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The Wreck of the Salty Carrot

These images from Henry and the Buccaneer Bunnies are up on my website, but they’re kind of small.  I thought you might like to see them here, so you can embiggen simply by clicking on them.

For the shipwreck scene, I wanted to mimic antique oil paintings of storms at sea.  The first three images by masters of the genre represent the kind of nautical art to which I would be tipping my hat.

Following those are my own work.  By now you know the drill: thumbnail sketch, tight sketch, color study, final illustration.

The thumbnail sketches are each about 2″ tall, the tight sketch is maybe 8″ tall, the color study is the size of a postcard, the final is about 20″ x 14″.

Eilian in foul weather, or Foul, Reuben Chappell

Ships in a Storm, Elisha J. Taylor Baker

Agamemnon in Storm

Oh boy, more pirates!

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 off and transferred the designs onto 12 ft lengths of Kraft paper.  We grabbed every jar of poster paint in the playroom, then 3 of my Sunday school students, Emma, Charlotte and Hannah colored in the areas I’d outlined.

Michelle needed an area for kids to sit, so we bought a cheap rug and I painted a treasure map on it in acrylic paint.  I don’t remember what the tiki hut was for.

Dead man’s chest o’ books

Update: Welcome, Bittersweet Harvest readers!

Now that it’s December, I’m wistfully recalling the first hot weekend of last Spring, the one I used as an excuse to paint outdoors.  I created some surface decoration on this wooden bookcase, to be auctioned off at a charity event for Beginning With Books.

I chose for my theme: pirates—natch.

I enlarged the sketch by drawing a 1″ grid over it, and drawing a 1′ grid on the bookshelf. The sketch was drawn so that one inch equals one foot.

The winning bid was from my pal Charlene Langer, an instructor at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

More Henry sketches

Here’s the thumbnail sketch for the opening spread of Henry & the Crazed Chicken Pirates.  Like in a movie, this establishing shot offers a broad swathe of visual information that tells the reader where the story takes place.  The crew of the Salty Carrot frolics in a tropical lagoon where their dear old barky is moored.  0405.tn.chickens

The art director asked that the image be flopped—the ship should face right instead of left.  I begin tracing the ship drawing on a piece of translucent paper through which you can see the layout with the enlarged thumbnail.

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Ships are complicated things to draw.  I trace the scene at least one more time.

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I like to place something like foliage in the foreground, so the reader has the sensation of looking through one plane to see another.  To make this scene truly idyllic, I added a waterfall in the background.

Prepare to repel boarders!

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A pox on’t! Henry & the Crazed Chicken Pirates is finally here!  Just click on the title to get a copy of your own.

As Drake said to his men before Nombre de Dios in 1572, ‘Blame nobody but yourselves if you go away empty!’

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Designing a cover for the new Henry

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Sponge out your cannons!  Prepare to repel boarders!  Henry & the Crazed Chicken Pirates will storm bookstores on August 11th!

Many eager customers are even now camped out in front of those bookstores, awaiting the big day.  For those of you with internet access, here are a few visual bonbons to take your minds off of how hard a concrete sidewalk  can be.

The cover of a picture book is hugely important.  It’s the packaging that gets a casual browser to pick up the book and look inside.  The cover image has to give you an idea of what the story is about.  I also wanted to get a bit of action in there, to appeal to boys.

As usual, I began by drawing little thumbnail sketches.  These are very rough sketches, indicating the idea and where the title type will go.

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Bird's-eye view, looking down on Henry from the top of the Black Yolk.

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Version D is the winner, with some changes.  Henry will be flopped so he’s running left-to-right, the Black Yolk (the chicken pirate balloon) will be moved to the left, and the title type goes in the space made in the upper right.  Here’s the tight sketch incorporating the changes:

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Art director & editor liked this much better.  One last change:  show Henry carrying his book.  Here’s the layout they sent me including both drawing and type:

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Finally, the title type.  We were able to pick up the word ‘Henry’ from Henry and the Buccaneer Bunnies. Here’s the sketch for the rest of the title.

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Then I enlarged the sketch, and inked in the lettering using a lightbox.

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This one is near, that one is far

When I talk about perspective, I’m talking about how an artist creates the illusion of distance in a flat drawing or painting.  Two ways to do that are 1) make the nearer object big and the farther object small, and 2) make the nearer object dark and the farther object light.

Here are some sketches from Henry & the Crazed Chicken Pirates.

We kids’ book illustrators are responsible for telling the author’s story in pictures.  So, when I work on a project, my first drawings are thumbnail sketches.  These are pretty small: maybe only an inch and a half tall.  Because they’re so tiny, I can draw them quickly and best of all, fit all of the scenes onto a single 18″ x 24″ piece of layout paper.  That way I can see the whole story at once.

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Here’s the thumbnail sketch for pages 14/15.  It’s pretty rough, but everything is there.  Another huge advantage to working so small is that the image’s composition becomes clear and simple.  Notice the contrasts:  Henry, in the foreground, is big and dark; the balloon, in the background, is small and light.

Atmospheric perspective is a technique Leonardo, Raphael and the rest of the boys came up with during the Renaissance.  Things that are close to us are sharp and contrasty, things that are far away are muted and softer.  If you are looking at a mountain off in the distance, its colors are softer because you’re seeing them through air that’s full of dust, water particles, cigar smoke, car exhaust, bird poop, &c.

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Spread 14/15

The comprehensive sketch is more refined but I’ve kept to the same composition.

By the way, those parrots are inspired by my parrot, Sherman.

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Wacka-wacka!

Sometimes the thumbnail isn’t quite doing the job, and the comprehensive sketch will change—and improve—what I’ve tried to do in the thumbnail version.  Here’s pages 20/21.

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In the thumbnail version, these pages look a little confusing together.  On the left, Henry’s gaze and pointing finger lead the reader away from the spread.  It’s always a good idea to direct the reader’s attention into the spread, not out of it.  Also, the right side is okay, but not inspired.

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Left-hand page.  By taking Henry out of the picture and just showing the book, we’ve improved the image: the bunny’s gone, so he can’t point outside of the picture.

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Right-hand page.  Yeah, much better.  A treetop lookout for Henry allows me to create a cinematic image, with dramatic perspective.  Henry is way up high and close to us and the Salty Carrot is below and far away.  The great height adds dramatic tension to the scene (will he fall off the ladder?), making it more important.

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All the dark, rich colors are near to us: the tree and Henry.  No dark colors were used at all to paint the ship and palm trees below.