sketches – John Manders

Q is for Queen

Here is one of my favorites from P is for Pirate, the notorious Grace O’Malley—Irish queen & pirate captain. She was a contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I and reportedly had an interview with Gloriana (who, after all, had a soft spot for buccaneers).

Queen Grace has been the subject of songs, at least one play and even a musical. So far as I know the swashbuckling Maureen O’Hara never played her in a movie, but what perfect casting that would have been!

I show Queen Grace in an Errol Flynn pose with her ruffians behind her. In the sketch I thoughtlessly drew a baroque-looking ship like we’re used to seeing from piracy’s golden age. In the final painting I used the Mayflower—much closer in style to a ship from Queen Grace’s time—as reference. Same deal with the costumes: they’re Elizabethan. I first drew her in men’s clothes but thought she looks much cuter in a dress.

Another Pete cover

Here are rough sketches for the jacket of Jenny Tripp’s Pete & Fremont. This is a wonderful circus tale told from the point-of-view of the animals.

Cover ideas for Pete’s Disappearing Act

Back when Jenny Tripp’s fabulous sequel to Pete and Fremont was still in production, the story—in which Pete leaves the circus in search of a new life—didn’t yet have a title. Things were becoming so desperate AD Samantha McFerrin was reduced to asking me for ideas. Here are rough sketches for the cover with title possibilities scribbled in:

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Nothing very workable here. What about something more show-bizzy? At this point Pete’s Disappearing Act had become the working title, so I thought I’d do something that looked like a vanishing act. Here are some ideas as tight sketches:

Too Houdini. Here’s a dramatic scene where Pete and his friends are almost run over by a riverboat:

Still not quite there. But this one was the winner—Pete caught up in a twister:

Festival in Venice

There’s a scene in The Famous Nini when the king declares National Nini Day and everyone celebrates.

Kerry Martin, the senior design editor, wasn’t happy with the scene as I’d depicted it in the thumbnail sketch with crowds on a bridge over a canal (p 17). I worked up 3 rough alternative sketches—where we see Nonna & Nini through the crowd, where the crowd is seen from inside the caffè, where Nonna & Nini are out among the crowd—and then did a tight version of the winner.

Sam

Model sheet for a character from a canceled project.

Doorman & Dream Mom

Characters from a canceled storybook project. The doorman was sort of Mephistopheles and Dream Mom Helen of Troy.

Dream Mom is supposed to be the ideal of a six-year-old boy. I tried to blend aspects of the dream girls from my earliest youth—Julie Newmar; Julie Andrews; Betty/Veronica; the girls’ gym teacher at my elementary school.

Bad moms

Character sketches of bad moms from a canceled project, The Mother Store.

Umberto & Margherita

The improbably mustachioed King Umberto and Queen Margherita come to visit Nini in his caffè—

(By the way—yes, this is the Queen Margherita for whom the pizza is named.)

Giuseppe Verdi & Nonna

Giuseppe Verdi makes his entrance in The Famous Nini.

More research for Nonna’s costume can be found here.

Stella the storyteller

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 to each other. It’s easier to plan the palette, or color choices, for the entire project when I can see it all at once. The scenes with Joe Bright feature warm yellows; the ones with Stella are cold blues and purples. Stella tries to foil Joe with 3 different devices—these are acid green, so the reader can identify them easily.

For example: