A Christmas Toy Story Show - At Contrapose Dance

©Lesley Breen Withrow

It's that time of year again! Time for Christmas, snow and ballet shows, like the Nutcracker. But I know of an even better Christmas show that is local (if you are in the Massachusettes, Rhode Island area) at Contrapose Dance. Contrapose Dance is a fabulous dance company started by my friend Courtney Peix. They are having 'A Christmas Toy Story Show ' in Bridgewater (Bridgewater State College) is this Saturday at 5:30 and Sunday at 3:00. It is a great show that is very family friendly (even for young kids) and you get to see the dancers up close which is just amazing to me! It's 1 hour long, and features a cast of 37 dancers (7 amazing professionals, 30 students). So, if you're in the area and you are looking for a wonderful Christmas show, this is a great one.

Also, I illustrated the poster for the this show last year, but just adjusted it a little bit for this years show. Adding my new logo and some new information and a few new swirls. Happy Holidays and hope to see you there!

See Steven Withrow's first "Fieldnote" on Seven Impossible Things!

My husband, Steven Withrow, is now a contributing monthly writer for the amazing children's book blog Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. His first "fieldnote" is about art director and children's book designer Susan M. Sherman. Check it out, it's a great read with lots of insight and art!

Next month he'll be interviewing children's book agent Steven Malk.

The Boy Who Wanted Wings

This past summer I illustrated the story The Boy Who Wanted Wings for the magazine Angels on Earth. Angels on Earth is owned by Guideposts, which creates spiritual magazines. This is an inspirational Christmas story written by Patricia Gaddis-Clark, and is well worth the read. It was a joy to illustrate too! I know it was intended for print, but I am glad to see it on-line as well. Enjoy!

The Holiday Mood

©Lesley Breen Withrow

Today I woke up to a ton of snow on the ground. What a surprise it was! Unfortunately, it turned over to rain and now it is a slushy mess. But, the snow has helped to put me in the holiday mood. Well, the snow and the Christmas tree we just put up! There are no gifts under it right now and I'm not sure if we'll ever has as many gifts as those under the tree I illustrated. Ha! But that's okay.

My Process of creating Mixed Media children's art

In this post I thought I would show you a bit how I work from sketch to finished art.

1. Here's my sketch

2. Next I lay down the foundation colors and start to fill in different elements of the art.

3. Once the initial art colors and characters are painted, I like to bring the art into Photoshop where I add lots of the details, textures and patterns. I have a large library of textures and patterns that I have created on paper using paints and scratchboard and pen and ink, etc. I have also been known to scan fabrics, newspapers, buttons, really what ever I think I can use in my art. It's a lot of fun creating those different textures and patterns and once I scan it into the computer I can use it multiple times because it's now a computer file.

4. And here is the final art with all the details, textures and patterns added in in place. But wait, there's one more addition to this piece!

5. I decided to add a border all around it. This was a border I created by hand and scanned/manipulated in the computer. Hope you had fun seeing a bit of my working process!