Category Archives: News

Mayor Sly and the Magic Bow Tie

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I seem to be in the habit of discussing my book projects on Tuesdays.

Last fall, I was contacted by my friends at Ascend Books to illustrate an exciting project for them. It was (drumroll, please) Mayor Sly and the Magic Bow Tie: A Kansas City Adventure.

The book was written by Aja James and Audrey Masoner with Kansas City’s current mayor Sly James. Mayor James is quite famous for his colorful bow ties. In this story, he wears a magic time-travel bow tie that allows him to travel through Kansas City history. This book required a LOT of visual research into the people and places Aja and Audrey wrote about. The scenes in modern day are in full color while the past sequences are in a limited color scheme. (And different colors for every time period.) Here are a few of my favorite images from the book:

Mayor Sly James admires the view from roof of his office. I was provided with photos of the rooftop view to get it as accurate as possible.

On the river with Lewis and Clark. The two faces and clothing of the men are based on old paintings of them.

 This historic building is now known as Kelly’s.

Mayor Sly meets Harry Truman and Walt Disney.  Notice that Walt has a mouse on his sketchpad. It’s not quite Mickey– I based it on a mouse I found on a movie poster from Disney’s Laugh-O-Gram studios to make it as period accurate as possible.

This is the first Plaza Christmas lighting. I made as certain as possible which Plaza building was lit and where they hung the lights. I couldn’t find a photo of the man’s face who hung the first lights so I obscured it from view.

If you’re interested in the book, you can find it on Amazon at the link below:

PaPa and Christian

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I recently had an email exchange with someone who was familiar with my Daily Drawings and wanted to know if I ever considered doing picture books and artwork in color. And I realized that lately I haven’t done a very good job of talking about or showing my actual paying work. So let’s try to remedy that, shall we?

Here are a few images from the book PaPa and Christian’s Great Adventures: The Treasure Awaits! written by Patrick R. Carberry and his grandson Christian Patrick. The book is follows Christian and his PaPa as they discover an old pirate treasure map. Can they find the treasure?

Patrick tells me he has lots of further books planned if this one sells well. If you’re interested, check it out on Amazon.

Let’s Go Yankees! book

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I have done a really bad job showing off my published work recently. So I’m going to try to remedy that in the next few weeks.

I really should have mentioned this one during baseball season, but this summer I had the pleasure of illustrating the book Let’s Go Yankees! written by Scott Pitoniak. This one was a bit out of my normal comfort zone– the publisher wanted realistic illustrations of the real players mixed with my usual cartoon animals. I also incorporated elaborate scenes of Yankee stadium throughout the book (Based on photos since I wasn’t able to fly to New York to see it in person.)

Here are a few of my favorite images from the book (click on the images to see them larger):

If you like what you saw (and want to read Scott Pitoniak’s text) please check out the book at your local bookstore or at the Amazon link below:

Go Cubs Go! Pages

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As promised, here are a few page spreads from my new picture book, “Go Cubs Go!” In it, Grandpa Bruno shows his grandkids his Cubs baseball scrapbook and mementoes. The book follows both the history of the Cubs and Bruno’s life.

If you like what you see, you can pre-order the book on Amazon (or at your local bookstore.)