Shade Tree Caricaturist

I was recently asked by a good friend to take part in his church's summer Bible School carnival day. The theme was a carnival atmosphere, so they asked me to come and do caricatures of the kids there. So among the bouncy houses, waterslides, games, cotton candy and popcorn, there I was with pencil in hand. They were nice enough to put me under a nice shady tree, too.

It was a great day and I had a blast. The kids were fun (and I got to draw a couple of the adults as well.) I wish I could have taken some snaps of the actual drawings - but the kids were all so excited they took off with them to show friends before I could.

I am not really a caricaturist per se - but I enjoyed myself, and everyone seemed pretty happy with the results. It was a fun day, and I want to thank my friend Jerry and everyone at the Valier First Baptist Church for the invitation to be a part of the day.

I'm on a Book!

I'm on a book! Well, ok, actually my artwork is. My good friends Bryan & Jody Fagan, both of whom are great writers, comic book fans, and librarians, recently wrote and published a book called Comic Book Collections for Libraries. It's a book aimed at libraries who are interested in starting a comics/graphic novel collection for their patrons. They kindly asked me to do the cover art. Being a comic book fan, and happy to help spread the art form I love to libraries and new readers as well, I jumped at the chance to do the book cover.

The book is both in-depth and informative, and covers the long and storied history of comics, the various genres of comics, and is actually an interesting read for those who may be fans of comics, but not librarians.

Bryan and Jody were kind enough to send me a copy of the book - which was awesome to see my work on a book like that. And as Bryan pointed out to me - it's a book with a foreword written by comics legend (and creator of Usagi Yojimbo) Stan Sakai, has interior art from some of the biggest and best names in comics history - and my drawing is on the cover! (thanks again, Bryan & Jody! It was an honor!) I enjoyed seeing my name as the cover illustrator in the library of Congress info (I know - seems silly, but I thought it was cool.) and also seeing my drawing on amazon dot com as a book cover! (again - may not seem like much to others, but I did a little happy dance when I saw it. Well, I was happy dancing on the inside, anyway.)

Here is a closer view of the art before the top area was expanded and the titles added by the publisher.

Thanks again to Bryan and Jody for asking me to be part of such a cool project. While this isn't my first book cover - that honor goes to my friend Ryan Nelson and his book The Bigfoot of Hamilton County and other Stories of Southern Illinois (image below) This is my first nationally published book cover. It was a fun project, and fun to see the final product.

So my second of what I hope will be many book covers to come. (mostly of my own books - but if someone else needs one, let me know - depending on schedule and workload, I would consider any serious offer.) And remember - support your local library, local authors, and local artists!