Terrible Yellow Eyes is a blog established by illustrator Cory Godbey to express his fascination and admiration for the work of Maurice Sendak, and in particular, his classic Where the Wild Things Are.

The blog is a growing collection of artwork from a variety of artists, each expressing their own admiration for Sendak’s work with homages to the book and its characters.

The list of contributing artists includes some wonderful talents and Godby has curated an exhibition at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra, CA, also titled Terrible Yellow Eyes, that puts many of these works together in a gallery setting.

The Gallery Nucleus exhibition runs to October 6, 2009. Godby’s blog has some photos from the opening.

Here is the initial post in which Godby explains his inspiration for Terrible Yellow Eyes.

Both Godby’s blog and the Gallery Nucleus page about the exhibition have links to the artist’s sites and blogs, a list that can keep Lines and Colors readers happily clicking deeper for may hours (timesink warning).

Images above:
Jason Caffoe
C.G. Young
Joel Furtado
David Miles
Mike Daley
Mike Lee
Shaun Pendergast
Saud Boksmati

[Thanks to Masha Dutoit for the suggestion]

Maurice Sendak has been a window dresser for F.A.O. Schwartz, an illustrator for All-American Comics, and, since 1951, the author and illustrator of some of the most well-known and influential books in children’s literature.

A fair bit of attention is currently focused on Where the Wild Things Are, his award winning and controversial classic that has just been adapted as a movie.

Sendak is the author/illustrator of several other books and the illustrator of over 40 more. My personal favorite is In the Night Kitchen, the illustrations for which harken back to the illustrators of the early 20th Century, as well as carrying a flavor of the surreal (i.e. dream based) comic strip flights of Winsor McCay.

The controversy about Where the Wild Things Are focused on the darkness of the illustrations, deemed “too frightening” by adults unfamiliar with the nature of traditional fairy tales.

In the Night Kitchen aroused concerns because the young protagonist loses his clothing and is naked for the first part of the story, something innocent to children who only learn the concept of shame that shame-filled adults teach them. Many of those shame-filled adults have challenged the book, tried to ban it from libraries or actually censor library copies by defacing the book, covering the “naughty bits”.

Also controversial is the implied darkness of the story sequence in which the threat of being placed in an oven with the bread dough, by bakers sporting Hitler-like mustaches, is an allusion to Sendak’s own preoccupation with the events of the Holocaust. (See the excerpt on Google Books.)

Sendak’s willingness to interject darkness and sophisticated themes (however tangentially referenced) into his children’s books, along with wild imaginings and his wonderful use of color and texture, light and shadow, has made his work resonate with generations of readers, young and old.

The Rosenbach Museum and Library here in Philadelphia is the official repository for Sendak’s work, with a permanent gallery devoted to his collection and frequent special exhibits.

I don’t know of an online repository for Sendak’s illustrations, but searching on Google, Google Books and Amazon will produce plenty of images. I’ve listed some other resources below.

One of them is an audio interview in which Sendak discusses one of my all time favorite children’s books, Crocket Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon.

Dan Santat is a California based illustrator and children’s book writer.

His clients include The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, The Village Voice, Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster and many others. Santat is also the creator of the Disney Channel animated series, The Replacements.

Santat’s style ranges from detailed to quite spare, but always seems to have a freshness and snap, in part because of his lively linework, rich colors and loose, painterly textures.

Santat used to paint in acrylics. He moved into a process of starting pieces in acrylic and developing the finish in Photoshop; and now does many of his illustrations directly in Photoshop.

Even when working digitally, Santat says he works from dark to light with opaque strokes of color, analogous to the way he paints in traditional media.

Santat’s site includes a blog, portfolio and a list of books he has authored or contributed to.

There is an interview with him on Diskursdisko.

[Via LCSV4]