Someone contacted me recently to let me know that the book I co-authored with Lee Ames made it to Amazon.com's list of top 100 selling books for kids on drawing. I couldn't be happier.
I should also mention that we are posting artists' versions of the Draw 50 Magical Creatures on the site...
http://studiofiveart.org/studio-5-blog/
Click on the Draw 50 blog there and see the Yeti going to ballet school and the Flying Dragon finding his gentle side. It's fun to see these characters going off with their own lives.
It really was something I considered when making the book and that was trying to add personality and story whenever and wherever possible to these creatures so they became more than just art lessons. They could become characters for stories the readers would go on to create in their own imaginations.
I thought I would say, too, that I am sorry that my partner on this book and the creator of the decades long series, Lee Ames, due to health issues can't enjoy these successes. I was very happy to be offered to work with him on this book and we were both charged up with excitement when we saw the finished product. Lee was a fomer animator at Disney (on Pinocchio and Fantasia,) a comic book artist at the Eisner/Iger Studio, and a longtime children's book illustrator (being a chief artist on the successful Landmark imprint launch for Random House in the 50's) all before starting his own Draw 50 series. Other artists to work with Lee on the series were Mort Drucker (Mad Magazine) and Bob Singer (Warner Brothers, UPA, and Hanna Barbera Studios). This is some elite company and I was honored to be up there with them. I told Lee from the very start that he wasn't giving me a fish but was teaching me to fish. Thank you, Lee, and thank you Becky and Hallie at Random House.
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