The Boss of Hearts in progress

Ooooh, yeah. This is happening.

Got Ma Pictures in a Book!

About a year ago I was contacted by Andrew Fersch, a writer and teacher from New England, who I had worked on other projects with before, about illustrating a book of children's poems called The Rough Draft of My Life Story. We initially went over the general idea of the book, how it would look and the amount of work that would be needed for it. The poems had a good mix of cute and bizarre subject matter, which was exciting since I had always enjoyed the offbeat work of Shel Silverstein, Edward Gorey and Henrik Drescher. After the initial brainstorming the project seemed to just fade away and I didn't really hear anything more, so I figured it was a no-go. But, a few months later, Andrew contacted me to tell me the project was still on, and we got to work.

The completed drawings, all laid out:

Some personal favorites below:

Then came the day the books arrived in the mail, and honestly, I didn't want to open them. I think after putting so much time and effort into something like that, you just worry that it's going to fail to meet your expectations, or it's just going to have something terribly wrong with it. Or maybe I just always assume the worst. After a few minutes of staring at the package, I just got it over with, and a wave of relief washed over me. It wasn't a huge train wreck. It was, in fact, a really solid, great looking book.

This was an addition to the book that probably doesn't seem like a big deal, but the fact that some of the thumbnail sketches were included in the back, really got me psyched. I didn't know this was going to be done, and it was a minor, but really fun surprise.

The cover illustration, before and after:

A big thanks to Andrew for thinking of me when initially conceiving the idea of this book. It was a great experience, even though half the time I wondered what the hell I was doing. I haven't done much black and white work lately, and with the amount of drawings I had to do, it was both a relief and a challenge to restrain myself and think a little bit more graphically.

Lost in the shuffle

Here are those extra heads I mentioned I had laying around. First is Ray Bradbury. You are blowing it if you haven't read any of his work besides Fahrenheit 451. Maybe when Urban Outfitters can market some hip cover design for his other works, more people will find out how amazing he is.


A young Norman Mailer


Also, here are some lyrics which have recently blown my mind and I'd like to share with you:

"Just wrap your legs around these velvet rims/ And strap your hands across my engines"

"Pick up the dog-doo/Hope that it's hard"

"Just the two of us/Building castles in the sky"