The Earwig’s Tail

September 29, 2009 in Books, Illustration | 5 comments

It was my great pleasure to have a chance to work with eminent entomologist May Berenbaum last year. May has a new book out called The Earwig’s Tail. It is an A-Z bestiary of insect myths that May dispatches with a great deal of wit. I was lucky enough to be asked to do the illustrations. The publisher used two of my illustrations on the cover.
earwig

I tried to do the illustrations in the style of a Medieval Bestiary. You can judge how successful I was. Here is the original illustration featuring the earwig (it’s teeny tiny of the cover).

B_Earwing_web

For those interested in the process, I would read May’s essay and then generate 2-7 rough sketches and post them on my website for her to consider. She would tell me which one she liked and I would ink it. On a few occassions it was “none of the above” and I would head by to the drawing board. Follow this link to see the seven rough sketches I did for the Headless Cockroach essay. The final illustration is below.

H_roach_web

  1. May Berenbaum’s avatar

    May Berenbaum on September 30, 2009 at 6:04 am

    Jay, you are absolutely brilliant! I was the lucky one to have an opportunity to work with you–you captured the comic sensibilities to perfection!

  2. admin’s avatar

    admin on November 22, 2009 at 9:11 pm

    Thanks, May! It was a lot of fun.

  3. Ann Downer-Hazell’s avatar

    Ann Downer-Hazell on January 5, 2010 at 11:45 am

    Jay, I love this blog about science comics, and will highlight it in a future post on my new blog, Science + Story. I have a hand in science comics myself now, working on the World of Viruses series.

  4. admin’s avatar

    admin on January 5, 2010 at 10:18 pm

    Hi Ann
    We can always use more good science comics! I haven’t heard of the World of Viruses series but I’ll definitely go looking for it.