As Pedro patiently waited for his copy of Spiderwick to arrive in the mail his anticipation and enthusiasm for the fantastic grew.  Upon reading the chronicles, he immediately took to the tale and was inspired to create art of his own.

The piece above was directly inspired from Simon and Byron’s epic fight against Mulgarath’s mother Dragon.  Though Pedro has been dabbling in art since he was a toddler, he has only been seriously tending to his craft for the past year.  Currently he is learning how to draw with Photoshop but he also works with pencil and watercolor.

Great palette and movement, Pedro!  You’re Photoshop skills are impressive.  I love the hand drawn quality you have brought to this digital medium.

Keep drawing, keep dreaming.

For one night only (May 15th) we will both be signing at Barrington Books, in Rhode Island. Bring your young readers, your camera and your books! (Yes, I really will be handing out FREE Wondla II sketchbooks.)

And, for you art students of Rhode Island School of Art & Design, we shall be visiting in the afternoon and holding a special presentation on creative process and answering any/all questions. I hope we see you there!

After I would wear out my paper toys of cranes and rabbits, I would pester my mom to make me new ones. Finally, she told me to read the instructions and learn to make them myself. I folded for many years throughout my childhood and found the hobby highly relaxing. I even made some of my own paper (from tissue and tin foil) in high school so that my paper models would hold their form.

So imagine the paper-folding pleasure that greeted me when origami master, Joesph Wu, sent me a note asking about the details of of my 1994 rendition of Planescape’s Lady of Pain.

Joseph’s work is not new to me. I marveled at his manipulation of paper years ago when I saw his origami D&D denizens.

This model utilizes two squares of paper; one for the head another for the body.

On top of that, he folded the “Pacific Sea-Maid” from Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide!

Thank you for contacting me, Joseph, and for sharing your fantastic folding talents with us.

Be sure to check out Joseph’s facebook page. You can see more pics of these models in progress as well as an additional, larger version of the Lady of Pain.

Keep drawing. Keep dreaming.

Like myself, she turned to other artists to fuel her creativity, spending much time in her youth getting lost in fantasy illustrations. She’s also a fan of one of my favorite and most influential artists, Arthur Rackham.

Years later, June’s love for Rackham’s enchanting illustrations led her to Arthur Spiderwick’s findings in The Spiderwick Chronicles.  In fact, she even chose Thimbletack as her inspiration for an awesome polymer clay sculpture.

This wasn’t the first time June had turned to Thimbletack for artistic inspiration, she had sculpted the brownie 10 years prior but lost the original in an accidental fall.  Although the sculpture’s break was a sad loss for her it turned out to be more of a motivator to test her artistic skills and take her craftsmanship to the next level.

“Recently, I had been wondering if my skills had been improving and pushing myself to do better. Out of the blue, Thimbletack for no apparent reason, fell off the bookshelf and broke irreparably. House felt empty with out him, so I sculpted a new one.” June explained.

June’s Thimbletack is a multi-media work of art consisting mainly of Sculpey’s Premo polymer clay, dressed with feathers for his hair, leather for his hat & suspenders, and a man’s dress sock for his pants, all delicately put together and mounted on a wooden base.  It took June about a month to finish her final sculpt with much of that time spent finding the mixed media accents.

Excellent work, June!  I’m glad you took the time to bring another Thimbletack to life.  It really looks like he could walk right off that wooden mount taking Jeffrey and Lemondrop with him.

Keep sculpting. Keep dreaming. Keep creating.

You may remember following along in my process last fall as I returned to rendering Jared, Simon and Mallory Grace along with some favorite fairy folk. This May, the books will be re-released in a larger format hardcover edition as well as paperback for the first time.

BTW, the yellow seen in this jpeg will be printed as gold foil (as seen below). You can see all five of the new covers on Entertainment Weekly’s site, here.

And speaking of Entertainment Weekly, I did a quick editorial illustration for their new geek blog, CapeTown, celebrating a favorite director of mine who is dashing off to a galaxy far, far away. Enjoy!

Ang, Soph and I enjoyed some serious trick-or-treating in nearby Northampton (where I freaked out more than one passersby with my undead Elvis costume…thank you, thank you very much).

Speaking of costumes, I was delighted to receive some snapshots of some recognizable faces this holiday, like this Spiderwickian wood elf:

That’s Hadley, from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She and her mom raided the local craft store to get the headdress just right. Nice face painting!

As we all know, big kids enjoy Halloween just as much as little kids. Its especially cool if the big kid also happens to be your teacher – like Mr. Milbury from Modesto, California. His class has been reading The Search for Wondla, so he thought it high-time that Rovender Kitt pay his students a visit. Dude, you wore blue tights in honor of my character. I am impressed.

The reading continued with Tony Pope of Atlanta, Georgia, who totally rocked out The Spider & Fly with a black light. What!? I had no idea the art would glow like that. That is so totally cool.

The “Best Costume” award, however, goes to seven year-old Noah from Barrie, Ontario. Noah admires Arthur Spiderwick’s commitment to the unseen world and is converting his bedroom into a study of his own!

With help from some crafty parents, Noah was able to piece together Arthur’s period attire. He made the sprite himself out of a clothespin and flowers. He even found a actual seeing stone! That is SO AWESOME!

I can’t express enough to you all how wonderful these make me feel – especially from a kid who always sported a home-made costume. Thank you for sending in these photos. I can’t wait to see who you plan on dressing as next year…

If interested in acquiring one of these pieces for your collection, contact Rich Michelson at: RM@RMichelson.com

The art for the Spiderwick jackets was created with a combination of traditional inks and washes along with Photoshop. After the work was complete, the inertia to continue onwards with my daily sketch exercises was still within me. Free of any contractual restraints, I started drawing fairies.

Some were old designs revisited…

…others were new ideas altogether.

Are they Spiderwick sprites? They certainly share the same style and design as the art rendered for the books, but I think these studies are a bit further developed. There’s a more mature aesthetic infused in them that I am satisfied with (for the moment).

The sketches were traced onto Strathmore smooth Bristol using a light table. From there, reference was gathered (with help from my little 5-year old sprite) from the outdoors and from my bookshelf.

Once the drawing was complete, I inked the image with my usual Hunts 102 nib and sepia FW ink. Though I will erase the heavy pencil work after the ink dries, I leave some of the underlying sketch to reveal a bit of my process.

Color was applied with Yarka St. Petersburg Watercolors over a thin wash of Burnt Sienna Holbein Acryla-Gouache. The Bristol board isn’t really the best for watercolors – its quite porous with little (if any) sizing on it – but I like soaking the color into the drawing to enhance the line. These are more tinted drawings than paintings to me.

Finally, since I hardly ever release my art for sale anymore, I thought it would be fun to make these available for purchase. Details on acquiring the original artwork will be posted here (and on facebook and twitter) this Wednesday (10/24) at 12 noon EST. Perhaps one of these little studies will find its way into your collection.

You can click the above image to see more detail. Also, I’ve added more of the sketches and color studies to my Art Gallery under Sketchbook. Enjoy!