There’s a little throwaway scene in Joe Bright and the Seven Genre Dudes where Joe is invited to a royal story-telling competition. For this image I needed to design the royal messenger and the king’s coach. The story isn’t set in any particular time or place—it just calls for a fairytale look. That allows me […]
From the Vance & Louise Torbert Collection.
Here’s Stella, from Joe Bright and the Seven Genre Dudes. Thumbnail sketch for pp 6/7. Stella the storyteller sees her rival, Joe Bright, in the back of her magic story-telling chair. Tight sketch for page 6. A close-up of my color map for the book. These are small color sketches of every spread, all next […]
I just got my catalogue from Upstart Books, and Joe Bright and the Seven Genre Dudes is available! This is my second title I’ve illustrated for author Jackie Mims Hopkins. We previously worked on Goldie Socks and the Three Libearians. Upstart publishes books with school librarians in mind. Here are some work-in-progress shots from Joe […]
I just found these photos of the decorations we did for Vacation Bible School at Third Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. The theme was pirates, and since I’m your go-to guy when it comes to pirate stuff, Michelle (our associate pastor) asked me to come up with something. I sketched images for banners, then gridded them […]
Here’s the model sheet I came up with for Henry. This was a few years ago. I was working along the lines of classic model sheets for say, a Disney character, with the proportion lines and head-height. Nowadays my model sheets are a lot looser, with many more poses scattered over the paper.
Over at How to be a children’s book illustrator, they’ve got some video of Brian Selznick explaining his creative process. The key idea to take away is this: creating a successful picture book requires having a vision for the entire project. You can’t think in terms of ‘one illustration at a time.’ Brian accomplishes that […]
I had it in mind to create some note cards with these images. Never got around to it.
Stinker and the Onion Princess is an updated Grimm’s story set in Texas—but with a fairy tale quality. I didn’t want the characters to look too real, but they should be sort of modern-day. To get the kind of vibe I was looking for, I turned to Roy Rogers. Roy, Gene Autry and a host […]
