How To Write A Picture Book

Check out the great link about writing a picture book. Thanks Jenny Kostecki for sharing this. This is a broad overview but really helpful advice. Enjoy~

http://www.buzzfeed.com/books

Collaboration for "Jemmy Button"

Check out this incredible collaboration between Jen Uman and Valerio Vidali for their gorgeous book "Jemmy Button". Read about how they did it on this post.
http://www.coolhunting.com/culture/jemmy-button-jen-uman-valerio-vidali.php#more 

A collection of dogs

I finally complied an illustration which features a bunch of my dog studies. I did two versions, one with names of some my dog friends and one with out. I sketched my dog buddies at Sugar Pond, at the Rumsford Dog park and the "Flaca Vaca" farm (plus a few other dog friends from my neighborhood). I treasure my walks around the pond in the mornings. I've made some great friends on those walks, both human and canine. Thank you Sugar pond friends (you know who you are), for the years of great conversations and comfort to just be myself. Also a shout out to Paco, Heidi and Tyler...my favorite crew in Stamford NY. (Click on the image to see it close up)
Here's the link to buy a print/bag/mug: http://society6.com/mariacarluccio/I-love-Dogs-23a_Print#1=45

Familiar faces

I thought I'd post a few faces. I did these for history of illustration class. We had to pick 4 famous people to illustrate (I choose famous artists) and you had to mimic the style of 4 famous illustrator. Maybe you can guess these two? These were my favorites.
I'm adding a version I did in color...playing digitally...

Happy

If you need a little pick me up just watch this video. It's hard not to feel good watching it.
You can watch the whole 24 hours of happy or just the short video too, It's really worth checkin out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6Sxv-sUYtM
24hoursofhappy.com/‎

Egrets

I was walking my dog by the pond recently. I had my sketch pad with me, I’ve been drawing dogs as you can see in an older post. I began to draw my dog who was looking at a few ducks. My sketches weren’t working, I was getting a bit frustrated so I began to walk away. Then for some reason I turned around to see where my dog was and when I did I saw a huge egret about 10 feet from me. I had not seen it there at all but it must have been there the whole time. I was all geared up to draw so I began to sketch the egret. I was mesmerized and it felt magical to be able to capture it through my drawing that day. After the egret  took off I thought how I feel some kind of connections to egrets. Years earlier I had seen one and it sparked me to start my blog “Beautiful truths” (http://mybeautifultruths.blogspot.com/). 

Two days after I sketched the egret at the pond I got a request form Cricket magazine to illustrate a poem called “the Secret Egret”. It was about an egret spotted by a busy highway.
Here’s some of my egret and duck sketches. The final piece at the bottom is what I ended up doing for Cricket…kind of an experiment for me.

Thank you egret, one of my many muses.