Third in the series.

Previously:

Get Bent Bezos Elephant

Don’t Buy Stuff Coyote

Companion piece to my Don’t Buy Stuff Coyote. I’m late to post this for the Amazon blackout that happened this week, but it’s never too late to not shop at Amazon. I have two more posters planned for No Nestlé Week (March 21-28) and No Walmart Week (April 1-14). I’ll do my best to get those up before the actual blackouts happen.

update: I think I like this drawing better with a darker background.

You must have seen the “don’t buy stuff” bunny by now. If you haven’t, you’ll find it here. It’s a great call to action, an invitation to participate in the February 28th Economic Blackout, AND it’s just a really good graphic. I liked it enough that I wanted to make my own version. So, here’s the “Keep Don’t Buying Stuff” coyote.

After I drew it, I found out there’s a series of economic blackouts planned which is awesome because a) these are good things and b) I want to make more animal posters. Look for the “Get Bent, Bezos” elephant coming next week.

For some reason, whenever I think of picture books from my early school days it’s always this one that pops into my mind.

This is despite the fact that to this day I haven’t read it (grimace face). That’s not intended as any kind of insult, it would have been nearly impossible for anyone to compete with Sylvester and the Magic Pebble or Herman the Helper, but the fact is FOOL OF THE WORLD is just one of “those” books. Landmark.

A Shulevitz book I have read, for years off and on, is his Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children’s Books. I used to get it from the Vancouver Public Library and flip through it, mostly enjoying it for all the illustrations (from popular artists of the time, including Steig and Aruego, as well as Shulevitz himself). These days, I like it for two main reasons: first, it’s full of really good advice on how to be a mindful creator.

Draw Boldly: Think, meditate, or debate in your mind as long as you wish on what and how you are going to draw, but once you take the plunge, draw resolutely.

I really like that line. He also has a good one about picture books being like theater. A common enough point of view, but Shulevitz says it in his simultaneously eloquent and matter-of-fact way.

Second, WRITING WITH PICTURES is a product of the era of when illustrators were ‘tradespeople’. There’s a big section on color separations and how to prepare your art for maximum fidelity. So much of this process is antiquated, but the book reminds us how much science and math used to go into art making. It’s a great historical record.

In follow-up to my process post, here’s a list (downloaded from Twitter a few years back) of Adobe software alternatives separated by category (photo, vector, prepress, layout, animation etc). I can vouch for Clip Studio Paint (in place of Photoshop), Affinity Publisher (in place of InDesign), and Olive (in place of Premiere). Making the switch to Clip Studio Paint and Affinity Publisher was pretty smooth. Olive had a much steeper learning curve but how often do you get to learn new things?

I was driving along a frontage road and passed under one of those electronic billboards that rotate through a number of advertisements and affirmations. As I went by, it flashed a message that felt connected to a work I just sent to my agent so I pulled a quick U-turn to take a picture of it.

This thought is often on my mind (see: Invisible Things), but it has been forefront since earlier this month when I wrote about the necessity for increasingly imaginative works in kids media as an antidote to the fast, cheap and out of control content social media offers. Anyway, now I’ve put those thoughts in a story and boy do I hope to share that with kids soon.

Anyway, another thing that has been on my mind is blogging. As of writing this, I have blogged every day (but one) in January. I opened with my 2025 affirmations post, and it felt fitting as I sat double-parked, waiting for the billboard to cycle through its various ads before returning to THOUGHTS BECOME THINGS, that I would be treated to a number of affirmations. Here’s a sampling:

They are all lovely messages, but that last one felt really specific to me. When I finally did turn around, I was, in fact, only a few blocks away from an honest to goodness multi-warehouse rummage sale. I parked my car, paid my seven dollars admission fee, went in, and almost immediately realized I was supposed to be somewhere else (d’oh!). I did have about fifteen minutes to spare before my next appointment so I did a quick dive through the kids books section and came away with 12 new (old) books. Enough fodder for more blogging.

See you in February.

Fuse Eight n’ Kate have done it again with another great episode. There’s a lot of good humor, so much I worry there might have been a gas leak in the studio, but also a good deal of inspiration. So much that I’m inspired to write about one of two things. Either: 1) my unfortunate history of working in graphite where I made a piece so successful, it was stolen from me or 2) a deep dive (no pun intended) into which animals can or cannot swim, via this paper by zoologist and natural historian Darren “@tetzoo” Naish.

I’m also tempted to dig into my collection of folktales and see if I can track down some version of this Jumping Mouse story.

All these decisions and distractions are a clear sign that I should probably be working on a revision I’ve been putting off so I’m going to hit publish and come back to one of these ideas later. If you want to have a say in which topic I pick, you can click on one of these buttons. It won’t do anything, but everybody loves buttons.

I’ve decided the last Monday of the month is going to be Zine Monday here at the blog. Every Monday going forward, I’m going to showcase a favorite zine from my collection. First up is this extremely limited edition Simpsons zine by a young person named Tilly (via @zinetent).

It’s a gallery of Simpsons characters rendered in a combination of finger painting, marker and stickers. Here’s Homer. His mouth is stamped by, I think, a closed fist:

Marge is a foot.

Bart is also a foot. Maggie and Lisa are open hands.

There’s the usual gang of suspects, Sideshow Bob, Krusty, Mr. Burns… each as delightful as the last.

The zine has a dustjacket made out of yellow construction paper.

Okay. It’s quirky, it’s cute and all that but it’s a remarkably successful example of form matching content. There’s just something so perfect going on here with the subject, the media, and the physical object itself. It’s not so gritty as some of my other favorite zines (that grittiness being almost a requirement to rank in my favorites), but it is loaded with handmade charm and that puts it way up there in my collection.

Well done, Tilly!

From my YouTube just now:

lol, definitely one of the greatest birthday cards I’ve ever received.