I am so honored to announce that this summer, in partnership with the San Francisco Public Library Summer Stride reading program, the National Park Service, the Presidio Trust, the Parks Conservancy, and Chronicle Books, a story walk of THE HIKE will be installed in the Presidio! I am so appreciative of the love, time, and care that it takes to pull something like this off and cannot WAIT to see it all in place! I ♥️ SF!!
My pal, Zoey Abbott interviewed me about THE HIKE (October 8, 2019 Chronicle). Click here for all the juicy details posted at the Small Empire site!
CYCLE CITY has been chosen for the Chronicle Ebook Deals promotion, lasting the entire month of May! It’s only $1.99! That’s less than my library fines! When you visit the Chronicle site, it will redirect you to many different distributers of ebooks including: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Google, and Kobo.
Friday afternoon I visited the Elgin Bike Hub’s farmer’s market booth.
I had some small helpers drawing bikes with me to make a poster for the Starlight Parade.
Friday night, we Starlight Paraded around downtown. Katie Thompson kicked off the parade with the megaphone and Parker Thompson wrapped the whole thing up at the end (Thompson announcers pictured in squid hats). The sky erupted in thunderstorms immediately after and we headed inside to the after party (scroll through)!
photo credit GBPL
Saturday, I read Cycle City and did a drawing demo for families at the Gail Borden Public Library . I love their library bike!!!
Sunday, Parker Thompson, his kiddos and I borrowed these awesome ebikes from the fantastic Four Star Family Cyclery in Chicago. We rode them to a very sweet kidical mass.
Kidical mass was lead by the fantastic biking aficionados Chicago Family Biking and Roscoe Village Bikes.
Photo credit Roscoe Village Bikes.
Parading through Roscoe Village!
photo credit Elgin Bike Hub
Here I am reading Cycle City to a very cute Kidical Mass audience! I love when my audience can sit in a box bike!
photo credit Elgin Bike Hub
Drawing demo after reading Cycle City! A very fun weekend in Illinois!!!
My husband's favorite food is ramen, so of course I designed a ramen T-shirt for him! Of all the print-as-you-go shops I have used, Threadless has the best quality ink. Find it here at: https://drawdrawdraw.threadless.com/
image copyright Alison Farrell 2018
My friend Emily made a fantastic song about Cycle City! Check it out here!
The next time Emily and I see each other, I'm guessing something like this will happen...
Early in 2017, while I was about halfway through the illustrations for my debut picture book, Cycle City (Chronicle Books, March 2018), I had a looming deadline and not enough time. I thought if I could get away from my regular responsibilities for a week, I might have a chance of getting back on track.
I soon learned about the Sou'wester Lodge in Seaview, WA. Sou'wester lodge is a magical, art-loving place that rents cabins, rooms in a house, camping spots, as well as a fleet of vintage trailers. They have a sauna, a massage trailer, a music studio trailer, loaner bikes, and a consignment shop trailer. They host events, retreats, and workshops. And they do artist residencies! I applied, and eventually booked a week there.
The Old Spartan, my residence for one week.
Inside the Old Spartan: compact, efficient, perfect!
At Sou'wester, I worked about 10 hours each day, mostly on linework! So so so much linework to be done! I brought my light table, used a fountain pen and some microns to trace all of my spreads onto 300lb Arches paper (snob-paper for paper snobs). I listened to the entire Harry Potter series on audiobook that week!
Amidst the chaos, one finished piece!
I'm so happy I was able to have a whole uninterrupted week to work at Sou'wester, it really was a treat!
Click through the gallery to see more photos of the Old Spartan and some of the places I walked to in Seaview, WA!
