Groundhog Day 2021

According to the Groundhog's prediction this morning, we should expect 6 more weeks of winter. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news!

As you may know, every year I create a Groundhog Day tribute, so here it is for 2021, a year which is so far only slightly better than 2020.

Thanks for looking and sharing- I appreciate it!

There are MANY more Groundhog Day illustrations on this blog.

I have a collection of my favorite Groundhog Day comics on my new comics site: edfrednedcomics.com

Backpack and Messenger Bag Cats

Everyone has a book bag preference...

Here's some of my work in progress:

Below is the (quick) sketch I started out with.

I redrew my sketched cat and made some improvements.

I knew the cat needed a friend, so I added in another one.

I began to add color...

And more color along with fur and some gradations...

Then I did the same for the other cat. After that I brought in a background to complete the piece!

Hate Has a Home Here. Unfortunately.

I love seeing the yard signs around my town espousing love for everyone, rather than the intolerance we see and hear from some of our leaders in Washington D.C. 

This editorial illustration is unfortunately just too real.

If you would like to support Hate Has NO Home Here, you can visit their website and purchase a yard sign, magnet or poster.

Coming Soon: Groundhog Day

Anybody who knows me is well aware of my interest (Or obsession, really) in Groundhog Day. 

In the very early days of my career as an illustrator, I wanted to celebrate a lesser-appreciated holiday to promote my business, so every year, I drew a groundhog illustration, and sent it out into the world. 

In the early days, I simply printed the illustration or cartoon on a postcard and snail-mailed it. These days it gets posted on every social media platform known to man.

Every now and then I find a little extra time to do some one-off sketches leading up to the holiday, and below you'll find one of them. 

For this year's illustration- keep an eye out on February 2!

Thanks for reading and looking! If you want to see my Groundhog Day illustrations from years gone by, click HERE.

Challenges of a Student with Poor Time Management Skills

The first student I illustrated for Engaging Minds is physically and mentally disorganized.

The second student is stressed out and has trouble concentrating. 

The third student (below) has poor planning and time management skills. He has trouble following directions.

Attributes of student 3 include:

• Poor planning and time management skills
• Doesn’t use a planner (s/he says she can just remember things in her head or just find it online)
• S/he doesn’t even really know how to use a planner to begin with so s/he jettisons it
• Doesn’t know how to prioritize
• Doesn’t know how to make lists
• Doesn’t know how to break down tasks into manageable pieces
• Never learned how to effectively plan out long-term assignments
• Doesn’t know how to create an agenda and estimate time on task
• Poor self-monitoring
• Doesn’t read directions
• Doesn’t follow the rubric
• Doesn’t use an assignment book effectively
• Doesn’t follow through on goals and plans

Engaging Minds is a learning and tutoring center in Massachusetts that helps students to enhance their academic engagement, and strengthen executive function and learning skills.

Challenges of a Stressed Out Kid

The first student I illustrated for Engaging Minds is physically and mentally disorganized.

The second student (below) is stressed out and has trouble concentrating. 

The third student has poor planning and time management skills.

The top image was a lot of fun to put together. How often does one get to include a 'poop' emoji in one's art?

Attributes of student 2 include: 

• Stressed out!
• Procrastinates and struggles with task initiation
• Always leaves things for the last minute
• Constantly thinks s/he has more time
• Easily overwhelmed
• Doesn’t know where to begin
• Doesn’t know how to break assignments down into manageable pieces
• Doesn’t have a homework routine
• Can’t focus
• Has a really hard time sitting and doing work for more than 20 minutes at a time
• Constantly daydreaming while reading
• Easily distracted – even by the squirrel out in the front yard
• Inflexible
• Unwilling to try new approaches; stuck in a rut and can’t see another way out
• Has a hard time shifting from one activity to the next
• Doesn’t do well when things don’t go as planned

Trouble focusing:

Procrastinates and struggles with task initiation:

 Inflexible:

Engaging Minds is a learning and tutoring center in Massachusetts that helps students to enhance their academic engagement, and strengthen executive function and learning skills.

Challenges of a Disorganized Student

Engaging Minds is a learning and tutoring center in Massachusetts that helps students to enhance their academic engagement, and strengthen executive function and learning skills.

Dan Levine, President and Founder, was in need of visuals to help convey certain types of students and their challenges in his presentation to parents, and he called on me to create them.

The first student (below) is physically and mentally disorganized.

The second student is stressed out and has trouble concentrating.

The third student has poor planning and time management skills.

Attributes of student 1 include:

• Disorganized
• Physical disorganization
• Messy backpack, messy binders, messy locker, messy bedroom 
• Consequently, s/he can’t find their homework, the book they’re reading for class, or their assignment book. 
• Mental disorganization
• Can’t get ideas out of their head and onto paper, doesn’t know how to take notes, doesn’t effectively prepare for exams, can’t follow multi-step directions.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I'll post the other 2 kids another time.

Cool Shark

Even sharks can have a soft spot.

Groundhog Day 2017

Happy Groundhog Day!
Welcome to another installment of the groundhog's quest to see/not see his shadow!

This year, the illustration is connected to a chapter book I've begun writing. 

In this story, the groundhog has banded together with other buck-toothed creatures of the forest to travel to the Shadowlands and get back his shadow.

I currently have a 200-page manuscript for a middle grade book getting shopped around with my literary agent, Rick Richter of Aevitas Creative Management and I'm excited to see which publishing house picks it up!

There are MANY more Groundhog Day illustrations on this blog.

I have a collection of my favorite Groundhog Day illustrations on Behance.

What My Kid is Reading-The Terrible Two

The Terrible Two
Written by Jory John and Mac Barnett
Illustrated by Kevin Cornell
Age range: 8-12
Released: January, 2013

What's this book about?
Miles is a kid who moves to a new town and meets a boy named Niles. But they don't know that the two of them are pranksters- when they realize this, they build the ultimate prank for April Fool's Day for their school.

Is the prank really great?
Yes! By the power of the cow, they manage to pull off the perfect April Fool's prank.

Um, the power of the cow...?
Miles' principal gave him a book called 1,346 Things You May Or May Not Know About Cows and you need to read the book to figure out why cows are so important.

This sounds like a fun book. Is it really funny?
Yeah, it was full of jokes and pranks you'll never forget.

Is the book illustrated?
There were a couple of illustrations on every few pages and they really helped the story and also made me laugh.

How did they help the story?
They helped the story by showing me what the story means and by giving me more details. It also made the story more fun because the drawings were so playful.

Why did we buy this book?
Because my dad (that's me!) loved the cover of the book (and the inside art!). And the title.

Who would you recommend this book to?
Anyone who wants inspiration for April Fool's Day pranking. Or for anyone who wants the power of the cow (just kidding).

Are you interested in reading book #2?
I already did and I thought it was even better than book #1.

Wow! We'll have to review it sometime!
Sure, why not!

How would you rate this book?
4.7 stars (out of 5)

Thanks Leo!

Buy The Terrible Two from Amazon
More book reviews from Leo

A Girl and Her Horse

I never get to draw horses so for this illustration I put in three. Yay!

This is an interior black and white illustration for a chapter book.

This was loads of fun- I hope you enjoy it as well.

What My Kid is Reading- Fortunately, the Milk

Fortunately, the Milk
Written by Neil Gaiman
Illustrated by Skottie Young
Age range: 8-12
Released: 2013



What's this book about?
It's about what really happens when your dad goes out to buy milk.

He just buys it from the store, right?
Yes. HOWEVER, fortunately the milk helps him on a journey through time and space.

So there's more than just groceries in this story?
Yup. There are also dinosaurs, "Wumpires", volcanoes, aliens and whole lot more but I don't want to ruin the story. Oh, and there is also a time machine and that's how you're able to see the previous list of characters.

I love how one of the main characters gives unusual names to things we know. Wet white hairy crunchers = coconuts. Floaty ball person carrier = hot air balloon. But a button is a button.

Is the book illustrated?
Oh, it has some of the best illustrations I've seen. I love his drawing style- all his lines are messy and he makes the weirdest looking characters possible.

Thinking about the illustrations, who's your favorite character in the book?
I really like the drawings of the Wumpires because their bodies look like rubber being stretched out.

Why did we buy this book?Because you suggested it to me.

Have you ever read anything else by Neil Gaiman?
No. Because most of his books seem to be for older people. Or not as funny.

(I think we'll have to check out some of his other titles so I can prove Leo wrong.)

Who would you recommend this book to?
Anyone would like this book because it has adult humor and kid humor.

Was it easy to understand the time travel aspects or would some kids find it confusing?
It was really easy to follow because they didn't talk about it as time travel- rather more as teleportation (even though it really was time travel).

How would you rate this book?
5 stars (out of 5)

Thanks Leo!

Buy this book from Amazon

More book reviews from Leo

Neil Gaiman Quote poster

Sometimes kids just need to be reminded how much they love to read so I illustrated and hand-lettered this poster and posted it on Etsy.

The quote is by the indefatigable Neil Gaiman, fan favorite writer of books and comic books (such as The Sandman from DC Comics).

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 Here's a detail. Click on the image to enlarge.

You can pick up a print in my Etsy shop.

Snowy Penguin Illustration

To Snow or Not to Snow… that is the penguin. 

A client asked for a winter image to tell her audience about her upcoming music classes. Utilizing the colors from the company's logo (which I also designed) I created the following penguin.

Here's the version I created for GroovyBabyMusic with text in place. She posted this image on Facebook and in an email to her audience.

And here's the logo for the company. Pretty much all of the colors in the illustration are taken from here.

Will Smith from iRobot

Flying back from California the other day flanked by my kids, I couldn't do much more than watch TV (Thank you Jet Blue!) and sketch a (very) little bit. Some Photoshop magic back at home and voilà:

Writing

A recent editorial illustration about the hardships of writing. 

Below is an alternate version for a more vertical space.

Tintin Boat Chase Book Cover/Poster

A client asked me to do a new commission for him to give to his wife for her birthday. Last year I created a Tintin cover for him to give her for Christmas (she was his fiancée then) which took place on Safari in Africa.

This year it was a boat chase off the coast of Italy. They provided me with a few photos from their recent trip and I took it from there. Here's the final art:

It was interesting to me to try to emulate someone as talented as Hergé (Tintin's creator). His draftsmanship is incredible and the amount of detail in every panel is astonishing. What I found surprising was the lack of color shadows. Buildings, for example, seem to be the same color from all sides and yet, through skillful drawing, Hergé was able to make them seem dimensional. Certainly a challenge for an illustrator who adores shades and shadows!

The final art was printed poster-sized and framed for the wall of their home. I also gave him a small image saved for the web so he could share the art with his friends on Facebook.

I tracked my progression from sketch to final and uploaded the work in progress to Behance. Have a look and leave a comment please.

A few images from along the way to pique your interest:

And here's the poster I created for this client last year.

Spanish Text Book Illustrations

or How I Spent my December and January

I recently illustrated the revised edition of a college level Spanish language textbook for Yale University Press. The number of illustrations was approximately 147, ranging from 1/4 pagers to full scenes and even a campus view, and the deadline was EXTREMELY short! While it was taxing rendering such a large number of images in so short a time (can you say tennis elbow?), I'm very proud of every one of them.

Here are a few of my faves from the book:

The authors of the book were hoping that I could update the look of the book and bring consistency as the previous edition had a few different artists, one of whom they were extremely unhappy with. Some comments I received:

"I write to thank you and tell you how pleased I am with the work that you have done on our book. The final colorized art is really great....the content is complete and supports our exercises and other pedagogical needs, and in addition is so very appealing.  Excellent job!!!"

"It has been a real pleasure working with you." 

It's always so nice to know that my efforts are appreciated!

More illustrations to come...

Groundhog Day 2013

Welcome to Groundhog's Day! Again. Feels like it was only yesterday that the groundhog last checked the weather for us. This year Phil has a positive outlook, regardless of what he does or doesn't see when he climbs out of his hole. And what he saw was: No Shadow! That means it'll be an early spring!

For 2013, I decided to create 2 illustrations so I'd be ready for whatever the outcome. The alternate version is below.

You can check out a bunch more Groundhog Day illustrations on this blog by clicking HERE.

Oh- and go watch the movie!

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I’ve been doing a lot of character development lately and from time to time I’ll be displaying on my blog new designs. Sometimes they’ll be black and white and sketchy and other times full color and finished. If you want to see more from this series, just click the “characters”, tag at the bottom of this post. You can also see a collection of characters in my Behance portfolio or on my website.

My New Book- Dogopotamus

Resting after chasing a squirrel around the neighborhood.

I'm going to be visiting a local elementary school soon to talk about my new book Dogopotamus: The Most Awesomest Pet Ever. Maybe. and I thought I'd post a few more images from the book.

Petimals is a series of books written by Michael Andrew Fox wherein the main character is on a quest to find the perfect unique pet. In Dogopotamus, as you must have guessed by now, he chooses to meld a dog with a hippopotamus and, naturally, all heck breaks loose. Of course a lot of fun ensues as well, but suffice to say the neighborhood squirrels will not be climbing any trees anywhere near Coby's yard for years to come.

Below are some images from the book.

I also posted more works in progress at Behance where you can watch as the illustrations go from thumbnail sketch to slightly more refined sketch all the way through to the finished piece. 

You can see those works in progress here.

The book is available on Amazon here. It's a really fun read!

Coby tells his mom what kind of pet he wants and his brother's turtles quickly retreat into their shells.

Dogopotamuses should not be taking the stairs.

Coby draws his vision for the perfect pet.

Thanks for looking!