Tony Piedra's Blog

I'm often asked how I create my illustrations.  In this post I will share with you my process for creating the artwork for my debut picture book, The Greatest Adventure. I won’t go in to great detail on each step in the process, instead, my goal is to impart on you a basic understanding of what it means to create a digital painting. And hopefully, you will also come to see the depth of thought and care that went into the creation of every si...

Earlier this year I was invited to speak at the Student Conference for Latinx Affairs (SCOLA) at Texas A&M University.  Specifically, I was invited to speak as a Latino artist, and by the subtitle of this year's conference, as an influential voice, as a representative voice, and this invitation has forced me look inward and reflect on my own Latino heritage.  And in this state of reflection, I thought about the idiom:  As American as apple pie; and I realized something beautifully ironic... 

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Baby Patches

In July 2017 I was afforded the opportunity to participate in the Voices of the Wilderness artist residency with the U.S. Forest Service in a remote area of southeast Alaska known as Pack Creek, Admiralty Island.  During my stay here I came to know of an old female bear named Patches.  Amongst the rangers I stayed with there was some debate as to whether she had passed away or not because she had not been seen for several days.  You see Patches was the oldest known female to f...

For better or worse, this illustration represents my childhood relationship to my brother and sister (psst...I'm the one in the middle, wearing the tablecloth-cape and corrugated sword).  Thankfully, they still love me.

The children's book that probably had the longest lasting impact on me was one that I discovered over two decades ago in my local library in Houston called, Album of Sharks, written by Tom McGowen and illustrated by Rod Ruth.  And it was Ruth's powerful, bold, wonder-inspiring illustrations that left such an indelible mark on my developing psyche that despite not seeing the book for over twenty years, I could remember nearly every illustration.  One of these days I hope to write and illustra...

There was just one pint. The bartender and all the other customers had run out the backdoor when the enormous hulking mass approached the window. I alone had stayed. I wanted that pint.  

"Breakfast?" it seemed to gesture.  Rob rubbed his eyes hoping to erase the image before him, but the smiling figure was still there.  It was shaping up to be a rather strange day, he thought.

Stacy gazed out the dining room window as she had done every afternoon that summer when her eyes locked with the unflinching stare of a rotund green mass perched on her neighbor's fence.  It looked like some sort of bird, though she doubted it could fly with its stubby little wings protruding from a body shaped like an under-inflated beach ball.  She wondered how it had managed to perch itself on such a high and precarious post.

No one would believe her.  She had to find her camera —quick.  "...