Good luck with your new adventure Sis!

Jack and Olivia were entangled in an exciting adventure.

One of my sisters has recently set up as a professional childminder, and she asked me to come up with some characters for her promotional leaflets. The image needed to be reproducible at differing scales, so it had to be bold without too much detail. I also wanted to create a feeling of the characters having fun, but also learning at the same time. The pith helmets fit the bill perfectly conveying dressing-up, excitement and exploration. My sister liked these two straight away, and I'm currently working on the typography for the leaflet.

The Coronation Parade

Let The Wild Rumpus Start!

There have been times during this project when I became frustrated with it, but now that it's finished I can afford to relax a little and take stock of what I've learned. Overall I've enjoyed myself, and I'm pleased that I did things the way I did. The cut-out technique can, at times, be a tad time consuming, though that's probably because I put more detail in than I needed to. Carol's hair took a bit too long, and if I were to do this again, he probably wouldn't have as many spikes. Having said that, I am very pleased with how he turned out. Perhaps the biggest surprise to me is how much I like Max. Monsters are usually my favourite characters in any piece of mine, but I'm really pleased with this podgy little guy.

Carol Prep Sketch #2

I haven't been able to figure out exactly why Carol (as he's been dubbed in the film) is my favourite wild thing. I wouldn't say I'm alone either, judging by the tributes on Terrible Yellow Eyes and on many illustrators personal blogs. He doesn't have a particularly prominent role in the story, except possibly in the coronation of Max, and Judith and KW feature as many times. It could be his stripes or hair, but I think it's most likely to be his wide, open face and friendly (if toothy) smile. Whatever the reason, I've enjoyed sketching him the most, and I'm really pleased with finished character too, which will be on this blog in the next few days. Just as soon as I've finished KW.

A quicky from the sketchbook

To stop the blog going stale, I thought I would share some of my sketchbook work every so often; I hope you like todays offering.

Jealous, Greedy Thing

Way back at the end of July I posted a Maurice Sendak tribute as part of the on-going back and forth that is the Twisted Creatures game, played by me and two brilliant illustrator friends of mine, Matt Dawson and Kev Levell. I had some positive feedback on the character, which encouraged me to submit it to the fantastic Terrible Yellow Eyes website. Not long after, I had an email back from Cory Godbey, the 'curator' of the site who is also a very talented artist in his own right. Unfortunately Cory felt that the image wasn't the right fit for TYE. I wasn't too disappointed, as it wasn't an entirely unexpected response, but you've got to try these things haven't you?

Undeterred, I've set about on another, more complete Where The Wild Things Are tribute which I've enjoyed doing a great deal. I've been trying the cut-out method of illustration used most famously by the great Eric Carle, but also by two of my favourite contemporary illustrators, my friend Matt (see his TYE submission here) and the fab Gorillustrator a.k.a Lee Cosgrove. I first gave this technique a go when creating my blog header, in an effort to move away from my tendency to depend too much on line. I was so pleased with the results I wanted to try it again right away.

I plan to recreate pages 5 and 6 of the wild rumpus (pages 27 and 28 of the story), and the chap above is a sneaky peek of that scene. I wanted to reinterpret the characters in my own way, but at the same time keep their essential character. All the wild things are manifestations of Max's most basic, wild emotions, at least that's how they're being treated as in the film (due out in the UK on 11th December, I can't wait!), and I see this guy as being either Jealousy or Greed.

Which leads me on to this weeks Illustration Friday topic; as all the wild things represent only one aspect of Max's psyche, they are all, by definition, unbalanced.

IF 'Blur'

A quick submission for this weeks
Illustration Friday topic: blur.

IF 'Fast'

fig 1 (detail)

Since the 17th century, at least 717 species of animals and 87 species of plants have become extinct. If the extinctions caused by humans before the 1600s are included, the number of extinct species rises to 2,000. Today, more than 17,000 plant and animal species risk the same fate (IUCN Red List).

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"When palaeontologists measure past extinctions, they might look at the probability of extinctions per million years. We're measuring the loss of species per century. When you extrapolate the rate of loss we're now seeing per century or per decade to millions of years, then you realise that species are going at a much faster rate than in the past" (Jim Hanken, Chairman of the Steering Committee for Encyclopedia of Life).

fig 1.

Fig 1. describes biodiversity since the dawn of life some 545 million years ago. The red arrows indicate the 5 major extinction events that have occurred in that time, the 5th being the one that put paid to the dinosaurs. Many conservationists consider the times we are living in, to be a mass extinction event comparable with the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.