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This was drawn a week ago, but I forgot to upload it till now. It’s the latest collaborative work I illustrated at the 826 Valencia writing center in San Francisco. This story, “the 3 Friends and BIG fight in the Zombie Castle on Pluto,” is the longest name I have seen to one of these stories. Pictured is the cover and the Alien Zombie Skeleton who lives in a castle made of water.

The kids where so enthusiastic, but sometimes I went ahead and had a drawing almost done when they would want to change or define something else more. Luckily Bonnie (the field trip leader) convinced them to use a version that matched my drawing so the story would make sense.

One thing I like about creating art on the fly like this is that you have to be more creative and resourcefully, but that is what makes it so fun and alive. Setting up to do the drawings I took the 8.5″ x 11″ frame from the book and blew it up on the xerox machine to fit on 11″x17″ paper. That way the drawings could be created larger and then shrunk down with little struggle for the final book. Also the final drawings can be given to the class to take back to school with them which the kids seem to like. I love mixing up mediums too: Different Pencils, Different Pens, and White-Out. The storyboards I did at 826 in October I think are a good example of mixing mediums to get some unique effects.