The Jungle Explorers - 2

The first page of my daughter's book. I'm planning on doing all the pages like this - bright, flat colors, to make the characters pop.

When I started, I thought I would have all this wrapped up in a week. It seems she's quite the writer - to do it justice, there will be pages and pages of illustrations. Maybe I should encourage her to write haiku.

Medusa

'Nother mythology pic.

Athena

Here's a sample screen I did for a hypothetical educational game. The first one is the artwork alone, and the second is how it would look with the questions.

The Jungle Explorers - 1

These are drawings that I'm doing for a story written by my 4-year old. Yes, 4. And writing probably isn't the right word; I was the scribe on this one. But she made it all up.

I had initially intended to illustrate a story I had written for her (it's about time for me to start on the kids' Christmas book, after all). But I was so taken with what she made up that I had to do this one first.

Part of this is also posted on dribbble.com - they like it when people re-link to them, so as more of these go up I'll put links to there as well.

You'll notice that the squirrels and acorns are happy together. My daughter seems to think that the two of them are friends. I don't have the heart to tell her it's more of a one-way relationship.

Rocket for Rocket

My youngest daughter, who dubbed herself Rocket, just turned 4 yesterday. I painted her this as her present. I was afraid she wouldn't be as interested in a picture (compared to things like games), but when I gave it to her, she hugged it! So I guess she liked it.

Birthday Card

Or rather, e-card, since I put this up on the screen for my wife to see when she opened the computer.

We went on a cruise this summer, and it was great. So great, in fact, that we all wish we were back on it. While I couldn't do that, at least I could draw it!

The Big Bad

This is something I did for my daughter's Lunch Notes, but, like the snailephant, I wanted to put it up here as well.

Seems like there's always a Monster King around when I get to telling adventures. For the Piggie story, there was a fuzzy Monster King. For the mermaid story, there's this scaly insectoid one. But every rollicking yarn needs a good Bad Guy.

The Snailephant

My daughter's teacher wanted me to read my lunch note story (well, part anyway – it's pretty long) for her class, and talk about what it's like working as an illustrator. That gave me an excuse to do a finished drawing of the characters, as well as the snailephant in all its glory (or repugnance, depending on your opinion of snails and/or elephants). The story arc for this part starts here.

It went over well in the class. The kids asked a lot of questions about drawing and writing, which is what the teacher was hoping for. Also, I made print-outs of this for the class to hand out, but the kids got so excited about it that the teacher asked if she could pass them out at the end of the day instead.

That's the kind of feedback illustrators love – my art will cause chaos! Totally made my day.

"The Magicians" by Lev Grossman - Again!

A while ago, I read The Magicians by Lev Grossman, and liked the imagery so much that I did a drawing from it. I sent it off to the web site of the books, just to see what would happen, and put it out of my mind.

Later, much to my surprise, Lev Grossman emailed me. He said he liked the Pauline Baynes-inspired style of it, and asked if he could post it on his blog. Naturally, I said yes – I was more than happy for him to do so, especially since I had drawn it just for fun. I didn't think anyone (outside of the wonderful people who read my blog, that is) would ever see it. Here's the link to the page (although it's the exact same image. It's just cool for me to see it on the author's blog).

While you're there, check out the rest of his blog – he's got cover art up for his upcoming sequel The Magician King, both the US and the UK versions. Cool stuff – the art for each is really good.

The Battle of the Five Armies