the occasional appearance, cycling in and out.

The Fish Who Cried Wolf is a favorite book, beautifully illustrated and very engagingly written, but with what is easily the worst name. The original story (The Boy Who Cried Wolf) behind the name doesn't even strictly connect to this story and makes the book seem like just another carbon copy, but it is actually very originally written.

My Truck is Stuck is also nicely written with rhymes you can't get out of your head. Leo is now able to 'read' this book by himself because it flows so cleanly. Lots to see in the artwork.

Free Comic Book Day this year got my son stuck on Pixar's Cars and The Incredibles (which was a back-up feature to Cars). Cars was good and somewhat easy to follow (although he didn't get any of the irony which was a bit too subtle) but The Incredibles (written by the VERY talented Mark Waid) was a little too dense for Leo's age. When we read this one, we basically have to paraphrase the character development pages to keep him interested until the action starts again. Once there's jumping and running again (not much hitting), he loves it!

The last one I want to mention (among all of these great books) is Robert Munsch's Purple, Green and Yellow. Last night was my first time reading this book and I loved it! Although the drawing style is a little dated, the use of color was very appealing and nice to look at. And the story! Munsch has a way of packing so much into one story without overwhelming the reader. This short story could be turned into a movie adaptation making use of the interesting twists/occurrences in the book.

Now, I have to get back to drawing my own children's books!

2 (Cool) Old Guys

I decided to put myself through an exercise today: Design a poster that makes these old guys cool.

My motivation was to keep things fresh while also updating my website (this will go in the 'design' section under 'posters'). Yeah, I used some popular conventions in the design (the style of the photo, edgy type) but I hope you will agree that I made the design my own with the concept.

First, I decided that these guys should be in a band, and what better name for a band than going with exactly what they are? It helps that they are dressed hip (certainly better than I was dressed when I shot the photo in Boston. I recall a pair of flip flops.). Then I gave them a venue and a couple of performance dates. (If you took a few minutes to Google the venue you would find out that it's an assisted living community where the median age is 80. Just having fun!)

I considered putting something about the type of music they play but decided against it- leaving this out suggests that if you were cool you would already know what they play.

Wolverine's secret identity...

In honor of the new Wolverine movie, I was sketching the other day in my book and started playing with the idea: What if Wolverine had a secret identity (old-school style)? So I pretended that he's a normal-looking guy (with glasses and all) with a 9 to 5 as a real estate broker or a lawyer and when he hears the scream of a mugging victim he transforms, Hulk-style, into the feral, hirsute Wolverine!

My favorite part: The familiar 'SNIKT!" that you hear when he pops his claws also occurs when his sideburns pop out.

Oh, and those forehead lines are inspired by Art Adams (for those of you who remember his kick-ass Wolverine from The Asgardian Wars).

Hope you enjoy this make-fun piece...