Jason Sandberg's Blog: Kingdom Comeuppance - Posts Tagged "picture-books"

Picture books ought to be a gateway to a lifelong love of reading, so they should never be a drag for kids, or the adults who act as intermediaries between the child and the book. I view quality as the ability of a book to hold up under multiple reads!

“You can’t judge a book by its cover,” so I have published 99 Cents, an inexpensive eBook that gives parents the opportunity to sample my illustrations and see that I'm attempting to create work that will survive the test of time.

"99 Cents" features the exclusive short story “Walking on Daddy’s Feet,” a celebration of a playful tradition. Gina @ Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers described it best... "Here, father and daughter share time in the sun and the snow, at the beach and at home, through the city and through the neighborhood, as they create memories that'll last their whole lives through. It shows how sharing the simplest of things can be priceless and that the best of times can be had when spent with someone we love."
99 Cents is available at Amazon

The illustrations in my eBooks are created on the computer, the line art is drawn in Adobe Illustrator and then colored in Adobe PhotoShop. The process lends itself to experimentation because missteps can be undone without too much grief (unlike painting). Sometimes during the coloring phase I'll have 2 alternate versions of the page developing side by side, then I'll keep the TIF file that most pleases the eye.

For some time I've been wondering how I could include my paintings in an eBook. I would need an appropriate narrative to tie the various landscapes together. The thought occurred that the "story" could be a poem about the experience of taking in a landscape painting, the process of slowing down and appreciating the details. I chose my favorite paintings and placed them into a variety of illustrated rooms to create the impression of walking through a museum. Under a Blue Sky is a poem for children that celebrates those first youthful glimpses at the complexity and scale of our world.