Fully Booked by Genn Pardoe now available!

My fabulous friend Genn Pardoe just published her first novel, Fully Booked (available here) – and I illustrated and designed the cover! So proud of Genny for getting it DONE!! It’s a fun read AND (bonus!) Genn is donating 10% of sales to two not-for-profit organizations associated with therapy dogs. The first is in support of pups who proudly serve Canadian veterans and the second supports Massuchusetts SPCA. 

Happy summer surfer gals

Aloha! Hey, I’m pretty sure this is the first day of summer. Is it? Yippee! Summer is my 2nd favourite season, and I do love it SO much, especially hanging out at the beach. One day I’ll learn how to surf, but so far I’m only a surfer gal in my mind. To celebrate, I did up not one but TWO illustrations of surfer girls. I’ll probably do a third at some point. Also I’ll have prints of these available in my Etsy shop probably in early July. So here’re the gals, happy and sunny and scanning the horizon for choice waves, and a cute shack with some fun graffiti in Rainy Bay, photo from In the Moment on tumblr, a great beachy blog. Happy Summer!

Gorillas with a twist

You know the old, fairly obnoxious joke: Where does an 800 lb gorilla sleep? Anywhere it wants to! Turns out, not really. A few weeks back I illustrated a really cute story by Pamela Love for Humpty Dumpty magazine, Little Gorilla Makes His Bed, which shows all the lengths this grumpy little gorilla goes to, to find a place to sleep. This was a super fun assignment, and I love how it turned out. Read the story online here, or check out the illustrations below. 

If you want a real critique of how truly dumb that joke is, Christopher Peterson’s article in Psychology Today has a few beefs with it. 

And on a really positive note, how amazing is it that gorillas can learn sign language and create artwork – both to communicate with humans and, it seems, for personal fulfilment – check out the artwork of Koko and Peter here.