The Banned Book Week project
Class project: Do some ad materials for a campaign or business. I picked national Banned Book Week (already over for this year, folks), presented by the American Library Association. I did slightly different designs for a poster, a bookmark and this totebag. I liked this one so much I'm having it actually made into a totebag at Zazzle.So you don't have to squint: Alice is holding "The Adventures

Goodbye, Old Friend
He was a good boy, that Oscar. Suffered many an indignity in his day, at the hands of small children and large dogs and the occasional inconsiderate adult. He bore most of it stoically and kindly. Not your usual aloof cat. He preferred to sort of melt in your arms, or on your lap. And if he was less adventurous than most (his twin brother met an early end playing "chicken" with the cars in our

Would your kid read this book?
Yes, so for one of my illustration classes, we put our childhood selves in an imaginary picture book based on things we liked to do or wanted to be when we were little. I remembered how a neighborhood friend (who, I'll admit, looked nothing like the curly-haired kid in the background here) and I used to teach ourselves walkovers and handsprings and whatnot. We thought we were pretty good. In my

Screaming Fun Comes to an END, bwahhahahah!
Well, children, it is time, at last, for the one-sentence ghost story to come to its conclusion, and I have to say I was torn -- torn, I tell you - by the truly macabre entrees. In the end, I settled on four finalists, all of  whom are deserving of prizes. As were others (and if you didn't win anything this time, please keep entering these contests, because your time will come -- I swear).As

Wolff Spider
At first I was convinced this was a wolf spider. We tend to get 'em out on our woodsy deck about this time of year. I'd seen his/her web develop over the last couple of days, but didn't see the creature itself till I gazed out there in the low afternoon light, when the web was practically glowing.After looking up "wolf spider" on Google, I'm less convinced it's a wolf spider, but since Mr. Wolff