Books and Scribbles

 Over the summer months I have had time, quite a lot of time, actually, to go to the bookstore in town to buy some secondhand books just to keep myself occupied as the summer rolls onward. One of the books that I have purchased is a children's book called Dinosaur Summer by Greg Bear, but what I hadn't realized was that it was illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi, an illustrator who I greatly admire. If you have not heard of Mr. DiTerlizzi and his work then here are a few of his pieces of work. He is mostly famed for his collaboration with author Holly Black with the series The Spiderwick Chronicles, which are lavishly and quite creatively done. Another is The Spider and the Fly, it is a delightfully macabre poem that was written by Mary Howitt and illustrated by Mr. DiTerlizzi. He is, in short, one of my favorite illustrators that is still in the land of the living and if you want to try to take a personal gander at his work before purchasing any of it go to his website here, I will grant that you will not be sorry.
To get back on track, this small scribble of the man with the camera was inspired by one of the characters that was in Dinosaur Summer, the main character of the book, if I am correct. To briefly summarize the book it is set in the thirties in America, but it isn't the world that we are all familiar with, it is set in the same world that was created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It isn't Sherlock Holmes' bustling world of London, though, it from one of his more strict characters, Professor Edward Challenger. For those not familiar with this particular character, he is a bearded, brutish man who finds an island that is inhabited with dinosaurs, this story of Mr. Bear's is very similar in that regard. It is a great adventure story about dinosaurs, fictional and otherwise, and film-making as well, I would recommend it to anyone who has time to kill.
This regally bowing character to the right here was inspired by one of my favorite stories when I was growing up, and it still is, it is Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Although this very much looks like a mouse, I always sort of thought that it was Rat from the whimsical story. Granted that I didn't truly doodle him to be a spitting image of Rat from the story, I enjoyed doodling it all the same.
This last and final scribble in this post needs no real introduction, mainly because it has his name clearly scribbled upon it. This is just a small doodle of one of the most eccentric sleuths in detective fiction, Monsieur Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's famous brainchild. Although he may not be the quintessential Poirot with the messy and owl-like eyebrows, it started out as merely as an experiment. I have recently gotten a dip pen with different nibs as well as a practically brand new bottle of ink. This small scribble was mainly the result of me experimenting with that particular pen on a scrap piece of watercolor paper.
I know that I may have crammed three new drawings into one post, but finally I shall quit rambling and end...keep a sharp eye out for my next post.