For the Children – Zach Franzen

The Angel Knew Papa And the Dog cover

I had the privilege to do the cover for the Rabbit Room re-issue of Doug McKelvey’s book The Angel Knew Papa and the Dog. This book is excellent and a beautiful read. Doug spoke about the book a little over the phone before I started the sketches. He mentioned something about the book’s frontier quality […]

Textbook Sketches

I’m working on a 5th grade History book for BJUPRESS. The designer and I have been going back and forth trying to zero in on the style for the book’s interior illustrations. Thought it might be interesting to give a peek at the thoughts behind the book’s illustrations. Initially, I wanted to do something stylized. The […]

Kickstarter: The Green Ember

I’ve been working on a project that I’m excited to tell you about: Written by S.D. Smith, illustrated by me, and published by Story Warren, The Green Ember is an adventure story that involves rabbits with swords. You’ll love it. As the author says in his blog post about the new book, “I made this for you.” […]

Rough Sketch

Here’s a sketch I did for a project a couple months ago. The sketch was discarded when they changed the parameters of the project, but I like it and may finish it one day.

Drawings

Here are some sketches for a storywarren post about Aesop’s fables.

Tea Paintings

There is a thought I hear quite often. It’s presented with such confidence that those who say it seem to think the matter settled. This is how it goes: humans are most human when they surrender to their appetites and abandon all to instinct. To resist one’s impulse is to deny one’s self. Remarkably, this […]

Story Warren Event

This past weekend I had the privilege to meet a lot of young artists in West Virginia at an illustration event hosted by Story Warren. I took the opportunity to speak about the unity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty and walked participants through an illustration for a forthcoming novel by Sam Smith (not to be […]

Sketch

Small sketch in the corner of my sketchbook.

Toaster

Here is an illustration I’m working on for upcoming Storywarren post. Below is the watercolor. Below is the digitally enhanced version. Here are some links to previous Storywarren posts: Time for Timelessness, and Rebel Without a Qualm: The Counterculture of Gratitude, and Member of the Family. UPDATE: Here’s the final: And here’s a link to […]

Rain

Rain by Robert Louis Stevenson The rain is falling all around, It falls on field and tree, It rains on the umbrellas here, And on the ships at sea. This poem (written for children) beautifully exhibits the impulse to treat children as humans with experiences that are universal to mankind. The rain described here seems […]