Category: Illustrations and Artwork

New Release! The Tightrope Dare

New Squirrel Book just released! Read an excerpt from The Tightrope Dare!

August 24, 2018

New Release!  The Tightrope Dare

Today I’m really excited to announce the release of “The Tightrope Dare,” the second adventure in The Landmark Tribe (furry squirrels lighting the way)!  The illustrators have finally finished with this project!

Rebeccah did this illustration.  She drew and colored both the cute little squawler and the full background!

Kimberly accented the drawing for digital copy and enhanced the details on the computer (some digital art manipulation).

Each of the Landmark Tribe books is narrated by a different member of the Tribe.  This adventure is narrated by Nutty, a crunchie (the squirrel’s word for teenager) who may be just a bit over-confident (okay, maybe he likes to brag and exaggerate, as you can see from the excerpt below).

Our Landmark Tribe books are written for our church.  Any sales we get go straight back to church because it is our squirrely church family who inspires characters in the Landmark Tribe and this series was created during a trip to church!  (Read that story here!)

Come read a bit from “The Tightrope Dare” here:

 

This is the story of how, me, Nutty, greatest Crunchie in the Landmark Tribe and in all of the squirrel tribes in the Wooded Lands, saved the day with my big brawny arms!

“Nutty.”

And that is Walnut, whose favorite thing to do is do that deep sigh and say Nutty, like I’m really doing something wrong.  He is a Crunchie in the Landmark Tribe too, but he is ages older than me.  Walnut is almost as old as Kahoona, our great and powerful leader.

“Nutty.” Sighed Walnut again.

Okay, so he isn’t really that old, but almost.

On the day my story takes place, the winds were ripping squirrels from their nests and squawlers from their mother’s clutching paws.

“Nutty, seriously?” Walnut chided.

Okay, okay, so maybe the winds were just enough to make leaves dance, Walnut is only a season older than me, and maybe I am not the greatest Crunchie in all of the squirrel tribes and maybe I didn’t use my big brawny arms to save the day, but I’m telling the story and that sounds cool, doesn’t it?

And that sigh from Walnut means he agrees but doesn’t want to say I’m right about anything.  Ever.  And he certainly doesn’t want to admit that I, Nutty the Great, am cool.  But I so am.

“Why do you start every sentence with a conjunction?” Walnut said in a bookish voice.

Honestly, he sounds so much like Grizzly, a new member of the Landmark tribe, that he seems like his real son.  Grizzly talks with a gruff bear voice but through his nose like it is constantly pinched shut.  And now Walnut has walked away so he can’t hear my awesome story.  Okay, well, you will have to do.  Stay right there and don’t move.

 

If you liked that and want to see how the Landmark Tribe of furry squirrels light the way in the Wooded Lands, click on the link to buy a copy or check out my Book List to view all the available formats!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

You Can’t Rush Art

“You Can’t Rush Art” say my illustrators while I’m waiting on cover art for two new releases!

July 24, 2018

You Can’t Rush Art

I love finishing a new book!  I actually have two (One is the pilot in a new young adult series, the other is the second in the Landmark Tribe Books) that are finished.

Now comes the part I’m always excited about… illustrations!

I never know exactly what my illustrators are going to come up with for covers.  Rebeccah is designing the one for the Landmark Tribe book because she loves drawing animals – and I love her furry squirrels!

She was discussing how to make a “quirky” Crunchie (aka teenage boy squirrel) but still keep the soft style she did with Granny Pecan for the “Busting Berry Bath” cover.  I can’t wait to see what she comes up with!

For the new series book, my illustrators get to come up with a whole theme!  With no pre-set design constraints, I’ve already seen a pastel sunset background, a sharper, darker, hard pencil background, and an oil-paint-style grid.  They haven’t decided on a “perfect” theme yet, but watching their imaginations run while they figure it out is amazing!

For now, I have to wait (trying to be patient – because “you can’t rush art!”) as they do the artistry part of my story.  Regardless of what people say, audiences DO judge a book by its cover.  This is why my illustrators make commissions off of their work!

I can’t wait to release these stories for ya’ll to enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

My Illustrators

August 3, 2017

My Illustrators

I love to write.  When it comes to drawing, I’m not an artist.  So when I’m ready to finish a story, I enlist the aid of my team of illustrators.

The latest releases, “The Mystery of the Strange Chip” and “A Clue in the Barn” were illustrated by a team.  Christina Tart sketched the design and Kimberly Tart used her new favorite medium, pastels, to color it in.  They turned to a computer editing software package to add text for the design.  The results are the new covers for what they call “old” stories.  (Old, well, they were written when I was dating and just after I was married – so they are older than the illustrators!)

It’s interesting for me to see what my illustrators come up with when they draw.  Sometimes what they see is not what I would have seen, but it’s usually much better!  When Ann Pearson (one of my little sisters) illustrated for “Long Tail” her images of Long Tail and Red Hawk looked different than what I pictured, but they were so perfect for the series!  Those images were colored by Christina and Rebeccah.  Crayon drawings gave the perfect texture to the childish, fun, read-along Long Tail stories.  (Ann’s running farmer was just perfect – you can see him in the DVD book and handmade book versions.)

Another new release is “Sisters at the Seashore” one of the Five Alive: Stories of the Funny Sisters.  Jaquline did her first illustration job on that!  She’s excited because “now I’m published too!”  Christina thinks it’s neat that their names show up on the ebook websites as illustrators or colorists (depending on their role).  Rebeccah loves getting commission on her work!  (I pay my illustrators 10 to 50 percent commission depending on the number of illustrations in the work.  The “Jilly and Luke’s Block Adventures” are 50 percent commission works because they are picture books – an illustration almost every page!)

At one bookshow I did, a fellow author expressed interest in my illustrations.  Her favorite was “The Living God” because she claimed the “abstract art is amazing” and she commented that it looked like the open jaws of a lion.  I’d honestly never seen it that way, but now, I can’t not see the open lion jaws when I see the book cover!  I previously just saw it as colorful geometric shapes.  (Christina’s favorite book cover illustrations appear to be random flowers, geometric designs, and scrollwork.)

As of the latest release, I now have five illustrators on my team: Ann Pearson, Christina Tart, Rebeccah Tart, Kimberly Tart, and Jaquline Tart.

Oh, and Jaquline’s second book cover illustration will be published shortly too – she redid the cover for “Birthday Present!”

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

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