At The Library - Illustrations

I had a lot of fun creating the illustrations for At the Library. The cover is a book shelf.  I always struggle making lines straight when there are a lot of them that are parallel. They always seem to start slanting one way or the other. But here the uneveness works fine.  I created the book shelf with watercolor. I purposely left it a neutral color so it would sit behind the title and then also become a neutral backdrop for the main illustration for the story.  The car and veggies on the bottom shelf refer to the topics of conversation in the story: gardening and cars.

This is the second illustration of Bartholomew's car, the 1974 Peugeot. The first was in Bartholomew and a Carload of Trouble. I enjoyed researching photos of this car. My favorite, that I used for this illustration, had a large grill on the front. I never realized there were so many different models of Peugeot's from 1974. Either people miss-labeled them or Peugeot was prolific in 1974. While looking for photos, I also found a video some guy created where he parked his Peugeot by the shore and then filmed a tour of the car inside and out. It was kinda dreamy and I think it is so funny that someone loved their car enough to make a short film about it. Awesome!

I digress. My illustration is of a car with painted flames on a background of vegetables. Being a botanical artist the veggies were a snap and fun to capture in a simple style. I ended up also using them as the background image for a different website I created.

Many years ago, I bought a book on how to paint flames on cars. I had an old worthless Ford Escort wagon that was in pretty bad shape. I thought it would be fun to spruce her up for her final days and bought the book. I also bought a spray gun and tools for painting her. I was all set to begin and then she threw a piston. I never have painted flames on a car yet, but hope to some day. Here I get to imagine it a bit. I hope you enjoy it.