The Halloween Costumes!

October was a little LESS SPOOKY for me this year. It was my first attempt at entering the online Fray of daily art posting. I did not post everyday. I just can’t. How can all of the other artists?!? I always have 16 places to be and 25 things to do. I did do it pretty regularly tho and it felt good. I did not avail myself of the prompt-a-palooza that is Inktober to Mabgraves… to Drawlloween … it’s all great stuff..I just had to go where my brain took me. I just remembered the costumes I wore and how they felt at the timed how I felt when I wore them. It was fun. I drew from memory not photos but dug up a few of the pics to see how close I captured reality from memory. I hope in Dec to do something for the Holidaze.

I had 6 surgeries on my drawing hand from 2016- 2017. It took 2 years after that to work my way through nerve damage and all kinds of drawing mishegoss. Drawing every day is the best thing for it. It’s been a journey. Isn’t that just the way?

First Halloween Costume I remember. My Mom told me it was blue, not pink. Makes sense. Hand me down from older brother. The whole home movie, I struggle to not fall backwards or forwards with the giant noggin and ears. Luckily my butt was heavily padded between diaper and pom pom tail.

I am terrified of clowns. Here I am terrified by myself.

My little cousin Heather cried the whole time we Trick or Treated. It severely impacted the candy haul.

Pilgrim with a coat on, I know, I know, it’s serious. That twirly black dress would make a comeback.

So much better as a witch! With my first Kitty (familiar), Tinkerbelle.

1977. Everyone was Process Leia. I was Peter Pan with a Dorothy Hamill haircut. Oh the humanity.

1978 - Grease was the word!!! I didn’t have a pink satin jacket to be a Pink Lady.. so I wore my blue one. It was the first time we made a costume out of what we had.. my saddle shoes, jeans, my roller skating jacket, a leotard and Mom’s old scarf.

The last year of my parent’s Diner in Manasquan , NJ. Sometimes, kids’ families have businesses and holidays fall on work days. It was still fun! “ALICE” was on TV and I got to say “Kiss MY Grits” to everyone!

The last year of the Jersey Shore.. racing out of childhood. Xanadu was the movie and roller skating was everything. I learned to make ribbon barrettes and do my hair like Olivia Newton John. I just wore my dance clothes with my skates and all of the band aids on my knees.

11,12,13.. Middle School. I was unhappy. We had moved. I loved to dress up and it was not such a big deal up north in NJ. I clowned around in 6th, was channeling my inner artiste in 7th and went back to the 50’s in 8th grade. I did discover red lipstick and hot rollers!!

Let me know some of your favorite costumes from your childhood !!

Be a JukeBox Hero …in the Studio

When I was 4, my Dad would have me stand on his feet and help me lean over and into our 1967 Zenith console record player. He would have just asked me to pick out an album from the shelf.. (50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong OR My Mary Poppins movie soundtrack with illustrated cover design.. were my “go-to” choices) and then Dad would patiently instruct me on how to gently lift the arm from the bottom and “slowly..slowwwwllyyyyyyyy……SLOWLY!”..place the needle on the outside grooves of the record.

The very first needle drops of the soundtrack to my life started in that wood paneled, Elizabeth, New Jersey living room. I went and sat on the orange bouclé sofa behind the glass topped boomerang coffee table to draw on the yellow legal pads Dad would bring home from work.

From records to eight tracks to cassettes to CDs to Napster to iPods to playlist.com alongside Blogger to Spotify, the 50 years of my life can be rewound to a song and a moment that corresponds to it. Music is essential. I NEED music. I feel it, physically. I need it to motivate me to get up, to shower, to clean, to cook, to calm down, to rev-up, to go for a walk, to spin on a bike and most importantly? I NEED music, to draw.

Some people have prayer to get them through the night. (I now am singing John Lennon’s .. “WHATEVER GETS YOU THROUGH THE NIGHT, IT’S ALRIGHT, IT’S ALRIGHT” ) - I have music. I have lyrics instead of Our Fathers and Glory Be’s and I have back up singers Show-dope-and Showby-dohing and Ramma Lamma Ding Donging away like Pentecostals speaking in tongues. I sing out loud and I am moved to stand up sometimes in the studio as if there was a pew underneath me to rise off of.

Dad and Mom at their engagement party.

I got the music in me. Thanks to my Dad.

SO, When I get a book idea in my noggin, pretty early on, I make a playlist. Do You?

I wonder how many creators do this. I’m curious. Let me know in the comments. Share with me your playlists!

I will add other playlists from other book ideas or trips or moments when I can not get my BUTT to move!

I have written a picture book / love letter to my Dad, who I lost in 2016. I grew up from the age of 5 to 11, in my parents’ Diner in Manasquan, N.J.. Just a Skee-ball roll away from Asbury park. It was a childhood that looked different from many other kid’s but I loved life at the Diner. I loved the kitchen and dinging the bell and the aprons and the chocolate milk machine and all of the different plates and bowls, each for very specific foods. The chores at the Diner that were mine did not feel like work. I would fill the napkin holders, the straw holders, the salt and pepper shakers and put down the place mats. Sometimes, Dad would let me fill the squeezy bottles of ketchup and mustard (messy) and I roller skated the delivery orders to the shop owners close by. For all of this .. I got TIPS. Dimes and quarters that added up to a whole lot of Pin Ball and Space Invaders. BUT I didn’t have to spend my hard earned, cold hard cash IN the DINER Jukebox. Dad had a jar next to the cash register where he threw change through out the day, so I could drop that magic metal into the slot and punch in those LIT UP letters and numbers. I DJ’d the Diner in 1977 when Dancing Queen was Abba’s new single and when Meat Loaf was not just on the menu but was..like a Bat Outta Hell and gone to the morning comes.

Thumbnail from my Diner book. Kelly Light

So I made a playlist of the years we had the Diner before I started to write and thumbnail. I put the music on loud and I sang and I cried and I spent two weeks with my Dad while I wrote this book. I hope it gets published. It could not be a bigger piece of my heart , so take it.. take another little piece.. well, you get it.

Thumbnail from my Diner book. Kelly Light

Here is that playlist on Spotify. I hope you enjoy it as much as a side order of gravy fries. Ding! Order up!

Starting Over

Hi There! It’s Kelly. I know! I KNOW! It has been a WHILE.

Let’s just say... I took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and a left at Pismo beach... and a huge detour from my journey in Children’s Publishing.

But I am back.

No one plans to have to start over, but I have to. So here I am, writing a blog post and doing just that. My Website has had a make-under. Thank you to my kid and web designer, Jace Bee. Less of the past makes room for more of the future. I hope to add new art and new ideas and new books soon.

For those of you who LOVE LOUISE? I love her too. She’s still around here but I am not sure if she will ever appear in another book. One can hope. 

Hope. That is the fuel for life, right? We hope and we dream and we find ourselves up against challenges. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes? We have to start over.

To start over, I decided to teach. A lot. I’ve taught at The Highlights Foundation and The Illustration Department. I teach in a very personal way. I give every student, only 5 at a time, a lot of individual attention. Their art changes in our month together. They get better and I get happy! Nothing makes me happier than geeking out over drawing! Teaching has helped me regain confidence in my knowledge and passion about drawing, especially drawing cartoons. Out of that, I found myself spending time looking around at old ideas and different new ideas… and that? Always leads me to a doodle. 

Jace was teaching me Procreate on my new Ipad and I was trying out brushes... I just was looping and scribbling to see how they worked. I had scribbled all over the screen and in those scribbles, I saw Doodle.

Doodle was a spontaneous creation. The best art surprise ever! Sometimes I have to search for a character, drawing over and over again until I meet them. Doodle yelled at me to throw all of my doubts away and just KEEP DOODLING! That same week, my pal Dave Roman asked if I would like to try a web comic and I said yes.. and then I sent him Doodle and asked “Do you think this is something?” He said yes... and I had to make Doodle a world to exist in.

I went to my studio and started to think not about what to draw… but about things I loved as a kid. Lenticular books! Sid and Marty Kroft! Time for Timer! Simon in the Land of the Chalk Drawings! Harold and the purple Crayon! School House Rock! Stop Motion ANYTHING! - I just made stuff. I started thinking about how when I was a kid.. I just made things from other things. I used to love my Barbie Dolls... and I would make them cereal boxes out of SunMaid Raisin boxes, complete with drawings and colored flakes inside. I turned a Dynamints box into a fish tanks, with cut out fish, scotch taped onto the clear plastic. I made the Barbies beds out of a shoebox, Lid for headboard, cut up an old sheet and use markers to make a pattern for bedding. 

I started making stuff… and Doodle suddenly had a handmade world to live in… and it could be ANYTHING I imagine! Doodle is a doodle. Doodle can walk by trees of Broccoli or take a bath in a tea cup. ANYTHING is possible when you doodle. While doing all of this? I mushed my kneaded eraser in my hand. A habit I always have done. Making it into shapes and animals and aliens. Suddenly... Doodle needed a sidekick.

Sir was born.

8 comic strips later with the wonderful folks at Sunday HA HA… I have the beginnings of a new book idea. 

SO... Starting over? Can be fun. You just have to… Doodle.