Children's Book Update

An update on the book that my wife Amy and I have been working on, off-and-on, (mostly off) for almost 2 years. We were able to work on it over vacation, and finally completed a first version of the dummy, with sketches and text pasted into place. We've read it out loud and shared it with a few friends. The reaction has been pretty positive. The overall structure seems to flow pretty well, but we've tightened the focus of the story, and our research into the 18th-century pepper trade has shown us the need for a fairly major revision in the storyline.We also have some areas where we can expand the story.The next step is for Amy to make the story revisions and for me to revise the sketches further, so that it is very clear what the action is, and produce a couple of more finished illustrations, I did a finished wrap-around color rough for the cover.
It's starting to come together, ever so slowly...

Children's Book

Welcome back from the holiday break! It's 2010! Here are some rough sketches, thumbnails and a final pencil drawing for the cover of the children's book that my wife Amy and I are working on. We took some time over the holidays to work out the page thumbnails. The next step is to make the book dummy and prepare 2 finished illustrations to send along with the manuscript. This is going to take a while, but I'll post more as the work progresses.

Character Sketches

Here are some character sketches for a children's book I have been working on, "Piewacket, Ship's Cat of Salem". My wife Amy wrote the story, and she has been trying to get me to illustrate it for months. The story is about a ship's cat on board the Friendship, an early 19th century merchant ship that sailed from Salem, to Sumatra and other ports of call in southeast Asia, to trade for pepper and other spices. It was not uncommon for ships to have a ship's cat, in order to keep the rats and mice from eating or destroying the cargo. The cat in the story is based on our own cat Piewacket, who is a very large Russian Gray. The story is finished, but the artwork is definitely a work-in-progress. The top sketch is of the two main characters, Piwacket the cat, and Thomas, the cabin boy. Below are sketches for the Captain, a ship's rat, the Farmer, who brings the cat to the Friendship, and the First Mate.