Lazy Sunday

Holy ghosts! That's a lot of ghosts!

"What is this noise," you ask?  I just finished drawing up a bunch of ghosts for a combination flip-book, called 10,000 Ghost Stories, to be published shortly.  I had pretty much free reign to think up 23 iterations of demons and dead things to connect at the neck and waist, which was a real pleasure to spend time on.  In the end, you can make about as many as, you guessed it: 10,000 unique ghosts!  The above is just one example.  Below are the 3 in their un-spliced forms.

Character-Building

Been working up a storm of character designs lately, some professionally, and some for personal projects.  Here are a few.  Above is the line-up of a kind of cowboy version of the Labours of Hercules.

 A spritely punk from a personal project.

A moto-girl for a racing game proposal.

And, finally, a (semi-personal?) character design for another game proposal:  It started with the game-play modeled after Snake, and I built the story on top of it.  The furry thing's name is Dash, and he's an alien pilot who steals fuel orbs for his spaceship from these dust mites that work in the mines of his planet. The story was deemed a little too complex by the PTB, which I get, but I made the artist's mistake of falling in love with this guy, so it gave me a little sad when he got rejected.

En väldigt svensk smak: A very Swedish flavor

Much to my possibly misplaced delight, Kalles Kaviar is once again stocked at the friendly neighborhood Ikea.  I got hooked on the stuff while visiting a friend in Sweden a couple of years ago.  The company itself admits it's an acquired taste, but what's not to love about squeezing creamed salmon roe out of a tube?  Here is an ode to Kalles I drew up for a lark: The Nordic goddess Freyja enjoying a light lunch (did you know Freyja was a cat lady? Thanks again, Wikipedia.).  Oh, and I've also been watching Vikings on History Channel (ed note: so good.), which is likely what sent me in this direction.

Bubbles and Wormholes

I've seen enough science fiction to know that time travel energy is always blue.  More like science FACT.  A couple recent examples, for Scholastic's Storyworks: A time traveler meets the inventor of his time machine.

And for Oxford University Press, a dotty professor builds a time machine out of something only slightly less cool than a DeLorean.

Holiday Gloom!

The Art Director at SCOPE Magazine always asks me to take the darker angle on the stories I get assigned, which is great.  So here, miserable Marley and the Ghost of Christmas Future.

Dr. Heidegger's Experiment

Much as I enjoy drawing pretty people, grotesques are so fun to do.  Best of both worlds in Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story illustrated for SCOPE Magazine.  Youth is apparently wasted on the old, too.

Eva Ibbotson covers

Three soon-to-be reprinted covers for Penguin/Dutton Children's Books:

a little gore

Title pages for recent issues of Scholastic's SCOPE Magazine:

Graphic Classics: Edgar Allan Poe

Two spreads from Poe's "Hop-Frog, or, The Eight Chained Orangutans."  Click to enlarge:

This was a kinda nostalgic project for me.  The full circle, for those interested: Graphic Classics took a chance on this once-starving illustrator for their very first issue and my very first publishing job about 10 years ago, for the very same Poe story. Back then, Graphic Classics was in black & white, and I only produced a handful of spot illustrations rather than a full graphic novel.  How far we both have come... le sigh.

BOO!

Ghosts.  An interior illustration for Eva Ibbotson's "Ogre of Oglefort," due out August 18th, from Penguin. (pre-order!)

drawing monsters, part II

Cover image for THE WEEK:

drawing monsters, part I

I've been rather enjoying myself recently, as I've been asked to draw a lot of total jerks.

Here is one recent example:
 

Dorian Gray for Scope (a teen-focused magazine).  Detail:

Good times.

The Darkside Zodiac 2011 Wall Calendar

Now that the holiday season is officially upon us, it is time to start thinking about buying you and yours a wall calendar for next year.

The gist of the book this calendar was based on is that most astrological guides are far too kind to their subjects.  The Darkside is all about calling out the bad behaviors of the Zodiac, in a humorous (and, might I add, BEAUTIFULLY illustrated) way.  I had a blast working on this, and ever since the publisher sent me my copies, it has tended to come out at parties where we all have a good laugh (and occasional uncomfortable silence) about how close to home some of the descriptions hit.  A gift that keeps on giving, so...

Purchase here!

the power of myth!

Greek mythology: I just love it.  The fantastical creatures! The romance and heroism! The savage and bloody wrath of gods and mere mortals!  So you can imagine my excitement when Scholastic asked me to contribute to a classroom book on the subject.  Stories covered were King Midas, Prometheus & Pandora, and Oedipus & The Sphinx.

Of course, I would have loved to play up more of the sexual tension between the Sphinx and Oedipus, shown Prometheus in chains, having his liver torn out and eaten by an eagle, and drawn some really nasty demons coming out of Pandora's box, but, ya know, kids!  I had to keep it pretty clean.  Still, as jobs go, the funnest.

don't be a-skeered, he's just misunderstood

This was a sweet gig to land.  Penguin has asked me to do covers for some reprints of a few Eva Ibbotson novels.  If'n you are unfamiliar with her work, she is a British author of some witty and winsome fantasy tales for the young'uns.  This first cover is for a new book of hers called The Ogre Of Oglefort.

It's nice to get back to my roots and draw some good old-fashioned monsters again.

Update: Eva Ibbotson sadly passed away October 20th, making this her final novel.  She seemed a pretty awesome lady, as noted here, and I'm honored to be an illustrator to her fantastic writings.

jobby jobs

 

Haven't had much time to do any art for art's sake of late, as the fast-paced world of children's illustration has been keeping me on the edge of overwhelmed.  As such, I thought it was time to add some illustration onto this here blog.  It means I'll be updating more often, at least.

So, to begin, here's the cover image and a couple of spreads for a forthcoming "Musicians of Bremen Town" comic, published by Stone Arch Books.  I found that a surprising number of people had never heard of the story, a Grimm's fairy tale about a donkey, a dog, a cat, and a rooster just trying to find some happiness and peace in this wicked world.  Spoiler alert: it all works out nicely for them in the end.