IF: pioneer

An American legend.

IF: undone

The grass in the back has been uncut for weeks. My weekend chores remain undone... Its a good thing it is cold and the grass is mostly dormant... But in the middle of the patches of grey green and brown are rings of rich green grass and growing around the edge of the rings are mushrooms. They take a week or two to go from golfball shape to full umbrella shape... Big, white and tall.

IF: Hatch

What will hatch from the mysterious egg?

IF: crunchy

The season calls!

Santa would be zipping by so fast - time to taste a crunchy morsel... and zoom!

IF: entangled

Hard to resist the cliche!

IF: music

Busy Busy week... As much as I would like to post a finished looking illustration - I am finding it hard to make the time... This is a idea/comp for a page in nursery rhyme book. The art will never be used in the actual book - not even the layout... I liked the idea that Old King Cole could be a modern Grandpa leading his Grandchildren in a musical parade.

Halloween Party - Bones

The short comic/book here is an experiment with sequential panels and text treatment. The idea is to present a short story with a high interest subject and a moderately limited and targeted vocabulary (late first or early second grade). The targeted vocabulary is the letter/sound of "ea" The ee! in eek!

The story should be something that takes a reader only a few minutes - practicing the letter sound as they go. The comic format is a great way to present more interesting visuals and story telling that hopefully would keep a child focused and willing to work thru the words.

This format is targeted towards boys (especially) struggling with reading in the early grades... and addresses some of the problems boys have with focusing attention on a reading task, finding something of interest in the reading task and reading to understand - to be drawn into a little story enough to want to work thru the text. The short exclamatory sentences are closer to something a boy (or girl) might be willing to act out (read fluently) and not be embarrassed over.

The story takes one of the characters from here: Parade. The character is all alone here... Other stories will focus on interaction with other characters. More to come.

rhino in the door - some details

The process of posting here tends to degrade the images quite a bit.

The image above is a detail of the full size version of the rhino in door image from the previous post. The image was done entirely in Studio Artist. The image below is a color comp done originally to get an idea for composition and variety of colors. The final is considerably more dramatic in coloring. I hadn't intended to get so dramatic - but the results are interesting

IF: unbalanced

What was behind the door caused his usual cool to become unbalanced.

IF: blur

A fuzzy, blurry sort of image.

A color comp for a book illustration.

skinny big

The big version - closer to actual size.

IF: skinny

Web pages are not so good for long skinny images.

A closer to actual size version is here: link

This was a study done for this book: link

The medium was Studio Artist 3.4 or so... then. Retouched with V4(beta)

IF: Fast

The Abominable has to work fast to cover his tracks!

IF: flying

This was made as a poster for the book Froggies At Sea:

About three frog brothers misadventures...

It all got really going when a dragonfly went flying by!

If you click on the cover image on that link page you get a lot of pages - leading up to a climactic "make-or-break" moment!

This image is getting a little ancient - but still good.

Digital art never fades... Tho it might blink out entirely - one day!

The image was created in Studio Artist 2.5 or something... and Photoshop.

I was happy with the natural media like look.

IF: germs

Germs are everywhere!!