I’ve written about color scripts before—where I create one big color study that includes every page in a book. I grabbed the idea from the animated movie world. Color is a powerful tool for telling your story: setting the mood and indicating time of day. In The Really Awful Musicians I wanted everything to take […]
The jacket painting for The Really Awful Musicians. This is one of the pieces to be exhibited at the Graffiti Gallery in only 2 weeks! [slideshow]
More of that jacket art for The Really Awful Musicians. Before I begin my painting, I work up a small color study.
Thanks to my buddy Louise for finding this online!
Here are the thumbnail sketches for The Really Awful Musicians jacket art, and the tight sketch.
My pal Jackie Mims Hopkins sends this photo of a wonderful story-reading chair straight out of Joe Bright and the Seven Genre Dudes! It’s the handiwork of fabulous librarian Leanne Drake to celebrate Jackie’s school visit and an upcoming storytelling festival. Nice job! Here‘s an older post showing the chair illustration in progress.
My pal Mary Nethery sent this photo of my illustrations for The Famous Nini. They were exhibited at the Morris Graves Art Museum during the Humboldt County Author’s Festival. That’s in California, isn’t it? Mary read Nini to kids at two schools, and they loved it!
I like this pre-dawn scene from The Really Awful Musicians for its drama. Illustration is just a form of graphic design. Here I’ve used the elements of space, value & texture to get the most juice out of the image. Color, too: the one sliver of orange intruding into the blue-black scene lends a feeling […]
Here are sketches of most of the characters in Really Awful Musicians. Piffaro is the little guy with the pipe & drum, Espresso the skinny dude playing a lute, Serena on harp, Fortissimo on sackbut and Lugubrio on bass recorder. Piffaro is the Steady Eddie main character providing an anchor for the other extreme musicians […]
Holy cow—I just got these in the mail from Hong Kong! These are the press sheets from The Really Awful Musicians. There are 2 sheets, each with 16 pages (8 on each side). Eight plus eight equals sixteen—two times sixteen is thirty-two. That’s why a picture book is usually 32 pages long.
