Bob Staake

One Cupola Down -- And STILL Ten Fingers On Two Hands!

2008-07-16T01:15:20+00:00

There's knot a lot of difference between making illustrations and making stuff out of wood (sorry -- couldn't resist).

When I designed my new studio two years ago, my intention was to crown it with a cupola. For a year I researched different models online, and I found that they were too ugly, too curvy, or just too damn expensive. I think the one I liked best was $2k, and while I'm certain it was worth every penny, the cheapskate in me said "You know, I know exactly what I want in a cupola, so I'll just build it myself."

Clean lines. Solid six pane windows. Proud roof angle. Classic. And maybe I was just the idiot to bring all those things into play?

I started in the spring when the weather in gorgeous here on Cape Cod and Stephanos has yet to start his rigorous biking that has him wooshing by the studio 3 times a day making everybody, certainly me, feel like a doughy schlump. What you learn VERY soon is that building a cupola is a little like building an Apollo command vehicle. No, it won't have to withstand 3000+ degree heat upon re-entry into the earth's atmosphere, but it IS going to have to hold up to 80 mph winds. The thing is, every time you add a course of screws to the frame, back a strip of moulding with strapping or shore up the meeting point of the four roof sections, you add weight to the thing -- and the more weight you add, the more you pull back and wonder "okay, how the HELL are we gonna get this thing on TOP of an 18 foot building?"

Luckily, I decided from the beginning to build the cupola in two parts -- the base and the roof. Engineering-wise, It would have been easier to build a singular unit -- but it would have required a crane to mount the unit. So for two months I worked when I could on the thing -- moving slower than usual just to make sure what I was building wouldn't come crashing through the studio, or worse yet, become airborne and wind up landing in the Atlantic.

Two weeks ago I was at that critical stage; finding a guy who would actually brave the ladders, the scaffolds, the physics of installing the cupola on the roof. Amazingly, a neighbor was having a large addition built on his home, so I walked over there and talked to Ian, a timber framer. In the afternoon Ian came by to look at the cupola, and I was relieved beyond words when he looked at it and said "GOOD for you!". He suggested a couple things; double from 1"x1" to 2"x2" the chamfered bases through which the timber locks will be drilled and attached to the roof, create eight rather than four pre-drilled angled holes in the 'x' cross bar so when we attach it to the roof we can accommodate wind shear, double up the attatching rafter points in the loft of the studio so the four 12" timer bolts will have more meat to sink into. It all sounded just swell to me -- so I spent a couple extra days fine tuning the cupola before Ian arrived.

He came last Friday and spent the better part of two hours creating the staging area on both sides of the roof with three ladders at different positions meeting at the gable. Once I saw all the equipment, I knew the installation would be done right -- though I didn't hesitate to ask Ian "you've got insurance, right?". He fell on a job once -- went from the roof of a two story house and right into the basement -- and essentially lost three years of his life recuperating. Yes, he had insurance -- he DEFINITELY had insurance.

I wish I could have taken better photos, because it was like ballet the way Ian traversed the ladders, the roof, the bulky cupola, but he knew it would be a two person job -- so when the other guy didn't show, I found myself working as his assistant.

There's something so incredibly rewarding about building things on your own -- having an idea how to get them done, then just kinda throwing caution to the wind and finding a way. You Drawgers who do the same thing, you know exactly what I'm talking about. First you think about the project, then you doodle out a couple designs, you go to the hardware store, you pull out the tools, you measure twice and cut once (especially 45 degree angles), and if you're lucky, you succeed.

So, what did I SAVE by designing, engineering and building my OWN cupola? Put it this way; After buying all the materials, calculating my time and bringing in sure goat-footed Ian, it would have been cheaper to just spend the $2k and be done with it. But where's the fun in THAT?

OhNoDometer

2008-07-15T19:33:10+00:00

i rarely get in my car and drive, so imagine my horror on saturday night and finding the need to fill up the beetle at $4.23 a gallon? who knew?!

Snickers

2008-06-03T23:40:35+00:00

Dogs are okay, but we're more cat people.

This is our newest addition to the Staake family and after weeks of deliberation, we finally arrived at what we think is the perfect name; Snickers McPorkchop.

Snickers, as you can see, is a very rare breed -- in fact, he looks more like an eskimo baby than a cat. Angelina Jolie wanted to adopt him, but we apparently beat her to the punch.

Pay no attention to my 3-out-of-4 aim -- we just LOVE our li'l Snickers!

The Poker-Addicted Grandson Of Ethel Flaffberg

2008-05-30T02:21:33+00:00

Can't show all of this picture book yet, but you get the idea -- portraits come to life, cuddly pets, freshly-brewed chai, legalized indian reservation gambling, and a pesky grandmother who can't keep her nose out of other people's bidness. Caldecott written all over it.

bigger

Only 673 Covers To Catch Up With Blitt!

2008-05-29T13:39:15+00:00

At this rate I'll need to draw another 68 years to catch up with Barry -- and that just ain't gonna happen.

This week's New Yorker cover entitled 'Foot In The Door'. Happily, the guy in the center isn't Ryan -- who graduates on Saturday from RISD and then off to California with a position at Apple. (Don't ask me why the dude in the center with the rabbit's foot tassle came out looking like Philip Seymour Hoffman -- just happened that way).

Speaking of The New Yorker, my book 'Trucks Go Pop' will be honored as part of their Spring Books party on June 4 -- right alongside the new books bt Salman Rushdie, David Sedaris and John Updike -- because EVERYONE knows that the erudite New Yorker crowd just can't get enough pop-up children's books.

Step-By-Step Process (Minus The Steps)

2008-05-28T18:42:39+00:00

Sometimes that pencil sketch can help, but other times it's just a impediment to reaching the finish line -- at least that's the way i THINK things could play out -- particularly when I have the image pretty well worked out in my head. So when Target Stores asked me to design a holiday gift card featuring a penguin fishing for a wrapped present, that's an image that's pretty straightforward in my noggin. Iinstead of muscling a dirty pencil and destroying an otherwise clean piece of white bond, here I just went to final. Some shapes here, some colors there, some motifs wherever. Yep, you got it -- little fish WOULD be cool, but with a small piece of credit card real estate, it's best to keep thing clean, tidy and instantly readable -- at least that's what my people tell me.

enjoy.

2008-05-24T20:08:52+00:00

Helping The Good People

2008-05-24T00:39:08+00:00

A few months ago I met Mark and Andrea, two wonderfully kind Canadians who run JustOneMoreBook.com. At a time when more and more of our kids are playing more and more mindless video games, Mark and Andrea have worked overtime helping to promote kid lit through their website and wonderful podcasts.

For those Drawgers (and NON-Drawgers) who do kid-oriented work (special shout out to Edel, Leo, Adam, Barry, Rob, Randy, Elwood, David, Stephen, Laura, Jim, Hanoch, Linz, Brandon, et al), I hope you might consider particpating in this worthwhile project for our friends to the north.

Thanks in advance.
Here's the info:

---------

This July, the Just One More Book!! children’s book podcast will celebrate its second anniversary and 400th episode of promoting children’s books and literacy. As part of our celebration, we are redesigning our website and would like the new look to include artwork that promotes a love of reading.

Illustrators of all backgrounds are invited to submit a logo-like illustration that can be resized nicely and featured on our website for everyone to enjoy. Illustrators submitting artwork will be invited to be guests of Just One More Book!! to talk about their design, the creative process and how their submission helps to promote a love of reading.

We ask that all submissions be emailed to justonemorebook@gmail.com in JPG, PNG or GIF format, 500×500 pixels on or before June 15, 2008. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Memorial Day -- 2008

2008-05-22T20:43:06+00:00

gwap

2008-05-20T15:27:42+00:00

Before transfering to RISD (he graduates in a week), my uber-tech son Ryan was at Carnegie Mellon. He met a lot of great people there and worked on a number of innovative projects. One of them was GWAP. The way Ryan initially explained to me was kind of like "they're these really addictive games that help computers get smarter -- gee, don't you know anything, OLD MAN?". Okay, so now that GWAP is live, I get it -- and my thoroughly addictive personality had me HOOKED on their 'Verbosity' game for 5 solid hours last night! I post this here because I know Drawger is a warm, festering stew of mensa types and boss-less time zappers who need nothing more than something else to get hooked on -- and these five inventive little games could be just the ticket. Don't say I didn't warn ya!

GWAP

ps: nice to see a credit on every page for Ryan's site Pomp + Clout (such a proud daddy here)

Animators Amaze Me (Part 2)

2008-05-14T19:40:09+00:00

A couple months ago I posted the first animation test for Struwwelpeter by Wyld Stallyons in London. I thought it was GREAT -- they thought t could be better. What I Hell, I said -- if you guys wanna take another swipe at it then have fun. And they did. The second test here is REALLY pretty nifty -- better audio, voice over, pacing, sfx, scene blocking, pans -- you name it. Okay, they were right, I was wrong.

Anyway, Jason and his team in the UK are just amazing -- so I had to share.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-auHWtzfTd8

Pets Go Pop Poster

2008-05-12T05:38:04+00:00

Seems like I just finished my first pop-up book (Trucks Go Pop) with Little Brown and then I found myself swallowed up by the next one, Pets Go Pop.

In addition to the 12 pages of super-vibrant, eyeball-socking, paper cut-inducing spreads, the books include these crazy 3' x 5' posters.

I love doing scenes like these, and when it comes to zoo animals AND pets, well, nothing could be more fun for me -- except maybe for the fact that you don't have to walk these critters OR clean up after them.

Tough to reduce a 5' wide poster down to Zimm's 600 pixels, so I'll toss in some details of the thing. To see a larger format image of the entire poster, go here.

I Love When This Happens

2008-05-02T18:49:52+00:00

A couple weekends ago we were in the city to celebrate my youngest's 16th b-day. On Saturday afternoon, the boys dragged me to ToysRUs in Times Square to check out some new Wii game. They were engossed in the shoot-'em-up air assault graphics and soon a line formed behind them -- kids, teens, 20-somethings, 30-somethings -- all waiting for their chance to take a shot at blowing a Saudi F-15 out of the sky or something. I just couldn't relate so I told them I'd be in the kid area. I walked over there -- amidst all the children's books, the leap frog consoles, the stuff all designed to TEACH kids something -- and all you could hear were crickets. It really bummed me out. How the HELL does someone like me even COMPETE against a surface-to-air missle with something as "frivolous" as a children's picture book? Yeah, it was a depressing picture. So I come back to the Cape, dig into my usual work, and then this morning comes an email that puts a smile on my face, makes me believe that it ain't as bad as it seems, gives me faith that we who write and illustrate these things really ARE helping.

For all of you who create books for children, this letter is for you:

Mr. Bob Staake,

I bought RED LEMON for my daughter about a month ago. In these past 30 or so days, the book has been read at least 18,372 times. She loves this book so much that it has become a nightly read before bedtime. I read a few books to her before bed; she always saves RED LEMON for last.

I also enjoy reading it to her. I have no doubt its colorful pictures and lyrical words are helping her to read. She’ll be 3 in a few months, but the poetry and rhythm allows her to read along with me by recognizing which line of the poem goes with which picture. She insists however on reading: “Lemons for Sherbet, lemons for pie, lemons for drinks….” herself, without any interruption on my part. She even makes the sound effects that would go along with that poor lemon getting tossed way over on that island.

Today I bought MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMP with hopes that she enjoys it enough to add to her nighttime repertoire.
Thank you for making it fun for us big kids too. I look forward to reading more of your books.

Kim (Last Name Withheld)
A MOM

Pet Process

2008-04-09T21:33:28+00:00

I've never been all that into "process" and probably for a number of reasons. First, I've been doing this for a long time (let's call it 1976) so in all these years you pretty much find ways to just plow through, get the work doen, and never look back -- and rarely reflect on too much because there are always 8 other deadlines on the horizon. Secondly, I'm pretty lazy when I want to be and the idea of saving scraps of paper, scanning it all, then posting them as a conga line of scribbles and feeble searches for an answer seems like, well, kinda boring. Truth be told I'd rather be outside hammering some copper plating to a cupola -- but a cold front seems to be moving in.

Anyway, this is the cover for a new book of mine for Little Brown -- another pop-up -- and since I found myself doodling, sketching and plotting preliminary drawings more than I have in a long time, I thought these pieces might be worth posting.

Even though the final color art took me no longer than an afternoon to complete, it was one of those projects where you start in advance of the deadline to make sure you know where you want to be going -- knowing full well that if you sit down and try and do the project the RIGHT way, you'll discard more false starts in an effort to attest to yourself that your final decision(s) were correct.

And My Agent Said I'd Never Get This Published!

2008-03-29T01:27:03+00:00

Yes folks, it's important to dream.

Absinthe Makes The Heart Grow Fonder (So They TELL Me)

2008-03-15T00:35:25+00:00

I don't drink, but don't hold that against me. Another thing I don't do is sleep too well, so last night at 3:00am I'm clicking around and I come across this show called 'Two Sheets To The Wind' on Mojo, that uber-guy oriented cable channel in which every bit of content seems to involve drinking, girls with tattoos and more drinking. The host went to the Czech republic and did a thing on absinthe. Apparently it tastes like a melange of pine-scented Lysol and turpentine (hey, count me in!). The best thing was the ritualistic manner in which you drink the ghostly green stuff -- pour it into a glass, rest a slotted spoon on the opening, place a sugar cube on the spoon, then light the whole thing on fire so it burns this cool blue. i guess after 6 of these you get used to the taste, though the host could not find a single person in this Prague bar (bar maid, bartender, waiter, etc) who would admit to LIKING the stuff. Still, it sure looked cool -- and made me think of Tolouse Latrec, Van Gogh, etc. I did a faux poster this afternoon -- and trust me on this -- I'll get into less trouble illustrating absinthe than drinking it! (I have a hunch Flaherty may have knocked a couple back over the years).

ObaMcCain

2008-02-27T20:59:10+00:00

While watching the debate last night, I grabbed my mouse and tried to channel my favorite caricaturist of all-time, Paolo Garretto.

Many of you are well aware of Garretto and his less-is-more approach to caricature, but if you don't know his work, be sure to click the link above (note: the 'Segue Caricature' link at the bottom of that page means there's a second page of Garretto brilliance). He could brilliantly capture a likeness with nothing more than a few judiciously placed shapes, add a couple airbrush details and then back it all up with a drop-shadow created by a dry toothbrush spatter of gouache.

I'm not alone in being a real fan of Garretto. David Cowles loves him, Steven Heller wrote a marvelous feature of his work in a recent issue of Print and am STILL jealous that my buddy Robert Risko actually MET the guy in New York in the 1980s.

Anyway, it was fun trying to reduce Obama visually and try and impart likeness with just a few shapes and elements, and when that worked out, thought I'd try the same thing with McCain. I'd try Hillary as well, but something tells me she's gonna be kinda out of the limelight in a couple of weeks.

Lost Angeles

2008-02-23T21:18:58+00:00

Growing up in Southern California, this was the architecture that I was surrounded by.

Idyllic bungalows like these from the South Bay of Los Angeles are literally being swallowed up and puked out by one McMansion after another -- and it's a crying shame.

I'm working on a giclee series called Lost Angeles -- part therapy, part visual history, maybe a little art thrown in.

Click the link to see the first three.

These idyllic bungalows are just so rare now and have been inhaled and

The BEST Film You'll See All Year

2008-01-28T03:14:31+00:00

4,683 Paper Cuts Later...

2008-01-18T19:15:30+00:00

... you get a BOOK out of the whole thing!

They're a lot of work, but I have to say that creating a pop-up book can be a trult rewarding experience -- especially when you finish the thing!

I'm in the middle of my second for the good folks at Little Brown ('Pets Go Pop'), but I have to say that THIS one, 'Trucks Go Pop' came out pretty well. Lots of color, lots of animated effects, lots of paper angling here there and everywhere.

The book was a unique experience for me because (generally speaking) I've never been big on projects that require my extended input, and between the extensive sketches, diecutting tweaks, working with the paper engineers in China and revisions to this that and the other thing, I somehow managed to keep my composure.

I think the BEST thing is what I learned on THIS book -- and how it is making the process of creating the next one (Pets Go Pop) even better.

Wish these photos were better, but you get the idea.

When Collaboration Sucks

2008-01-14T20:23:08+00:00

I've always loved to collaborate -- particularly when it means working with talented people who specialize in creative areas different from mine. I've done a lot of animation design in my career, but I somehow have never been able to develop much of a tolerance for what I (assume) is some major tedium, so when the amazing folks at Wyld Stallyons in London said they wanted to work together developing an animation project based on one of my books, I told them I'd be desighted to -- as long as I didn't have to do any heavy lifting or major league drawing. In the end, we decided to start developing my version of 'Struwwelpeter', a book I did for Monte Beauchamp's 'Picto Novelette' series for Fantagraphics a couple years ago (the book of uber-German morality tales for kids was actually written over 160 years ago by physician Heinrich Hoffmann). Anyway, Wyld Stallyons sent me a test this morning -- based on 'The Story of the Thumb Sucker'. It's pretty amazing to me that they could get SO much out of the mere TWO illustrations I provided them -- art created for the book and not tweaked in any way by me -- but the pacing, the music, the edits really demonstrate just how good Wyld Stallyons are.

Here's the video link. Enjoy.

(Here's a flash version from Wyld Stallyons)

I.D. Magazine's 40 "Creative Workspaces"

2008-01-09T02:14:39+00:00

When you've been doing this stuff as long as I have, you learn a few things: A low-paying project that promises "really great exposure" never produces anything but the sound of crickets. "We just want to make a couple small changes" means you'll have to change Uncle Sam from a human to a hippo and dress him up in a powder blue tuxedo. But most importantly, when they send a photographer who says "I only need two hours -- max" he's referring to the time it will take him to swap out the buzz fuses in his generator -- NOT the time for the actual shoot itself.

By the time he's finished, he's put in a day and half -- waiting for the light to shift, throwing up some baffles to bounce some illumination over there, reshooting entire scenes because he just noticed a power cord in the background of one shot. In the end, it always produces little output -- a photo, or two, or three -- when you recall hearing nothing but cameras clicking, bulbs exploding and generators squealing to regain their power.

But, what are ya gonna do? Me, I try and work while it's all going on -- and because I can't stand having anyone around me, it's tough to pull off. By the 8th hour, I'm doing a lot of growling -- and asking the photographer if he needs help loading up his car.

Last fall I.D. Magazine called and said they would like to feature my studio as one of 40 "Creative Workspaces" they found around the world that represent, well, as far as I can tell from the magazine, square footage and an insane level of hipness. " Designers are famous for", said I.D., "dressing in black and wearing fancy watches and shoes...". Geez, I'm lucky if I'm wearing pants!

When it comes to I.D., size definitely matters -- or at least square footage counts. In addition to showing all these amazing studios, they also give the stats for each one -- 4,000 square feet, 12,000 square feet, even a studio in Japan with over 50,000 square feet. Hell, all of JAPAN is, what, 83,000 total square feet?! Me, I come in at a whopping 240 square feet, and I can only imagine that the japanese designers probably have an entire room of 300 square feet JUST to show off their Hello Kitty toys to their clients whom they invite over to schmooze and impress.

They also list "number of employees" for each of the 40 studios -- some have 48, some 12, most 4-6 -- and when they get to me -- it's that lonely, singular number. Hey, I'm fine working alone -- I really am -- but in this context, I come off looking like a leper or, at the very least, antisocial ("He seemed like just a mild-mannered illustrator, officer, always kept to himself -- we can hardly believe he killed the Nussbaums!")

Oh, and music. You can't profile these nauseatingly hip studios without mentioning what was blaring from the company iPod when you did your story. The German graphic designers were goosestepping to the 'Pussycat Dolls', a product design firm of five in Brooklyn was listening to 'a Mozart concerto on Sky.fm' and a 60-employee didgital design firm in London was rocking to 'Foo Fighters'. When they talked to me, luckily Radio David Byrne was oozing out of the speakers, but that was really an accident because there's something uncanny about my iTunes that causes it to play 'The Cuppycake Song' at really inopportune moments.

Seriously, it is flattering to be among the 40 here -- and there are some amazing work spaces. A friend called me when the thing came out and said "Dude, your studio is on the cover of I.D. Magazine", but when I saw it I had to set him straight -- if only because we're a 100% reindeer-free studio.

Yes, the photographer finally left. 10 hours later, he finally left -- clearly to move on to bigger, better things -- and a little more square footage.

My Odd Way Of Working

2008-01-04T17:35:50+00:00

Over the holidays, Ryan played around with iMovie, Garage Band, Snapz Pro and, of course, Adobe Photoshop 3.0 -- the program I started with, the program I work in today.

Everything of mine that you see -- from 'New Yorker' covers to 32 page picture books -- it's all done in PS 3.0. I tug on a mouse, I click on the keyboard, I slap it all together on a single white layer of TIFF.

I have illustrator friends (some of them even here) who think I'm crazy to work this way, and once we posted a couple videos on YouTube, it's pretty obvious the world agrees.

Yes, crazy. A kind word for the way I work. ANYway...... (PLEASE disregard the shameless promotion at the end of this video. We just wanted to make sure we didn't send visitors into Flaherty's site!)

Prepare To Be Blown Away

2007-12-21T15:28:50+00:00

Words are superfluous... Other Portraits

Pulling The Covers Over A Cover

2007-12-19T20:33:31+00:00

Two weeks a ago I learned that Barry Blitt had broke his drawing hand in a freak snow plow incident. At first I was alarmed, but then I realized that with Barry out of the mix, it might mean that even if his hand healed in 6 to 8 weeks, he'd only be able to get in 26, maybe 27, New Yorker covers in 2007. I sobbed uncontrollably for Barry, but when the phone rang and Françoise asked if I could do the Winter Fiction cover, I decided shedding tears for Barry wouldn't do good for anyone. I was in the final home stretch of a new picture book with only 1.5 spreads to go, but as everyone who's ever gone to art school knows, there's an old adage that goes (roughly) like this: 'When you learn that Barry Blitt has maimed his drawing hand, YOU must draw fast!'. So, that's what I did -- or at least I pulled, yanked and slapped that computer mouse faster than I had ever pulled, yanked and slapped it before -- and 5 hours later, I emailed the cover to Françoise. "It's a beaut!", she said, and off she went to show it to the "people" whom she needs to show things to. Three days later, I slide into home plate on the picture book, Paulette shoving a congratulatory Maduro in my face just to quiet me down when the call comes in. BAM!!! A bullet right into the forehead -- my Winter Fiction cover is killed. Hey, it happens -- I'm a big boy, and these things just happen. I show the sketches here because in my very short history as acontributing cover artist, if there's one thing I've learned it's that when it comes to New Yorker covers, things move fast, furiously and are in a constant state of change. I hear Barry's hand is doing better now, which makes me think of one word: DAMN!

Reality Check Time, People: The above post regarding Barry's broken hand, wrist or any other jutting appendage is 100% untrue, or as we call it in typical borscht belt comedy circles, a complete joke. Barry is fine. Do you THINK he could take over the entire illustration world with one arm tied behind his back if it was BROKEN?! No, I think not. We now return you to our regularly scheduled Drawger fare

Some Looked Just Like Calamari

2007-12-14T15:58:28+00:00

I finished 'The Donut Chef' (Random House/Golden Books) last week. It was a fun book to do, and while I had HOPED to indulge in some very serious "research" while working on the pages, I somehow resisted eating a single donut. This is one of the spreads -- a scene in which the "evil" chef and our hero engage in frenzied competition by concocting bizarre donuts. The "sketches" show just how hazy I can be when laying out a book like this and when I get down to creating the final, color art (which is really what I want to do anyway), I sort of only refer to the original thumbnails, sketches and doodles as a general roadmap and then let the mouse take me where it does. I think this book comes out next Fall.

Snowball (In Progress)

2007-12-13T19:14:33+00:00

Just looked out the window of the studio to find it snowing -- and the 600lb rusted steel ball seemed to speak to me. Uh oh!

Paul Rand

2007-12-08T17:10:02+00:00

As artists, we all have our visual heroes. For me, A.M. Cassandre, Jean Carlu, Herve Morvan, Mary Blair, Tibor Gergeley, J. P. Miller, Aurelius Battaglia, Paolo Garretto, Herbert Leupin, Donald Brun, Niklaus Stoeklin, Otis Shepard -- these are the people I'm first to mention, but give me another day and I'll name another 600! But when it comes to designers, there's one guy who (in my humble estimation) could make an stationary image, a visual element, a typographic character quite literally dance -- and that guy is Paul Rand. That's why it was so fun stumbling across this little film today -- because it SHOWS his work in movement -- the way I have always seen it. So, kick back and enjoy.

One Little Word

2007-11-15T17:05:47+00:00

This week I've been working on the spreads for my new picture book 'The Donut Chef. Once I looked at the layouts and started dropping on greeked type, I noted my use of one odd little word within the rhyme; "snaking". I kind of have this fear of slitherly things anyway, so I wondered why I wouldn't AVOID using the word in a children's book -- in the same way I'd refrain using words like "frothy", "zesty" or "lather" -- other words that similarly make my skin crawl for no specific reason. Anyway, when you write in rhyme, you find yourself using words you'd never be caught dead with -- and that's part of the fun. It's also fun to stare down the word itself, come to grips with your irrational phobia, and insert a teeny little snake within the scene -- if only to humor myself and pass along the fear of reptiles to some unsuspecting kid who reads the book. Hey, we all have to get our jollies SOMEhow!

What's Your Sign?

2007-11-01T18:23:50+00:00

Anyone who has had the pleasure of strolling, driving or even hiccuping through New England knows the tradition of naming your barn or outbuilding.

I know very little about the origins of the tradition, but I've been one of those people who's comfortable having my eyes tell the story and then let my mind fill in the gaps. For instance, the carriage house across the street is named 'Convince Me'. There's a studio closer to the pond with a quarter board on the gable exclaiming 'High Tide'. If you continue down Main Street you'll come across 'Sea You Later'.

I wanted to do something a little different -- a sign written in Latin -- so enigmatic, so indecipherable, so damned erudite that anyone passing by would look upon it and have this thoroughly puzzled look on their faces.

There was only one problem; my latin is pretty bad. The internet saved me though and within an hour I had a list of maybe 300 great latin quotes -- some mysterious, some perplexing, all easily envisioned in gold leaf chiseled letters on glass-like lacquered wood.

I then had to reduce just six candidates:

1: Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur - Anything said in Latin sounds profound

2: Brevior saltare cum deformibus mulieribus est vita - Life is too short to dance with ugly women

3: Braccae tuae aperiuntur - Your fly is open

4: Cave ab homine unius libri - Beware of anyone who has just one book.

5: Revelare pecunia! - Show me the money!

6: Quomodo cogis comas tuas sic videri? - How do you get your hair to do that?

Now I had another problem. They were all SO GOOD! How do you choose? I just couldn't.

We then fell back on the New England and thought it might be best to just come up with a single word for the quarter board -- maybe take a less goofy approach -- and see what made sense. 'Create' sounded too anti-Darwin. 'Think' sounded like something you'd see sitting on a middle manager's desk. 'Imagine' -- now that word kind of said everything I wanted to say in terms of living a creative life, paulette loved it because it evoked John Lennon's anti-war message.

So, that was it -- IMAGINE it was.

The quarter board has only been up for a week and already people are stopping more often than they already had. They stare at it. They furrow their brows. They smile. They continue on to the beach.

And maybe the word makes them think just a little -- at least that's how I imagine the effect of the sign.

Go, Go, Ghost!

2007-10-30T03:49:31+00:00

I walked into the CVS on Sunday and noticed waaaaay too much candy, which could only mean one thing; Halloween was apparently creeping up on me, and I barely noticed.

I really need to get out of the studio more, but when that just isn't possible, the next best thing (for me at least) is to create a piece of art -- because it helps delude me into believing that I'm actually getting INTO a holiday.

This was going to be just a simple scene of a round-headed green dude releasing a ghost into the wild, but once I started adding other characters, I decided what the Hell -- and played with the lighting, shadows and highlights a little more than usual.

The piece is 24" wide, so of course dropping it down to 500 pixels wide for the Zimmster insures that every bubble, wart and whisker drops out -- so I'll add a couple detail views to cut down on Drawger eye strain.

Actually, just click here and you can see the entire image.

Drawger's 1,000,000th Visitor!

2007-10-23T13:52:08+00:00

Zimm doesn't want to blow his own horn or anything, but today marks a major landmark in Drawger history -- our one millionth visitor!

So who is it? Well, none other than Myra "Hoagie Roll" Slotzsky of Clarion, Pennsylvania!

For years Ms. Slotzsky worked as a quality control specialist at Amish Kountry Krafts inspecting dried apple head dolls insuring that they looked adequately wrinkled. She never married, but reports that she has always kept herself busy with a variety of hobbies. "I tend my garden, bake peach cobblers and enjoy playing full court basketball", chuckles the frisky octogenarian.

Asked how she stumbled upon Drawger in the first place, a sardonic Ms. Slotzsky quipped "Oh, I don't remember -- searching for farm animal porn, I suppose."

Congratulations, Myra! And please enjoy kicking the tires here at Drawger while you find yourself entertained by our collective wit, wry frivolity and self-depricating shenanighans!

PS: If you use the rest room, please remember to jiggle the handle.

What Comes First?

2007-10-21T16:55:53+00:00

The Third Try

2007-10-18T14:48:01+00:00

I was asked to be part of a show on book illustration and in the process of looking for the right images, I stumbled across some castaway images from a book I did a couple years ago called 'The Orb Of Chatham'.

It was a weird book for me -- part mystery, part graphic "novel", part ghost story -- and since it was set in 1935 Cape Cod, I wanted to call on the spirit of the inimitable Grant Wood to create the black and white illustrations.

There is a scene in which the orb passes unnoticed beneath the bridge that passes over Mill Pond. To suggest that the orb is unnoticed, I wanted to introduce the element of an auto headlight that illuminates somewhat, but essentially misses the hitting the orb. I initially thought the best way to play this was with a more bird's eye view of the bridge, headlight and orb -- with the moon and starry sky reflecting on the pond. Though the scene was rendered (with few details added), I recall scrapping it because the point of view was so different from the other images that it broke the visual cadence of the book.

Most of the other scenes were pretty straight-on -- not the most adventurous compositions, but it made sense handling them way. So what I did next was create a no-nonsense view of the orb -- half submerged beneath the bridge, completely hidden from the beam of the car. This was such a lame visual solution that I clearly decided to abandon it before adding so much as a single star detail in the sky,

Ultimately I took the view I am most familiar with -- the scene I see when we pass beneath the bridge in our canoe. Somehow it seemed to work best of the three options and seemed to express the dreamlike sensibility I was after in the book.

I'll never forget what Milton Glaser once told me (and I paraphrase): "The computer allows the illustrator and designer to come up with a good graphic solution too easily". Milton went on to explain that when you're looking at that blank computer screen, there's no noodling with a pencil, less searching for the ideal reference, the discovery of a very workable typeface no more than a simple mouse click away.

I know exactly what he's talking about because more times than not I will just attack that blank tiff file and slash away. The end result almost always "works" -- it's just that I seem to never work out thumbnail and doodle after doodle to make SURE that it is the RIGHT visual solution.

That's why I enjoy stumbling onto things like these three approaches for a single scene. maybe I made the right decision, maybe I didn't -- but if I learned something and can apply it to the NEXT book, then I guess that's what the process is all about.

Now, Let The Wax Wreck It!

2007-10-16T14:44:30+00:00

Here's another surfboard I designed, this one for my friend Bev in Manhattan Beach (CA, not NY). I was asked to provide the shaper with PMS colors and he came back with one of those typical comments you'd expect from someone who associates PMS with something else. He hit the colors pretty well and placed the panels generally where I wanted them. Anyway, these one-of-a-kind objects are always fun. Nice and shiny today, waxed and dinked up tomorrow!

The Extra-Wide Poster

2007-10-15T20:23:01+00:00

Can anything look more lame than a 27" wide poster reduced down to 72 dpi and a mere 500 pixels wide? No -- nothing.

These are some details from a poster that's 27" wide and 9" tall.

This is one of those projects that definitely requires me to go back to my inner 7-year-old. I always try to fill and image like this with lots of details that may not be perceived the first or second time -- but keep on being "discovered" with every new view.

Enjoy the ride.

it's not a diner unless it's open 24 hours (in a row), animals don't need no stinkin' seatbelts when the circus comes to town and there are STILL newsstands that sell your favorite comic books. Yes, it's a fantasy world, indeed.

Gourd Board Book

2007-10-04T11:27:01+00:00

Publishing is a bizarre business. You finish a book and then you see it in print a year and a half or two later. Still, it's nice when a new one comes out and the FedEx man knocks on your door with a box filled with twenty copies from your publisher. The weight, the new book smell, the thick pages that literally have to be bent back to read the thing. 'This Is NOT A Pumpkin' (Simon and Schuster) is an odd one for me -- really just kind of a lark. It's virtually little more than a single illustration and a mere 97 words. To be honest I have sort of been queasy over the release of this book because I worried when people "read" it the response would be "WTF?????!!!". Happily, there have been emails from parents saying their kids love the book -- and I noted a review on Amazon saying "My kids love this book! They yell out and laugh each time it says, "This is NOT a pumpkin!" It is funny, witty, and visually engaging. I am buying a copy for my friend's daughter now" . Last night it was the 33,462nd most popular title on Amazon, and now I check and it's dropped to 110,864th. Maybe if she buys that second copy it can jump to 16,398th by the end of the day!

Qaeda, quality, question, quickly, quickly, quiet

2007-10-02T13:03:07+00:00

Hard to come up with words for this (I mean beyond seeing Bush's Axis of Evil speech reformatted alphabetically).

My son Ryan sent me this creepy and haunting art film.

http://lenkaclayton.co.uk/gallery.php?gallery=qqqqqq

(to watch film, click 'beacuse' link). those artists!

The Great Garretto

2007-10-02T01:54:32+00:00

Paolo Garretto, the amazing Italian caricaturist (born 1903), has always seemed to historically take a back seat to Al Hirschfeld and Miguel Covarrubias -- and unrightly so.

His approach to caricature was always from the less-is-more visual point of view, and every few months I'd google Garretto and sadly find very few examples of his work -- until today.

(I swear, I feel like I might have scooped my buddy Kroninger coming up with the following internet find, though Stephen DID just send me the link to a web site featuring 18 solid hours of video interviews with 'Popeye' creator Elsie Segar's maid. I can handle 22 minutes of Popeye -- but that's only if Bluto is beating the crap out of seagulls or something.)

But I digress...

Today I stumbled on an Italian site that has TWO pages of Garretto caricatures -- in addition to what appears to be a fine recipe for spumoni gelati.

I'll stick with the Garretto -- because ithis work is even tastier.

Enjoy Paolo's inventive caricatures -- and his streamlined sense of graphic design.

Back Among The Living

2007-09-25T17:01:06+00:00

I feel like I've been sequestered in insane-world for the last two weeks while all my drawger friends have been having fun!

Between murder trial jury duty, a conga line of ridiculous book deadlines, psychotic freelance demands, family issues, etc -- over the last two weeks I have felt absolutely isolated and on another planet. ADD to that a major league birthday (I am now OFFICIALLY old), crazed weirdness and a fair share of sorrow, Summer 2007 was indeed a very "unique" season for me. Getting to play with the Goldins, the Goldbergs, the Espinosas, the Rodriguezes, et al this year -- we had a great time and laughed alot -- but truth be told, beneath it all I was doing my best to deal with the untimely deaths of no less than 6 good friends -- and I have yet to find a way to deal with the death of friends.

Buzzkill? Nah, not on Drawger -- never -- but I think I'm emotionally ready to get through a very trying summer, put on a smile and dive face-first into Fall, my favorite season.

You people may THINK your Fall is amazing, but out here in the middle of the Atlantic, dudes and dudettes, it is SERIOUSLY insane.

Good to be back among the living, the doodling, the drawging.

ps: I also hate to be in the position where I am creating a constant daily stream of images and I simply can NOT show them --unless I want the lawyers to bang down the doors and drag me into a courtroom. How totally sucky is that?

Jury Duty!

2007-09-19T14:15:11+00:00

I've never served jury duty before so I didn't know what to expect.

You get up at 7am, get to the courthouse at 8am, then sit around for like 6 hours.

Finally they bring us back to the courthouse and they announce that they ARE selecting a jury this afternoon -- for a murder trial.

The video that the judge had us watch says that in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 90% of trials end in one day, 95% go a day and half -- but that we jurors should be prepared to serve until at least Friday.

This is insane. I'm self employed, I have deadlines up the wazoo, my wife (the lovely Paulette) doesn't work, so if I'm sitting on a jury looking at nauseating crime photos of bloodied bodies, no one if bringing in the dinero.

I'm juror number 9 and am asked to take a seat in the juror's booth. It takes over an hour to assemble the jury, and once they do, the judge reads off a list. "Juror 4, jurors 11, juror 9, juror 4, juror 7 -- you're all dismissed and may go home."

NO questions, no defense attorney looking you up and down wondering if you're going to send his client to the gas chamber, nothing -- just five 40ish MEN all being pulled from the jury from the get-go.

It's obvious; When it comes to a murder trial, a defense attorney wants women.

When it comes to ME, I'm glad to be back in the studio and working!

Board Yet?

2007-09-17T18:57:16+00:00

It would be hard to imagine a more amazing person than Kevin Cody, and I know a LOT of amazing people.

He has a heart. He always does the right thing. He can write like a sonofabitch. He started the 'Easy Reader' in Los Angeles at a time when the ONLY "weekly alternative" newspaper in the country was the 'Village Voice'.

He's also ten years older than me and thinks nothing of slapping through 30 miles of blue Pacific from Manhattan Beach to Catalina on a paddleboard.

Every 5 years or so Kevin has me design something for him -- his newspaper, a new magazine, a surfboard, whatever -- but a couple months ago he asked me to make his paddleboard look exceptionally bitchen.

I posted a sketch of the paddleboard on Drawger a few months ago, but designing on the flat doesn't mean a THING -- until you see it slapped on a 3-dimensional object.

If Kevin is to be believed, then my paddleboard is being called the most amazing looking paddleboard ever designed -- if only because paddleboards are RARELY designed (think solid yellow, red or blue). In fact, this design was being knocked off a week after it hit the water.

But I digress.....

Here's Kevin's paddleboard. Next week, the lovely Beverly Baird's longboard!

Me And Color

2007-09-13T15:26:38+00:00

I have a lousy relationship with color.

Everything i do is full-saturation, a million hue variables, 60 shades of blue when two would be just fine.

So on my new book (I can't mention the title of it or my publisher might scream), I decided that I wanted to do something different -- maybe just use THREE color in the entire book.

This would accomplish a few things; it would harken back to those classic children's picture books of the 1950s/60s, it would force me to create a unique visual world, it would enable me to cut down on the erath tones that Al Gore says we all have to cut down on while he flies his private plane back and forth from his 6 energy-zapping homes.

So I actually DO create a limited palette of 4 colors -- and once I design the cover, I find out WHY we call a "limited" color palette that. By the time I get inside on a spread, I'm taking those four colors and adding a medium aqua, and if I have a medium aqua, I need a darker value aqua, and if I have a darker value aqua, I need a lighter value aqua.

You get the idea. So now I have a palette for this book of 13 colors -- which, believe it or not, is extremely limited for me.

I am so in awe of you guys who can work in a fistful of colors and move on. Even if it means representing a bengal tiger in green and red, it works.

I need a crash course in color reduction. Thanks for letting me vent, dear drawgers.

So a minute after posting this I'm crusing around drawger and I find Linzie's post showing these KILLEr eastern euro matchbook labels. THAT'S what I'm talkin' about -- gorgeous, reduced color palette, total less-is-more.

http://www.drawger.com/linzie/?section=comments&article_id=4127

I take one of the labels and I use the four colors in it. Nothing more (other than white).

I just wish I had the you-know-whats to work this way. It's how MANY children's books were done in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

Have been playing for the past hour or so and I think I may have it figured out: The KEY to color is in Linzie's matchbook labels - simple as that!

9/10

2007-09-11T18:55:59+00:00

Totally Out Of Context

2007-09-10T04:00:09+00:00

Bits and pieces, pieces and bits from a 44 page picture book, but you get the idea.

As I explained to Leo, I have always waanted to go down as the children's book illustrator who depicted a lobster being used as a baseball (thanks for noticing, Leo!). Here's a hyper close-up of the crustacean.

Beached

2007-09-07T01:58:49+00:00

I've always said that the thing I probably love most about illustration is never really knowing what you'll have to draw next. It's easy to do the same thing over and over again. but what's fun is when you have to draw something you've never drawn before -- let alone seen. I live on the Atlantic, but I'm lucky enough to never have come across a beached whale. In the new picture book I'm working on, my challenge is to find over 16 ways to show a huge, beached and incapacitated whale in a variety of poses - not an easy challenge. Thank God for visual distortion -- I'd be lost without it! Here's one scene (when the whale gets pissed) and a spread before the one where he starts to "stink a little". Hopefully kids will giggle. Click here for a bigger version of the spread.

Gone Are The Days...

2007-08-30T21:05:06+00:00

...of "here's the cover for the book".

What starts out one way often ends up another. An art director loves the first cover, your editor may as well, then someone even higher up says "it looks too much like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man" -- and then he crashes and burns.

So you start over and you fall back on the safe stuff because you know when to pick and choose your battles.

More "narrative", less "static", give us "more character".

So the new cover -- complete with full color saturation -- and the interior spreads to follow over the next month.

September is always my month -- and everyone loves a donut.

Pixels Out Of Context

2007-08-30T14:20:07+00:00

When I was a kid, my father worked at Hughes Aircraft and we could never see what exactly he did.

That's because it was government work, so for all we knew he was working on some sort of laser system designed to take out half of the USSR with the flip of a switch.

I don't work with lasers, but more often than not I'm working on things that can't really be shown until they're released, published or pop up on your tv screen.

I thought I might be able to hyper-crop some areas of an illustration, and when I started doing this, I realized that I work in a pretty odd manner and was interested in finding out if any Drawgers work the same way.

When I first started working in Photoshop way back in 1995, I thought I would never be able to get my head around the idea of creating art that consisted of nothing more than little square "pixels" of color. However, it didn't take me long to fall in love with the logic and the "feel" of working that way -- and the process remains the same for me today, never anti-aliasing a line because when the image is reduced down for print, all those tight little squares will become anti-aliased and the image will look crisp.

I'm so blown away by you guys who work in CS and Illustrator and Painter and CURRENT versions of Photoshop, but I guess the great thing about this profession is that we all have different ways of arriving at our work and making that deadline.

If Women Ran The World

2007-08-23T01:59:46+00:00

Maybe it was my education as an editorial cartoonist.

It was the late 1970s and I was away from USC and interning in Washington DC at the Robert F. Kennedy's Student Press Law Center studying First Amendment rights as they related to high school and college journalists.

The SPLC published a quarterly magazine reporting the First Amendment abuses that we fought to rectify and I of course was saddled with the job of illustrating everything from the cover to spots scattered throughout the publication. The folks at The Reporter's Committee For The Freedom of The Press sort of served as our professional advisors and tried to keep us on the straight and narrow. I walked into their office and a woman reporter came up to me and get let loose saying that she had seen the most recent issue of the SPLC magazine and that she felt my cover illustration was "sexist".

"Just LOOK at it", she screamed.

I scanned the cover. It was the interior of any (what I perceived to be) "typical" news room with reporters typing away, editors yelling across desks, photographers lining up photos on light tables -- and two what appeared to be secretaries -- both female -- doing nothing more than walking between the desks with a pile of papers in their hands.

They weren't doing anything "important" like the men in the news room, just schlepping piles of copy from one desk to the next. The only more egregious way I could have depicted them would be to have them schlepping mugs of fresh-brewed coffee.

At first I thought this woman was out of her mind because the absolute last thing I could be accused of was being sexist. Still I pulled back and looked at the illustration -- and she did have a point.

If society had yet to place qualified women in more vocations of importance, in positions typically filled by men, why wouldn't I take the bull by the horns at least draw them as editors, as reporters as photographers? Why would my mindless gut reaction be to toss in a couple gratuitous female secretaries and then portray them engaging in mere servant capacities?

It's a long story - and being raised on TV probably didn't help -- especially when shows like Bewitched were on.

But I started really looking at this issue and I seriously wondering if I as a male, as an "illustrator", if I was somehow perpetuating a sexist mythology -- or at the very least not doing my small little part to "realign" my art.

Happily as women became more successful in the corporate world, as they began filling positions and vocations previously the domain of white men, I'd note more and more editors asking me to "add more women and give us a better racial mix" in my illustrations.

Fine with me.

I got the message. For years -- probably since 1985 or so -- I have tried my best to be proactive in giving women some power -- at least in my illustrations.

I'll show a 747 pilot and she'll be a black woman. A dentist will be drilling on a kid's teeth and she'll be a woman. Hell, my animated pilot 'Sister President' (it came THIS far away from being picked up) featured not only the world's first women president, but she also happened to be a 9-year-old girl.

Editors like that they don't have to ask me to draw women in places where you typically find a predominance of men -- in construction scenes, in judge's chambers, even in newsrooms.

Just this week I jumped on the chance to do it again -- and twice. A woman drives the snowplow in a spread for a new picture book, a black woman calls the shots in a scene within an advertising agency.

My agent saw the spread featuring the snow plower driver and she emailed me "I LOVE our girl snowplow driver".

"Amazing how much editors appreciate that sensitivity", I wrote back.

"As do agents!", came her response.

BUT...Is It Art?

2007-08-22T23:31:04+00:00

Sometimes after I've worked on an illustration, I'll close down Photoshop and in doing so there will be one or two temporary files on my screen that were used for a little speedy cutting and pasting. In their independent context, most of these little images are complete throwaways -- utter nothingness. But every now and then I look at one of these accidental compositions and think "Hmmmmmmm, now that's kinda interesting." When you break it all down, there is zero in the way of intention here -- just a little means to an end elsewhere -- but I do become fascinated that what spews forth here is an image with something aesthetic going on here, not quite sure what it is, but it IS a piece of art that for all intents and purposes spontaneously generates. I'm certain that when my buddy Stephen Kroninger is cutting and gluing some interesting negative shapes fall onto his work table. When Hanoch Piven dumps out the junk drawer in your kitchen I am sure he sees not only a caricature of Woody Allen, but he probably would find my car keys as well. And everyone knows what happened when Jackson Pollock noticed what happened when house paint dripped against his barn floor. Accidental art can be quite interesting -- I'm sure I would become a better artist if I stopped to try and find it more often that I do.

Simple Versus Detailed

2007-08-09T15:10:04+00:00

I should be able to officially report soon that two of my books are in animation/film development, but I've been down this track before and it's a slow and mind-numbing process.

That said, one of the projects has forced me to dig out my original Photoshop files, remove all the type, and provide them to the production company.

That's always an odd and revealing process because it forced me to look at images I haven't REALLY looked at in a couple years. In fact, I rarely look at books of mine once they're published because the process is just too damn excruciating.

In breaking down the image files for 'Struwwelpeter' (2006 - Fantagraphics), I noticed that on first glance the book is clean and spartan in design, but when you look closely, there's a ton of detail. I DO appreciate a 'less is more' aesthetic point of view, but truth be told, I can become downright obsessive when it comes to adding detail -- even to the point of hiding strange little visual jokes that are probably only noted (or appreciated) by one person -- me.

When it comes to picture books, it's the details -- subtle and overt -- that really help set a mood within an illustration or a spread. Are those details "hinted" at through abstraction, or are they meticulously rendered in anal-retentive obsessiveness? Are they realistically represented, or are their angles tweaked and thrust in such a way to convey chaos? That can only be determined when the author/illustrator sits down and decides what mood he'd like to push his reader into.

It's all been said before, but in many ways the building of an illustration (and particularly the creation of a 32 page picture book) plunges the illustrator into the multi-facted role of artist, actor, director, costume designer, set designer and even lighting technician. It's a little like being a 8-armed Teamster -- without, of course, the weekly payoffs to the Paisano Brothers in Jersey City.

Anyway, I thought it could be fun to show just one small illustration segment from a two page spread within 'Struwwelpeter' and then isolate on some of the details -- in their full when created.

Reduced and crunched through the 4-color process, details can indeed wash out, recede and see their importance diminished. At the end of the day, that's a good thing in a picture book -- because the truly essential content -- the BIG picture -- isn't lost to the competing screams of doilies on side tables, poofy fabric on vanity stools or the gothic symetry of a day bed's claw feet.

Still, i just lovvvvvve details.