Monday, December 11, 2006

A Few Works in Progress

I've had my hands full the past couple weeks, which is a great thing. At the moment, I'm working on a private commission for a children's book, a CD jacket for a single, and a piece for Fantasy Flight Games. I can't show what's going on in the last two, but I thought I'd show some progress thus far for the children's book as well as a personal piece.

The story is about a girl who rides around on training wheels. She has no desire to ride without them. One day, the neighborhood bully 'borrows' the bicycle and destroys the training wheels when he rides off a sidewalk curb with them. Though it's likely the father can replace them, he says he cannot, hoping to convince her to ride on just two wheels. She refuses, and the bike is put away. Winter comes and goes, and in the spring, she watches the neighborhood kids freshly learning to ride without training wheels. Reinvigorated, she decides to give it a try, and after a couple wobbles, she succeeds.




And I finally started an illustration that I've had in my mind for several months now but haven't had the chance to work on. The working concept is "Knowing when's the right time to talk to your child about the birds and the bees."

Obviously, the baby will have something more age appropriate in his thought balloon for the finished piece! Probably a spoon with airplane wings on the side.

7 comments:

Mike said...

Your art is very original and amazing. I'll keep an eye on your blog!

Unknown said...

These are exellent Mike - can't wait to see the finished version. The author/publisher is lucky to have you.

I actually love that the baby has 'wtf?' in the thought balloon - I laughed really hard at that.

Anonymous said...

Great sketches! I like the girl's shadow in the doorway...very telling.

I'm looking forward to seeing the final pieces.

I also like the "WTF" in the image of the baby...very funny! I'd love to see the baby's face though -- with a "WTF" expression.

Thanks for answering my question, too.

Ana

Julien alday said...

Ho, is it Christmas allready ? :) Thank you for drop this cool bunch of pictures, Mike. You ABSOLUTLY have to drop the references of that children book when it will be printed, I want one allready. :) :) :)
I love the last one too, the "WTF" in the balloon made me laugh hard. Probably because it was the most unexpected reaction ? Nice update, mon ami.
Say "Bonjour" to Alex for me.
Julien.

Foom Spectacular said...

Wonderful blog. Such great paintings and sketches. The little girl and the bicycle looks great too.

My favourite one is, The Great Escape.

Mike Dutton said...

Thanks for the comments guys. Hey Julien, I wish the book was being published on a wider scale, but it's actually a custom made book someone is creating as a present to her father. So it will be a very limited run .... of one copy. Who knows, maybe some time in the future?

I'll be sure to post some of the finished images here though.

Patri Balanovsky said...

mike, dude... always been a HUGE fan of yours. just heard you`re discontinuing your SB at CA.org.
damn shame. ;)
no matter, I`ll be stopping by here, checking out the good stuff whenever possible.
thanks for the great inspiration.
keep at it.

Pat(chuck,mate).