The Sweetest Book (aka: too many calories to count)

To see all my illustration portfolio samples, visit my web site. 

In 1951, the Little Golden Book classic, Pantaloon, was first printed by Simon & Schuster... In 2010 the new version of that children's picture book classic will be released by Random House, the present day owners of all the Golden Book titles. 

I had the very fortunate opportunity to be selected to re-illustrate this new version of the book, and yesterday received an advance copy of the completed book. The reproduction of the art looks terrific. It is such a satisfying feeling to finally have the actual printed book in your hands, after the many months of doing all the preliminary sketches and the numerous finished illustrations! All these illustrations were finished in the late winter of 2009... and the book will be released nationwide sometime in the spring of 2010... 

The story is about an energetic poodle who is determined to become the Baker's new assistant, and will stop at nothing to to so... People who have seen the illustrations already, have all commented on how delicious and tempting all the pies, cakes, breads, cookies and pastries seen throughout look. Out of curiosity, I just did a quick count of how many tasty items I actually illustrated... counting everything seen on the cover, endpapers, inside illustrations, etc... I think there are about 490 food items! After reading this book, one will definitely head straight for the nearest bakery to pick up a chocolate eclair (or three). How many pounds did I gain while working on the visual research for the book you ask? I'm not telling... but let's just say that I hope my next children's book project is about a kid who spends a lot of time in the gym. 

All the illustrations were painted with Winsor & Newton gouaches on Arches hot press watercolor papers...then scanned into Photoshop, where I did some additional digital enhancements, especially with much of the "pastry" work.

Posted here is the half-title page art (box of pastries), and an illustration from one the the opening pages where Pantaloon and the Baker first meet...

(see previous post)

Character sketches from my recent book...

To see all my illustration portfolio samples, visit my web site. 

In February of this year, my latest author/illustrator picture book for kids was released by Harcourt, entitled “Harry Hungry!” (click here to see previous post)

Above are two preliminary character sketches from very early in the process when I was first exploring how the main character should look... the gastronomically terrorizing tot named Harry. As you can see comparing these initial sketches with the final images from the book, Harry's final look ultimately was not as distorted. But there is a wonderful raw quality of these early sketches, so I thought I'd show them. I think doing a next book project wherein the final images are more in keeping with the roughness of these sketches would be a great look. 

The sketches were created with brush and gouache on white bond paper.

19 Girls and Me (x 4)

To see all my illustration portfolio samples, visit stevensalerno.com

A few years ago I illustrated a picture book project for publisher Penguin... actually for their children's book imprint Philomel Books, entitled “19 Girls and Me” written by Darcy Pattison (released in 2006).

The story is about a young boy (John Hercules Po), his 19 female kindergarten classmates... and how they all become friends through their imaginative recess adventures around the world to places like Mt. Everest, The Great Wall of China and the Amazon River.

In these past few years this wonderful book has also been translated into German, Chinese and Arabic (the various cover images are posted above) allowing children from these other countries to share in Po's adventures, too. The Chinese edition even has the entire story repeated in English (with all the illustrations scaled down) in the back of the book, also including a musical CD. (I listened to the CD, and it appears to be Chinese children singing the story as if it were a Broadway musical -so charming!)

The Arabic edition, of course, reads from back to front... so all the images were flopped. (I never allow my images to be flopped, because visually they never seem quite the same... but in this case, it was a cultural necessity for this version.)

In “19 Girls and Me” all the illustrations depicting the children in the classroom, or when they are first stepping out into the schoolyard, are in black&white, except for the girls red dresses and Po's blue blazer. Then in all the scenes where the children are on their fantasy recess adventures everything is rendered in full color.... sort of like the same visual tactic used in the movie The Wizard of Oz ... a film in black&white, which then becomes full color when the main character Dorothy literally falls into the Land of Oz.

The interesting "behind the scenes" story regarding the illustrations for this picture book, is that I actually created all of the final images in full color. But when I showed the final illustrations to my Philomel Books editor Michael Green and art director Cecilia Yung they correctly assessed that the classroom and playground scenes, in terms of color, were too hot and bright to the point of distraction... so I came up with the solution to convert those specific images into black&white (ah, the magic of Photoshop!) but made them more stimulating by keeping the girls dresses red and Po's blazer blue. The end result looks as if it was my original intention to have the various “school” scenes in black&white and only the “fantasy” scenes rendered in full color.

"Going Out of Print"... for a book, this is like forced retirement

To see all my illustration portfolio samples, visit stevensalerno.com

Unfortunately, two of my children's picture books, as both author & illustrator, will be going out of print soon with publisher Marshall Cavendish. It's very sad, as both these picture books are very solid stories with, I must say, excellent illustration... but of course, as the creator of the words and images, I am bias! (posted above are the covers)

Hopefully another publisher will want to pick up Coco the Carrot. It's a fanciful story about a carrot who discovers she has talent for designing and making hats, takes an ocean cruise adventure, tumbles overboard, becomes friends with a monkey named Anton on a tropical island, is rescued, ends up in Paris, and becomes a famous hat designer. I won't tell you how it ends... you'll just have to buy one and read it yourself. I think someday, this imaginative story with the spunky main character will be in print again, or maybe even made into a musical play!

Girls really love this story. When I did a book signing a couple years ago at Books of Wonder in New York City (the best children's book store in the city or maybe anywhere) they were having me sign the book and their sneakers, too!

You can still get a copy from Barnes & Noble or Amazon, but not for long.

Little Tumbo is a tale about a little elephant who cannot yet trumpet loudly... he is still leaning. His curiosity gets him kidnapped, and his captors plan on selling him to the circus.... but an old boatsman and his grandson help Tumbo escape...and alone he makes the long journey back toward home. But the kidnappers track him down and just as Tumbo sees his whole family in the distance.... they nab him again! You can guess what happens next! Let's just say Tumbo finally is able to trumpet loudly at a very crucial moment!

You can see inside illustrations from these books on my web site in the Children's Book portfolio section, as well some sketches, too.

Onward and upward!

PANTALOON -remake of the 1951 Little Golden Book classic

To see all my illustration portfolio samples, visit stevensalerno.com

In 1951, publisher Simon & Schuster's imprint for children, Little Golden Books, released another picture book in their long line of hundreds of little slim storybook gems entitled, PANTALOON, written by Kathryn Jackson and illustrated by Leonard Weisgard.

I think every kid in America, and millions of children in countries throughout the world as well, have owned or read one of these many Golden Books titles. Pokey Little Puppy, Taxi That Hurried, Tootle, and Saggy Baggy Elephant come to mind.

At the end of 2007 I was contacted by Roberta Ludlow, the children's book art director at Random House (Random now owns the rights to all those hundreds of Little Golden Book titles from the '40's, '50's, '60's, etc...) and was asked to illustrate their re-release of PANTALOON. (slated for release later in 2009 or possibly early 2010) This new version of PANTALOON will be a full-sized, hard cover edition. Random editor Diane Muldrow later informed me that their original intention was simply to re-release PANTALOON with the original Leonard Weisgard illustrations, but that Weisgard's estate could not locate the original art for digital scanning. So Random made the decision to have a contemporary illustrator give a new visual spin to the 1951 classic... me!

I was thrilled to have been chosen for the task to illustrate this tale about the baker and the over zealous poodle, Pantaloon. Who could pass up creating images about a baker, tons of pastries, and a dog who rides a bike? I also wanted to be a part of the Golden Books history!

In my earlier blog posts, you can view sketches and some additional spreads from this new book project. I also have images from the book on view on my own web site, in the children's book section.

http://stevensalerno.blogspot.com/2008/12/picture-book-sketch-to-finish-stages.html

http://stevensalerno.blogspot.com/2008/09/pantaloon-view-of-work-in-progress.html

I created all the images using brush and gouache, painted onto Arches 260 lb hot press watercolor paper, then scanned the paintings into Photoshop where I digitally enhanced some colors and moved some elements within the image to make it better fit the layout relative to the placement of text.

The text in PANTALOON is of course the same as it was in 1951... but my spin on it was to really bring out the nutty, frenetic character of the poodle Pantaloon, far more than in the original book. I did so by giving him a quirkier style bicycle, more animation to his movement (I love the original illustrations but they have a more static quality) and in one scene I combined his actions of playing the guitar, trying on hats, and taking a bath (which were all separate scenes in the original book) to purposely expose Pantaloon's goofy nature.

Posted at the top is my new cover art version and below it is the original cover art from the 1951 edition. Below the covers are spread illustrations I created for the new version of the book, with the corresponding illustrations from the 1951 edition just underneath.

I cannot wait to see the preliminary printing of the book!