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Tomb it may concern

I don’t recall where I found this lovely little mausoleum, but I sketched it as a possible spot for the Where’s My Mummy? title page.

Endpaper

Here’s the sketch and painting (still on the easel) for the endpaper art from Where’s My Mummy?

More Mummy cover sketches

Back cover of Where’s My Mummy?—working out some sketch ideas, followed by the layout for the entire jacket.  When an art director sends me a layout (sketch & text together in one piece of art) she’s telling me to go ahead and start painting.

Hide and shriek!

Here’s the opening spread from Where’s My Mummy? This scene shows Mama Mummy getting Baby Mummy ready for bed—but Baby wants to play one more round of hide & shriek.

Since they’re mummies, I designed an interior to look like the inside of a pyramid, with lots of Egyptian details.  The legendary art director at Candlewick, Caroline Lawrence, felt the setting didn’t convey enough ghoulishness, so she asked me to redraw the scene with a gothic interior.

mummy0607

Revised sketch with gothic details below.  Architecture geeks will note the new shape of the columns, rough-hewn stone walls and groined vault arched ceiling.

mummy.revise.0607

I changed the oil-burning lamp to a candelabrum, but doused the candles in the color version because they were causing me lighting/shadow problems.  I kept the sarcophagus bed from the first sketch.

mummy_01

The light is coming from a single source.  More dramatic and easier to paint.  Also, the viewer’s eye naturally looks to the light source, which is where I put Baby Mummy.

 

H is for Haunted House

HAUNTE~1

from Merrily Kutner’s Z Is For Zombies.

G is for Ghost

GHOST

…from Z Is For Zombie.

K is for Knight

SKELET~1

This image comes from Z is for Zombies by Merrily Kutner.  I painted this one a long time ago.  I think this was my second book, and the only one I didn’t do for laughs.  Very unlike me.  All the images are kind of scary…

Irish ghost story

Only two weeks til Hallowe’en…

Fergus-NightDemon02_72ppi

Fergus O’Mara bargains for his soul in an Irish graveyard—from Fergus and the Night Demon by Jim Murphy.

Creepy spooky haunted house

spooky

I did this picture for a collection of stories or poems—I don’t remember—and this was for the cover.  It’s a caricature of my dear old house in Pittsburgh.  That house doesn’t have a tower, but what’s a haunted house without a tower, right?

Mom reviews Mummy!

A nice review of Where’s My Mummy? over at Mattie’s Madness blog.  newmamamummy