Children’s

Choosing which constellation should represent the Poles was not as easy as I thought. Like everyone else, I have my favorites. And since I’ve recently finished fifty or so of these guys, I certainly had enough to pick from. In the end, I decided to go with the constellation that actually includes Polaris, the north star: Ursa Minor. Naturally, where the little bear wanders, so goes the mama bear, Ursa Major.

The curious thing about Ursa Minor is that, in order to include Polaris, the little guy needs a big ol’ tail. Which, in my opinion, makes our diminutive ursine friend look a whole lot like a beaver. My working theory is that the artists who drew the original constellations had never seen a live bear, but rather went by the descriptions furnished by witnesses. Seeing as I’ve met and fled bears in the wild myself, it’s my opinion that most witnesses don’t spend alot of time memorizing the little details.

These critters, and their fifty-odd friends, will grace the pages of P.K. Chen’s book, A Constellation Album: Stars and Mythology of the Night Sky. This will be my first book, to be released this September. Each piece of art was cut from a single piece of paper (Yay! No glue!), and fashioned to fit around the particular constellation’s stars. I’ll be posting more about the book as it comes closer to launch.

Illustration Friday

No hide nor hair of a monkey to be seen in this, the third page of my art for Mark McKenna’s Bananatail short comic “Hide and Seek”. But with all those bananas lying about, you know that one has to be around somewhere. Not wanting to be all conformist, I decided not to do the sequential art sequentially, so page 2 is still being hammered out. There’s no text or swoosh lines yet, but I think Reena came out very nicely. Enjoy, and click on the image for a larger view with tons of texture-y goodness.

In the multitude of posts leading up to this one, I put up the individual panels for the first of three pages of my art for Mark McKenna’s Bananatail short comic “Hide and Seek”. Cut-paper being what it is, It was a whole lot easier tackling the panels as individual illustrations. Certainly better than laying out the whole page and wishing upon a star that everything would magically fit together.

I was very, very curious how everything would look jigsawed together and with text and titles slapped on. Turns out it looks pretty darn good. Click the image above for a bigger, more legible, more monkey-licious version.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

…The first egg was named “Thought”. Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha, said, “With our thoughts, we make the World”. Elemental forces caused the egg to hatch. From it came a stone monkey. The Nature of Monkey was irrepressible!

Panel four of my art for Mark McKenna’s Bananatail short comic “Hide and Seek” (and another monkey quote) finish out the first page. Next post, I’ll show how everything fits together into the comic with text and titles. Of course, there are two more pages to the story as well.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

猿も木から落ちる (saru mo ki kara ochiru) translates as something along the lines of “Even monkeys fall out of trees”. It’s a proverb which I’ve always been fond of. It also happens to be the motto of my friend Taro’s Mad-Monkey School of Mixed Judo. There’s a longer version, but I’ll save that for panel four.

Which must mean that this is panel three of my art for Mark McKenna’s Bananatail short comic.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

That’s one swingin’ monkey (Ba-dum-BUM)! Panel 2 of my art for Mark McKenna’s Bananatail short comic. The story now officially has a name: “Hide N’ Seek”, which should help a bit if you’re trying to come up with dialogue or just figure out the action.

Part 1
Part 2