It was a warm and gorgeous weekend in Central Massachusetts. It was a perfect weekend to take a field trip to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art to see the Mary Blair exhibit before it came down on Sunday. It was so inspiring to see her working color sketches and finished illustrations. I took her strong, simple and good design approach in and reminded myself to keep it simple in my own work. My favorite quote of hers on the wall: "I had three jobs. Raising children, keeping house, and making my art work." - Mary Blair

Seeing Mary Blairs work as well as the Uri Shulovitz animated film of his beautiful book, "Snow" as well as just being in the presence of all the great illustrator's work really helped me take a  breath and get ready to knock my next big project out of the park: Gracie Brave.

working color sketch for front cover of first Gracie Brave book 

working color sketch (left side) of wrap around front cover of first Gracie Brave book. 

worked on some illustration icons or "bling" that will be used to add interest and fun to the illustrations in the Gracie Brave book. I did these in gouache, colored pencil and experimented with adding pastel pencil on top of the gouache which I liked the result of.