Downward Dog Baby (Yoga)
Tag: children’s illustration
Cat on Head Reading
See, Talk
A couple of tiny spot illustrations for a 1st grade textbook for Hart McLeod.
Copyright © 2014
Hart McLeod Ltd.
Wordless Comic Strip
I can’t remember if I posted this yet. Another Hart McLeod one for a third grade textbook. This one was supposed to be an intentionally vague, wordless comic strip. The student is supposed to write a story explaining what frightened the stick-man.
So, what do YOU think happened in this strip?
Vacuum Ate Cat
Here’s an illustration for Hart McLeod for a third grade textbook. It goes along with a poem where the vacuum ate the cat.
Instructions for Making a Pop-Up Card
Here’s an image illustrating some instructions on how to make a pop-up greeting card. Created for Hart McLeod for a third grade textbook.
My Entry for the Tomie dePaola Award
Here is my entry for the Tomie dePaola Illustration Award given by the SCBWI. The prize is a trip to New York to attend the SCBWI winter conference, lunch with Tomie dePaola (he’s been an illustrator for over 40 years and illustrated nearly 250 books), and some sort of little award presentation. 
The prompt was:
Visual sequence is key to conveying feeling, action, storyline, interest and character, especially in children’s book illustration. One of the hardest things to do is to know your character so well—what he, she, or it looks like, how they move, how they project emotion, and at the same time to make the character immediately recognizable and consistent —all without resorting to a generic depiction, but making sure your character has charm, individuality and special qualities that make young readers fall in love with them. All of this is the same whether your character is human, animal, and yes, even vegetable! (Maybe inanimate as well) The task is to create a six-panel sequence that has a beginning, middle and an end that is obvious, featuring a character of your own invention. It can be funny, sad, dramatic or ordinary, but interesting and with lots of invention and finesse.
So, this piece was designed to be a bit of a sampler. It has close views and distant views, a variety of expressions, a couple of challenging poses, a consistently drawn character (I hope!), and a bit of humor in an otherwise ordinary daily routine.
The girl is biracial because biracial children are under-represented in children’s literature and it allowed me to have her really fighting with her hair in panel 3. Two birds, one stone.
The monster is there because I had some empty space in the panels and it added humor and complexity. And I was a little bored. Hopefully, though the series has a clear conclusion, you’re still left wondering, just a little, what’s the deal with the monster?
This is merely round 1 of a two-part contest. The second part won’t be announced until the 10 finalists are chosen. Wish me luck!
Update:
I didn’t get into the semi-finals, which is disappointing. They showed the semi-final entries, and I think most of them were better than most of the ones for last year’s prompt. So, congrats to everyone who entered and made it into the second round!
For future reference:
I think this competition is looking for illustrations targeting the preschool age range and he likes humorous, whimsical illustrations. I think I should have entered a reformatted version of this or a colored, more finished version of this and I might have done better.
Dinosaur Bones
Here’s an illustration I made for a workbook for Hart McLeod.
I am somewhat concerned by the blatant workplace safety violations depicted in this illustration. 😉
Hidden Picture Image
Here’s a commission I just sent in to Hart McLeod.
Hidden in the image are 12 pictures. They weren’t supposed to be TOO hard to find, so you should be able to spot them. A woman, a man, two girls, one boy, one owl, two rabbits, three turtles, and a frog.
Interesting thing about this project. They told me which hidden elements they wanted to see, but said that the scene was the artist’s choice. I hate that. That means I had to figure out an interesting scene and compose it with no guidance or limits. I love limits. Contrary to what you’d think, I can be so much more creative if I have defined framework to work in. Oh well.
Luckily, I pulled out this reference photo from my photo collection and used it as my framework. I took this at the Overland Park Arboretum this fall. There actually is a pond off the frame to the left, but it isn’t to the horizon like in the drawing.
Fruit
Here’s some vector fruit I just created in Adobe Illustrator for Hart McLeod. They’re for a textbook.
Karen B. Jones - Illustrator 