My story …

Making art brings me joy. I love to doodle and sketch✏️ and illustrate children’s books.📚 My latest picture book I illustrated is Sloth Is Not a Baby! 🦥🚫👶🏻 and was written by Nelly Buchet. This lovable sloth book 📕 arrived in stores in June, 2024. Chick Chat 🐥💬, a book I wrote ✍🏼 and illustrated 🎨, published in 2021. In 2024, I illustrated Just One Owl, 🦉🌙 a sweet book written by Carolyn Crimi about a lonely owl finding a friend. It lands in bookstores this fall (2025). A fun 🎉 fable 👑 I’m illustrating (written by Kelly DiPucchio) about How to Be a Proper Ogre ✔🧌 will be available in 2026!

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I love creating visual stories with heart ❤️ and humor 🤣 that readers can relate to emotionally—whether it’s over the span of a 32-page picture book or through a single illustration. My characters are very expressive 😳, whether human or animal. 🐸

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For drawing ✏️ I work almost all digitally, using an art tablet and stylus with my computer 💻 or with an Apple Pencil on an iPad. For color work 🎨 I usually combine digital drawing, inking, and painting with traditional watercolor 💦 and other natural materials .

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As a kid, I was curious, creative, determined, and very chatty 💬just like Baby Chick. 🐥 I was always ready for an adventure, whether real or imagined, and so is Baby Chick!

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That’s my first-grade school 🎓 photo at the top of this page ↑↑↑. My six-year-old self was chatting 💬 while having my first picture taken 📷 at school! 🏫 Hair a bit messy, a funny expression 😏, and my arms crossed—that was me. (Most of that is still me! 😜)

 

Being the youngest child 🧒🏻, I entertained myself quite a bit when not playing with neighbor friends. 😳 I made up crafts 🧵 for myself, usually making something out of something else (like a robot 🤖 from cardboard oatmeal containers, cardboard boxes 📦, aluminum foil, and tape , lots of tape).

 

I grew up in a suburb of Dallas, but spent quite a bit of time in East Texas 🤠 on my grandparents’ farm or my family’s 80 acres. Poking around in creeks and back pastures, 🐄 I was always bringing home some new, non-human “friend.” 🐸

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I’ve been asked if I have a yard full of chickens. 🐓🐓🐓 I don’t, but I wish I did! I grew up around chickens on relatives’ farms, and my parents kept a coop of “chicken girls” that my sister and I gave to  them after they retired to their East Texas farm 🚜. I loved gathering eggs, 🥚especially the aqua-colored Ameraucana eggs.