A little tale to lighten the mood during quarantine (inspired by my children)

Jack and the Social Distancing Beanstalk

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Jack. He and his mother lived in a hovel on the edge of the forest. Initially, it had seemed like an isolated shack; now it was desirable distance away from everyone. On the other hand, they still needed supplies.

“Jack!” called his mother. “Take this wheelbarrow full of money, and go down to the markets on the Amazon River to buy hand sanitizer!”

“Just one wheelbarrow?” he asked.

“Well, get a small bottle anyway, if they have any,” she snapped. “Now, off with you!”

He obliged, but on the Amazon, there wasn’t any hand sanitizer, at any price.

Glumly he went back home, when up popped a stranger.

“Hi there!” the little man chirped happily. “How would you like to buy some magic beans?”

“Sure, if you can pass them to me from at least 6 feet away,” agreed Jack.

The bag of beans were tossed to him, but Jack happened to sneeze before he could hand over the wheelbarrow, so the little man just ran away.

“Hi Mom, I’m back!” he called. “I still have the money, and I got some magic beans too!”

“You don’t know where they’ve been! Throw them out!” she screeched, so he did.

The next morning, a beanstalk had grown outside the hovel, reaching all the way to the sky.

“Now THAT’S what I call social distancing! I’m outa here,” he said, beginning to climb.

At the top of the beanstalk, he saw a gigantic castle in the clouds. He snuck in, and saw a titanic giant amidst all his hoarded treasures. There were rolls upon rolls of toilet paper; hand sanitizer was stacked up in enormous barrels; and there was a goose that laid an unlimited supply of face masks.

Jack took one look at the giant, and decided what to do. He coughed.

The evil giant, hearing this, ran panicked out of the castle, fell down the hole where the beanstalk was, and smashed to bits on the ground.

Jack lived happily in the castle, and, since he had so much, he was willing to share his treasure with others. By throwing it down, of course; there was no way he was going back down there.

The end

My Next Painting (in progress)

Got a Red Riding Hood theme going on here, but I'm enjoying it.

Just like the last painting, this one will be in full color. But to start, I wanted to unify it by painting in all the shadow color as an underpainting. And I liked it so much, I decided to take a picture of it.

If I hadn't done the first one in full color I'd have been tempted to just leave this as is. So glad it wasn't the first one!

Prepping for Art Class

I'm teaching an art class starting this Sunday at the Chinese School. And when I was coming up with a subject for the first class, I remembered my first class from art school. We had to draw our initials, in a way that would represent us. It was a way for the professor both to see what we could do, and also learn a little about the students. So I wanted to do it in my class as well!

To kick things up a bit, I'm also having them make this the cover of a sketchbook that they can use. And, so they could see what could be done, and how it would look at the end, I made one myself to show them:

Anyone who reads this blog won't be surprised at the fairy tale reference for the S! And since we just went camping, I wanted to try something different for the V.

It was fun putting it together - never tried stitching a sketchbook together before, and it came together well. I also asked my kids to try the same assignment. They're working on it now - coming up with some interesting work! I'll show it tomorrow as more examples, to help generate ideas.

Honors Students, Folktales, and Dim Sum

(pictured: Dr. Snyder, standing and looking very professorial, 

a group of really intelligent Honors students, and me)

I got to talk about illustrating, my book, and folktales with a group of Honors Students from Mississippi State not too long ago. They were brought up here by Dr. Christopher Snyder (dean of the Honors Program), and, as both of us like Chinese food, we all met for Dim Sum.

The students were great - I got to share my experiences, as well as hear theirs. Which included math, astrophysics, political science, and medicine, so I definitely got a lot out of the lunch as well!

The Silver Rings - It's Here!

The Silver Rings is now available at http://www.brattlepublishingstore.com/trade-publishing/the-silver-rings!

Here's the book description:

Alice and Celia are identical — as twins, and as the recipients of ghastly treatment from their horrid stepmother and stepsisters. To escape, they flee to their fairy godmother Mozzarella’s house. There, Mozzarella advises them to separate and make their way in the world, offering them the rather dubious assurances of troll skin disguises and silver, somewhat magical, rings.

Alice manages to find an abandoned cave of treasure, and settles in to blissful solitude. Celia, on the other hand, runs afoul of a bad-tempered witch, and is promptly turned into a frog. Informed by her magic ring of Celia’s peril, but not her whereabouts, Alice sets out to rescue her. Instead, she finds herself atop a glass mountain, avoiding the love-struck Prince Randall. With Alice’s quest at a standstill, and Celia still enchanted, will the sisters ever realize the high hopes that their godmother envisioned?

Got to create a lot of artwork for the book as well, so more pics to come!

Sleeping Beauty's Mother-In-Law

Another one from the Modern Grimmoire book - it even shows up on one of the "Look Inside" pages on Amazon!

The illustration comes from an older version of Sleeping Beauty, by Charles Perrault. In most current versions, it's all happily-ever-after once the Prince kisses her. In Perrault, once she wakes up her troubles are only beginning. The Prince's stepmother is an ogre, who wants to eat her own step-grandchildren, along with Sleeping Beauty as well! And, were it not for the kindness of the cook, she would have succeeded. Then the ogre tries to kill them all with snakes and poison toads… but why give away the ending?

Hans My Hedgehog

An illustration that got into Indigo Press' "Modern Grimmoire." They're an independent publisher, but the book is available on Amazon.

I always like "Hans My Hedgehog" ever since I read it in Grimm's Fairy Tales, mainly because it's so surreal. He's a half-human, half-hedgehog who's parents want him to leave. He agrees, but only if they shoe his rooster and give him bagpipes. Only after I started drawing it did I realize what an unfortunate instrument a bagpipe is for an animal with sharp spines!

The Evil Queen (Once Upon a Time)

Done done donnnnnne! My goal was to get it finished before the show got to how the Queen actually prepares the apple. I'd have hated to have come this far, and then find out I'd totally gotten it wrong. But as long as they haven't shown it, I still had the excuse to go classic like this.

The Evil Queen

Got to ink it in at last! Here she is, the Evil Queen, in this particular instance inspired by the self-same villain from ABC's "Once Upon a Time."

Ultimately, I want to add color, but I'm not averse to line art fairy tale illustrations. Like those by H. J. Ford, who did the drawings for Andrew Lang's Fairy Tale books. H. J. is a big inspiration to me. As is Franklin Booth, who may not have done fairy tale art but is just plain incredibly amazing.

Work in Progress: the Gingerbread Thark

Another fairy-tale inspired piece of art, but this time with Edgar Rice Burroughs thrown in as well. What with John Carter coming out in theaters, I thought I'd put this up today instead of waiting to finish the whole piece.

Tharks are 4-armed green men from Burroughs' Martian series (and the best part about the movie being made. While I hope like the movie is good, as long as I see these guys big screen I'll be happy). They're horrible creatures that consider cruelty the height of hilarity, but are awfully fun to read about in their cheesy pulp-fiction form.

They're so warlike and hyper-violent, that somehow I wondered what Martian fairy tales would be like (don't ask, I don't remember what prompted that connection either). Then my free-associating brain came up with the Gingerbread Thark. No "run run run" for him - Tharks don't run from anything. Ultimately he will go on to conquer the bakers, along with everyone else, and establish himself as king. If this were a real fairy tale, that is, but at least it's fun to draw.

Up next are the bakers that he's attacking, along with some text. And taking it into PhotoShop for some texture. But in the meantime - hey, Andrew Stanton, if you need a movie tie-in for the kids too little to see the movie, I got some Martian fairy tales for ya...

Fairy Tale Christmas

Time for a Christmas illustration for the blog. Last year it was Viking Santa, this year Goldilocks.

This is a perfect example of how deadlines drive illustrators. I came up with this one as a birthday card ("Someone's been eating my cake!"), drew a rough sketch, and then promptly forgot about it. Then along comes Christmas and I realize I have no drawing. So (to quote my three-year-old) ta-da – POOF! It turns into a Christmas drawing, and I get it finished.

Kiss the Cook... and you DIE!

I just got a third story published over at Enchanted Conversation - it's a great site for re-imaginings of the classic fairy tales. They're on issue 4 at the moment – if it's a genre you're interested in, I highly recommend it.

My story is "Cooking Children! with Witch Wanda." If you read it, you can tell that there's a LOT of Cooking Channel being watched in our house (and okay, I'll say it, Crone Weekly is inspired by Us magazine. But it's my wife's, not mine, really!). In it I describe Witch Wanda's apron, and decided to draw up some possible versions of it. They're just comps, since I can't make up my mind which one I like better. Anybody have a preference?

Wedding Invite: the pencil comp

A friend is getting married in Hong Kong this year, and she asked Serena to do the invitation, and me to do the drawing. She said she wanted swans, so my first take on this was to do them like an Asian brush painting.

When she saw them, she said don't do that. Go full-out fairy-tale style.

For me, that's like saying to your puppy, "No, don't play with the rubber bone. Here, have some steak."

I mean, I love Chinese and Japanese brushwork, it's absolutely amazing. But even more than that, I'm the biggest fairy-tale geek, so I was all over this.

The final will be in full color, so I get to have even more fun.

Sorry, Were Those Yours?

I was putting too much thought into this one, which made it seem like it would never get finished. So I just decided to do a little bit at a time. That way, I'd just play with it, instead of trying too hard. And then, after a couple weeks or so, when I went to work on it again, it looked finished. It just sort of happened, somehow.

Which seemed so highly improbable that I asked another artist I work with if he thought it looked finished, and he said yes as well.

So here it is. The picture of the little bird that caused Hansel and Gretel so much trouble. I'm going to start a witch picture in the same vein at some point, but I've really gotten going on "The Woodcutter and the Mermaid," so there will be a lot more pages of that up first.

And They Lived Happily Ever After

The last page of the Frog Prince! Now all I have to do is print up a copy for her. Or several, after seeing the fate of the Happy ABCs.

One thing I never mentioned. The reason I dressed Princess Moy Moy the way I did is because that's how Arianna likes to pretend to be a princess. She has a big pink bath towel that she wraps around herself, and sways back and forth saying "priiiincess." That's also why Moy Moy's dress has an empire waist - Arianna always holds it up high like that!

Or Maybe This

Just in case the Prince looked like he should have a big gold chain to go with that open shirt, I changed his collar. Here's the new version. I figured I'd leave the old one up on the previous post, just for comparison. I'd welcome any input – anyone have a preference for one or the other?

Not Too Much More Frog Prince

Not too much left to go, at any rate. Down to all but the last page!

Page 21 is a good example of something I would change if this were to move to an actual book format. Currently, it's 22 pages (which allows me another 2 for title page, or, in other words, a 24-page book. All books have to be in multiples of 4, because of the way they are printed). A typical picture book is 32 pages, so I'd need to add another 10 to fill it out. Which is why I'd change page 21 – I could easily break that into 2 pages, if I weren't concerned about finishing this before Arianna is too old to appreciate it (say, at 2 and 3/4 years old. Hey wait, she's narrowing in on that now!). The transformation could be one page, and his explanation the next.

Other places to split pages would be when she answers the door. If I weren't trying to keep the current page count down, I'd have made that it's own page. I could also make Princess Moy Moy's first appearance in the garden a two-page spread, as another example, as well as her running back with the golden ball. But all of that is just a future possibility, I've got a child to hurry up and read to!

P.S. On my screen, it looks like the Prince has a yellow front to his shirt (i.e. the same color as the frog's belly). On Serena's screen, it looks like his shirt has a neckline that goes all the way down to his waist (she said all he was missing was chest hair). How does this look for other people? Should I make it more decidedly different from his skin tone, or does it look okay?

More Frog Prince

Up to page 18 – nearing the end! Only 4 pages to go.

The way I rendered her disgust with the frog sharing her pillow is a direct result of the previous comments. A little dramatic without breaking the style of the drawings. So all comments are welcome – they make a better book!

Ew, Yucky!

I got a comment on the last post, noting that Princess Moy Moy doesn't really show much disgust at the thought of the frog sharing her cup. And, for good or bad, that's true. I toned down everything, due to the art style and the age of my audience.

Which is not to say that it wouldn't be great fun to go all-out on the grossed-out expression, if this were in a different style. So, for my own amusement, I thought I'd do a more over-the-top version of the princess from page 15. It'll never make it into the book, but it was fun to draw!

Finally, More Frog Prince

Been away from this one too long, but that's what major home renovation will do to you.

Page 15 was a collaborative effort with my wife. She liked the drawing, but the expression on the princess' face just didn't say "Ew, yucky" to her. I thought about changing the expression by adding eyebrows, but it just didn't work. Then we came up with just changing the shape of the whites of her eyes, which is such a fun solution I may revisit some of the older ones to see if it would apply to any of them.