For my rendition of The Reluctant Dragon, I wanted to create a comfy, cozy world reminiscent of Wind in the Willows. My motto for it was “a warm cup of tea”. In other words, I wanted the mood of the book to evoke the comfortable feeling you get when you curl up with a warm cup of tea on a lazy afternoon. Jim Henson’s adaptation of Emmett Otter’s Jug-Band-Christmas is very similar in tone to what I was aiming for, so the dragon needed to feel like he was from that world.

That said, I replaced all of the human characters in the story with animals. Once I started designing the main characters (which I will showcase in a later post), I was able to push the dragon design to where I wanted it.

I referenced cats and goats for the main inspiration and worked from there. I tried various images showing the friendship forged between the hero, a rabbit named Kenny, and the dragon. Some were too epic, like this one:

…and others didn’t feel quite right mood-wise. In fact, this one felt a little Neverending Story-ish to me. So I kept exploring…

This one above, an early color comp for the jacket, was getting closer. You certainly get that they are friends, and the dragon face has a lot of personality. But I wanted a little movement, a little action to create some real interaction between the dragon and the hero. At last I arrived at this:

Its worth noting that the color of the scales, I think, sets it apart from other depictions. The original text mentions the dragon being blue in tone and I really liked that unexpected element a lot (it seems like so many dragons are red, brown or black). Angela had me push it into this greenish-blue to put my own spin on it, and I like the way it feels…plus Saphira (in Eragon) is blue.

So what did i gain from this design journey? I learned that a dragon - like a human - has been rendered countless times for centuries by many talented artists. To find an exciting and unique design, I need to understand the creature and what sort of character it represents. Though I still think these beasties are tough to render, I have even more appreciation to those who offer up something new and exciting to such a classic denizen of fantasy.

This is a special edition of “Friday Fan Art”. Its an homage to that raspberry-colored pal-o-mine!

Despite all the love I have for Spiderwick, and its incredible successes, I must confess that my second picture book, Ted, is still a favorite.

Sure, it’s a little long for a picture book (especially nowadays) but I was proud of my boldness at such an early point in my career to make a statement about being a working parent (even though I wasn’t one yet) and holding onto your childhood. Heck, even Mrs. Cheney liked the book. She read it back in 2002 as part of her campaign, “No Such Thing As a Vacation From Reading“, for (you guessed it) summer reading.

A couple of years ago, my brother Adam, blew me away with one of the coolest birthday presents ever. Ted rendered in various animated styles. I simply HAD to share these as I think they are so cool! Enjoy! (Thanks bro!)

So, as I mentioned in my last post, I am waist-deep in my new book project Kenny & The Dragon. It is a retelling of the Kenneth Grahame short story, The Reluctant Dragon, which was found in his book Dream Days published back in 1898.

This is one of my favorite dragon stories that I remember as a child. The surprise here is that the dragon is hardly the fierce, fire-breathing variety - he’s more a poet and a pacifist. There is also a slight humor in both the original version and my retelling, so I wanted his design to reflect that, yet still be an interesting and unusual creature.

My first attempt was very closely based on Ernest Shepard’s design in the original version. I quickly abandoned it and moved along feeling there was nothing more I could add…

I came close to this birdlike beaky version (remember those Pern dragons?) which I felt looked intelligent enough to speak, read and write, but wasn’t quite warm enough for the mood of the text that I had written.

This turtle-inspired version was more on the right track…but I still wasn’t quite there yet.

Yeah, yeah its Saturday and I am posting the fan art - it has been a hectic couple of weeks here in DiTerlizziland. Speaking of DiTerlizzis, I have received some art from Celia, a distant cousin of mine who also can push a pencil and paint around:

…and here is an oldie-but-goodie from my brother Adam, who just graduated with a degree in animation and teaches up in northern Cali.

…my sister, Jenn, also does art and is quite the make-up artist. For us DiTro-kids, we have our mom to thank for spending all that time painting and drawing when we were little:)

Sometimes at book-signings, my fans will bring me little tokens of appreciation. Nothing warms my heart more than someone handing me a drawing that they did just for me. Take this one, for instance, that Samuel gave me last weekend at my event at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

…I love the scales on the feet, and the crossed eyes. It looks like something out of G is for One Gzonk! Thanks Samuel!

I’m teaching a class tomorrow at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art on creating your own unique interpretation of known fantastical creatures. One of the several designs the students can choose from will be a dragon, so I’ve amassed a library of some of my favorite images to share. It seems the timing is serendipitous with my ongoing dragon conversation here on my blog, so I decided to include a few.

Henry J. Ford was best known for his illustrations in Andrew Lang’s Rainbow Fairy books which were a HUGE inspiration to the design of the Spiderwick books. He did this piece back in 1909.

Of course, many know Arthur Rackham’s work, and I have mentioned him many times as my main influence. This is Siegfried killing Fafnir in his book version of Wagner’s The Ring.

John Bauer is a Swedish illustrator from the turn-of-the-century. He was certainly influenced by Rackham, but had his own unique take on trolls and fairies. I am certain he was a big influence on Brian Froud. This is a title page to one of his troll books, done in 1915.

Moving ahead in time, this is the cover to a picture book called Dragon Feathers done by a Russian couple Andrej & Olga Dugina. I have seen some of their originals in person, and they are BEAUTIFUL. The detail is stunning. Try to look up their books next time you are in a library or book store, you won’t be disappointed. (and this dragon design is amazing!)

Last, but not least, is one of my favorite dragon designs. This was done by Ernest H. Shepard, best known for his work in A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books and Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows. This is an image from another Kenneth Grahame short story, The Reluctant Dragon, from a book titled Dream Days.

This image means the most at the moment, for you see my next book, Kenny & The Dragon, is a fully-illustrated retelling of this very story. More to come next post…

This week’s winner came from Silas. And I can’t tell you how touched I was by this one.

You see, Silas has copied a drawing from a book I created when I was 12 called Gondwanaland. It was about an island inhabited by bizarre creatures that I made up, along with dragons and goblins. The book was written by a scientist and structured as a field guide. So in many ways, it was the seed for Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide.

Here is my drawing from the original book I made:

I recap all of this (along with my new take of Captain Bassolf) in the anthology Guys Write for Guys Read, edited by none other than Jon Scieszka. There are a lot of cool short stories in it from a variety of people as well as drawings from lots of my favorite artists…you should check it out.

Thanks Silas! You MADE MY WEEK!

PS-in the letter, Silas also drew Link from The Legend of Zelda and asked if I have ever drawn pictures from that world. As my brother can tell you, he and I are HUGE Zelda fans, and yes – we’ve done lots of doodles from Hyrule:)