I’ve been using the colored pencils to do some quick color studies before I start painting this new story. Nothing fancy! Just quick and messy sketches to help me decide what I like and don’t like.
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Working on a new book - and the star is a turtle…so I had to stop and take some photos of this little guy I spotted after fishing. This is called a painted turtle because some varieties have a really colorful plastron (bottom of the shell) - not because they’re actually painted of course - although When I was a kid I found more than one box turtle with names painted on them. At the time I thought it was a neat idea, but my brother schooled me that it was not a good for the turtle. Their shells can absorb the chemicals in the paint and hurt them, not to mention that it totally messed with their natural ability to blend in. They bascially had “Snack” written in neon letters on their shell as far as crows and coyotes were concernend. Anyways, what was I talking about? oh yeah….I love turtles. I love painting. Painted turtles are cool. Painting on a a turtle is not cool. Painting a picture of a turtle is fun. Painting with a a turtle requires patience. There you have it.
Where do you go on a Field Trip after you’ve been to the bottom of the ocean? That’s the burning question! Emphasis on burning…
Anyways I just finished the art for the next Field Trip book - it will be released next Spring! I can’t wait!
I’m also excited to be starting on the next project - a book that is not a Field Trip, and it even has……words! New territory for me!
Anyways, I should really post updates more. Nothing like a blog of mediocre posts with long gaps of time between them! I hope everyone is doing well out there!
While going through one of my grade school notebooks, I found this perplexing sketch. I don’t even know what it means to “ham” something up…but I’m going to try to use that phrase today and see how people react.
So I decided to put together a “video” of Field Trip to the Ocean Deep using the preliminary sketches. With the help of some royalty free music and sound effects, the sketches really come to life! Well… I think so. Also I’d like to point out that royalty free doesn’t mean something is sub-par. A lot of the music i found was really great…in fact one of the songs has become such an earworm that its a bit of a problem (Candelabra by Latasha in the Youtube Audio Library). Anyways, check it out, and if you like it check out the actual book - Even if that means literally checking it out from a library. I like to think the final art gives it a life and atmosphere of its own.
This is from a story I wrote when I was in grade school called Reptic Returns - a story about a Lizard who joined the air force. (I was really into Top Gun and Iron Eagle and anything involving cool airplanes). Anyways I don’t know what my favorite part is about this page….the fact that I left the girl character’s name blank to fill in later, or the somewhat suspect air force application…
I was so thrilled to get this in the mail today! Babalibri, the Italian publisher of Field Trip to the Ocean Deep, recently put out a new catalog for 2020. It includes a 4 page feature on Ocean Deep including an article I wrote about it. But I can’t remember what I wrote and my Italian comprehension is….nonexisitent. Still! it looks dang cool!
Originally some of the creatures in Field Trip to the Ocean Deep were a bit more intense! Like these giant amphipods that tried to eat the school bus submarine in one of my early ideas for this adventure.
Giant amphipods (related to shrimp) are not to be confused with giant isopods (ocean dwelling relatives of pill bugs) that are featured in the recently released final version of Field Trip to the Ocean Deep.
Field Trip to the Ocean Deep is officially out! Here’s some of the early drafts of the cover along with the final version.
A quick sketch of my old friend Robot made with ink on clayboard. My brother saw this and said it looks like he’s wearing short-shorts. I tried to explain that his shorts (and shoulders pads) are accordian-style rubber sleeves that protect some of his moving parts - like the rubber boots you’d find on the front axles of your car…but no amount of explanation can make me right and him wrong. I can’t unsee it now.
This is a crop from the cover art for Field Trip to the Ocean Deep. In it you can see the space bus from the Moon adventure. The spine of the book would be run vertically between the space bus landing pad and the sub bus thruster. These schools have an impressive bus budget!
This is from the Italian version (published by Babalibri)
Here’s a fun sketch from a story idea that’s on ice.
When I was a kid, my favorite activity was exploring the woods near our home. One day I came across my first salamander. It was THE coolest thing I had seen up to that point. It was like a frog and a lizard combined. What could be cooler? I also quickly realized that, like a frog, it needed a moist environment to flourish. Which makes it all the more crazy that in ancient times, salamanders were considered creatures of fire! That notion is thought to have originated when prehistoric people would gather old, dead wood to burn - and when doing so the occasional salamander would emerge from the fire! (moist dead wood being a favorite home of theirs). So a legend began to develop that there were large salamanders out there with the power to start and extinguish fires! Kind of cool. But not as cool as just a plain old wet-log loving salamander.
Check it out if you have time! If not I believe they’ll be recording it so it can be viewed later. Must remember not to pick my nose….
I was going through some old files and came across this quick sketch made around the time I pitched Field Trip to the Moon. It always makes me think of the late Alan Bean, the Apollo astronaut whom upon returning to earth became a prolific and awesome painter. What a great combination of things for a person to be!
Here’s another prompt sketch! I like to think they’re getting a bit smoother but meh…hard telling.
So this is a story idea I put together about 8 years ago and it was my first serious attempt at getting an agent. It wasn’t accepted, but I got some good feedback that lead me to a revised version where Lloyd and Floyd were kids and the trains were toys. That version did get me an agent! That said, I always liked the characters as portrayed in this version - middle aged men behaving like kids. Probably because that describes me pretty well. Anyways I decided to make an animation out of the original dummy sketches (and some later sketches too). I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two since making the original dummy. You’ll notice the pacing is a bit herky jerky, the story leaves some questions, and its hard telling what type of book I was trying to make - but I still have a soft spot for it.
Here’s an old idea made into an animation. The original premise was that the reader was supposed to inspect the train page by page to make sure everything was okay. Of course everything was not okay, each page stuff gets progressively more strange. I think this idea still has merit and could be better executed if the inspector was a character and there was an actual plot arc with stakes….that said. I love that this has none of that. So give it a watch and see if the train looks okay to you. Forgive me if the old-timey music is too much! I was trying to figure out what way to go with it.
Yup! I’m still playing around with this stuff. Here’s another prompt sketch. This time I’m trying to make it more interesting by encouraging people to guess what the word or phrase I’m sketching is…. Kind of like Pictionary basically. Anyways it gives me an excuse to try and sketch on the spot. Check it out and see what you think!
I’m having fun using the quarantine as an excuse to experiment. I just posted a video of a Prompt Sketch…just a super quick sketch based on a writing prompt. It is suuuuper basic and if I was to keep doing something like that, I’d make it a bit more interesting. Still….gotta start somewhere! Not saying this is the start of something….but if it was there would definitely be room for improvement!
A quick sketch based on a silly prompt (a prompt is a word or short phrase used to get the creative juices going) This was made using Photoshop on the iPad. ...