Missing Sadie paintings update: two found

Back in 2008, three paintings of mine went missing from the Ian Logan Design Shop, London, when it closed down. All three were illustrations for my picture book, Sadie the Air Mail Pilot. Yesterday two of the paintings, shown above, were recovered, thanks be the internet! One painting, the one below of Sadie getting dressed, is still missing.

Thanks to Ruth in East London, who saw these two paintings at a car boot sale in Epping some three years ago, and had the good taste to buy them for her young son, and thanks to her sharp eyed friend who recently recognised them as being from the book. Ruth’s lad now has two framed digital prints of the images in his room to replace the paintings, as well as a signed first edition of Sadie the Air Mail Pilot. He’s lived with the images for a long time, but never read the book before. I hope the story lives up to any he may have daydreamed for himself!

You can download a wanted poster here showing the one painting still missing.

You can’t lick this

The Times Higher, August 4th 1995, for a review by Lyndall Gordon of The Oxford Book of Letters, edited by Frank Kermode and Anita Kermode.

Maybe I should try to break into the postage stamp business . . .

. . . if there still is a postage stamp business.

Sadie at The Illustration Cupboard, London

This year’s Winter Show at The Illustration Cupboard, London, will include a number of original paintings from my picture book.

The show runs from 19 November 2009 to 31 January 2010 at The Illustration Cupboard, 22 Bury St, St James’s, London SW1, with late night openings until 7.30pm every Thursday until Christmas.

There are some rather fabulous artists included in the show, for example Children’s Laureate Anthony Browne, Angela Barrett, Babette Cole, Lauren Child, Nick Park, Hergé, and also rare prints by Maurice Sendak to be had. For more details, visit the gallery website.

“No wind, no rain, no cold or flu . . .

 . . . can stop the Air Mail getting through!”

For obvious reasons, I was very pleased to read this story of the US Postal Service’s last surviving wilderness air mail route, recently spared the axe. The accompanying photos could be straight out of a Little Golden Book.

Sadie at the Smithsonian

The National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC holds regular story time events for children, and in June one of the stories being read is my picture book with the flying cat. Come along and listen at the National Mall Building, Gallery 102, on Thursday June 18th, 11 am, Friday June 19th, 11 am, and Saturday June 20th at 11 am and 1:30 pm.

Details on the museum’s June 2009 events calendar.

In the control tower

Before my picture book was a picture book, it was an animation project in development with the Irish Film Board. But books are easier than films to complete, so a book it became. Now, bound book in hand, we venture down the animation path again . . . above, story sketches showing the control tower at Air Mail HQ.

Flying home

While I was on holiday, the Sadie paintings arrived home safely from the exhibition in Finland. The above homecoming picture is now on my wall, resting before the next adventure. Below, a detail view. Click on it for an even closer look.

Knuckle Peak

Here are some images related to my interview for Scamp, now enlargeable, so click away.

In the Scamp post I talk about the somewhat involved way I went about creating my first picture book, Sadie the Air Mail Pilot, including making computer models of Sadie’s aircraft and of Air Mail HQ. These were combined with hand drawn elements, and the final paintings were all acrylic on paper.

For Knuckle Peak weather station I made two models as reference, a very rough small scale clay sculpt of the mountain and a larger scale model of the interior made with card, paper and balsa wood. Neither were very pretty, but they were very useful in drawing the multiple viewpoints of the location seen in the book.

Before doing any final art, however, the book went through five drafts, each one a fully sketched dummy book. Below are some of the early sketches of Knuckle Peak.

Scamp

Scamp, the Irish illustration blog, has an interview with me up today, mostly about my picture book, and how I went about it.

A plane for Sadie

A few of the working drawings for the Sadie picture book, published in 2007.

Yes, I know, those exhaust pipes make no sense.

Under a bushel

Relief for the eyes after all that reading: a detail from my cover design for The Chesterfield Arrangements, a CD of Raymond Scott tunes recorded by The Metropole Orchestra and featuring The Beau Hunks Saxtette. 

Missing - have you seen these paintings?

The following three paintings are missing, feared stolen. Have you seen them?

The paintings are all illustrations for my picture book. They were on show last year at the Ian Logan Design Shop, Charterhouse Square, London EC1. The shop closed in January 2008, but I only learned of this some months later. Today I was told that the paintings haven’t been found in storage with other items from the shop.

This amounts to months of work lost. They are irreplaceable. Any help in recovering them would be greatly appreciated.

You can download a wanted poster here.

If these have been stolen, sad to say it wouldn’t be the first time for me.

UPDATE 22 January 2012

Two of the paintings have been recovered! Yesterday I collected the second and third pictured above. The first, of Sadie getting dressed, is still missing.

 Thanks to Ruth in East London, who saw them at a car boot sale in Epping some three years ago, and had the good taste to buy them for her young son, and thanks to her sharp eyed friend who recently recognised them as being from the book. Ruth’s lad now has two framed digital prints of the images in his room to replace the paintings, as well as a signed first edition of Sadie the Air Mail Pilot. He’s lived with the images for a long time, but never read the book before. I hope the story lives up to any he may have daydreamed for himself!

Sadie wins the Concours d’Elegance

I worked hard to raise her strong and smart, and she’s done me proud. Off she went into the world, seeking fame, fortune, and most of all adventure. Now I hear reports of her exploits across oceans and continents. Oh, I am a proud papa.

More details here.