Night After Christmas - sketches

I have been working on a new picture book of sorts for marketed towards adults for Winepress Publishing since early March 2009. It's called Night After Christmas - A Holiday Paradigm Revisited. by Jim Chapman. It's a take on the poem The Night Before Christmas by an anonymous author first published in 1823. It deals with a modern families struggle of materialism and lost sight of what Christmas was really all about. I did 10 full page illustrations plus a cover in a stylized realism manner. I had lots of fun coming up with the scenery which is loosely based off my own home and family. I had about 3 months to do 11 full blown, full page illustrations with repeating characters and scenes all while teaching 2 classes, taking 1 MFA class and many other freelance jobs. I thought I was done in June and then the author had lots of little revisions to some of the illustrations starting a few weeks ago. I got final approval on all the illustrations just last week! It's due to be printed and in the stores hopefully in a couple of months just in time for Christmas.

I wanted to give you first a taste of the process of some of the illustrations. I always start with pencil and here are some sketches I sent the publisher. The author had some very specific art direction from a Word doc and the story obviously gave some clues to set the scene. I had already done a fair amount of research and photo reference.




So from these I digitally painted the scenes in Photoshop and Painter. The finals are coming in a later post.

Illustration Friday - Cracked

Oil painting about 12 x 20 done way back in 1997! Cover article about the Death of Calvinism. A dying tulip in a cracked landscape. The flower represents Calvinism and the dried up land is the lack of interest and nourishment of this theological system. Interesting to note: I snuck in the word SIN into the cracks and was caught! Had a great relationship with the Art Director and went on to do many many more covers and inside art for Tabletalk.

Illustration Friday - Horizon

This is my Illustration Friday entry for the word "horizon". This was a oil painting I did for an inside spread for In Touch magazine, In Touch Ministries a while back. Original is 24" x 10" and is for sale.





Prints of this are available here.