Sad, sad day. Maurice Sendak, children’s author and illustrator best known for his book Where the Wild Things Are, has passed away at the age of 83.

From The New York Times:

In book after book, Mr. Sendak upended the staid, centuries-old tradition of American children’s literature, in which young heroes and heroines were typically well scrubbed and even better behaved; nothing really bad ever happened for very long; and everything was tied up at the end in a neat, moralistic bow.

Mr. Sendak’s characters, by contrast, are headstrong, bossy, even obnoxious. (In “Pierre,” “I don’t care!” is the response of the small eponymous hero to absolutely everything.) His pictures are often unsettling. His plots are fraught with rupture: children are kidnapped, parents disappear, a dog lights out from her comfortable home.

Tom Spurgeon:

A curmudgeon and character of the first order, Maurice Sendak made several good books and one titanic one. I don’t know anyone else whose reputation is so closely aligned to a single work that has never been diminished or re-appraised for that fact, but you don’t step to “Where The Wild Things Are.” You just don’t.

Nice interview here with NPR’s Steve Inskeep from 2006.

To Sorel, tracing is cheating.

“If you don’t trace, it’s art. If you trace, it’s illustration,” says Sorel. “For me, working direct is fine art, and tracing is commercial art. That’s the difference.”

From the Gothamist:

“It’s either the smartest or the most idiotic idea ever,” laughs Niemann. He wanted to tell a personal story-”but I realized I’m running out of stories, because my life isn’t that interesting.” So he signed up for the marathon. “I like the idea of working without being able to go back into the studio for a week,” he says. “There’s something about the urgency of deadlines that interests me. I’m pushing the idea of live reporting to the limits!”

So far the plan is to run a mile and a half and walk a mile and a half while drawing during the walking portion.

Good luck Christoph. If you’re not familiar with his work, head over to the New York Times. I especially liked his “Rock Paper Scissors, 2011 Style“

Sendak feels old, but happy, relieved to have escaped youth and all its worries. After the death of his longtime partner, Eugene Glynn, and after triple bypass surgery, he continues to compose daily and is busy with a project about noses, the bigger the better. Mortality is an appointment he is resigned to keeping.

“I want to be alone and work until the day my heads hits the drawing table and I’m dead. Kaput,” he says. “Everything is over. Everything that I called living is over. I’m very, very much alone. I don’t believe in heaven or hell or any of those things. I feel very much like I want to be with my brother and sister again. They’re nowhere. I know they’re nowhere and they don’t exist, but if nowhere means that’s where they are, that’s where I want to be.”

His new book, Bumble-Ardy, is his first in 30 years.

Mile 44, as the duo is known, began printing in Chicago in 2004. After learning the craft from Steve Walters at the Screwball Press Academy, Windisch and Curtis picked up steam doing jobs for Lollapalooza and local bands like Favorite Saints. They designed a poster for OK Go the week that the band’s treadmill video for “Here It Goes Again” made them superstars on YouTube.

After Windisch moved to Bargersville in 2007, new doors began to open for the duo. Rather than having to compete with the densely-populated Chicago screen-printing scene, Windisch and Curtis found themselves able to fill a nearly-vacant niche in the Indy area, churning out projects for shows organized by My Old Kentucky Blog and Bloomington’s Spirit of 68.

The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes

Mark was kind enough to answer a few questions about his book and whether illustration will be his new career direction.

AG: How did this book come about?

MP: Whenever I taught cartooning to children, I was struck by how many kids became frustrated that they couldn’t draw perfectly the first time. I began focusing on the sketch process and teaching the importance of making mistakes in your drawing process.

This led me to think about what a child’s life would be like if they could do EVERYthing perfectly the first time. Aspects of it would be awesome, certainly. Ultimately, though, it would be an awful existence. THE GIRL WHO NEVER MADE MISTAKES tells the story of Beatrice Bottomwell, celebrated in her town for never ever having made mistakes. Slowly, though, her world falls apart as she discovers the paralyzing untenability of maintaining it.

My friend Gary and I both have daughters about the same age and we’d talked about writing a children’s book together. THE GIRL WHO NEVER MADE MISTAKES is the happy result.

AG: You mentioned your daughters, what influence did they have on the book?

MP: When we wrote this book, I only had one daughter, Millie. She appears in the book as a character, as does Gary’s daughter Sarah. Millie’s the perfect test audience. She gets highly involved in the books that she reads, often acting out her favorite parts of the book, and quickly lets you know when she’s bored.

In writing THE GIRL WHO NEVER MADE MISTAKES, I wanted a book that I could read to my own children one day. I also wanted to write the book that I would have wanted to read as a kid.

AG: Aside from Millie and Sarah, I noticed that a certain hamster shows up in the book as well. You had a developmental strip between Mr. Lowe and Lucky Cow that featured a hamster. Did you purposely include the hamster? Are there other Easter Eggs in the book?

MP: Wow, that’s an obscure reference! Not many know about my talking hamster strip (and for good reason!). I suppose, now that you’re putting me on the couch, I’ve always had a fascination with hamsters. Perhaps it goes back to my childhood, when I found Furball eating his lifelong partner Thurber in an aquarium on my dresser. Eating him! Hamsters are some cold mofos.

Other than that, you’ll find myself and my cowriter Gary hiding in the backgrounds. Of course, we’re in disguise.

AG: Do you see yourself doing more books and illustrations in the future? Any plans to do another strip?

MP: I’ve loved doing this book. I’ve found that my comic strip experience has been excellent preparation for this kind of work. I’m comfortable telling stories using words and pictures in tandem. In a way, picture books are like extra long Sunday comic strips.

In doing comic strips, I sometimes became frustrated that I couldn’t begin a new project and work with new characters. After all, if you have a successful comic strip, you end up drawing the same characters and scenarios for up to 40 or 50 years! Picture books give me the opportunity to constantly explore new themes and characters. That said, everyone and their grandma wants to do children’s books, so it’s a tough and crowded industry to crack.

I love the medium of the comic strip. There is no other like it. You publish each and every day of the year and what readers see/read is what the artist wrote and drew a couple of weeks earlier. It’s highly personal. That said, I also have no illusions about what it takes to produce a successful comic strip. Were I to do another comic strip, it would be because I thought I’d stumbled upon something really wonderful that needed to be out in the world.

AG: Tell me a little about your collaboration with Gary Rubinstein?

MP: In doing comic strips, I’d grown accustomed to (and weary of) working alone in a studio. I was eager to collaborate with someone else on a project. Gary had given me feedback on LUCKY COW sketches for years and we were eager to work together on a project.

After Gary and I settled on our concept, we each took turns writing drafts, which the other would rewrite in his next draft. It had its challenges because I tend to think visually about a story and Gary tends to think more literally. In the end, though, we had what we thought was an excellent story. I then mocked it up with sketches into a book and we presented it to a literary agent. Our agent then hooked us up with Sourcebooks, who really understood our vision and has been superb to work with.

You can order (and see inside the book) the book over on Amazon.

You can see some of Chris’ illustrations on the Plymouth website.

FEATURE ANIMATION

Ronnie del Carmen – Storyboard Artist – “Up”
Tomm Moore – Director – “The Secret of Kells”
Barry Reynolds – Character Designer – “The Secret of Kells”

NEWSPAPER ILLUSTRATION
Bob Rich
Tom Richmond
Robert Sanchuk

GAG CARTOONS
Glenn McCoy
VG Myers
Dave Whamond

GREETING CARDS
Glenn McCoy
Kieran Meehan
Debbie Tomassi

NEWSPAPER COMIC STRIPS
John Hambrock – “The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee”
Wiley Miller – “Non Sequitur”
Jerry Scott & Jim Borgman – “Zits”

NEWSPAPER PANEL CARTOONS
Dave Blazek – “Loose Parts”
Tony Carillo – “FMinus”
Hilary Price – “Rhymes with Orange”

MAGAZINE FEATURE/MAGAZINE ILLUSTRATION
Ray Alma
Anton Emdin
Tom Richmond

BOOK ILLUSTRATION
Lou Brooks – “Twimericks”
Tom Richmond – “Bo Confidential”
Dave Whamond – “My Think-A-Ma-Jink”

EDITORIAL CARTOONS
Nick Anderson
Rob Rogers
John Sherffius

ADVERTISING ILLUSTRATION
Steve Brodner
Randall Enos
Mort Gerberg

COMIC BOOKS
Terry Moore – “Echo”
Paul Pope – “Strange Adventures”
JH Williams – “Detective Comics”

GRAPHIC NOVELS
David Mazzucchelli – “Asterios Polyp”
Seth – “George Sprott”
David Small – “Stitches”

TELEVISION ANIMATION
Kevin Deters – “Walt Disney Prep and Landing”
Mike Gray – “The Infinite Goliath”
Seth McFarlane – “Family Guy”

Reporting in:
Ed has blogged about his experience in good detail; Jeff Bacon covers the tour for the Military Times; it was reported on the Ramstein Air Base website. Also check a photo gallery posted on the Ramstein’s website.

UPDATE: Stephen Silver has posted his thoughts on his participation. And below is video he took:

Have you ever wanted to sit in the studio of a famous artist and watch them draw?

Now you can, for the first time with “The Masters Series” exclusively on Schoolism. Hear their stories, learn their techniques, watch them draw.

The Master’s series was created by Stephen Silver who was welcomed into the artist’s homes and spent two days with each of them, interviewing and filming them draw from start to finish. The series was created with three goals in mind- to appeal to the student, the professional and the fan.

You will learn how they got started, what helped them achieve their goals, stories of how there careers unfolded, the mediums they use and much more. Never before have they been filmed like this in their home studios with complete access to their process of drawing. These videos have been made in order to preserve the Legacy of the legends in our industry.

It is one thing to buy their books, and look at their marvelous art. But now for the first time you can see their hands in action, line by line. This is just the beginning, with many more legends to come. The first series will start in January 2010 with the legendary Mort Drucker. Followed up by Stan Goldberg (Archie) and John Reiner (the Lockhorns, Howard Huge).