Author Illustrator Tao Nyeu gives us insight to her creative process. She shows us her silkscreen color separation technique for Squid and Octopus, Friends for Always.
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.
Dasha's work really inspires me — so fresh and loose and graphic. I got chance to meet with her recently at her home studio in Brooklyn talk about the making of her author-illustrator debut, A Year Without Mom.
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.
A face to face interview with the author/illustrator Sara Varon. We discuss her color palette, her children's book process and her myriad of art projects.
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.
Paul O. Zelinsky’s style changes depending on, and in service to, the story. We interviewed him at his Brooklyn studio.
I love opening a children's book to find beautiful, surprising endpapers inside. Here's a round up of some of my favorites.
Last October, Liz introduced me to a great book called What Makes a Baby, written by Cory Silverberg and illustrated by Fiona Smyth. (I talked about it in my post on picture books and doing it.) Cory’s book, which approaches the reproductive process from a more inclusive perspective, was a Kickstarter smash hit: $65,516 pledged of a $9,500 goal. The first, self-published printing of What Makes a Baby sold out and it is now in its second print run […]
Above: David’s final “tater tot” mama squirrel character from Ol’ Mama Squirrel. (Inspired by The Scream) David Ezra Stein spoke about overcoming creative blocks at the scbwi winter conference this past January and his talk was one of my favorites. During his presentation, he told us the story behind his latest picture book Ol’ Mama Squirrel. David completed all the final artwork, delivered it to Penguin, and then decided it wasn’t right and asked if he could […]
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