Free!!! My Brand New E-Book

Facebook friends please be aware this is an Rss feed from my blog and mostly just repeats info I've shared on Facebook previously. I think this will be about the fourth time this book cover has shown up on my profile in the past week,LOL.

I wanted to let everyone know that my brand New E-Book "Samantha Loses The Box Turtle" is now available AND it's FREE!!!!  http://thefrugalgirls.com/2011/10/free-kids-smashwords-ebook.html  check out that link for details on how to get the book free on smashwords. for a limited time anyway.

        First I just really want to say I enjoyed working with this client every step of the way and she's a super generous woman with her time and seems to be the greatest mom. So Personally I would love to see a bunch of folks go out and pay the $3.99 for the book just to help her along a bit. We worked on the book over the past seven months and I really do think you won't regret it, as your kids will enjoy it. YET, she is the one telling me I should alert folks about this coupon to get the book for free so please don't feel bad about doing so. Tell all your friends. If your an artist, friend or family member, get the book to see my new artwork for my first ever chapter book. If you're a parent get the book for your kids or for grand kids etc. You can't do any better than free.
    
      It's available for kindle, Nook, PDF etc. so if you have any of the popular e-readers then you already know how it all works. If you don't have an e-reader then head on over to Amazon and download there free "Kindle for the PC". Go onto the page for any e-book and there is a link to download this free software for your computer. Or just get the PDF version of the book if you already have adobe reader downloaded. It's all pretty simple and straightforward but let me know if you have any questions.

    The author and I both would LOVE any and all reviews of the book you could share on amazon or elsewhere you find the book listed, Barnes and Nobles etc. Feel free to leave comments on this blog as well and I'll be sure the author is aware of them. Amazon is most helpful as it lets folks know if the book is any good if they are thinking about purchasing it. Thanks and enjoy!
-Matthew

Free Peter Newell Children's Books

One of the blogs I follow made mention of some free Newell books. I had never seen them before and enjoyed looking through th

em so figured others may as well. I have to say I'm slightly frustrated though because the book concepts are somewhat similar to one of the book ideas I've had for a couple years,LoL. Mine is different enough to be very unique though so maybe one day I'll have the luxury of illustrating my own ideas.
here's the link
http://www.nonsenselit.org/newell/

you can click on the different books and click through the PDFs page by page. So much fun to look at and read! Enjoy!
To purchase the books on amazon

How to Have an Online Presence

          I'm taking the day off from illustrating books in order to catch up on a few neglected illustration business related tasks. Sooner or later you can expect to see an increase in blog posts, update my illustration website with recent work, my Etsy Shop with some of my landscape paintings, additions to my Zazzle Store and my number one goal is to finally edit some art tutorial videos I started a month ago to post on my YouTube Channel.
     Each of these things are great ways to alert your followers and fans to updates and to make a bit of extra income from your illustrations. None of them will generate a ton of income without putting a ton of work into them to begin with. Blogs can be monetized by becoming an amazon associate and things of that sort, websites can be used to sell your art and products and services, Etsy of course can be used for selling your original art products, zazzle is great for putting digital images of your art onto various products in a  POD format yet with a quality result for sale and youtube is a huge way to get people interested in your art and products. For me they all tend to take a back seat to actually creating the art but even just the little work I have put into them has brought some results. I just finished my previous book and am a ways into my current book so I'm hoping I will finally be able to steal a bit of time for such tasks as these. I'm on tons of other art websites but the above few are probably the most important for my promotional needs.

     Recently
-One of my favorite children's digital artists, Dani Jones* launched a website called the illustrated section in which she sells the works of various artists in digital PDF format for e-readers.  (ipad, nook, kindle, computer, iPhone, or just about any other electronic device.)  She excepts most any art books from individual artists so long as it follows certain guidelines, which probably explains why she accepted My book The Caterpillar and the Express Train  there are also FREE books available on the site!

- I participated in an illustrator interview for the facebook group "facebook Author's and Illustrators". The interview was posted about a week ago at this link.

- The author of my caterpillar book discovered an interesting review of the book online on this blog in which our train character was compared to Thomas the train on acid.



*Dani Jones

Free Andrew Loomis Books!!!

If you're an illustrator and haven't heard of Andrew Loomis then you will certainly be glad you stopped by this blog. I grew up in a home that was pretty much illiterate (or maybe that should be ill-art-erate) when it comes to art. My exposure to art was my older sisters traced drawings of cartoon characters. I was lucky to have a grandfather who loved art at my age and actually has a HUGE Norman Rockwell collection which he loved to show us whenever we stopped by for a visit. Since art college he has even opened me up to a whole world of his art he created for a mail-art instruction school he participated in at my age. In my senior year of high school I was one of two people in my whole art class who had a hard time passing an art history test my teacher gave us. As I left for college all I knew is that I loved making art and I wasn't too bad at it either.

Unfortunately my poor knowledge of art history persisted throughout most of my art college experience despite the required art history courses for which I actually bought and read the huge text books for. I just couldn't grasp the stuff. However I eventually got tiered of not having an answer to the question that would continually pop up the more I progressed in my art. First people would ask what college I go to or what I do for a living and when I told them I'm an artist they immediately ask who my favorite artists are. For the longest time the only name I had to throw at them was Norman Rockwell. Sure I knew of Picasso, Monet, Gauguin, Michelangelo, etc. etc. and I grew up on Bob Ross and some dude who drew cartoon characters on tv, but I was never really really inspired by any of them. Not initially anyway.

The point I'm trying to make is that I finally broke this bad habit and came across some spectacular artists who i admire and learn from on a regular basis. Without these influences I don't feel i would have been able to pursue my art in the way I have, creating children's books, commissioned paintings, logos etc. So my hope in writing this is that one young artist who may be in a similar situation would start the whole process early. Look at tons of art and find out who is your favorite. Then buy their books, read their blogs, watch their videos, learn from them. Soon I hope to have the time to post a list of artists who I look to for inspiration and guidance whenever I'm faced with challenges. For now I Just want to open your eyes to one artist in particular as he has taught many of the greatest illustrators with his books. That is Andrew Loomis. Unfortunately his books are out of print but luckily I found them for free in PDF form here http://www.alexhays.com/loomis/ . So go download them and start reading! More artists and great resources to come.