Maurice Sendak Talks About Illustration

Here is the father of the 1964 Caldecott winner and cultural icon "Where the Wild Things Are", Maurice Sendak, talking about illustration and what makes his books so special. I love his response. He feels that the idea to add an underlying story to the actual story is instrumental in making the his books intruiging to his audience. This reminds me of Tim Gillner's (Art Director of Boyd's Mills Press) "adding a carrot" concept to making the story and illustrations of a book come to life. Author/Illustrator Dominic Catalano also talks about this idea, by adding tracery imagery to artwork it can beome much more meaningful and inciteful and add to both the character and visual story development.

Happy drawing.
T.

Incredible Online Figure Resource

Hi everyone,


I just thought that I would share this great online resource with you. The site is called http://posemaniacs.com/ and it is the most useful figure reference resource that I've found yet. This site features interactive poses of people that you are able to move and rotate in order to analyze how a figure is constructed. It's a wonderful tool if you are working on an illustration of a person but you do not have a model handy. I also found this video by Thomas James that shows in detail how this site can be utilized. I especially like the animated portion when you can show a walk cycle, for instance.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/2097443#utm_campaign=twitter.com&utm_source=2097443&utm_medium=social

Hope you find this site helpful. Keep an eye out for a message about our next meeting. I know it's past due, so I'd like to set one up in the next few weeks.

Happy drawing.

New Illustration References

Another quick note:

I just added some more illustration references to resource resource page on my website. There are some great sites that focus not just on children's book illustration but on illustration in general. Now my google reader will keep me even more captive. Here's a link to my list if you want to take a peek:

http://www.tanjabauerle.com/resources.html

Happy drawing to all.

T.

Chris Piascik Draws

Chris Piascik from Quarter Productions on Vimeo.

Take a peak at this great video. Chris Piascik starts with a lopy doodle pattern and continues to fill it in to create a dynamic illustration. It just goes to show that any doodle can become artwork. :)

James Owen "The Shadow Dragons" Book Launch

Hi everyone,

Just a quick note to let you know that James Owen will have his official book launch for his fourth installment, "The Shadow Dragons", of the Imaginarium Geographica series at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, this coming Tuesday evening the 27th at 7:00 pm. If you go to the link below you can read more about the event. They are expecting a significant crowd so if you plan on going, make sure that you get there very early in order to get a seat.

http://changinghands.com/event/owen

Hope to see you there.

Happy drawing.

T.