Making Glad the Heart of a Small Child

This is for my 4-year-old daughter, whose favorite book is Trina Schart Hyman's Saint George and the Dragon. And those who know me know I couldn't be happier about it – get the young dragonslayer started early. Besides, it's a great book with great art.

Anyway, the only downside is the book is a little long for a single night's reading (unless she starts going to bed waaaay early. Hold on a second, that doesn't sound so bad! Let me enjoy that thought for a moment... wait, where was I?). So she asked me to make her a knight bookmark. This is my rough sketch, but a tight one, so I printed these out for her so she could color it herself. And also for her brother and sister, because I know if I come home with one thing for one kid... well, those of you with children know where that one's going.

Work In Progress: Apple Tree

Another part of the larger drawing, to go with the cauldron.

Work In Progress: Cauldron

One part of what is turning out to be a much larger scene. More to come!

The Jungle Explorers - 3

The next page – just a couple of the evil King's cronies.

Solar Compactor Graphic

Whenever I walk around downtown, I always see BigBelly Solar Trash Compactors. They're a really great idea - they smush the trash and use their own energy to do it. The only thing that bugs me about them is the graphic on the sides, which looks like this:


Intellectually, I know that the cut-out is supposed to show the difference between the shirt and the pants. But even so, I can't help seeing it like this:


Maybe it's just me.

My Daughter's First Monster King (snif)

Another one from my daughter's story. And I'm proud that she felt the need to include a Monster King, and even that she made it her own by calling him the "King of the Monsters." I've had two Monster Kings on this blog already, so I'm happy to see her keeping up the family tradition! I... I promised myself I wouldn't cry...

Some of the king's cronies can also be seen on the Dribbble post. They'll be showing up in later pages.

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.