If I knew what my laurels were, I might rest on them for a second.

But as it turns out, I'm not sure from whence that saying derives. So I guess I won't.

For what I'll just generalize as contractual issues, I'm not saying what these are from at the moment. For now we'll just call them jobs, though if even that gives away too much, I'm happy to pretend for now that it's all from one big job detailing the long involved travails of Bigfoot, some yeti hunters, and a couple of time traveling musicians.

Various sizes, oil on paper, 2010.

Calico Dorsey

Hey, even if it's not shipping until September 28th, my latest picture book illustration project on the market, "Calico Dorsey," written by the extraordinarily gifted Susan Lendroth, has already garnered a nice review from School Library Journal. In the in interest of shameless plugs and self-aggrandizement as a healthy and effective marketing and promotional tool, I'm reproducing it below:

Gr 2-5—Illuminating California's silver mining era, Lendroth creates a plausible story line. It is based on a possibility of actual events surrounding the Border collie that came to be an official U.S. Postal Service mail carrier, crossing the Mojave Desert between the town of Calico and the hills where the miners and prospectors worked. Perspectives on the dog's experiences are related by the Stacey brothers, who run the general store and post office; Nellie, the young daughter and niece; and Dorsey himself, which create excitement for young readers. In the author's notes, Lendroth writes that she uses the information she found during her research to create a story based on fact. Gustavson's paintings are intergrated into the text, flowing from page through the centerfold to page, making this obscure story larger than life. The vitality of the characters is enhanced by the artist's accurate, yet expressive details that add humor and sweetness to the faces of both the people and Dorsey.—Tina Hudak, St. Albans School, Washington, DC

The Blue House Dog

...is now available. I'll be signing shiny new copies of the book with author Deborah Blumenthal Wednesday, August 18th from 10:30 - 11:30 at the Clinton Book Shop, 12 East Main Street, Clinton, NJ.

From Publishers Weekly:

Blumenthal’s dog-and-boy story may be too sad for some, but her lyrical prose and Gustavson’s (Mind Your Manners, Alice Roosevelt!) lush paintings have the impact of a documentary film. The Blue House Dog, a stray German shepherd mix, has been left homeless after his owner dies, while the death of the boy narrator’s old dog has left him bereft. Blumenthal (Charlie Hits It Big) observes the boy as he works to approach and tame the stray, paying close attention to physical sensations (“He lets me run my hand/ lightly over his fur./ It’s the same color as my hair”) and crafting affecting prose-poetic lines (“he scrunched down/ under a building,/ waiting like a soldier/ hiding from the enemy”). Gustavson’s paintings capture the big dog’s skittishness and the boy’s protective instincts. Scenes of autumn leaves and spring flowers reinforce the sense that the intimacy between the two takes months to develop. The emotions are raw and authentic, while the way in which they’re delivered is elegant--a potent combination. Ages 4-8.

End of the School Year...

So it's time for some quick thank you cards to my children's wonderful teachers.







And their equally wonderful retiring principal.

Dead guys and deadlines.

I'm currently working a series of illustrations for a mystery magazine called the Strand Magazine, which is publishing in serialized form a lost manuscript by the writer Graham Greene.

This isn't the first serialized novel I've illustrated; in 2000, I worked with The Oxford American magazine, illustrating the debut of John Grisham's A Painted House.




The Grisham job was full of interesting adventures from an illustration standpoint; each bimonthly issue contained between 4 and 6 oil paintings; each story installment rolled through my fax machine on an indeterminable Thursday night. Pencil sketches were due via fax the following day, and the paintings had to be dry enough to FedEx out on Monday, directly to the service bureau/printhouse doing the scanning so the magazine could go to press on Tuesday. Never quite knowing when the job would come in, I finished a few of them on vacations, once even sending the art out from a local upstate NY realtor's office, as they were the only scheduled FedEx pickup in town.

My initial offer to work for the Strand bore some semblance to this experience, actually. The initial email (oh, 2000, with your quaint fax toner ribbons and extra phone lines...) offered up two days for final art, no sketch required. It's a murder mystery, which obviously means I can't tell you anything that happens, except that for the sake of this post it takes place in an English estate around 1926, and includes an aging police detective and a houseful of deceptive, suspicious and temperamental Edwardians.

So with two days to draw, paint, dry, and scan, here's the detective in the dining room with the murder weapon. (I should probably take this moment to state that there is in fact no retired military man bearing a condiment for his surname, nor is anyone done in in the study with a candlestick.)



About two weeks ago, while in Savannah researching an different book project, I received another email, containing the next installment, this time with a week's deadline to produce a painting under. I spent most of that week with flu-like symptoms in a fetal crouch of self-pity and sinus mutiny, but pulled this one out in the end, with the help of a fast drying acrylic underpainting...



...only to discover that that particular scene will be fleshed out in the October installment. I'm still not telling you what happens, but apparently in between these two pieces, something like this happens with yet another English gentleman...


...who left a few dots of fresh white paint on my scanner bed.

The downside to super quick deadlines, really, is that they require a particular reliance on "chops," an the creative decisions made in them often have much to do with what someone like me is confident they can pull off in a pinch. So that said, there aren't a ton of surprises, no greenish skin tones or odd violet shadows spilling in from nowhere. The end result is fine, but the nuanced creativity in a painting—beyond concept and composition, which all need to work out pretty quickly too—often is the unpredictable stuff that happens in the third coat of paint, and sometimes, after all the wham-bam-thank-you- ma'am-er-google period research and figure studies, there just isn't time for one of those.

Holy Flying Boats!

Some work for an upcoming project with the lovely folks at Corby Street Press, with more details to follow.

oil on paper, 13 x 20 inches

"Plein Air" sounds fancier than "That guy wandering around painting stuff."

Orange Painting #3, 2010. Oil on canvas, 12 x 16 inches.

Orange Painting #2, 2010. Oil on prepared paper, 16 x 18 inches.

Orange Painting #1, 2010. Oil on prepared paper, 15 x 14 inches.

But that's what it looks like to everyone else.

I've been trying to get out of the studio and wander around the neighboring neighborhood, taking advantage of some of the dereliction and crumbling facades before they're one day torn down and replaced with something more respectable. Searching for character is really such a selfish pursuit; I think overall it's better to try capturing these fleeting bits of ugliness than it is to fight their slow gentrification and lament the aesthetic loss. Plainness does suit the greater good, really, far more than falling bricks and exposed wires. The things I like about squalor have far more to do with how it catches light than how nice it would be to live amongst.