Adams Street

Valentine

Squirrel brush work

Winter outside, Spring inside

Studio move to the Arts at the Armory in Somerville

This weekend I'm moving the studio to the Arts at the Armory building in Somerville, MA. It's a community art center that hosts a wide range of visual, music, theater and dance events. There are a number of working artists and organizations housed within the armory, as well as a cafe and large performance hall. I'm thrilled to be getting the studio set up and enagaging with the rich community of people who work and visit there.

The Sketchbook of Susan Kare

The Sketchbook of Susan Kare

Kare’s work gave the Mac a visual lexicon that was universally inviting and intuitive. Instead of thinking of each image as a tiny illustration of a real object, she aimed to design icons that were as instantly comprehensible as traffic signs.

Happy 4th of July!

Doodle: Gather

White squirrel

I was thinking about the white squirrel we see in our neighborhood from time to time. This was a sketch to test some custom photoshop brushes made from scans of wax crayon on paper.

Brush work in progress

View from the studio

Summer

Signs of summer

I'm on instagram as timjonesillustration http://instagr.am/p/FoflV/

Brush drawing

I've been working on a small group of portraits drawn only with a brush. Here's one from last week.

Allyn Johnston on Why We're Still in Love with Picture Books

Allyn Johnston and Marla Frazee from The Horn Book:

We’re clearly not alone in believing that sharing traditional picture books with children is one of the best ways to grow them up. If a child’s life is filled with picture books, read aloud from birth, he or she will be better able to process the complexities in the world, read with deep understanding, and emotionally connect with themselves and with others. And the adults in their lives will grow right along with them.

Sword and Sworcery, and a memory

Have you discovered Sword and Sworcery? It’s a game for iPad, wrapped in an immersive audio-visual art experience. Although it evokes games of pixel-past, it feels new. There are rich, untamed landscapes and careful color choices made throughout. Such care is given to the lighting, and subtle rustling sounds have an emotional impact as you move around. And the music? Just incredible. There are a number of good reviews written for the game, so I won’t go into great detail, but beyond a certain nostalgia it evoked I did want to highlight a specific memory.  If you are of a certain era and ever had the chance to play Pitfall II from Atari, you might have found there was a hidden level built into it. At the time it was a thrilling discovery--a doorway into a new world within the game. I may have reached it once or twice, but as sometimes happens, our controllers broke. There was no eBay or Amazon to easily replace the controllers so the game console languished, moved to the attic and eventually disappeared. This lost place was never to be visited again. But as with all art that has an impact, it stays with you. Entering sword & sworcery was like teleportation. I felt as if I was back inside the additional Pitfall level, except it had evolved while I was gone and now there was wind, and music and humor.

I played for a few minutes longer with my 5 year old. As I was figuring out the game I asked her to help me decide what to do and where to go next. Within moments she would only speak in whispers as we tried to find the tome and tame the dark wolf in our path. The careful combination of story, sound and image, I think, allowed her to be so fully engaged. 

This kind of gaming experience reminds me that the meta-realities we create though our art are real. They are places that we go, leave and come back to. They act not merely as brief escapes, but as appurtenances to our real lives.

Cambridge Friends School Music Festival

 

This weekend is the Cambridge Friends School Music Festival. If you live near Cambridge MA and are looking for a fun, family event, this is it! You can learn more and get tickets here:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=220918977924676

Making the Art of I See I Learn

I've added an overview page to the site of all the work done to create the art for the I See I Learn series, from author Stuart J. Murphy and Charlesbridge. See it in Current Work.

Snow Day!

No school today, so why not make some art and share it!

I'll be at Book Expo America on Wednesday

I'll be heading down to BEA 2010 on Wednesday. For the past year and a half we've been developing the look and illustrations for the I See I Learn series with the wonderful folks at Charlesbridge. You can find all about the series at their booth.

Renée Kurilla is the character designer, I create the thumbnails and sketches, and then we both work on the book illustrations. Read more about the first four titles over at author Stuart Murphy's blog.

I'm looking forward to seeing a few people and enjoying the day in the city. Hope to see you there!