These sketches are from two small books I made for Moomin when he was two. One is a simple picture book called “What Little Birds Do” that has a different verb and action on each page. The other was a book about how our cats cast a spell on him to give him cat ears and a tail, and they all went together to Cat City on a flying train to eat tuna fish ice cream cones.
It was fun to find the preliminary sketches for that book, which I’ve lost completely. I’m a sloppy, sketchy artist but try to make the sloppiness part of a style rather than the ineptitude and laziness than underlies it – and to me at least, the sketches have a cheerful & dynamic charm.
Milo liked seeing himself in drawings a lot! If you like the drawings in my “sketches” set on Flickr then leave a comment for me!
They’re watercolor pencil and fine point black felt tip marker.
I hope you are inspired to make your own little books for your kids, which will then inspire them to make books too.
I think your illustrations are easily as wonderful as those in published books–and much better than many. I could ramble about spirit vs. technique, but whatever. Your drawings are lovely, and absolutely engaging.
*blush* *bluster up of pride* Thanks! That means a lot coming from you – your art is so cool!
I came here via anti-racist parent. I love the idea of making books, in fact my current project is a fabric book filled with B&W photos of my 3rd son as a baby. He is always asking me to turn him back into a baby and not that pretend stuff either, for real. We had to write a note to the tooth fairy who was visiting his older brother and ask to borrow her wand. She let us know that the magic only worked for her but his response was that we should ask her to come and do it for us then. Anyway I will be back.
What a great idea, and I love your picture. Eons ago as a new and idealistic mommy I went to a talk about reading and kids and I remember dutifully writing down a place where you could buy blank books. Alas, I’ve lost that info. and free time for making books, but I really should. We found the one and only baby book I completed and my son started wanting that to read at night. I put a link to one of your posts in an anti-racist parent blog comment, just an fyi. Timely that this is delurking week and here I am delurking (I actually met you at the blogher party in SR and love your blog and particularly the info about schools since I’m in your school district)