The Ax Man Cometh

I originally sketched this little guy one day at work. I thought he was cute.The first version (at the top) was pretty simple, just Robot and his custom-designed ax. I liked him, and I wanted to include him in the book somehow, but he just wasn't fitting in. Maybe a little too cute.

So I spruced him up a little. Now he's happy.

Doc Chocolate

Here's another illustration that I redrew in graphite for the book. Originally, he was created specifically for greeting cards back in 2006, and these two images are the before and after shots. He looks very different (I've learned a lot) and, I think, very improved.

Humpty drawing before and after

Some of the illustrations I'll be adding to the book I decided to redraw so everything will look consistent. The first do-over I posted back in March was called "Bombs Away."

The illustration I drew for the "Humpty" story in the book actually started a few years ago with the illustration you see at right, on top. I just drew it in pencil one day to be funny. It was way before The Rots ever existed, so maybe this Humpty could be considered the very, very first Rot.

Something about the general idea of the picture I liked, so I updated it last year (the Humpty in the middle) in a style closer to the way The Rots look. In that one I used a pen and ink line art kind of style.

I redrew the whole thing again to go in the book, and that's the one on the bottom. As with all the illustrations in the book, in this one I used powdered graphite washes with details in pencil.

Bombs Away drawing before and after

As promised, here's the first illustration I had to redraw for style consistency. It's called Bombs Away, and the one on the left was originally published as a greeting card a few years ago. The right one is the redraw.