Marcus and Petunia

I'm painting/writing a book about two firefly friends. Here they are, meeting for the first time:

Marcus:
and Petunia (a rough sketch of her, anyway):
I started this image on Thursday. It's still a work in progress, but I like it so far. The look of it is just what I had in mind. Last week I received a letter from a publishing company asking to see more of my illustrations. The design team specifically requested some sequential narrative images geared toward children. As I was reading the letter, a little tale about two fireflies popped into my head. (At the time I was working with kids on bug-themed projects at the Arlington Center for the Arts.) Over the course of the week the story took shape, changed shape and reformed again into Marcus and Petunia. One of the most interesting aspects of creating this story has been designing the characters. I wanted to make them hyper-realistically buggy, but also a bit anthropomorphic and charming. So I studied actual firefly anatomy and then subtly amplified "cute" features, like their big, shiny eyes.

In other news, in the event that my status as a "real American" should ever be called into question, I give you the following image:

Me, last night, riding to the demolition derby at the Marshfield Fair, eating extra crispy KFC chicken over the 10-piece BUCKET clamped between my knees.