A retelling of an American Folktale, this project follows Paul Bunyan as he finds Babe in the woods and they become friends. 

All of the pages were done in watercolor as was the type for the cover. 

This was a pattern that I did for the inside cover.

The second spread in the book where Paul is walking through the woods and comes across a small ox, stained blue by the blue snow. Babe is mad about the situation but Paul takes him home anyway.

I left the type off of these examples to show more of the illustration. 

On the left page, Babe is so big now that he has to scratch his back on the sides of cliffs. On the right, he's eaten everything in town and still hungry, is asking the cook for more.

With both the spread above and this one, I wanted to guide the viewer's eye to the focal point by using different shapes in the composition. Above, the ax handle and the trees on the right lead to Babe. In the spread below, Babe's back and head on the left point toward the cook on the right while Babe's arm on the right page brings the viewer's eye back up to his face. 

This was one of the original sketches for Paul Bunyan's character. I liked it so I thought it would work well for the cover. I wanted both Paul and Babe to be top heavy with little legs so they shared a common trait and also because I thought it would be funny/fun to draw. 

Babe's design and facial expressions are based on my German Shepherd/Akita. Once I was able to simplify the story to "a boy and his dog", the rest fell into place. 

A photo of the first spread where the weather is so cold that words froze in the air at night.