Van Dale Junior Dictionary

For HarperCollins I am working on a series of illustrations.

The kind of illustrations reminds me at project I've done before and worked on it for ten years (intervals included!). The project was about to draw over 10.000 unique images for a dictionary, called The Van Dale Junior Dictionary for Ambrasoft and Noordhoff publishers.

Together with my great friend Jos van den Langkruis, we started in 2002 with the job. Unfortunately Jos died in 2011 and I finished the job with my other great friend Jamel Armand in 2012.
Below are some of the 10,000 images that we have made in the period 2002-2012 for the Van Dale Junior dictionary.

Girl with bird and boy with whale

Last week I made two drawings to try out some techniques. Each drawing was made in about four hours.
At the first picture you see a girl and a bird.

Should you work with a colored outline, as above, or with a black outline usually depends on the picture as a whole. Below is the same design, but with a black outline. I have no clear preference ...

First I worked out the complete background in detail and then put a blur over it. Below the drawing without blur.

And some sketches ...

In the second picture you see a boy and a whale.

In this drawing I wanted to try some brushes. And also look at the light effects it in the drawing. Hereafter some sketches.