Caricatures, Silhouettes and Illustrations by Leona Hosack

I am so excited to learn that the book I finished illustrating earlier this year, Jamila Does Not Want A Bat In Her House, which was written by my wonderfully talented writer friend Phyllis Edgerly Ring, is about to be released in the next month or so by The US Baha'i Publishing Trust's subsidiary, Bellwood press!  Below is the artwork for the cover of Jamila..... minus the title text. If you would like to know more about the author of this book, please check out her inspiration blog here!https://phyllisedgerlyring.wordpress.com/

We have been attending several Fall fairs in the last few weeks starting with the Franklin County Fair in Western Mass. a couple of weekends ago! It is actually held in my home town of Greenfield, Mass. I was especially excited, not only because I was able to visit with family and old friends while I was there, some of whom I haven't seen in many years, but also because, with the help of my husband I was able to offer for the first time- my caricatures, silhouettes and portraits on tee-shirts! A realistic pencil drawing I did at the Franklin County Fair in Mass. A caricature of my grand nephew Jacob on a tee shirt- drawn at the Franklin County Fair. A sweet family who posed for me at the Fair in Mass. My sweet hubby Larry puts my drawings and silhouettes on tee-shirts if people request them, right on the spot at Fairs and also if ordered through my Etsy shop! https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/466749406/adult-custom-caricature-on-a-tee-shirt?ref=shop_home_ac...

Whenever I cut silhouettes at an event people are always asking me how I learned to cut a likeness of a person in under five minutes.  It's hard to answer that in the few minutes I have with the people I do silhouettes of.  So I usually just say that I've been drawing faces my whole life, and when I learned from watching a documentary in 2009, that the art of the silhouette was still sought after, I  just went online and looked up the few other silhouette artists still working, and taught myself by looking at their methods.  So with a very sharp pair of scissors( mine, which I got from Walmart and aren't fancy, but are very sharp) and black silhouette paper, (black on one side, white on the other) which I now order from an Etsy shop, I sit in a chair a little ways away from the subject, and cut their silhouette just by looking at their profile. No pre-drawing, no tracing a shadow, no lights.  My figure drawing class in art school was probably th...

Salt River consists of: (left to right) Cathy King on bass, Mike Rogers on blues harmonica, guitar and vocals, Bev Rogers on vocals, Leona Hosack on guitar and vocals. I'm so glad that I am still performing original and traditional folk-blues music with Salt River. This is our 17th year together! We will be performing this coming Saturday, April 9th, 2016 at Alfredo's Restaurant in Wells, Maine.(corner of Rtes.109 and 1 ) We start around 6 pm. No cover charge , great food and great music. Hope you can make it!

A caricature I did a few years ago! This is me last summer working on a portrait outside at Alfred Festival Day in Alfred, ME. St. Patrick's Day is next week and the first day of Spring is just around the corner! I would have been playing irish music today on my guitar with my wonderful friend Mary, who plays awesome flute and penny whistle, at a local cafe. But instead I am spending the weekend with my sweet, brave and patient husband as he recovers from surgery in the hospital near us here in lower seacoast Maine. Yesterday during the long hours of the surgery I could have taken a walk outside, but I got lazy in the waiting room, warm and cosy, free coffee always available! I actually got a little done on my fantasy novel for middle readers, or young adults. I haven't decided which yet! It's a good way not to focus too much on the distressing situation at hand. I read somewhere, probably in one of the many writer's blogs I tool around at, that the...

So excited to announce that my book "Babysitter Blues" published by One Voice Press is now available at Barnes and Noble.com. Click here to  order  it!: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/babysitter-blues-leona-hosack/1120693411?ean=9780989115261 Here's a caricature I did recently for a recipient of a gift certificate given out when I did caricatures at the  Franklin County Fair in Greenfield, Mass two years ago! It is soon to be posted as a sample in my Etsy shop.   "Let's Be Friends" an illustration I worked on recently just for practice. A new piece for my portfolio! Happy Drawing!

I've been going through my files of old work, drawings and sketches, and have found some of my illustrations that I haven't looked at in a while. Quite a number of years ago, I happened to have been asked to illustrate a few stories for New Millenium Press a small Baha'i Publisher out of Macau. I did the illustrations and sent them, and at the time the person I was in contact with through email, somehow disappeared and I lost contact with them. So I never found out if they actually got published.  This is a portrait of George Washington Carver and sketches and a sketch of him in the field with farmers for a story about him.  A portrait of George Washington Carver in ink and watercolor! A preliminary sketch for the pictur above.  The next four pictures below are about how children should be kind to animals, a story or section of a book based on a quote by Abdu'l-Baha.  These last two pictures were for a story about Baha'u'llah, although ...

I am excited that my illustrations have been accepted on a wonderful website called Storybird. www.https://storybird.com/  I have been in the process of trying to find an online free converter that will tranform my jpg files into tiff. files, and hopefully will also convert my regular rgb (red, green, blue) files to a cmyk(cyan, magenta, yellow and black) file, because these format are what the website requires. Since I don't have a photoshop program and I'm not quite up to speed on the Gymp program on my laptop, finding the right resource on line has been a challenge.  Today I found one that works - for me anyway! Yahoo! I still have to resize the pictures I've chosen, but that I can do on an iphoto program I have on my pc. But I found a website on line that converts not only from rgb to cmyk, but converts from jpg to tiff at the same time. I highly recommend it.  http://www.rgb2cmyk.org/ The two pictures below are two different versions of my artwork entitled...

 Here is my latest work: Below is a caricature I did for a local realter who sometimes uses caricatures for promotional materials.  Notice the houses on the birthday cake and the house shaped package on the top of the present pile!   I have been accepted as an illustrator to post my work on www.storybird.com  so I have been engaged in the process of converting some of my art files from jpg's to Tiff files, as well as changing them to the appropriate color format. This is an image that just came to me about a year ago, and I had the sketch above for all of that time, and was not sure whether it was worth finishing or not. I didn't have a story in mind or any thought of why it's a bird girl or why she looks sad or confused. I took it out of my files because I think it would fit well into the Storybird website. The idea of the website is that writers can choose an image and write about it! SO here it is (below) in process. I'm still thinking abou...