The Soldiers’ Night Before Christmas

A few posts ago I zeroed in on a book cover from the fifties showing Santa Claus smoking tobacco from a hookah.  Pretty unusual, right?  Nothing like what you'd see Santa doing in a kids' book nowadays.  Well, not so long ago I illustrated…

A great old truck

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My friend Tim is a landscaper in Mars, Pa, and owns this wonderful 1950s Ford truck.  It still runs but needs a bit of, ah, cosmetic repair in one or two spots.  Yes, that's a fender in the bed.  I confess: I covet it and would love to have…

Chaos in Market Square

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From Peter Spit A Seed At Sue, a painting in progress: I've set the scene in Pittsburgh's Market Square.  If you look closely you'll see the location photos I shot.  I used them to help me design a setting that would be recognizable from…

Happy Thanksgiving!

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My friend Vince Dorse, the über-talented artist who colorized Two Bad Pilgrims, spills the secrets of his technique here. Here's hoping you enjoy a blessed Thanksgiving with family and friends.

The Mayflower

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Another spread from Two Bad Pilgrims.  This is the big splashy first glimpse of the Mayflower. Here is the thumbnail sketch: Everything's there that needs to be, but I was concerned that the direction of the drawing didn't show the Billingtons…

Five not-too-bad cover ideas

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People do judge a book by its cover.  Or at least, it's the cover that gets people to pick up the book in the bookstore and see whether they like it.  Here are rough cover ideas for Two Bad Pilgrims. Art Director Jim Hoover liked…

Samoset

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The costume color indication for Samoset, for Two Bad Pilgrims.  Not that there's much costume.  Samoset walked into Plymouth Plantation in the middle of March wearing hardly anything at all.  He was showing the pilgrims he had no concealed…

Master of the Mayflower

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Here's my costume color indication for Master Jones for Two Bad Pilgrims.  'Master' was what they called the ship's captain back in the 1600s. I couldn't find a contemporary picture of him, like an engraving—so I made him up.  I tried to…

Plymouth Plantation

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It's November—time to start thinking about Thanksgiving and pilgrims!  Here's another scene from Two Bad Pilgrims.  This one shows the pilgrims beginning construction of Plymouth Plantation.  The first thing they built was the common house/fort. …

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…