Marvel Sketch Cards

This was fun. The Upper Deck Company is putting out a new Marvel Masterpieces collectible card set, and some packs will include one-of-a-kind sketch cards, featuring original drawings by comics industry artists. Calling me a comics industry artist is a bit of a stretch, but I agreed to sketch on 10 blanks. Here are 9 of them:

9 because it makes a rectangle, and 9 because my 10th card (Captain America) kind of sucked.
I hope someone gives me a good excuse to do a painting of Modok some day.

Nerds With Kids Interview a Nerd Without Any

The blog Nerds With Kids asked me some good questions recently. Have a look if you want to know what I think about Spiderman 3 or Joss Whedon.

Character in Search of a Story #5

MR. BABY, The Boy With No Birthday
See also C.S.S. numbers one, two, three, and four.

Fan Art!

Illustration rock star Rodrigo Avilés has sent some Abraham SuperLincoln fan art:

Go see it on his blog and then follow the links to find out what that spaghetti tree business is all about.
Thanks, Rodrigo!

Character in Search of a Story #4

TINY YETI
And here, as ever, are characters number one, number two, and number three.

Phony Tiny

I was just looking at photos on Brian Biggs' (Biggs's?) site (www.mrbiggs.com) and noticed this photo that looks like a miniature but isn't a miniature. I love these, so I thought I'd post my favorite of those that I've made. This is Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park, taken (not by me) from a small prop plane, altered (by me) in Photoshop, and absolutely not a photograph of a miniature.

Character in Search of a Story #3

ROOMBA 2.0
Click here to see Character in Search of a Story #1 and Character in Search of a Story #2.

Robert's Snow

I'm proud once again to create an original, snowflake-shaped painting for The Jimmy Fund and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The snowflake, and many others decorated by fellow kid's book creators, will be auctioned online to raise money for cancer research this fall. I'll post this again when the auction is underway in November, but here's a preview:

If you'd like to see the snowflake I painted for the last auction, click here.

Character in Search of a Story #2

G.I.(tract) JOE, THE CUDDLIEST TAPEWORM
Click here to see Character in Search of a Story #1.

Home.

Got back this afternoon, after 28 hours on airplanes and in airports and sleeping beneath an escalator with a beach towel under my head. Here are a few pictures from Kauai. There are chickens everywhere on the island, roaming free, getting into all kinds of chickenbusiness.

Kauai Turtle

I'm still on vacation, but I thought I'd post this sketch. It's of any one of the big sea turtles I've been snokeling with here in Kauai–they all look the same to me. That's not an ethnic slur, it's just the truth.
This was drawn strictly from memory, so I'm not claiming a high level of accuracy here. But I'm happy with it.

On Vacation

I'm on holiday as of tomorrow, but I'm leaving behind a simpsonized version of me to watch over the place while I'm gone. See you in about a week.

Character in Search of a Story #1

CHIMPANZEKE

Book Recommendation

Last night I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, the seventh and last book from a series by a Mr. J. Rowling. They follow the adventures of an English boy wizard at magic school. I recommend the whole series to anyone interested in stories about magic, boys, schools, or England. They were originally published in Great Britain but you can get them here, too.

The True Meaning of Smekday – Making the Cover 3

So here's the cover we selected and I painted again, in case you didn't see it the first time. This is what the jacket will look like when the books ship in September:

But, waste not, want not. I still liked the flying car cover idea, so it became the book's title page:

And, finally, I used another of the concepts on the book's case–you'll have to lift the dust jacket to see this "alternate cover."

Incidentally, if you'd like to learn a little more about The True Meaning of Smekday, click here.

The True Meaning of Smekday – Making the Cover 2

So here are four cover ideas that I sort of settled on as my best bets. The story features, among other things, a road trip in a flying car, a theme park with the Snow Queen's castle at its center, and large spaceships that have fish bowl-like tops and hose-tentacled lower halves. This is hopefully enough information to understand why I liked these images.

The True Meaning of Smekday – Making the Cover

Here are a number of thumbnails and sketches of potential covers for my fall novel, The True Meaning of Smekday. I sketched out more ideas for this cover than I do for most–I was just really excited about this project, and the story is such that it didn't suggest an obvious solution to me early on as some do.

I had high hopes for something like the setch below, but on paper it didn't seem to work as well as it did in my head. In fact, I wonder if anyone other than me can even tell what's going on.

More soon.

Useless Quiz Dept.

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Studio Tour

My studio is actually sort of clean for a change, so I thought I'd post pictures. I always like seeing where artists work. Like in this flickr stream by Brian Biggs.
Anyway, here's my decidedly less impressive studio.

A 2-part panorama of the whole deal:


Closeup of my workstation:

What's left of the paper steamboat model I made whilst working on Ste-e-e-e-eamboat A-Comin'!. See the "BOOKS" link at the right for details.

7 Impossible Things

Check out this post on the kids' lit blog Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. You can see a page from my fall picture book, Pssst!, as well as a painting of the alien star of my fall novel, The True Meaning of Smekday. Then keep reading the blog for all kinds of great interviews and reviews.
In the meantime, here's one of my favorite panels from Pssst!

Super Models, But Not the Good Kind.

Just a quick post to show this photo of a few of my models for Pssst!. In the center is a Sculpey head I made of my human character, Zooey, and she's flanked by a couple of nice little toys from Schleich. These, in conjunction with a lot of photos of real animals, helped me paint.

Pssst!–Making the Cover

Here's a potentially embarrassing look behind the scenes at the making of the cover of Pssst! (see previous post for the final cover).
My first finished sketch was theatically similar, but with a completely different composition ang title design. The thumbnail:

and the finished sketch, with some digital color:

Harcourt didn't like it. I can't remember why. But I like the final cover better, so they must have been right. Here are a few subsequent stages:

That last one turned into the final cover you can see below. The title changed a bit–typographical artist Judythe Sieck helped me redesign it into something a little cleaner and easier to read.
That's all for now, more in a few days.

Fall Preview–Pssst!

Here's the jacket of my fall '07 picture book, Pssst!. It's to be released at the beginning of September by Harcourt. It's the story of a day at the zoo, and what happens when the animals start asking for favors. And it's got penguins in it, which I understand the kids like. More images from the book to come.

BEA Thanks

Thank you to everyone who ame to see me at Book Expo America last week in New York City. I had a great show, and a couple of great signings with Harcourt and Hyperion.

Special thanks to the guy inside the gorilla suit at my Harcourt signing. I wish I could remember his name. The Javits Center was hot enough for the rest of us without wearing black fur. And I know he was dripping sweat at the end, because he accidentally flicked some of it on me when he waved goodbye. Goodbye, talking gorilla. Fare thee well.

Another Oldie

Here's another sketchbook page from about seven or eight years ago. I want to stress that most of my sketchbook pages do not look like this. This was the product of one of those perfect days, when it seems you can draw no wrong. This was before I got into kids' books, and I was trying my hand at celebrity caricature. So that explains most of the page. And the age of these drawings explains why I thought it was relevant to caricature Marilyn Manson.