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.
