Nov
13
Phew… AlphaBooks is over–twenty-six weeks of alphabetical literary characters. First off, thanks to everyone who participated–especially co-administrators Andrew Neal and Rich Barrett–and a big congratulations to everyone who finished a full alphabet! I’ve assembled all of my illustrations into a single gallery that I’ve posted below along with a few post-project thoughts. (And you can …
Nov
12
OK, before you call me on suddenly deciding that last names are now legit for my Alphabooks entries, note that “Mi” in the novel Planet of the Apes is a fictional honorific, like “Dr.” or “Mrs.” In the book, the character is referred to as “Zaius” or “Mi Zaius” throughout. Anyway… Z is for Mi …
Nov
05
Y is for Yang Xiong — from Water Margin by Shi Nai’an Well, I had to once again break my self-imposed rule of doing only characters from books I’ve actually read. And, again, I could have easily avoided this with a bit of advance planning. Ygritte from The Song of Ice and Fire series would …
Oct
29
X is for Xavier Desmond – from Wild Cards by George R. R. Martin Well, this is for sure one of my least favorite AlphaBooks illos. First off, I don’t really like the drawing very much. My wife was out of town this past weekend and the extra child-wrangling took a lot of my sketching …
Oct
22
Ok, technically he’s John Wemmick, but he’s referred to simply as “Wemmick” throughout most of the book. So… W is for Wemmick – from Great Expectations by Charles Dickens Wemmick is one of my favorite characters from all of Dickens’ writing. Wemmick is a bill collector for Jaggers who winds up befriending Pip. Despite his …
Oct
15
I’ve had this guy in mind for “V” since the very beginning… V is for Vladimir Harkonnen – from Dune by Frank Herbert I’m pretty happy with the way this turned out; I think it’s one of my stronger AlphaBooks drawings. I did the initial sketch for this one right after Ahab (I was considering …
Oct
08
“U” was a tough one for sure. There aren’t a ton of literary characters whose names begin with “U,” and even fewer of those are from books I’ve actually read. But, here’s what I settled on: U is for Uther Pendragon – from The Story of King Arthur and His Knights by Howard Pyle Uther …
Oct
02
Last week I got involved in Twitter back-and-forth with a few folks (Alan Haverholm, Eric Orchard, and whomever operates the Hooded Utilitarian’s Twitter account–Noah Berlatsky, maybe?) about the differences–or lack thereof, argues Noah–between cartooning and illustration and it got me thinking about children’s books. I don’t have some big, overall point here vis-a-vis the formal …
Oct
01
My only other contender for “T” was Tom Bombadil–and I guess I could have done him since I could technically have claimed that my earlier drawing of Gimli was from The Lord of the Rings and Bombadil was from The Adventures of Tom Bombadil… but that’s kinda cheating. So instead, I did this guy: T …
Sep
24
Selecting an “S” subject for this week was tough. My other two candidates were Sydney Hen from Charles Portis’s Masters of Atlantis and Sukie Rougemont from The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike. Ultimately, though… S is for Serafina Pekkala — from His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman As you can see, I mixed things …
Recent Comments