Bunny hop

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Here's the scene in Let's Have A Tree Party! where the animals bunny hop across a branch.  You'll notice the thumbnail sketch shows a bird's-eye view.  Art director Maryellen Hanley asked me to change the direction of the branch so it would…

7 Impossible Things review!

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Seven Impossible Things reviews The Really Awful Musicians and even does a behind-the-scenes series for illustration geeks.

Color for the characters

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The Really Awful Musicians has a cast of characters who appear throughout the story.  It's important for me to decide on the colors for their costumes before I start painting the final illustrations.  This color sketch is a reference tool…

Really Awful color script

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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…

Jacket art painting in progress

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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]

Jacket art color study

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More of that jacket art for The Really Awful Musicians.  Before I begin my painting, I work up a small color study.

Jacket art sketches for The Really Awful Musicians

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Here are the thumbnail sketches for The Really Awful Musicians jacket art, and the tight sketch.

Escaping the king’s men-at-arms

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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…

Really awful character sketches

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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…

Really Awful press sheets

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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. …