Miakara Belanger and her mother, Ariel, enjoy Monday’s Art @ 3 at the Cultural Center at Ponte Vedra Beach. (photo by Chuck Adams)

Pelican Pete didn't make it to the Cultural Center at Ponte Vedra Beach Monday, but there were plenty of reminders of the children's book character, which has been around for about 10 years.

There were some of the Pelican Pete books on hand, as well as the husband-and-wife illustrator-and-writer team from St. Augustine who are his creators.

Hugh and Frances Keiser were guest speakers for the Art @ 3 event at the center, 50 Executive Way, Ponte Vedra Beach.

They came to the center to present Hugh Keiser’s newest work, “Pencils to Pixels: The Art of Picture Books."

Among the  audience's 31 members were two youngsters, one of whom, Miakara Belanger, hoped to take away from the session “details of how to do art, and secrets, and stuff that’ll help me.”

Also in the audience was Ponte Vedra Beach author and illustrator Lois Simon, who had a number of things she hoped to learn.

“I’m always hoping I learn something every day,” said Simon. “I guess I’m mostly interested in the process they went through.

“I joined the Florida Writers Guild just to get information from other writers,” Simon said,” and found out it’s not book stores that sell your books — it’s the author. I want to find out how they do their marketing, and possibly find out a little bit about their publisher.”

The Keisers’ first book was published in 1999. The Pelican Pete series came from where they live, on the beach at St. Augustine.

“’Pelican Pete’ became the character in the books because we live on the beach, and the pelicans fly overhead,” said Frances Keiser. “We became fascinated with pelicans, and when we decided we were going to do books, the natural character was the pelican.”

Hugh Keiser, a graduate of Cooper Union, has been illustrating for 10 years but has been painting and drawing professionally for more than 40 years. Many of those were spent as an architect with Keiser Associates, a New York top-10 design firm he founded.

He said he moved from architectural design into illustrating because “clients get to you. I don’t like working for people ... I like to work for myself.”

The Keisers moved to Florida from Long Island, where they lived in a community at the eastern end of the island, 100 miles from New York.

Hugh Keiser’s presentation of “Pencils to Pixels” included “how we get into a computer, how we use the computer and samples of the work," he explained.

Frances Keiser talked about her husband’s journey from “pencils to pixels.” She followed up, after he gave the “means and methods” for how he works, with information tips and resources for artists who might be interested in illustrating children’s books: just what do they do, how do they get into it, how do they find writers and what kind of software they need.

“I’ve been writing all along and doing poetry,” said Frances Keiser, “but not children’s books. When we decided to do children’s books, then it was going to be books about nature for children, because I’ve always been involved with nature.”