Background of the Obey book

More about the "Obey" book, if you're really interested.

About the Art(ist)
Some of you might know that I took a lot of art classes in high school.... er... nearly 20 years ago. I always liked art, but after high school I ceased to practice drawing. When I attended the grad program in journalism at UIUC in 2005, I took a news graphics course that reminded me how much I loved design. That led to a job as a designer and editor at a local newspaper... I feel that I can probably hone my skills into something workable, but I really need lots and lots of work. That's why I'm opening up these pages for discussion, pointers, constructive criticsm and just friendly encouraging (or friendly discouraging) comments.

About the Style
I'm in love with a lot of children's book illustrators' work. I grew up with the beautiful collage-like quality of books by Leo Lionni and the whimsical visions of childhood in Gyo Fujikowa's "Oh What A Busy Day." Some of my recent favorites are the bold, bright pictures in books by Lucy Cousins and Leslie Patricelli. My kids really like these kinds of illustrations too, so I was aiming for this kind of simple, colorful and cartoonish feel.

About the Medium
I'm not endowed with a budget that allows me to purchase Adobe Illustrator... and I'm paginating this book in my 7-year-old InDesign CS ....with no numbers after it. SO ... these illustrations are done in MS Paint. And saved as PNG files... (??) I know. Crazy and stupid. But I couldn't wait to start sketching, and Paint is what I have on my computer. So, there's no layers. There's no vectors. No bezier tool. I'm just using the "crayon" brush and sketching freehand, using my laptop's touch pad. I tried the mouse, which sucked. I have a really old Walcom tablet (seriously, from high school) but it has a legacy plug.

The text
I've written the text below each image. It will actually appear in the blank space above the picture. I'd love to purchase FF Providence Sans for this book, but might end up settling for the free "Kristin ITC" that's on my computer already. It's a step up from the font all designers love to hate, Comic Sans. This book is meant to be an 8.5 inch square. The font size will be 24 or 30 in black.