Above: The cover for The Chupacabra Ate the Candelabra. I love Ana Aranda’s work, and I especially love her incredible color sense. She embraces purple and pink, and makes these colors feel sophisticated and fresh in a way I haven’t seen before. (Look at that amazing palette on the cover!) Today I talk to her about her U.S. illustration debut, The Chupacabra Ate the Candelabra.
Illustrator Maral Sassouni combines ink, pencil, crayon, and monoprinting to create the rich collages in The Green Umbrella, a sweet picture book about friendship and imagination by Jackie Azúa Kramer. There are so many great details to linger over. Today Maral tells Pen and Oink about her inspirations and her really cool process.
Lani Yamamoto's books have been a big inspiration to me. I love her books on every level, for the topics they tackle, for her simple line illustrations that speak volumes, for her inventiveness and for her extraordinary sense of color. Many moons ago I worked at a bookstore and told anyone that would listen that they should buy the Albert series.
Jessie Hartland discusses the process for her graphic novel, Steve Jobs: Insanely Great. "I'm really drawn to taking very complicated material and simplifying it with drawings and words."
Laura Carlin's work is sensitive, thoughtful, and beautiful. With her author-illustrator debut, A World of Your Own, Laura adds a nice dose of humor to the mix. Today she tells us all about it.
I share the books I picked up in Italy incredibly illustrated by: Nicoletta Costa, Manuela Santini, Emmanuele Luzzati and Altan.
I talked with Dan Santat about his picture book, The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend. Read on for a detailed behind-the-scenes look into the making of this beautiful and thoughtful story.
A follow-up post on illustrator Mel Dietmeier and his hilarious French for Mastery text book illustrations.
A quick look at recently published great books with yellow covers illustrated by: Sara Varon, Allie Brosh, Marc Boutevant.
A closer look at Sara Fanelli's raw illustrations in My Map Book.
Akira Satoh and Kyoko Toda's animal portraiture play with the idea of individuality and force us to pay notice to the differences in each animal face.
I love opening a children's book to find beautiful, surprising endpapers inside. Here's a round up of some of my favorites.
Pen and Oink 