Tom Sawyer Batch #4

I hit my limit. There was simply no way to do the work I needed to get done by the deadline. So I reached out to my fellow illustrator at McGraw Hill, Max Yeager, who stepped in and finished three out of five of the illustrations in this batch. I thought he did a great job taking the reference, sketches, and some of my previous illustrations to hit the same style so the illustrations would be seamless. I still lament not being able to get to these, I ended up giving him some of my favorite compositions, but I am deeply grateful to Max for helping me hit what turned out to be an impossible deadline.

If you want further proof of how hard this was to do, let's take a look at the first image I created for this batch. It was a lot of fun, but six portraits just plain take time.

The next piece is one of my favorites of the whole project, and a great example of what I was able to do with just the few extra hours Max bought me by jumping onto the project to help.

Max worked with me to understand what my vision was for these next pieces, and I'd say he did a bang-up job of bringing these scenes to life!

The second scene Max produced was difficult, not only because of the perspective, but the lighting, too. 

Finally, Max's third piece got out in the sunlight and he was allowed to put some color in! One of the things that made his inclusion so vital was that I was able to use the time he spent creating these images for all the other batches: reference, compositions, final touches, and of course that monster image with six portraits. 

You'll be seeing his work again throughout, he ended up producing six pieces overall, but I'd like to emphasize that with these three images, Max put his other work down and helped to save me from a project that was on the verge of blowing deadlines.