Entries by johnmanders

Prepare to repel boarders!

A pox on’t! Henry & the Crazed Chicken Pirates is finally here!  Just click on the title to get a copy of your own. As Drake said to his men before Nombre de Dios in 1572, ‘Blame nobody but yourselves if you go away empty!’

How To Become An Illustrator, Canto III

Anyone left in the room?  If you read Steps One and Two and you’re still here, you must really want to be an illustrator. Okay.  You have a day job, you’ve begun the process of organizing your business—now let’s move on to Step Three.  Build a portfolio. Who is your market?  Figure out who your […]

Paper/Pencil/Brush.

My pal Margeaux Lucas has a blog, Paper/Pencil/Brush.  She shows a lovely example of underpainting in a gouache illustration. Her style reminds me of picture books I read when I was little.  It’s all too easy to become heavy-handed with gouache, especially when you’re piling paint on top of paint, as you’re obliged to do […]

Two Bad Pilgrims’ progress

Here’s the big scene from Two Bad Pilgrims, where Francis and Johnny nearly scuttle the Mayflower when they fool around with their father’s fowling piece.  First the thumbnail sketch: Then the tight sketch: There was some squeamishness about showing two boys firing a gun in a kids’ book, so we tried a different approach.  Sometimes […]

Being John Singer Sargent

I’m working on paintings (finishing them up, actually) for a story about a cat who lives in Venice circa 1890.  Since the publisher refused to send me to la Serenissima to gather visual research (hey, you can’t blame a boy for asking!), I was forced to make do with the beautiful paintings of John Singer […]

Designing a cover for the new Henry

Sponge out your cannons!  Prepare to repel boarders!  Henry & the Crazed Chicken Pirates will storm bookstores on August 11th! Many eager customers are even now camped out in front of those bookstores, awaiting the big day.  For those of you with internet access, here are a few visual bonbons to take your minds off […]

How To Become An Illustrator, Canto II

Step Two. Organize your business. The very idea of organizing a business bores the pants off us creatives. But, illustration is a business.  We create something people want to buy, and sell it at a profit.  That seems fairly straightforward, but let me tell you that many illustrators sell their work at a loss—and don’t […]

How To Become An Illustrator, Canto I

I received an e-mail from Jim, who recently graduated with  a bachelor of visual arts from Boise State University in Boise, Idaho.  He asks: how does one go about becoming a professional illustrator? That’s an excellent question.  I’ve been asked that question by more than one art school grad newly saddled with five-digit debt and […]

John & Elinor Billington

Here are some more character designs from Two Bad Pilgrims.  John & Elinor Billington were Francis & Johnny’s mom and dad.  The passengers on the Mayflower comprised 2 groups: the Saints and the Strangers.  The Saints were the Puritans who wanted to found a colony where they could practice a Christianity free from the corruption […]