Written by Tom Corwin | Doubleday 2008

Mr. Fooster is a 100+ page book that is both a children’s and adult book. It’s about a simple man that sets out on a journey into an enchanting world where questioning your own assumptions is somewhat liberating. He sets off on foot and immediately encounters creatures and stuff that would be typically overlooked by anyone on their way to anything important. He gets lost and we learn of his secret weapon—a bottle of bubble soap that creates whatever he needs to get out of his particular jam—like an old DeSoto or a birdcage full of tropical fish.

It’s a short text book that lent itself to an illustration per page—50 total. I illustrated it entirely in pen and ink drawings done with sepia-tone Micron pens in Moleskine notebooks. The drawings involved a lot of trees and landscape that I photographed near home in Northern California. Though I have drawn in a cross-hatched style for many years, I never really use the technique commercially. It was really a treat to immerse myself in the project for 18 months and ultimately produce a sweet little bedside book.

I did mountains of sketching to get to final illustrations. Once finished, each illustration got a numbered rubber stamp of approval prior to production.

We created an animated website as well as reading at Google.