Here’s a sample of illustrations I did for a client that I then converted to panels, adding text and speech shapes. It’s an exercise of how I can work art into this format – and it looks pretty good..
There’s a lot of recent buzz about graphic novels moving into children’s books. This isn’t really new – think of Archie comics, comic strips, even some wordless books – some of Jan Ormerod’s come to mind. I recall reading small graphic books in seventh grade – ‘Gift of the Magi’ stands out, but there were dozens of others in a series at my school which I devoured. Then in tenth grade I discovered ElfQuest while at ICON on Long Island and I was really hooked by the series. Wendy and Richard Pini melded words and pictures in a story so beautiful, compelling, thought-provoking that it was a huge part of my life at the time.
So here are some fan-based art pieces you might enjoy. The characters are copyright Wendy and Richard Pini. The pencils were drawn by another artist (Ariel Wulff), the story was wordless, and appeared in print a few years ago to ElfQuest fans:
