Sendak Commission

20x16", Red pencil on Arches 140lb. hot press

Hi guys. Here's the final drawing for another privately commissioned piece. The client wasn't sure about what he wanted from me, other than that the piece would involve characters from Where the Wild Things Are. We talked about it a bit and when he said that he liked the elements of antiquity in some of my work, I got the idea of kids discovering an old mural that has a classic scene from the book on it. He loved the sketch and I went ahead with the drawing.

Even though the client wanted a classic piece from the book, I still tried to personalize it in some ways. The monsters and Max are done a bit differently then Sendak's originals, with some added line work and a bit of a proportion change in some places. This piece was also physically out of my comfort zone, because he wanted it to print larger than my original proposal. So, I got to try my hand at a bigger drawing. I'm not a fan of huge pieces- they can be big time holes and unnecessary in the case of illustration, and less intimate in the case of fine art. Nonetheless, it's something I've wanted to try out anyway, just because some of my favorite artists do work well above the reproduced size (I generally do 150% of print size), so we'll see how the piece holds up when it's shrunk down..

ps- sorry if it's a bit out of whack. big pieces are also sometimes difficult to scan...grrr