Zack Rock's Blog

The Normal School—America’s favorite, non-The New Yorker journal of literature and analysis—has a new issue out, and you might see someone familiar on the cover!

No, not the worried-looking guy, that’s my old flatmate Anthony.

No, not the bear, that’s Jerry the Bear. Also known as “King Diamond Claw” in his native forest tongue, and “Painbringer” to the shadow mages of the Twilight Canyons, upon whom the forest dwellers vowed revenge after the destruction of their sacred cerulean citadels in the spell blitz which ended the War of the Seven Domains. Also, Jerry’s still mad because the shadow mages laughed when he got his snout stuck in that bee hive. Oh, Jerry!

No guys, it’s me! It’s my name! I did the cover of the most recent issue, on newsstands now. So go buy a copy!

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram!

As soon as Tom Waits entered my bookstore I assumed he was a shoplifter. Now, even if I couldn’t recognize a Grammy-winning, Oscar-nominated musical genius when I see one, his impeccably distressed jeans and coiffed soul patch should have tipped me off that this guy had a more lucrative career than petty thievery.

But being an anxious, sheltered suburban boy, I couldn’t see past the tectonic features and fedora. All I saw was Wharf Thug #2 from The Eye-Gouging Angels or some other pre-code gangster film. All I saw was trouble.

I took it upon myself to track trouble through the store. But he never veered far from the art section, and its huge volumes were unlikely candidates to be snuck down someone’s pants. After 20 misdemeanorless minutes passed, I began thinking maybe this guy wasn’t a shoplifter after all.

But my anxiety still desperately felt for a foothold. I recalled among the art section’s Monets and Matiesses was The Last Day of Summer, a book of photographs featuring French beachgoers. These included a discomfiting amount of nude preteens.

His proximity to the book was fuel enough for my worry. How could I have been so blind? This guy wasn’t a shoplifter. He was a pedophile. I suddenly cared less about what he might sneak into his pants, and more about what he might sneak out.

But another 20 minutes passed, pedophilia-free, and he finally brought his purchases to the counter. I swiped his card and thought just how relieved I’d be when he left. Sure, he didn’t commit any crimes today. But I just knew he was someone to watch out for, someone with a record.

And when I glanced at the credit slip he handed back, my suspicions were confirmed. “Thomas A. Waits,” it read. He did have a record, plenty of them: Bone Machine, The Heart of Saturday Night, Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs.

“Uh, hey, you’re not THE Tom Waits, are you?” I asked my shoplifting pedophile.

“ME? Nah nah nah,” he replied, waving his hands like he was trying to wipe away his unmistakable, chain-smoking bullfrog voice that shattered the possibilities of sound for generations of music lovers.

I stood there blinking as he fulfilled my wish and left.

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram!

I paint small, y’all. It’s a helpful skill if you want to work on a project in a coffee shop, or conserve paper, or ensure you’ll never have a profitable gallery show.

But if I’m a micro artist, Lucy Eldridge is nano. She can paint a battleship the size of a penny. A stock of brandy you can fit in a bottle cap. A cat you can inhale. All while still exuding a mammoth amount of charm, energy and originality.

I came across Lucy’s work a couple of years ago on the illustration website Pikaland and was so inspired by what I saw I sent her a super gushy fan email. Tons of emails and @ tweets later, I’m happy to count her as a friend and my personal DJ (homegirl also knows a thing or two about good music).

But I’m still a gushy fan, so I leapt at the chance to do an art swap with her a couple months back. I sent Lucy the anxious mice above, and in return got this foxy cab caller and skateboarding dinosaur.

I love them so.

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram!

Like the main character of Homer Henry Hudson’s Curio Museum, Magpies are famous for their hording habits, especially shiny stuff. So when James at the picture book review site Magpie That asked me to contribute to his collection of corvids, he struck gold.

Four square inches and twenty-two objects later, I had me a miniature Midas Magpie.

And carpal tunnel syndrome.

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram!

Yesterday my first book dropped into the world. And like any newborn, it has been focus of international public criticism and analysis. Happily, the reception has been overwhelmingly positive, and Homer Henry Hudson’s Curio Museum has been featured on some of the internet’s most reliable sources for picture book news and reviews.

Below you’ll find all the features, reviews and interviews in one convenient, updated-as-needed place. Almost every one tackles a different aspect of the book and my process, so you could read through them all in one go and not be mind-bogglingly bored. By why do that? It’s a beautiful day out, go adopt a Whippet and take it sailing.

Here we go:

Kirkus Reviews review (in which it’s remarked “Hudson’s droopy, liver-spotted mug is so realistic readers will want to scratch him behind the ears”)

Vintage Kid’s Books My Kid Loves review (in which the book is given “100,000,000,000,000,000 thumbs, five pinkies, two index fingers, and a pointer finger way way UP!”)

Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast feature (in which a painting that took me 17 days to complete is ready in 10 seconds thanks to the magic of animated GIFs)

The Book Sniffer interview (in which I share some advice and some sketches)

More coming soon!

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram!

The above is a sketch I did for my upcoming picture book, As Yet Untitled Wildly Successful Pig Vehicle. It depicts the untitular pig reading upside-down atop a statue of a proletarian accountant (it makes sense in context) (sort of).

Keen viewers will notice the building behind the statue’s left arm has been left unfinished. And with good reason: I gave up on it. Why? Because this drawing is what we refer to in the illustration business as “irredeemably bad.”

Here’s the same scene again, with the bad removed:

So what’s the difference? Why is the bottom illustration more engaging that the top?

Lots of reasons: cooler-looking buildings, the first statue has that dumb tie, etc. But the most important reason, especially for a picture book, is that the original illustration has no obvious subject. The statue, pig, and buildings are all vying for the viewers’ attention. So what was needed was a better composition to direct the eyes to the subject of the illustration.

Creating a composition with a clear subject can be done using color (putting a warm-colored subject on a cool-colored background, or vice versa), tone (putting a dark subject on a light background, or vice versa), by arranging the elements of the piece to frame or point to the subject, or some combination of the three.

Subtle artists will nuance the image elements so the viewers won’t even know they’re being guided. On the other hand, I basically made the statue into a giant arrow pointing at the pig.

And in case you didn’t get it, the building below the pig also points in his direction. Nearly every element points towards the tiny pig. LOOK AT THE PIG, GUYS.

Of course, there’s many examples of great illustrations that straight-up flaunt compositional clarity and still end up looking dope. But this is how I work. And this is why I work slo-o-owly.

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram!

An illustration in honor of my new neighborhood—Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin, rumored to have the highest birthrate in Europe. Babies are everywhere, they’re like some hot new fashion accessory; wearable taxidermy is OUT, tiny puking humans are IN. Hence, the baby.

Also, I can’t draw babies very well. Hence, the distracting hovering geese.

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Remember, you can always find me on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram!

The hangover hounded me all day, left me seeing spots, sick as a dog. I’d spent the night previous chasing my tail at the old watering hole, trying to forget the lady (the tramp) that marked my heart like a fire hydrant. She told me she’d always be loyal. And she was, right before she up and strayed. It was going to take more than a few Greyhounds to shoo her memory away.

As I self-medicated with a little hair o’ the dog, there came a knock at the door.

“Come in,” I whimpered.

He didn’t have to throw me a bone. All it took was one look to know the guy wanted to see me at the end of a rope. Or, more specifically, a leash.

“Hey buddy,” he said, giving me puppy eyes big as a dinner bowls. “You look a little ruff.”

“What’s it to ya,” I growled back, but my bark was worse than my bite. He was going to get what he wanted, sure. But I wasn’t going to beg for it.

“Heard you howling last night,” he said, “thought maybe a walk would cheer you up.”

He had the scent all right, I had been inside with my tail between my legs for too long. Maybe if I got some fresh air I could forget my troubles for a while, let sleeping dogs lie.

“Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy!?” he panted as we trotted out the door. I didn’t bite. Good? Bad? What’s it matter when we all end up in the same place. The important thing was I was feeling better. And as long I focused on putting one foot in front of the other in front of the other in front of the other, maybe, just maybe, I could find a way to heel.

[Commissioned piece. RIP Ant]

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Remember, you can always find me on Etsy, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram!

A quick sketch to wish our athletes the best of luck! Guys, no matter what they are, I hope your Olympic dreams come 100% true.

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Remember, you can always find me on Etsy, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram!

The book is done.

What started off as vision of an antique store helmed by a talking bulldog clerk that wandered into my head during a midnight ramble ended up a 32-page adventure through lands marked by fiery rebellions, sea-sunk civilizations, stone giants, and dark nights of the soul. Oh, and there’s also two scenes in a sushi bar for some reason.

All it took to get from that quaint flight of fancy to a real deal book was a pinch of imagination, a little luck, and an unhealthy amount of work. It was like giving birth, only it took 11 months and I was in labor the entire time.

Copies will be showing up on bookshelves this fall. I know it’s a ways off, but I’ll remind you when the time comes, and often. And I’ll share more images from the book in the run-up to its publication.

In the meantime, enjoy this little watercolor of the bulldog himself, inspecting a famous animated ball (painted for a friend who was kind enough to give me a tour of Pixar last summer).

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Remember, you can always find me on Etsy, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram!