I guess it’s about time I announced some new work on my website, including illustrations for Richard Due‘s masterful YA fantasy, The Dragondain and for Abuelita’s House, available on the FarFaria app by Intuary, Inc.
More details about these projects to come!
Here’s the finished product of an ink and watercolor map of Treling, a tree nursery and home to Lily and Jasper Winter, and Ebb Autumn, stars of Richard Due’s The Moon Coin. Stylistically, this was a departure from the work I’ve done in recent years, but I had such a blast with it that I’m considering busting out the ol’ microns more often.
Richard Due’s The Moon Coin is a story (…tale? Read the book, there’s a difference), of Lily and Jasper Winter whose eccentric Unlce Ebb has gone missing. Ebb is the kind of uncle whose presence colors life’s ordinary days with magic, and whose bedtime stories tales of the far-off Moon Realm have for years sent the siblings off into dream-filled nights of nine orbiting Moons and their beautiful and strange inhabitants. Even Uncle Ebb’s house seems infused with the wonder of the Moon Realm, which, any child knows, is not a real place. Not really.
Last summer, I had the pleasure of illustrating this project, which was released as an ebook for the Kindle, Nook, and iPad. Now, it gives me great pleasure to tell the people of Earth, and of any realms of Moons out there, that the print edition of The Moon Coin is on its way this spring. I’m of the ilk who find the war between ebooks and bound books tiresome (let’s all live together in harmony, shall we?), but if there isn’t still that certain something about a tangible bound book, spine facing outward from my shelf.
While Richard’s in the process of the finishing typesetting touches–a job I do not envy–I’m gearing up for the new cover, featuring one of Uncle Ebb’s inventions–the Tesla generator-powered coral reef walls of his mansion’s hallway. Here are some rough sketches to get a handle on the lighting and patterns of the wall, which is enveloping a painting of (spoiler alert!) Lily and Nimlinn–a Rinn of Barreth–in The Moon Realm. There, I said it. The Moon Realm is real, the suspense is over.
Click the image below for Richard’s tour of the mockup book jacket in action (featuring a cameo from Moppet, the pocket Rinn).
The winner: pinky promise on the right.
Working with Richard Due, author of The Moon Coin was the kind of experience that’s all too rare for an illustrator. It’s when a client trusts the artist’s vision and stylistic choices that a true collaboration is born. That’s not to say there won’t be the occasional snag along the way.
The scene: bedtime at the Winter’s. Uncle Ebb, having missed Lily and Jasper’s birthday party, arrives with stories and gifts before lights-out. It’s a comforting scene — playful and endearing, tinged with the magic that grows and runs rampant in later chapters. This one took a while for author and illustrator to meet on the same page, but a string of emails about color and mood, some Dick Van Dyke clips (Richard’s suggestion), and three drawings later, we were there.
