"the owl and the pussycat went to sea ..."

when i read edward lear's nonsense poem "the owl and the pussycat" (~1870), i knew i had to illustrate it someday. that day arrived this summer, when i met up with some friends for a long weekend of drawing and writing. out of this came a booklet dummy of "kauz und katze", with the text translated to german by me. when working on it further, plain coloured backgrounds seemed too boring, so i tried out some photo collaging. i need to keep working on this - finding the right photo is just as hard as finding the right colour!

100 ways of getting ready for frankfurt book fair ...

... one of them is creating mock-up book covers from illustrations like these handletterings. lots of fun - now i need to make up some content!

"one last minute family portrait coming up ..."

two weeks ago i got a last minute commission for a family portrait. a hectic day of painting ensued, and it was a lot of fun but also excruciating - what colours do i use? how do i do the eyes? what about the background? what do i do with the background, now that i have started with these orange bits? working with actual paint on actual paper is something i haven't done for a while, and boy, did i feel it! no simple "delete" commands here ... but it's just such a lovely thing, not only doing it, but having something like that done for you. the birthday boy (or man, rather) loved it, so everybody's happy! :)

crucero #3 info illustration

here's a few shots of the sad ship/happy ship illustrations i did for the current 3rd issue of cruise ship magazine "crucero":

io sketchbook entry

the io sketchbook has been doing its rounds despite the german postmen's strike. i chose the one with the guidebook/how to theme, because i wrote a little text that fits that description, it's called "what to do when you have some time on your hands" (you can read it in pandora #8). it's wordplay and a little surreal, and it was fun to put images to. the sketch was supposed to be unfinished and open, to show your process. it got a bit smudgy from the pencil, i hope people can still read it. you can find more sneaky peeks at entries from all the different books here - or come see them for real at the buchmesse frankfurt in autumn!