‘Behind the Graphics’
From TomLaBaff.com: 60 Seconds with Creative Director Mark Tuchman
From SLJ Tumblr: “I had the good fortune of working with Maurice Sendak…”
The Evolution of an SLJ cover: “Travis’s Excellent Adventure”
How our Sesame Street cover came to be.
From SLJ Tumblr: The process of creating the illustrations on the Battle of the Kids’ Books site.
Illustrators blog about assignments
Zachary Pullen on creating the November 2008 School Library Journal cover.
Janet Hamlin on the August 2012 cover of School Library Journal.
Brian Biggs created the October 2011 cover for SLJ‘s ‘Series Made Simple’ supplement.
Victor Juhasz on his February 2011 cover.
Tom Richmond did a full page illustration for us in November 2010 and documented the experience on his blog, showing his readers the process of doing an illustration job.
Ken Orvidas displaying four separate School Library Journal assignments. Ken always hits it out of the park!
More illustrators
Photographers blogging about assignments
Portrait by Saverio Truglia.
A Numbers Game. UK photog Sean Maylon on photo shoot with author Rachel Ward. (Post is near the bottom of the page.)
Ivan Lee at IJ Productions on photographing author Sonya Hartnet. For a previous assignment, Ivan strung up nature photographer Nic Bishop in a giant spider web. It was awesome, but that was in 2007, apparently before Ivan was blogging.
SLJ’s Battle of the Kids’ Books
Battle of the Kids’ Books, which began in 2009, is an annual online elimination tournament involving great kids books, inspired by basketball’s March Madness. I create the graphics for the site from the site header down to the artwork that accompanies each individual round.
This link takes you to the 2013 tournament’s “downloadable graphics” page where you can easily check out all of the illustrations I created for this most recent tournament.
At the conclusion of the 2012 Battle of the Kids’ Books, the folks who run the tournament posted ‘Who’s That Man Inside the BoB Studio.’
Comics assignments and collaborations
Occasionally, SLJ has published features in comic strip format. I really enjoy working on these.
I was the scriptwriter (and art director) for two projects illustrated by Cleveland’s hardest working and most prolific cartoonist, Gary Dumm, perhaps best known for his work with Harvey Pekar. Laura Dumm was the colorist. Gary and Laura are the best collaborators you could wish for. I had a blast. The projects were My Bluford High Boys and Seeing Stars.
In May 2008, SLJ published an article on PMOGs (Passively Multiplayer Online Gaming). In place of an illustration, I wrote a story and script, and commissioned cartoonist Marty Baumann to turn it into a comic. He usually writes his own stuff, but thankfully he accepted anyway. The comic strip helped explain the complex subject and served the article well. See it here: Irwin the Destroyer
Comics artist Ellen Lindner scripted and illustrated a few for us including this one about getting reluctant readers to read more.
My illustrations on the web
Illustration for article about Goodreads.
Oh so long ago. Student orientation guide book for Hampshire College. Still in circulation after 28 years!!! Taking Root: Hampshire for Beginners.
Assorted other links
From the “no such thing as bad publicity” department. And no greater compliment than to be parodied!