I was commissioned very early this year to illustrate and print a book for a local Rhode Island author, Glenn Holloway. His short story, titled "The Christmas Monkey", is a project very near and dear to him, and I had the pleasure of helping bring this book to print!
Here is the portrait of the Christmas Monkey. He's modeled after a figurine the author provided.
The illustrations were made as scratch boards, which I like working in because the final images look similar to engravings. They are made by removing black ink from a white surface, so the process is familiar.
I also made an illustration of the Magi, or Three Wise Men.
The final 2 images are of some desert camels resting during a long journey and a scene of an Animal Bazaar, where the monkey was discovered.
With the illustrations complete, we began the design for the book. It was laid out in Adobe InDesign and the cover was designed by hand. We had a printing plate made for the cover, and proceeded to letterpress print the covers for the books on a beautiful coffee colored cotton paper.
The pages were printed on beautiful text weight stock from my favorite paper mill, French Paper, out of Michigan. The inner pages were printed Xerox and the book was assembled with a staple binding
These were printed in a limited edition of 50 hand numbered books. A percentage of each sale is donated to the Association for Parkinson's Disease.