Commissioned Pieces for the Holidays

I'm doing commissioned illustrations again this year at a flat rate of $99. Will draw anything you like, but I specialize in animals and pets and christmas cheer. Email adam.mcheffey@gmail.com to get started. To give me enough time to draw and you enough time to print, please have all orders in by Thanksgiving.

Specializing in...

Pets

Hojo the Christmas Pup - Commissioned Pet illustration

Other Animals

Cardinal Watercolor and Pencil

And anything else you can think up.

Little Shop of Demos - Plant with Ukulele 

Donald Trump Hair

For fun. Done with Sketches app for iPad.

Release Day!

It's not everyday that you have your book published! I'm so pleased to announce that "Rudy and Claude Splash Into Art" is now available in bookstores around the country as well as on Amazon. 

If you've had a chance to flip through the pages and would like to leave a review on Amazon, your feedback would be most appreciated!

Thanks everyone for your support so far! It's been so great sharing the progress of this book with you guys, and I'm so happy with this journey so far.

-A

TBT - If Rudy Was A Snake

I was going through some old drawings today when I found this:

It struck me that the original concept for my latest picture book, "Rudy and Claude Splash Into Art" actually featured a snake, not a rat, as its main character. It wasn't until I started drafting the images for the story that I realized I needed a change; I think that a rat, with its hands and feet, gave me way more options in the way of positioning Rudy and having him interact with Claude and the other props in the images.

Still though, this snake definitely would have been fun-- slipping and sliding around in the paint.

Rudy and Claude Out Next Week!

I'm so pleased to announce that just one week from today, on September 16, 2014, my second children's picture book, "Rudy and Claude Splash Into Art" will hit shelves!

Here's Rudy, he's the inquisitive protagonist from "Splash Into Art." We've gotten to know each other really well over the past year, and I admit that I see a lot of myself in him:

And here's Claude. the know-it-all pigeon that helps Rudy discover his voice as an artist:

As you'll come to learn, Rudy has a tough time wrapping his head around the whole art thing. But that doesn't stop him from being the most determined mouse around. 

Stay in touch for more updates! I promise to post more. For anyone interested, the pre-order for the book can be found here.

My First Religious Illustrations

Just received a few advance copies of a work book I did for the Syriac Orthadox Church: a tool for them to use in their 4th grade religion classes. I wasn't sure how I felt about doing illustrations for any church, but illustrating bible stories is really fun: there's lots of swords and action, and the characters are great. Drawing people, especially their faces, hands, and clothing, is challenging but always rewarding.

The Golden Triangle Celebrates Sendak

I received a great phone call the other day from an old school friend about doing the cover of the next edition of The Golden Triangle Writer's Circle-- an online literary magazine that features amazing work from writers and poets.

In celebration of Maurice Sendak's intensely prolific career and in commemoration of his recent passing, they requested a piece that had something to do with the man's work. I was ecstatic, nervous, and optimistic. I'm a huge fan of Sendak-- his stories, his lines, his textures-- so this was a project that I decided to take very seriously.

Here are a couple of sketches I submitted for their discussion. They've already made their choice with which will go to paint, but I won't tell you quite yet. Which one yells "Sendak" to you?

Hey, that's kinda neat!

So exciting! Asiago (my vampire protagonist, as you may or may not know) landed the site-stripe on the Amazon Children's home page. I'm so thrilled for that little guy.

Tradition

It's becoming a tradition: whenever I finish a dummy for a new book, I lay out all 32 pages in my hallway and just sort of stare at them for a long time. It's a great feeling to get something like this done, especially when it's so nice out-- I thought I was going to be inside drawing all weekend.

Reference Photos

If you need to draw a character watering flowers, eating a sandwich, cleaning their car, or walking the dog, it usually helps to have a picture or a model to give you the shapes and gestures. I do a lot of drawings of people doing different things, so I'm always taking reference photos of myself.  I thought it'd be funny to compile the most recent in my Photo Booth. Depending on where I am with which project, I usually look very crazy.

Publication!

 

It's something I've been looking forward to for a long time. My first book, my brainchild, "Asiago," is finally on bookshelves. If you've been to The Daily Graphite before, you might know the young vampire pretty well already, but for those of you who don't...

Asiago is a vampire, and like all vampires, he avoids the sun, wood, and garlic. When his friends invite him to the beach, he is excited to go. But after getting a sunburn, a wooden splinter in his foot, and a stomachache from eating clams with garlic sauce, Asiago can't wait to get home. Luckily, his friends come up with a clever solution that makes it possible for Asiago to enjoy the beach. 

I used color pencils to create a vampire appealing enough that children will want to meet him again and again. Library Journal calls it a "funny and fresh introduction to one of the most vulnerable vampires ever depicted for a child audience." (April 2012) I hope that's a good thing haha.

In case your curiosity gets the best of you, you can order the book now on Amazon!

mmmk!

Here's a tee shirt I did for a summer camp in Westchester County. It's a cartoon version of their trail map-- still pretty accurate. I started by doing a light trace of their actual trail map to ensure that all of the lines would fall in the right spot. With the rest, I took some artistic liberties (for instance, there is not a bumblebee the same size as their building).

Fun to know that your work will be worn by a few hundred kids over the course of the summer.

The Doom and Gloom

I was asked to do a sketch for a picture book that deals with animal cruelty. At first I was very taken aback by the subject matter. I think it's good if kids get a taste of reality, but (and know that I'm an employed environmental educator as well), my instinct has always led me to encourage a love of nature first, and then share the doom and gloom stuff when the children are a bit older, let's go with 4th - 6th grade (around the same time you'd delicately educate a class about the Holocaust or any atrocity of that caliber). If kids grow up with a love of nature, the advocacy for preserving our environment will come more naturally. Just one man's opinion.

With that said, drawing lions is always awesome, and I take every project that comes my way.

City to Country

I was asked to do a drawing that represents the city going into the not-so-city. Here's the finished product.

Figuring out the right style...

The last step in creating a "dummy" (a mock-up of a book, composed mainly of sketches), is doing one finished piece. It helps give prospective agents and publishers a sense of what the book will look like when all is said and done.

It never hurts to try out a few different styles, color palettes, whatever-- and this is a great stage in the game to do it.

So what do you think? Textural and a little wonky or straight and bold with a more modern look? The one on the left is graphite and the other is ink. Both with digital color. Which one does it for you?

Clouds

What Is Art? -- My Latest Project

I started working on another picture book. While walking through the fantastic sculpture garden at the PepsiCo headquarters in Purchase, NY, my four year-old nephew asked me what one of the sculptures was. It was a totem-pole looking sort of construct, and while at a loss for a simple and accurate description, I said "It's art," to which he replied "What is Art?"

It was such a keenly felt retort that it gave me an idea (and a title) for my newest story. I'm not ready to give it all away, but I will say that it's about a rat, whose name is Rat, and his search to answer the very difficult but important question, What IS art? Something I'm still trying to pin down myself.

He tries to paint a landscape, but this goose gets in his way:

The adventure begins again. Stay tuned-- I'll introduce his mentor, Pigeon, next.

Adam

A Big Day for Me

My first published children's book, Asiago is now on pre-sale through Amazon.com. View it here! It's a really strange and wonderful feeling-- I began working on the book in September 2009, and here we are at year's end in 2011 and it's available on Amazon.

Here's the first drawing I ever did off Asiago, before he was tailored to fit a children's story and he was just a little guy wearing and old-fashioned bathing suit living in my notebook:

And here's where we ended up:

To everyone who's been following along with The Daily Graphite this past year and a half: thanks so much for sticking with me. This project means a lot to me and I look forward to sharing more and more art as we venture into 2012.

-A

The Back of the Book!

Slowly but surely, I'm putting up more and more drawings from my first published book, "Asiago." It will be available this coming spring. Really quite a trip for me; if you go back to some of my first posts, you'll see that I began sketching for it over a year ago. Now I'm eagerly anticipating the finished and printed book to hit shelves.

Tree Fort