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Thursday, May 07, 2015

Tar Pit Trouble! La Brea Tar Pits! And Science!

So this is a mock-up  cover for a picture book I'm submitting about The La Brea Tar Pits for a Calfornia publisher. One of the edtors was a friend of my agents, and said that they were looking for California-themed books, and I suggest La Brea, and showed them a comic strip I made a few yearss back with a similar theme.

All they wanted was a manuscript and one image, which saved me the trouble of doing a dummy.

This was my first version of a wraparound cover before I did all my homework:


But then I discovered that the La Brea mammoths were not wooly at all, but hairless imperial mammoths! So I had to depilate my mammoths (no easy task):




This also gave me an opportunity to add grass and trees and give it more of a sense of place.

The lettering was done by mixing up ink with acrylic matte medium and dribbling it to make the letterforms.

So they liked the image, and  I'm in the process of editing the manuscipt.  And soon we'll send it out and see what happens.

Also the original of the bison  (since I work in pieces), is available in my Etsy store!


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