We’re always happy to share good news from our stubbled Italian fairy godfather, Sergio Ruzzier. He’s with us now to talk about the creation of his new book, Bear and Bee, which comes out today. And with that, we hand over the conch shell. Take it away, Sergio! When my daughter Viola was in, I believe, third grade, I was asked by her school, P.S. 295 in Brooklyn, to come up with a bee character […]
Ruthie tries out Liz's color separation photoshop tutorial. Can she do it or do the raccoons get the best of her?
Happy New Year everyone! We’ve got lots of great interviews, process posts, books, and more to share with you in the coming months. In the meantime, I wanted to share with you the pigs I created to accompany our logo. For more about how I designed our current logo, check out this post. (And check out Liz’s pigs and Ruthie’s pigs 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.)
Last week we interviewed children’s book illustrator, Stephen Savage. Stephen sent me so many great images I couldn’t fit it all into one post! Today, Stephen talks to us about his award-winning, wordless picture book Where’s Walrus? and takes us through his process, from the very first sketch to the final color comps for the cover. Stephen’s style is fresh, spare, and seems effortless, so it’s fascinating to see the amount of work and planning that goes into his finished pieces. […]
Melissa Guion is our first guest poster. She shares her process for Baby Penguins Everywhere.
Today we’ve got an awesome interview with my neighbor and friend, Stephen Savage. He has a great new book out called Little Tug, and Polar Bear Morning, his sequel to the award-winning Polar Bear Night with author Lauren Thompson, comes out in January. You may also know Where’s Walrus?, a beautiful, wordless picture book about a walrus who escapes from the zoo. Stephen’s work is bold and graphic and he’s generously given us some insight […]
Ruthie, Robin, and I decided to make a bunch of pig drawings to adorn our new logo. For me, this little project was a chance to play with different styles. This first one is a combination of hand drawing and Photoshop. I started out with colored pencils and crayons. Because it was an experiment, I didn’t overthink things. Then I used a mask to give the pig a cutout look and better define the eyes. […]
Whenever I look at Rob Dunlavey's work, I want to sit down with a big pile of crayons, paint, and paper, and get my hands really dirty, because he makes it look just that easy and playful. I am, therefore, delighted that he's making the move into children's books. I hope he stays a long while.
When we decided to start this blog I created the logo below. I chose the font because it felt piggie: chunky and round, and the letters curling up reminded me of pig tails. Well in turns out someone else thought the exact same thing. I got an email from Liz a few weeks later. She was visiting Simon and Schuster and saw a book called Oink on the shelves there. Same word, same typeface. The book […]
Last week, I discussed the design process for one of the posters in my (EXCITINGLY CLOSE TO ITS FUNDING GOAL) Kickstarter. Today, I’m going to talk about a relatively un-fancy way to make this sort of illustration yourself. I made color separations for my posters because they are going to be silkscreened by hand. But once upon a time, children’s book illustrators frequently drew this way–it made the books cheaper to produce. To my generation, […]
As I mentioned last week, I recently launched a Kickstarter to make silkscreened children’s posters. I thought I’d talk a little bit about how I designed them. The idea came from a doodle in my sketchbook. I like to draw animals, and the Olympics were coming. And I knew I wanted to make some posters. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted them to be silkscreened or offset printed, but I didn’t really need to know […]
Lauren Castillo joins us today! The thing I love about Lauren’s work is that it’s just so classic. I’d always envisioned her working quite traditionally on fancy thick watercolor paper. So I was surprised to handle some of her finished art recently and discover that she works on regular old drawing paper out of a pad! Lauren’s latest book, The Reader, just came out. She’ll be touring the Internet to talk about it, and we […]
Pen and Oink 