Characters and Radon

This week I've been clearing out the crawl space in our basement so we can have a radon filtration system installed down there. I guess they cover up the crawl space and do whatever else. There was 10 plus years of junk crammed into that crawl space including these massive canvases I was painting back in 1999-2000. By massive, I mean 4' x 6' average. By canvases, I mean 6 or seven of those monsters. I think I only still like one of them. I've decided to remove most of the the canvases from the stretchers and just roll/store the canvases so I don't ever have to move them again and maybe never look at them again either.

Besides radon fun, I've also been knee deep in picture book sketches. I'm working on sketches/art for 3 picture books right now. And I've also been developing a pitch for an author/illustrator idea that I sent to my awesome editor at Disney-Hyperion last week. Fingers crossed for that one!

Enough words, how about some pictures? Here are three character sketches I did for one of the picture books currently underway. (a beautiful text by the lovely Rebecca Kai Dotlich via Boyds Mills Press) I did a handful of completely different looks for this central character. These drawings were from one of my favorites. We went a different way, but I still quite like these drawings as stand-alones. I hope you do too. Radon power!