Uncle Goose Toys

Presidents Continued

Dover, Penguin, Uncle Goose Toys

JohnsontoArthur

 

Continuing with my ‘President’s Day’ tribute, we come to the Reconstruction Presidents, from Andrew Johnson through to Chester Alan Arthur. Mostly taken from the Uncle Goose President Blocks project and the Dover President Caricature Stickers, but with a few additional illustrations from a few Penguin books, a Dover book on ‘Poker Terms’, and one of the earliest illustrations in this collection, a caricature of U.S. Grant eating a pickle from sometime in the early 1990s for Christianity Today. More to come as I compile them.

Below, are the presidents Cleveland through Roosevelt (Cleveland being the only president to serve non-consecutive terms, bookended around Benjamin Harrison). Several illustrations of Teddy Roosevelt are included, mostly from the book on the ‘Panama Canal’ that I did a few years back.

ClevelandtoRoosevelt

Presidents Continued

Carus Publishing, Dover, Penguin, Uncle Goose Toys

JQAdamstoPolkContinuing with my salute to the Presidents (with President’s Day falling on Monday of this week), I’ve dug up all the presidential illustrations I’ve done in my nearly thirty year career. The more obscure early presidents from John Quincy Adams through James Buchanan are mostly culled from a few projects from about ten years ago, a collection of caricature portraits for a Dover Sticker Book, and a series of woodcut illustrations for a set of Uncle Goose Presidential Blocks (I’ll have to share a photo I have of former President Clinton holding a set of these blocks in a future posting). Once we get to Lincoln, I have several illustrations to dig out of the archives, and scrolling down we also find an extra James Madison and George Washington that I had forgotten about (dating back to around 2002).

TylertoLincoln

Lincoln&leftovers

Snails, Roses and the Never Ending Election Cycle

Green Prints, Uncle Goose Toys

The above photo was courtesy of the Uncle Goose Instagram feed. This is a picture of the two portraits I did in anticipation of the coming election, as they will be updating their ‘Presidential Wooden Blocks’ set with whomever wins. Since I had done a Mitt Romney portrait for them four years ago, I had jokingly suggested that they start a collection of ‘Presidential Losers’ (McCain, Kerry, Gore, Dole, Dukakis, Mondale, McGovern, Goldwater, etc etc) printed on recycled and reclaimed wood, and it got a laugh, but I don’t think it will be happening anytime soon.

Below we have a recent assignment for GreenPrints, including the rough sketch for each illustration, and the usual dingbats and drop cap letters and small spot illustrations that go with each.



Big Wheels

Main Line Today, Today Media, Uncle Goose Toys

Started working on a new coloring book project (samples to be posted once the book is published), and in the meantime, had a few short deadline projects. The illustration above was for Main Line Today magazine for an article about super competitive pre-school admissions. The article was more slanted toward a ‘Hunger Games’ parody, but once they mentioned ‘big wheels’, I started picturing something more along the lines of “Mad Max Fury Road”. I posted the sketch for this in the previous post, and here’s how the finish turned out. Below are a few new portraits of Hillary and Donald for a set of Presidential Wooden Blocks that I did several years ago (and have been providing ‘just in case’ portraits in the intervening years). I jokingly said to the client that since we are starting to amass a collection of ‘also rans’ that we perhaps ought to put together a set of ‘Loser Blocks’ with all the candidates who lost the presidential bid (who knows, maybe I’ll just do a series of portraits along this line on my own, just for fun).

Still Here

AHMM, Green Prints, Uncle Goose Toys, US Catholic


Been over a week since my last post. Been keeping fairly busy, but as with a lot of my work this year, I’m unable to share it on the blog until after publication. Last week spent most of my time working on a series of 4 illustrations for a book project I thought had been put to bed months ago, but a few extra illustrations were added to the pile. Still awaiting approval on a batch of 90 illustrations for another project, and have been given the go ahead on starting sketches for the next ‘Amish Girl’ book. But in the meantime, I’m still working on this and that short term project for my magazine clients. Above is another fiction piece for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (24 years working for this digest this month). Below is a spot illustration (and an additional widget of a sprig of parsley) for GreenPrints (a newer client I picked up last fall and for whom I’ve done 3 or 4 previous assignments).

And somewhere in the past couple weeks I also had a pro bono assignment from a friend of mine, which harkens back to my earliest days of freelancing. Back when I was in High School, my very first assignments were from my Mother, who would hire me to draw a caricature poster for various retiring co-workers. I usually would do these on poster board bought from the local drug store using a box of colored markers (I can still recall sitting at the family dining room table late in the evening trying to milk the last bit of color from quickly depleting felt tips). This one was a caricature to decorate a flyer/invite for a friend of a friend’s upcoming retirement party.


Last week, I also received a package from the UPS man, with a box of wooden presidential blocks that I had provided illustrations for about 4 years ago. (Currently working on a new project for this toy manufacturer, and it was brought up in conversation that I hadn’t yet received a sample to see how they turned out)

This morning I also finished up a piece for US Catholic (pictured below) on Urban Sprawl.

In other developments, over the weekend, I started working with a new animation program (starting work on a new music video for my band, as a way of continuing my education in animation in hopes of eventually turning it into another branch of TFI). I’ll be posting some ‘sneak peeks’ in the coming weeks. So far, the program has been a challenge to learn the ins and outs of, but the leap forward in the professionalism of the end product has been very encouraging.