This weekend, I’m attending the annual conference for the Kansas Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (Kansas SCBWI). This year, the conference has homework to be done ahead of time (gasp!) As part of that homework, I had to design and illustrate an new cover for the classic book “Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum. And this is what I came up with. What do you think?
I’m excited to discover what the other illustrators at the conference created.
I’m taking a week off from Jim and Ted’s adventures for something a little different…
I was saddened to read that the brilliant cartoonist Richard Thompson passed away a few days ago. I never met the man, but his brilliant comics and scratchy pen work have been a huge inspiration to me. If you’re unfamiliar, Richard Thompson created the comic strip Cul De Sac as well as a million other illustrations, magazine covers, and some brilliant caricatures. His book “The Art of Richard Thompson” was partly my inspiration for the Daily Drawing I did last year.
So I offer this sketch of Petey and Alice in memory of him. When I first discovered his work, I was disappointed by the deceptively simple characters and sketchy backgrounds. But the more I saw the more I realized how deliberate every line was. I was utterly amazed when I realized how utterly good he was. (My Petey and Alice tribute took far longer to draw than I anticipated, and Alice doesn’t look cute enough. She’s always cute, even when she’s annoying Petey.)
I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned it here before, but I participate in the weekly illustration challenge Line it is Drawn over at goodcomics.comicbookresources.com Every the audience (via twitter) suggests comic book related topics to draw based on that week’s theme. Here are a few of my favorites from the past few weeks:
The Muppets as the Fantastic Four:
The cast of Dilbert as the Justice League:
The daughter of Lucy and the Punisher (who happens to look just like her mother):
Check out The Line it is Drawn every Friday for more comic-related imagery from me and my fellow artists.
A year ago, I had the privilege of working on a project for the Australian company Dodo to illustrate a promotional “Colour In Book” featuring their dodo mascot. Here is the computer generated mascot they use in their ads and other materials:
And here are a few of my favorite pages from the Coloring Book (to use the American term):
Looking back on it, I probably added too much detail to these images–they were probably too hard for children to color. But I had a lot of fun with it. This is one of the few projects I’ve done that I didn’t get a printed copy of, so I don’t know how the final product looked (or even if my artwork was used). But I like to imagine that kids all over Australia have been coloring these dodos for the past year.
Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, and other characters copyright Disney.
As I’ve mentioned once or twice before on this blog, a few years ago I was approached with the possibility of drawing Disney’s ducks for comic books. I grew up watching Disney’s Ducktales on TV and reading all the comics I could get my hands on. But I had never tried to seriously draw them until then. And I wasn’t too bad at it. But before I could get my first assignment, the editor I was talking with lost his job and the whole Disney comics line closed down. Such things happen sometime. (Don’t worry, I landed the Kansas Jayhawk ABC book weeks later, and that worked out pretty well for me.)
But I developed the love of drawing Donald, Uncle Scrooge, and the whole gang of ducks. So I occasionally start my day with couple sketches of Donald to warm up the ol’ drawing hand before working on my own stuff. And so I decided to put all that practice to good use and draw the Disney ducks in a more finished illustration.
And I think it turned out OK. What do you think?
