Barnes & Noble

Throwback Thursday – Barnes & Noble Cover from 2007

Barnes & Noble

adventure

I missed posting a ‘Throwback Thursday’ last week, as I was in Chicago getting ready to celebrate my son’s wedding.

This week we are taking the ‘way back machine’ to a decade ago around 2007 when I had a pair of assignments for Barnes and Noble to illustrate the covers of a pair of reprint story collections. The first one was a book of ‘Pirate’ stories, and the second one was a book of ‘Adventure’ stories (pictured above). I don’t often work in the ‘painting style’, but this was probably the one piece in that style that I was most pleased with. This is a larger, more detailed version than I’d posted in the original blog entry.

Happy Belated President’s Day

Barnes & Noble, Barrons, Carus Publishing, Miami Herald, Penguin

Washington

In honor of President’s Day (which fell on Monday of this week), I’ve collected every illustration that I could find in my archives in which I’ve portrayed George Washington. 3 of the most recent illustrations are from the ‘What Was the Constitution?’ book which I just completed a few months ago, and the others are from various sources, including the Uncle Goose President Blocks (upper left), Dover Presidential Sticker Book (2nd clockwise from the top), a few early Cobblestone illustrations (more or less center), an illustration from the Miami Herald (bottom left) and a cover illustration for Barnes and Noble (bottom right).

AdamsJefferson

 

And then, since I found an extra ‘George Washington’ that I did for the Wall Street Journal (the dollar bill portrait with the black eye), I’ve collected all the 2nd and 3rd Presidential portraits that I have in my archives. Again, some from the Presidential Sticker Book from Dover, and from the Uncle Goose Presidential Blocks, plus some others from various sources. Below are the portraits I did of Madison (many from the same ‘Constitution book’ that I recently completed), and the only two times that I’ve drawn James Monroe. The remaining presidents I have on file are rather hit or miss, but I may continue with this series at a future date.

MadisonMonroe

 

And I almost forgot the paper dolls that I had done just last year for a book on Alexander Hamilton, so here’s Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison one more time.

paperdolls

Books and Newspaper Work

Adventure House, Barnes & Noble, WSJ



The illustrations above and below were all for the Wall Street Journal over the past few weeks. After a slow August, it was nice to get a flurry of illustration assignments to start out the fall season.

I finished up a large batch of illustrations recently for Adventure House. This was another of the ‘large projects’ that I have been mentioning since early in August. This was a set of around 40 spot cartoon illustrations for an upcoming textbook (I’m guessing it has something to do with Language, based on the various situations I was asked to illustrate). It had been a while since I’ve gotten the old ‘cartoon style’ out of mothballs, so it was fun to take a break from the usual scratchboard assignments.



Another quickie illustration that crossed my desk over the past few weeks, was another book cover assignment for Barnes and Noble. This was for a book of ‘founding father quotations’ and needed a trio of portraits (Washington, Jefferson and Adams), done in black and white scratchboard.

Something Nice from the Postman

Barnes & Noble

Received my complimentary copy of ‘A Skeleton at the Helm’ from Barnes and Noble today. Very nice looking book. I also see that it is now available for purchase at their online site (link here). One of the nicest looking books I’ve ever been involved with, with gold foil lettering, and is definitely finding a permanent home on my ‘nautical shelf’ in my library. Below is another look at the original illustration (which loses a little bit in the corners due to the round cropping for the cover usage).

Book Cover

Barnes & Noble


The above book cover assignment was completed in late December for Barnes and Noble Publishing. This was the second assignment for this particular client, the first being a ‘pirate’ image that I did in scratchboard back in the fall. This illustration and my holiday postcard were the first two times that I’ve moved from using the ‘oil pastels’ to using the ‘oil brushes’ in my Painter software. I’d been a little intimidated by them in the past, but was determined to get over the learning curve with this project. This book and the other ‘pirate’ book should be published sometime this spring, and I’ll be sure to put a link up when I get it.