Astronaut #25

Here's another astronaut.  Enjoy!

Happy New Year! Astronauts #22, #23, #24

Wow.  I've never gone this long not posting anything new, but over the summer I started posting on Instagram and kinda forgot about this place.  I've got some good stuff coming up.  A pile of school visits in the coming months, and a new book in September.

I hope you all have a great New Year.

Here's a few recent sketches/ideas for a new book.  They also get to be numbers #22, #23, and #24 in my 50 Astronauts series.

Saturn Squad!

I've been toying with the idea of combining photographed backgrounds with drawn images, and these are the first two attempts to see what it could look like.  The background is a little diorama I built for some Star Wars collectables I have, but it never ended up being used that way.  I think it works better as a backdrop for these illustrations. If I were to go forward with this idea, I would make architecture of my own design, and not just lift from a galaxy gar, far away.

So the Saturn Squad is a sort of 80's Buddy/Cop movie type thing, but the Buddies/Cops are aliens.

More filthy kids...

Another sketch from my "kids living in a dump" story, which is different than my "kids getting out of destroyed city" story.  But there's a lot of dirt in both.

Worm "One-Offs"

I've been doing these one panel drawings of a new character called Worm.  I guess this is a way for me to workshop him, and find his voice.  I want to make him brash, and outspoken, but I don't want him to be a jerk.  I think the last one is the best.

Digital sketches

I have a pile of small digital sketches sitting in my computer, so I'm going to try to get them out here over time.  The first two are of a bear sitting in the sun, and Frankenduck wandering a haunted forrest.  These aren't really for any book projects, just the sort of images I create as I try new techniques out.

White lines...Freeze! Rock!

More texture and some stripes!

Now with a kid!

Color choices...

A few color variations of the same drawing.  Like many others, I feel that the hardest part about working 100% digitally is that the options are limitless.

More monsters...

Like I said, I'm going to try everything I can come up with.

Trying everything...

I'm working on a new book that has a monster in it.  I would really like to try to find a style that is different, bolder, and more exciting than what I currently do.  Here's a few different approaches.  I'm not sure if any of them work, but I'm trying...

Textures and colors...

I spent some time today looking at Jon Klasson's work trying to figure out what he does with layers, colors and textures.  I had this simple sketch in one of my books, and added some color to it using some notions inspired by Klasson.  I don't want to learn, or copy, his style, but I want to push my coloring, and I thought his work might lead me in some new directions.  Just a note, I did not have any of his work in front of me while doing this, I just went by what I remembered.

And here's the unedited sketch from my book. 

Another New Idea...

The other project I've been working on the last few months or so is a large, stand-alone graphic novel about a bunch of kids who drop out of society and set up camp at the town dump.  Honest.  I'm actually pretty excited about it, as it is the sort of "could happen in the real world" type story that I really enjoy.  There's no magic or fantasy elements.  It's as realistic fictiony as I get.

Here are a few pages from my sketchbook.  The color was added digitally at a later date.  I could decipher the text in the sketches, but I think I'll leave it up to you.  Most of the writing in my notebooks and sketchbooks is as sloppy and messy as this. I think, in a way, I need to really commit to an idea before I write more carefully.  At this stage, the dialog itself is a sketch.

More Sci-Fi stuff...

I spent most of the summer working on a big, odd, sci-fi story that, while I'm excited by it, I'm also unsure about it. After slowly developing it for a few months, it occurred to me that it might not really be for kids.  It's not that it's too heady or violent, but I'm just not sure what it says to kids about the lives they live.  While it is a story that is meaningful to me, I simply don't know if a young audience would relate to it.  And truthfully, I'm not really interested in aiming at at adults.  This is a hard one.  I'm not sure if I'm going to go forward with it.

These were two sketches I put together.  In the top one I'm really trying to figure out how simple I could go with colors and solid blacks.

This one is a colored sketchbook page.  Some of the stuff, such as the lederhosen dude, just kinda snuck onto the page.

With Any Luck I'll Drive a Truck

My latest book, "With Any Luck, I'll Drive a Truck" is finally out, and it's getting great reviews.  It was written by David Friend and published by Nancy Paulsen Books.  It's the first book that I've illustrated for another author since 2011.

Here are four of my favorite drawings from the book. Eventually, I will post some pictures of the process behind them. I'm posting them without the text, so if you want to know what each page says, you'll have to read the book!

Here are some of the reviews, Kirkus,  Publisher's Weekly,  and the New York Times.

I hope you take the time to find a copy of this book for all the little drivers in your life!


     

Animation concept update...

Here are the previous two images updated with the second main character dropped in.  I've included a close-up of the two of them together as well.