An Elf, a Boy and My Morning Coffee

Today I warmed up with drawings of characters that play pivotal roles in my next children’s book.
SPOILER: The elf dies a horrible death involving tigers and too much alcohol.
Anyway, that’s how exciting my morning was.
boy elfsketch

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Thrilling “Cat” Thursday

The Kids book I’m working on now has a cat, an elephant, a bird, and even an elf. But I’ve told you too much already! Yesterday was Wednesday. That’s the day I work on cat drawings and do the laundry, but mostly cat drawings. This is a small fraction of them.cat scan flat

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Thrilling Thursday and the Brooklyn Book Festival

I didn’t take any pictures of the beautiful day or any of the events I went to at the Brooklyn Book Fest, but I found this amazing book that I wanted to share! Amazing as it’s illustrated by Andre Francois, was originally published in 1949 and has been out of print for decades. I unfortunately don’t know much about Andre, but one look at Google and you can find a plethora of his material. He did cartoons, children’s books, design and much more. The inside flap of “Little Boy Brown” mentions that he even studied with Picasso, which is fairly apparent from his wonderful line work. A small publisher of children’s books called Enchanted Lion Books, operating out of Red Hook Brooklyn, are the people responsible for getting the book back into print. Get a copy if you can! I’ve scanned some of my favorite images from the book below. First the cover: Boy blew cover
The image below is an image of Jack Frost biting someone’s nose. Love it.Boy brown jack frost
Just one more that I liked. These old books with one or two colors used that limitation to their advantage. They would never fly today which I really think is too bad.Boy brown jhouse and car
This last image is NOT from “Boy Brown.” I found it on the internet and it’s from a book Andre did called, “The tattooed Sailor. That image forces your mind to fill in some interesting… information.Tat sailor

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Thrilling Thursday Children’s Art

I am working on my second children’s book that won’t be out
til…well, some time next year I would guess. In the mean time,
here are some sketches of said book I can share. Some houses and
yes, a pirate. You see, you can never have TOO many children’s
books featuring pirates. Look it up. It’s a fact.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Bit of Art

This is from an upcoming Children’s book.
No, I can’t tell you all about it just yet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Art for the very young

Warm ups from last week or so .
Art for a book I’m working on which is so
simple even a 6 year old could read it.

The top image is not part of the book.
He’s just a warm up for the warm ups.
He is the one thing that does not
belong with the others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Tiny Elephants

Sometimes a tiny off hand sketch is everything I wanted!
This scribble is no bigger than an inch high. I blew it up after scanning.
Of course, if I redraw it for the final project it will lose all the
fun and spontaneity this image contains. What IS the final project?
A project for little children. A book Kids would read.
One of those types of books.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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