Zickefoose Jigsaw Puzzle--Family Feud!

Thank you! to everyone who has ordered "Fantasy Flock." I finally got all the orders catalogued and recorded last night. And 50 puzzles came in the rumbly UPS truck yesterday! Little Chet Baker greeted the UPS man, sniffchecked them and they're all OK.

I wasn't sure what to expect from a jigsaw puzzle, but I figured you'd respond enthusiastically. So, apparently, did Galison's customers. The first printing is already sold out, so after only a day and a half of lovely online sales, I'm backordered until the first week of December. 

Another one of those "good problems to have." I seem to have a lot of those!

I'm going to trust that I can get them delivered to you by Christmas, so order away. I hope to get the paid orders out today, and then I'll have to cool my jets and wait until December 7 or so to send out the rest.  Please hurry, puzzle printer. Thank you for your patience, and for your support of my work. 

At the outset, everybody wanted to help. Even little Chet Baker. 

Daddy came in and started helpfully putting together a few of the birds.

This offended a sense of order and even, I daresay, morality in our fiery daughter. She did not see this as helping. She perceived it as poaching. For his part, Chet Baker perceived the puzzle pieces as  small, tasteless bikkits, perhaps, and he persisted in begging for them long after he knew they were just pasteboard. Please. Let me sniff that tiny bikkit. I may want to chew it up.

Meanwhile, Phoebe got madder and madder. Then madder. Daddy didn't get why she should be mad.  I would dip in and listen to the conversation, then sneak out of the crossfire to go do something else. As a mom, I'm often pressed into service as an unwilling adjudicator, and I had no desire to issue a ruling in this case.

I empathized with both parties. Putting together the birds is fun. And it's helpful, to a point, until you try putting together the sky, which is not nearly as much fun. 

So here's Phoebe dutifully working on sorting all the blues in the sky wash, which turns out to be a teeth-grittingly large percentage of the puzzle's area. And here comes Daddy of a fine Saturday afternoon, whipping out the ruddy turnstone in a matter of minutes. Here you go, Phoebs! 

 I could see smoke coming out of Phoebe's ears. Like when they pick a new Pope. 

For Phoebe, it was like having him sit down at the table, eat her dessert, and say, "I helped you finish your dinner!"

After repeated deployment of her Death Glare, Phoebe and the more pliant and obedient Liam were soon left alone to their meditative work.

Phoebe has found a key piece, some bird's beak. I can't remember which one, and I can't see well enough to tell. 

Progress photos, some taken very late at night (incandescent light).

The birds are the least of it.

To say this puzzle is challenging is, um, an understatement. Self-proclaimed "puzzle freaks" will love it, because they'll know they can beat it. I'm more of a throw-up-the-white-flag puzzle person, in awe of real puzzlers, and happy to let them tackle it.

Morning light. They're still working on it. We're talking days. But hey. A good 1,000 piece jigsaw should take days. That's what a jigsaw puzzle is for. You set it up on a card table where everyone (except apparently Bill) can have a nice occasional whack at it.

It's really coming under control now. I think this was the last day.

They all run together. Ahh, I love this scene. Kids, with the time, the concentration, and the leisure to work on a puzzle. Phoebs wants one for the dorm she lovingly oversees as a student proctor. She will get one! Better hide those bird pieces until everyone's done the sky, girl. Or better yet, let them work it out themselves.

In the end, Phoebe settled on a systematic way of locating the correct blue pieces. She made separate piles of each shape, discerned which shape and color she needed next, went to the correct pile, and tried every one in the pile  until she got the right one. Holy Pope Smokes!

I can only marvel at the system she evolved. I suppose that's standard behavior for puzzlers. I designed and painted it, but I definitely don't have the patience to do that.

Basically, you go from easiest (birds and clouds) 

 to hardest (those durn blues of mine!) Watch out. The blues gonna getcha.

 But eventually you finish it! They let me put in the final piece!

When finished, the puzzle proved amazingly durable, unflappable!

That's a mighty proud pair o' kids there. I am incredibly proud of them for completing it! These photos were taken before they busted it up so they could do it again. Someday. Not really soon.

 It can be done! Don't drop it, Liam!

Sweet memories of last summer, when our girl came home. She walked right into a sky like the one her mama painted.

You can order "Fantasy Flock" 

by clicking here.

Please allow -eep- 7 weeks for delivery of pure awesome.

A Zickefoose Jigsaw Puzzle?!

One by one, my dreams come true. 

When I was a kid, we had a beautiful round Springbok jigsaw puzzle covered with songbird vignettes by Don Eckelberry, ca. 1965.

I worked that puzzle again and again with my sister Micky. We'd separate out the yellow pieces, distinguishing the sunny strong eastern meadowlark yellow from the lemony goldfinch yellow from the evening grosbeak's rich mustard. We knew tanager red from cardinal red, oriole orange from redstart orange.

I loved to draw even then, and dreamt as I worked on that puzzle of someday decorating a jigsaw puzzle full of birds. 

And now I have! 

Galison/Mudpuppy has produced a truly beautiful 1,000 piece puzzle of my painting, "Fantasy Flock."

It was first commissioned by my hero, the late and dearly missed Russ Greenberg, founder and director of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.

I'll never forget what he said. "I need a painting of face-melting beauty that will draw people from across a crowded convention hall."

He wanted it for a decorative banner. He told me I could pick the species I most wanted to paint.

This being the thing every freelance illustrator yearns to hear but almost never does, I nearly fainted from joy. I immediately got to work on a full-sheet watercolor of Neotropical migrants against towering thunderheads. It made a fabbo banner for SMBC's trade show booth.

Years later, I looked at my paintings and wondered which ones would make a good jigsaw puzzle. 

I had a hunch that Galison would select it from the array of art that I offered. Knowing what I do about jigsaw puzzles, it was a no-brainer. 

Well, I should reword that.

Because doing this puzzle takes some serious brains.

The only person in our household disciplined and methodical enough to complete it is Phoebe. She is the reigning Queen of Jigsaws. The rest of us help--Liam more than anyone--but Phoebs is the undisputed Queen.

You can order it using the button in the right sidebar of this blog homepage. It's called "Fantasy Flock." Or click here. 

Small caveat: The puzzle has proven extremely popular right out of the gate. Barnes and Noble made a massive order from Galison and virtually cleaned them out. I have only 50 to sell now--that's all I could get-- but more are being shipped the first week of December. 

Shades of The Bluebird Effect. The first printing was gone--Poof!--just like that. And everybody had to wait a couple of months for the second printing. 

Thanks Oprah! Good problem to have, everybody said.

In my next post, I'll show you what it's like to put "Fantasy Flock" together!

A few sparks flew...to be continued.

Why Don't You Make Notecards With Your Paintings on Them?

I have been asked this question an estimated 1,072 times over a 38-year career as an illustrator. I guess the proximate answer is that it costs money to do that, and career illustrators don't tend to have a lot of money. Now that I've segued into writing and illustrating my own work, not much has changed. Still no capital to do anything with, though I dream. For years I've watched the marvelous Dutch artist Marjolein Bastin flourish, selling cards featuring European songbirds to the American market. Good for her. She does lovely work. But part of me always wondered why that couldn't be me. Wouldn't Americans prefer cards featuring birds they know? Why have a European blue tit when you could have an eastern bluebird?

So when the well-respected New York stationery company, Galison, approached me last year to ask if they could make notecards with my paintings on them, it didn't take long for me to say Hell Yeah!!

Paint four of my favorite birds (I got to pick!) in seasonal settings for high-quality notecards that you can send through the U.S. Postal Service to surprise someone with a piece of Real Mail?

With the backs decorated with my sketches and botanical studies? 

And four designs, four of each, for a total of 16 cards with 17 pretty envelopes, and all of that in a sturdy keepsake box with magnetic closure?

 Oh yes yes yes! I was on it like Bluebonnet. 

Sketches and mockups flew back and forth (electronically) between Whipple and New York City. Without meaning to, I totally grossed out my contact at Galison with this photo of my desk full of reference material. She said she couldn't look at this picture. Well, I don't make this stuff up. Gotta get it somewhere. Detached wings from roadkills, study skins, real sumac in a vase. Real reference material means accurate paintings. That's how it's done at Indigo Hill Arts, where we take bird painting seriously.

The finished flicker in staghorn sumac. A painting I've always wanted to do, since I've seen this scene in nature several times. Maybe not quite this colorfully, but a flicker in sumac is a fine, fine sight. Perhaps North America's most ornate bird, and one I love very much. 

Though cardinals were suggested, I decided the winter image had to be cedar waxwings in mountain ash. Cardinals have been done, and done, and done. I've raised three waxwing babies and I love their rollicking sense of fun. The best part, after painting those tiny red tips on the flight feathers? Taking a toothbrush, dipping it in Chinese white, and flicking it all over the finished painting. Snow!

 Spring would feature one of my favorite warblers, the Canada. See, I got to pick!  I'd put him, fanning his tail, about to launch after an insect, in blooming mountain laurel, because that's where I love them best. What a gas to paint the spectacles and necklace on this magnificent little bird, then top it all off with the candy cake decorations of mountain laurel buds and blossoms.

And Galison wanted the cover painting from The Bluebird Effect for the summer piece. Fine with me! Male eastern bluebird with chicory, a little yellow vetch and wild rose--doesn't get a lot summerier than that. Right about now, in fact.

The bluebird would go on the cover of the keepsake box. It's a really nice heavy box, and the magnetic lid closes with a satisfying car-door thunk.

Throughout, my handwriting and sketches. I even wrote the copy on the back of the cards. It all feels very personal, like pages torn from one of my sketchbooks. I loved the whole experience of being involved in creating these cards. Thank you, Juanita! Thank you, Galison! Thank you, Russell Galen, for your help in negotiations!

So. You want 'em yet? I got 'em! Thanks to my fabulous Web Witch, KK, I've got a little purple card-ordering button on the right sidebar of this blog, and on

juliezickefoose.com's home page

 or you can just

click here

to find out more and order

 I'll wrap 'em up and get them to you via the U.S. Postal Service! 

If these do well, I'd love to do more. More birds, then flowers, insects, mammals, reptiles...the sky's the limit.