The Red Max fan art
Toys short story illustration
Project brief Commission by independent author Jan ten Sythoff to illustrate two of his children’s short stories. Toys is about a boy whose toys start to war with each other. Jan provided the manuscript and some ideas for the composition for four illustrations. We delivered the final document design as a PDF with the text …
Meatballs short story illustration
Project brief Commission by independent author Jan ten Sythoff to illustrate two of his children’s short stories. Meatballs is about a boy who makes friends with an alien. Jan provided the manuscript and some ideas for the composition for four illustrations. We delivered the final document design as a PDF with the text and full-colour …
Elephant’s Gerald
Traditional painting exercise I used traditional watercolour and brushes to brush up on the process that a child may use to draw their favourite characters. I selected a minor player in the Kitten Mews series of picture books that are in development. The elephant’s Gerald, who will have a sibling (also an elephant FYI, as …
Jack and the Beanstalk reimagined
My dummy book of the classic fairy tale, created for Penguin’s 2018 “Draw Now” WriteNow programme. The brief This year’s Penguin WriteNow requirement was to create new illustrations for a potential new edition publication of a picture book ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’. The existing text was provided and the brief was the standard dummy book …
Looking For My Eye Dummy Book Project
Dummy picture book for author-illustrator agent representation I have prepared a full dummy PDF of the 32-page picture book ‘Looking For My Eye’ by Jeff West. It contains black-and-white rough layouts of all interior pages and spreads, plus front and rear covers. Full-colour artwork of the front cover and pp 22-23 spread is also included. …
You don’t have to be a super-fan to make passionate art
If I’m immersed and emotionally engaged with the work, the results will have more chances of engaging the customer and the audience as well. If I’m just going through the motions, then the work itself will probably come across as dry and mechanical. And so the key that unlocks engagement always comes down to finding that vehicle which allows empathy to become passion and flow out as creativity and conversation.
Looking For My Eye project
Dummy book PDF is ready for an author-illustrator picture book agent. Contact Jeff West to look inside!
Uncomfortable monsters of Horror and Halloween
What if the monsters were the cute things being chased by Halloween itself, and by our avid consumption of them?
The Far Side scratch ‘n’ sniff
Return from The Far Side I was delighted to read that Gary Larson, creator of The Far Side … comic? was considering a return to the drawing board, right here in 2020. Or rather, a return to the digital tablet. I blundered into this world in 1987 on my first trip to the USA, buying …