Highlights Hidden Pictures Spring Cover

Can you find the bumble bee hidden in this illustration? What about the duck? The frog? The butterfly? The rabbit? And the turtle? The turtle is a real tough one…

Scott and Wendy: Hidden Pictures addicts.

It takes a keen eye to find Hidden Pictures, but trust me, it takes an even keener eye to draw them! That's why I'm grateful to my optometrist, Sheila M. White, for setting me up with some stylish drawing glasses. I stopped by The Eyeglass Shop recently to give them a copy of the Spring Highlights Hidden Pictures, which features this illustration on the cover.  

The folks at the shop are long-time fans of Highlights, and Hidden Pictures in particular. They actually have contests to see who can find all the hidden objects first! I was proud to supply them with a Hidden Pictures puzzle of my own, and I thank them for keeping my drawing eyes in decent shape.

The Spring Highlights Hidden Pictures is in stores now through May 22nd!

Preliminary sketches.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! I created this leprechaun for a group mailing my agent, Portfolio Solutions, put together. Each artist had to illustrate a leprechaun with a pot of gold and a rainbow.  I first tried to make the leprechaun look like he was hot tubbing in his pot of gold, but he just looked naked – and creepy. See sketch below…

Sorta like a white-trash leprechaun.

I experimented a bit with this project: there's a lot more texture than I usually use and the leprechaun is more cartoony and stylized. I think it's fun – and a style I want to explore.

And why the snake? I don't know. I think I was going for irony but, really, it's inexplicable.

If this is what's waiting for me at the end of rainbow, I'm not interested.

Prehistoric Poultry

I illustrated this crazy dinosaur for Highlights Magazine (March 2012). Gigantoraptor was sorta like a big turkey – it stood 12 feet tall! More Gigantoraptor facts (and loads of additional Fun with a Purpose) in the March 2012 issue.