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.

Eat Pete color thoughts...

As I had said, I am working on a picture book that I am determined to make look very different than my current work.  Here's some simple color ideas that I was pleased with.

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.

More little war kids...

Here are a few more drawings of "war kids" from my sketchbook.  These were done with Copic markers, and contain no digital elements at all.  The drawing of the bear was done first, and I had a limited selection of colors, which is why the bear is kind of mustard a color.

This idea, of a bunch of children getting left behind in a future/fantasy war zone of some kind, is really starting to take shape.  It allows me to pursue "post-apocolyptic kid" story, with a reasonable explanation of where the adults are.

Little Orange Guys...

Here are a few recent pages from my sketchbook, these drawings go along with the story idea from my last post.  These are ink and markers, and a bit of pencil.  I like all these little guys in their “Ned Kelly” helmets, but also worried that they might end up looking too much like Bender from Futurama.

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. 

King sized...

Here's a drawing that I put together for a picture book idea I'm working on.  I wanted to see what I could do with a limited palette, and flat colors.  I like the way this turned out.

Aliens driving little cars...

Yeah.  More of this nonsense.

Here's the same drawing with a colored line.

Robots...

...and some more aliens.  A continuation of the previous post.

Wexler

A few years ago I wrote a picture book called "Wexler."  It's about a strange little animal that keeps being sold by a pet shop, only be returned the next day for various reasons.  I think at one point he pooped on someone's ceiling.  I started thinking about the story again last summer and did this drawing of the main character.

More Unit 77

I noticed that I have a big pile of stand alone drawings that don't really fit into any one category. I think I'm just going to start putting them up with no real order or agenda.  This is a finished drawing of the clone character "Unit 77." I like this one, but I didn't pursue this design of him much further.

Shortly after I drew this first image, I started working on a Wacom Cintiq.  This version of Unit 77 was one of the first things I drew on it.

New Book, and Fangbone! update...

Today I started drawing a new picture book written by David Friend.  I haven’t worked on a picture book since 2010, so I’m really excited to get rolling.  It’s a truck book, so that was a terrible joke. 

The first thing that most illustrators do when creating a book, is sketch the whole thing out on one large piece of paper.  This way it’s easier to break up the text, and get a sense of what the whole thing will look like.   I also start looking for good compositions to emerge.  The picture below was just my first pass. There will be many, many more…

People keep asking about the Fangbone! TV show.  I wish I had some answers myself.  The stuff I do know, I can’t share.  Things are looking good though. The waiting at this point is very, very difficult, and it would crush me if the project fell apart this late in the game.  I’m trying to stay positive, which actually is not my default setting and it takes a great deal of effort.  And cake.  Cake helps.

This is a scan from my 2001 picture book, “The Pie is Cherry.”  Sadly, it is no longer in print.