Friday, February 23, 2007

new Moonpowder painting and detail



Here is the latest Moonpowder painting. It was fun creating this room for my little hero. The lighting is something that is important to the mood of the scene, and it took me a bit of time to get it right. I am not sure it totally works just yet, but it is close, and I will adjust the colors of all the paintings once they are all complete.
On another exciting note, I have been invited as a special guest to speak at the April meeting of the Children's Book Librarians of Los Angeles. I will have twenty minutes to speak about my work and I am thrilled about this opportunity. I moved from L.A. to NYC with the intention of creating children's books, and now I get to return to L.A. as a published author!
I have also been invited to do a book signing at the infamous children's bookstore, Hicklebees, in San Jose on April 25th.

2 comments:

Ben Hodson said...

I saw your painting at the SCBWI in NY and was surprised how small it was for the amount of detail. How large are these paintings and how do you decide upon the final size? Time and/or scanning constraints play a role?

John Rocco said...

Hi Ben,
The paintings for this book are actually done a bit smaller than how they will be printed in the book, about 90% size. The book itself will be 11"x10" so when it is opened up it will be 11x20. I think the paintings are around 10x18". I have a small scanner so I either scan it in pieces OR I have my publisher scan it in for me. Time also plays a role. I usually need to finish at least one painting a week, so this is a size that I can comfortably get that done. Thanks for the question.