I’ve mentioned it before but I get to make flannelgraphs that are used in Sunday School rooms.  How cool is that?  Who knew that I’d have a hand in creating the very items I grew up learning from.  Here are a few that I liked from a recent assignment.  I love the bright colors!  And another secret…

These are all me!!

I have family members pose for some but in a crunch I’m usually my most cooperative model!

No, I haven’t been fishing in Alaska but after working on these drawings I think it sounds incredible!  I was contacted through referral by John A., who needed some artwork for an instructional e-booklet on fishing the Kenai river for Red Salmon.  It sounds different from any fishing a Michigander might be accustomed to!  John has put his passion for Red Salmon fishing into an e-book in a effort to aid the ‘out of towners’ in their quest for Red Salmon.  As soon as I have a link for purchasing I will put it up here but meanwhile, here are a few illustrations I made for him.

I have a lot of great things in a works and I can’t wait to get it up here.  In the mean time, these are a few images from a book that I worked on last winter.  It was a 4th grader reader filled with stories about kids from history.  I don’t get to work from history very often and I think the challenge here was finding costume reference to fit the time period!

There are a few more images below the fold (click for more)

Thanks for stopping by!

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Growing up my Dad used to enjoy the occasional monster movie.  I recall seeing Godzilla fight Gammorah on more than one occasion.  I think the thing that interested me most was that Godzilla had this strange relationship with the humans.  He always helped them out!  Crazy, water-sleeping, building smashing, man-in-a-monster-suit monster!  Anyway, I’m sure there were a couple where the monster had a strange connection with a small boy so here we have Godzilla playing catch with a little boy.

I’m not so thrilled with the way the color turned out on this one.  I may have to revisit this in the near future to see if I can improve the process a little. For now it’s time to move on!

Whoa!  Another round of Sketchoholic this afternoon.  What a rush!  A lot of great entries and I ended up coming in 2nd!  Woo hew!  One of these days I will claim the coveted Bobby Chui sketch .  These one hour sketch throw-downs are so intense and I actually learn alot about how to get ideas down quickly and how to make some quick decisions.  If you like to draw and like the encouragement that comes from sketching with a group of people be sure to check it out!

This past winter was pretty busy!  Attached below are several images from an upcoming book called Alfred the Clever Crow by Peggy Carey.  Alfred is a curious little crow whose curiosity gets him into trouble.  Throughout the book he learns that his Mother is there to protect him and that he needs to listen to her rather than venturing off on his own .  I’ll post a link when it’s available!

Had a great time sketching today with The Intensity Club at Imaginism Studios.  Voted top by the other artists so thanks!  Looking forward to the next sketch.

This past winter I illustrated a book called Cop’s Night Before Christmas, by Michael Harrison.  It’s a great story about a policeman whose duties call him to serve on Christmas Eve, away from his family.  I really enjoyed illustrating it and can’t wait to see the final product!  I just found out that Michael Harrison will be featured in American Profile magazine in 2011!

American Profile will run a feature on Michael Harrison, author of Cop’s Night Before Christmas for Christmas Eve 2011. The story will mostly be about police officers working on Christmas Eve and Michael has worked more Christmas Eves than most police officers. The book will be mentioned in conjunction with the story.

American Profile is a weekly, four-color magazine that circulates within community newspapers nationwide.

To get ready for its release this fall I’m posting a few of my favorite images… check back in September for a few more!

These guys have been getting a lot of play lately… two whole illustrations and they are still walking along.  The sketch for them is below.

Sketchoholic.com, one of Bobby Chui’s web sites has had another contest.  The theme of this one centered around sculpture and interpreting something classical.  I went around and around with this one and finally settled on the caryatids in Greece.

It seemed like a good idea… then I decided to make this my next promotional mailer (gotta make the art work for me .  So my thought was to make a postcard with a fun spot on the back to tie the whole thing together. So here we go …

My wife’s a big fan of Audrey Hepburn (and who wouldn’t be) so, after a lot of noodling I thought maybe the caryatid had run off with some other piece of classic sculpture for a holiday .  I’m kinda diggin this one .  Thanks for stopping by!