As with the previous post, I am not sure which of these books is ‘volume 1’ or ‘volume 2’ or whatever, but I’m calling this one ‘volume 2’, as it is the 2nd book I’ve managed to get my hands on after two decades. There are still two additional volumes of this set, and I’m on the lookout for those, and shall post samples when I manage to get my hands on them.
I did not do the cover on this one, and the volume of interior illustrations was a little less than the previous book. In this one I just did two large illustrations for the start of stories, and a full page ‘upside down’ illustration for a poem. As with the previous book, the style relied heavily on my cartoon style, which comprised of india ink outlines, colored with Philip Martin dyes and colored pencil (on a bristol board).

Good examples of what my cartoon style used to look like in the ‘pre-digital’ days.

 

I’m not sure exactly if these were designated as ‘volume 1’ or ‘volume 2’ etc etc, but I’m calling this one ‘Volume 1’ just to differentiate between the four that I illustrated. This was the only one that was the cover artist on (and I don’t think I got paid any extra for the honor, but it was more of a designer’s decision after the fact). I did quite a few of the stories in this collection, and I’ll be posting more samples as I get them photographed and scanned in. Here’s the story from which the cover illustration was taken.

These illustrations serve as a good example of what my cartooning style was looking like just a few years prior to switching over to digital. I’m not sure if any of this artwork was returned, or if it just got thrown away during one of my periodic purges, but it is interesting to take a look at these after all these years. India Ink, Philip Martin Dyes and colored pencils on bristol board, if I recall correctly.

I even managed to do a scratchboard illustration or two in this volume. But mostly it was the color cartoon style.

next: Volume 2 of the series