Katherine Thorne

@sparklemarkers

She/her. Picture book writer/illustrator. Rep: @swekstein.bsky.social 2024 Round Table Mentee, #PBParty Honorable Mention, #50PreciousWords HM. Keep posting about your books; I want to read them! sparklemarkers.com

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Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· 16d

Ikea once sent us an ENTIRE DRESSER that we didn’t order and they were like

The confused cartoon guy from the IKEA assembly instructions

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· 17d

I don’t think I’ve posted my favorite Richard Scarry illustration here yet. There‘s so much going on in this picture, it’s amazing.

A Richard Scarry illustration. The caption reads:

The mayors of the two towns went to the road engineer and told him that they wanted to have a new road.
The townspeople had agreed to pay the road engineer and his workers to build the new road.

The scene is an office. The Chief Road Engineer is sitting at a desk that is a bulldozer with a built-in armchair. He’s playing jacks on his desk and there’s a bunch of papers in front of the dozer blade. Behind him is a small cat with a pink ribbon and hairbow concentrating on typing. She probably does all the work.

On the office wall is a shovel labeled “My first shovel” and a poster depicting “a bumpy road” and “a smooth road.”

The door to the office, with a sign labeled “Please wipe feet,” is wide open. Outside, the Workville mayor’s car is parked directly on top of the Busytown mayor’s car. There are two sets of muddy footprints outside and a single muddy footprint inside.

The two mayors are wearing fancy hats and sashes. Each clutches a clear plastic bag containing a few dollar bills and coins. The mayor of Workville is pointing to the smooth road on the wall poster and saying “we want this one.” Their right foot is covered in mud.

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· 17d

daaaaah I’m forever your girl

Modestly Hot Homsar (from Homestar Runner)

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· 21d

the Pisces Moon mermaid may be literal actual me

Capricorn Sun from the art book Fairy Friends by Yoshi Yoshitani

Pisces Moon from the art book Mermaid Hues by Yoshi Yoshitani

Libra Rising from the art book Foxy Fashions by Yoshi Yoshitani

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· 28d

Altered Peanuts panel with Marcie and Peppermint Patty sitting at desks. Peppermint Patty is looking at Marcie, who says "No, I did not vent about you on Wikipedia, sir"

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· 29d

that website is very wordy for something straightforward, I suspect AI 🤨 I just found my colors from the list it had partway down the page

Capricorn Sun: Granite Pine, 4F6659 (a pine green)

Pisces Moon: Deep Mermaid 4E7F96 (a medium muted teal)

Libra Rising: Airy Peony E7A8C2 (a cool pink)

Aquarius Venus: Digital Purple 9C8CD6 (medium light purple)

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· Jul 11

I divided an absolutely bonkacious amount of irises today and I‘m not even done

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· Jul 11

excuse me you are talking to someone who has this flag in her house

a yellow flag with an illustration of a beautiful Chicago hotdog. from hairbraineddesign.com, they are great

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· Jul 2

It's forecast to be a hot #KidLitArtPostcard day where I live. Stay safe and limit your outdoor time so you don't bake or melt! And it's always okay to stick your head under a sprinkler. Portfolio: sparklemarkers.com Rep: @swekstein.bsky.social

An illustration of two donuts and a cupcake in swimsuits, frolicking underneath a sprinkler that is spraying rainbow sprinkles.

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· Jun 26

This is how my kid solves online crosswords

Part of a crossword grid filled with Es. Most of them are crossed out by the word checker but a couple are correct, totally coincidentally

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· Jun 15

I don't have one single favorite but I'd like to put in a good word for the white-throated magpie jay, who is the Charizard to the blue jay's Charmander

The white-throated magpie jay, a blue and white bird with little black decorative feathers on his head. Photo by Charles J. Sharp, via Wikipedia

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· Jun 13

oh noooo this book called me basic! (…it’s not wrong)

“How charming! Another Katherine. This place is overglutted with Katherines, Kates and Kats and Katys and Katies and country cousins Katelyn and Katrina. And by "this place, I of course mean planet Earth.
This Katherine is cute enough, if that is your area of interest, and filled with the tender confidence of a woman who has only been herself for two or three big years, but her style is deeply, deeply basic, jeans and a T-shirt, as if she is planning to work in a mine after this.”

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· Jun 13

sure is mellow grazing in the grass (grazing in the grass is a gas, baby can you dig it)

a tuxedo cat just chilling in a bunch of grass and weeds

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· Jun 9

Dr. Wily does not understand pillows

a tuxedo cat sleeping on a pillow that was standing up, so she’s squished the middle down

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· Jun 5

I can't even begin to tell you how much fun I had drawing this

illustration of a woman wearing sunglasses and looking cool in front of a background of melty faux-AI-slop cartoon women looking like chumps. the words "keep it real" appear in fancy cursive. drawn entirely by hand by me

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· Jun 4

Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy

“Please do not the cat,” featuring an angry cat, a red X, and a hand trying to the cat.

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· Jun 4

5 years of #KidLitArtPostcard, woohoo! Turning five was a BIG occasion for me. I'm available for colorful and whimsical picture book projects! I'm represented by @swekstein.bsky.social. sparklemarkers.com

An illustration of a child wearing a yellow shirt and tutu-like green skirt sitting in a tree branch.

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· May 30

are we blocking Marvin's view of Venus again?

Marvin the Martian looking through his telescope trying to figure out where the earth-shattering kaboom is

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· May 29

BREAKING: Dr. Rockzo the Rock and Roll Clown has also withdrawn from the Freedom 250 celebration.

Dr. Rockzo from Metalocalypse. He's an animated clown with blue hair, corpse paint-style black and white face paint, a spiky red nose, a purple police hat?, and a rainbow tiger print bodysuit with a cutout that extends below his navel. If you have booked him for your show things are probably not going well for either of you.

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· May 28

WAIT. Who are you. I‘ve never seen you before!

A bearded iris with buttery yellow standards and purple falls

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· May 28

I think a lot, A LOT, about what Brian Eno said about a medium’s limits becoming its signature, about how mistakes are the most interesting thing about AI-generated stuff, and how AI pushers just keep trying to make things that are flawless imitators of something else

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· May 27

It’s been an interesting season. A lot of the various lavender ones (pallida, Little Bay, those fadey ones) have been growing and multiplying vigorously, and a lot of the others have been laying low this year. The "what color even IS this" yellowy-pink ones are back. Shorter, but blooming.

Various lavender bearded irises: Little Bay Denoc (shorter, darker, flared-er) in foreground, I. pallida in background

Bearded iris 'Easter Candy': pale yellow standards, light blueish-purple falls with a darker stripe down the center, ruffled form.

Bearded iris with lavender standards, dark reddish-purple falls, and prominent yellow beards

A very cool yellow-to-mauve gradient bearded iris. Other irises in different shades of light purple are in the background.

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· May 27

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· May 22

ALERT ALERT we got a lucky one! Four falls (but three standards). Wonder if it’ll do that again?

Top view of the same iris, all four falls visible

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· May 21

Only Parable and Florentina are blooming in the backyard so far. The spot with all my random neighbor irises is ahead of schedule! The fadey lavender is back and there’s about nine stems of them.

Florentina, white iris with yellow beards

Lavender iris with flared form and purple-white-yellow beards

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· May 21

we had this whole LORE about our cat being a visionary buzzwordy tech ceo who generally had no idea what he was talking about but was very good at talking it up

a black and white cat who is unaware that the people who feed him have made up extensive fanfic of his tech career

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· May 17

I'm probably not going to do a whole blow-by-blow of all my irises this year, seeing as they're gonna be mostly the same as last year, but they've been growing really well

a whole bunch of iris plants, none in bloom yet.

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· May 12

I kept seeing Slimer in the olive and now my drawing will haunt me for real

a marker drawing of a green olive with slimer's face. his mouth is where the pimiento opening is. he's holding a box of hi-c, his favorite drink.

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· May 8

I think every song on this album except Shake Your Love started with some sort of "ooh-ooh-ooh" vocal

Debbie Gibson's "Out of the Blue." She drew a face on her knee and her teddy bear is wearing a watch! I looked at this album cover A LOT when I was eight despite it being mostly empty space.

Katherine Thorne@sparklemarkers· May 7

debating whether I should put this up on redbubble or somewhere 🙃