Character designs

A few character designs from Pete and Fremont, showing the reference and inspiration.  I also include the first versions of Pete (the poodle) and Rita (the chimp).  Rita especially gained more depth after art director Samantha McFerrin asked me to make her more feminine.  Author Jenny Tripp gave the Lipizzaner Sisters wonderful MittelEuropean accents that reminded me of Zsa-Zsa and Eva Gabor.

Update: I should mention that the shackled grizzly bear in the reference photo is being relocated, not destroyed.

Wizard reunion prints available!

High-quality signed limited edition prints of The Return of the Wizards are available here.  Get ’em at an incredible low-low price.

A very sad day

My little African Gray parrot, Sherman, went to heaven this morning.  Though he was small, he had a huge personality.  He filled up our house with chattering, whistling & singing. He made up words.  He sometimes called himself ‘Shermy-Pie’—his combination of Sherman and sweety-pie.  It’s heart-breakingly quiet around here now.

You can see him in many of my books.  Wherever I’ve drawn a pirate scene, Sherman is there. Now I’ll carry him in my heart.

Goodbye, Shermy-Pie, my little budgie.

Another Pete cover

Here are rough sketches for the jacket of Jenny Tripp’s Pete & Fremont. This is a wonderful circus tale told from the point-of-view of the animals.

Señor Don Gato on Ebay

I’m auctioning mint condition, signed copies of Señor Don Gato on Ebay while they last.  Of course I’m happy to sign/inscribe them.

Goldie Socks in progress

Oh, happy day!  My computer, before it had its nervous breakdown earlier this year, absolutely refused to recognize some of my old disks.  Now I pop in a disk and voilà!—some old files I’d thought were lost forever are back again.

I worked on Goldie Socks and the Three Libearians, by my pal Jackie Mims Hopkins a few years ago.  I’d just gotten a digital camera and was beginning to document the progress of my paintings.  Here’s one scene where I’m painting the inside of the libearians’ house.  Goldie Socks settles down to read a book in a couch that’s too soft.  At the end of the sequence, Goldie is still only an underpainting.  I’ll come back later and paint her into every scene.

Big old machines

I visited the Pioneer Steam & Gas Engine show in Saegerstown, Pa, last Saturday.  Here are a few shots—you’ll find the rest of ’em here.

Cover ideas for Pete’s Disappearing Act

Back when Jenny Tripp’s fabulous sequel to Pete and Fremont was still in production, the story—in which Pete leaves the circus in search of a new life—didn’t yet have a title.  Things were becoming so desperate AD Samantha McFerrin was reduced to asking me for ideas.  Here are rough sketches for the cover with title possibilities scribbled in:

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Nothing very workable here.  What about something more show-bizzy?  At this point Pete’s Disappearing Act had become the working title, so I thought I’d do something that looked like a vanishing act. Here are some ideas as tight sketches:

Too Houdini.  Here’s a dramatic scene where Pete and his friends are almost run over by a riverboat:

Still not quite there.  But this one was the winner—Pete caught up in a twister:

Dear T Rex cover

My computer had a nervous breakdown in March and I thought I’d lost all my images from this title, Dear Tyrannosaurus Rex.  Here are some that follow the development of the cover art I found on a disk.

The story’s about a girl who sends a T Rex an invitation to  her sixth birthday party.  The first sketch is for front & back cover, showing T Rex opening the invite in his museum.  Next is the painting with more background on the left side, including the security guard.

The art director wasn’t happy with this image, and suggested something simpler.  Here’s the sketch and the painting.