Read the article I wrote about “procrastination” here!





Award-winning children's book author-illustrator. Awesome Michigan School Visits & Webcasts. Michigan's Leading Expert on Visual Literacy. Animal-lover. Ultra-vegan. Super-nerdcore. Ker-pow!
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Happy holidays! I was lucky to be invited to illustrate the entire REVUE West Michigan Holiday Gift Guide. Featuring 25 “character types” that you may be doing shopping for this season, (the bookworm, the movie buff, the music junkie, etc…). Pick up a free copy in many local west Michigan shops, or view all the images here.
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Check out my artwork in this month’s issue of Revue West MI – It is my two year anniversary of only drinking local beer, so to celebrate this I was lucky enough to do some work for one of my favorite West MI publications, and excited that its in their all-local microbrewery issue – Hooray for Michigan!
You can download the issue here, and my “Michigan: Land of Beer” map is on page 33.
Disclaimer: You must be at least ‘this tall’ to enjoy Ryan’s artwork in the beer issue of Revue.
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This weekend I was a presenter at the Society of Childrens Book Writers & Illustrators Fall conference on Mackinac Island. Not only did I present, but I was an attendee in the illustration boot-camp portion of the conference. So to my TOTAL astonishment, I won second place in the Illustration Nation competition, winning a one-hour mentorship with the amazing Matt Faulkner – I was up against some INCREDIBLE talent, and am COMPLETELY flattered. At the three day SCBWI conference, we were tasked within a one-day period to complete a single painting depicting one scene from a manuscript we were given that day. The story was about a boy that sees wild amazing things no one believes, and the scene I chose was him explaining to his parents that he caught his piano teacher levitating. And I discovered I won about 10 minutes after getting a standing ovation for the presentation on self-promotion I gave to the conference attendees, so you can imagine I was a bit emotional.
See the images on my Facebook page here.
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I will be speaking at the SCBWI-MI annual Fall conference this weekend on Mackinac Island, MI. And I need your help! I am speaking on the topic of authors and illustrators self-promoting, and I want to demonstrate an exercise in how Twitter is a great resource for building fan relationships. On Saturday, September 24, I will be calling on my Twitter fans and friends with a specific question that you can hashtag back with #hipphop. I’ll be showing the feed live from my session, and the “secret question” will pertain to why Twitter is awesome for building relationships. I will be giving three lucky random participants an original piece of artwork for helping me demonstrate! Hope to see you Saturday!