School Carnival Drawing

Our little charter school puts on a Carnival every year to raise money and to give the families, faculty and community a chance to come together and have some fun. Last year I made a little piece of art for the posters used to promote the carnival. The image was also put on t-shirts which sold out within hours! I was proud that they brought in a nice bit of money for the school. This year's image will be put onto t-shirts, root beer mugs and posters- fingers crossed for some more good fund raising!

My Agent is Not Only a Fabulous Agent- she's Brilliant Writer an Innovator Also

My agent at Red Fox Literary, Abi Samoun , has written a couple of books that are being published the traditional way, but this one is something different- She and illustrator, Elizabeth Haidle , are creating this crowd source funded book about Nikola Tesla. 

I feel so very lucky to be represented by someone who is a creative force in her own right.

Why We Still Like Fairy Tales

On Being.

Cassini Mission

CASSINI MISSION from Chris Abbas on Vimeo.

The Poetry of Reality

The Fault of Our Stars

My morning today: woke up, made coffee, fed fish, removed blanket from parakeets' cage, fed parakeets (Coco and Carl), watered garden, listened to npr morning edition while beginning this morning's paintings, took bath. My baths for the past week or so have been long. I put a few drops of lavender oil into the hot water, get a tall glass of water and a cup of coffee, turn on the audio book The Fault of Our Stars and soak. Today I finished the book and I have to say it was brilliant and felt so real an non-contrived. There was a scene in the book where the main characters go to Amsterdam. The description of the setting made me remember how much I love to travel- the other worldliness of it.

 The Fault of Our Stars in a YA novel. I haven't read one of those in ages. The last one I read was friend Jay Asher's 13 Reason's Why (also completely brilliant). Anyhow- I was balling in the tub and after the book was done, I thought-about that part of life- the teenage years- the part where you begin to figure out who you are, or rediscover who you are, or reinvent yourself- what a fragile and amazing time that is...

Steal Like An Artist

3-D Map of our Known Universe

Just to put this into perspective for everyone- each one of those  lights is a galaxy like our Milky Way. In our Milky Way Galaxy we are in a tiny local group of planets- our solar system- when you look at our galaxy we are a barely distinguishable point of light among the millions of other points of light- those other points of light are other solar systems like our local group. In the Milky Way Galaxy alone, there are more stars than there are grains of sand on all of the beaches of our little planet. This is just what is known so far- The vastness of the Universe is almost inconceivable ...our little Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 light years across - meaning it takes light 100,000 years to travel that distance...

Neil Gaiman on the Web

Will Your Child Inherit Your E-Books

article

And this Video Also

More on RRKidz

Here is the link to RRKidz.

RRKidz

Take look! It's in an iPad RRKidz (Reading Rainbow) and Thank You Miss Doover is one of their iPad app/books!!I'm super stoked- check it out link.

Quiet

Having a lot on my plate right now means that I'm in the studio for most of the day- pretty much from the time I get up until I go to bed with meal breaks and yoga break in between. I don't mind doing this for long periods of time. I'm perfectly happy with that.  One of the things I enjoy about being in the studio for long hours is that I can really get into a rhythm. I listen to music and audio books and draw, paint and write and am good with that.


This week I listened to a fascinating book that made me feel more at home in the world. It's called Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. The last book I read that made me rethink things was Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers.