More about me …

Making art brings me joy. I love to sketch inky images and illustrate children’s books.📚 My latest picture book is Chick Chat 🐥💬 (2021). My next book is Sloth Is Not a Baby! 🦥🚫👶🏻 by Nelly Buchet, illustrated by me, which will publish in early 2024!

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I love creating visual stories (and characters) with heart ❤️ and humor 🤣 that readers can relate to emotionally—whether it’s over the span of a 32-page picture book or through a single illustration.

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For drawing ✏️ I work almost all digitally, using an art tablet and stylus with my computer 💻 or with an Apple Pencil on an iPad. For color work 🎨 I usually combine digital drawing, inking, and painting with traditional watercolor and other natural media.

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As a kid, I was curious, creative, determined, and very chatty 💬—just like Baby Chick. 🐥 I was always ready for an adventure, whether real or imagined, and so is Baby Chick!

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Here’s my first-grade school 🚌 photo. My six-year-old self was chatting while having my first picture taken at school! Hair a bit messy, a funny expression, and my arms crossed—that was me. 

 

Being the youngest child, I entertained myself quite a bit when not playing with neighbor friends. 😳 I made up crafts for myself, usually making something out of something else (like a robot 🤖 from cardboard oatmeal containers, cardboard boxes 📦, aluminum foil, and tape, lots of tape).

 

I grew up in a suburb of Dallas, but spent quite a bit of time in East Texas on my grandparents’ farm or my family’s 80 acres.🐄 Poking around in creeks and back pastures, I was always bringing home some new, non-human “friend.” 🐸

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I’ve been asked if I have a yard full of chickens. 🐓 I don’t, but I wish I did! I grew up around chickens on relatives’ farms, and my parents kept a coop of “chicken girls” that my sister and I gave to  them after they retired to their East Texas farm 🚜. I loved gathering eggs, 🥚especially the aqua-colored Ameraucana eggs.

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I now live in a cozy, 100-year-old house 🏠 in Michigan, USA 🇺🇸 and spend time in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Europe 🇫🇷 whenever possible.