Robert Squier Illustration

When I was a kid, I was given Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. I was very young, and didn't understand the difference between a coloring book and a picture book. I scribbled Crayola circles all over Max and his Wild Things. Then guilt set in. I thought I had ruined the one and only copy in the world. Fraught with guilt and shame, I resolved to become an artist so I could one day replace the book I had destroyed.

Some families might discourage a kid that aspires to be an artist. My grandfather, Donald G. Squier, was a portrait painter (whose clients included General Patton and President Taft), so my family was use to dealing with eccentric artsy types.

I did suffer a setback when my older brother Michael "accidentally" smashed my Etch-A-Sketch shortly after I unwrapped it one Christmas morning. Despite this sabotage, I became the star artist of my kindergarten class, due mostly to my prowess at drawing giant prehistoric beasts.

It wasn't long before I started adding stories to my drawings. I wrote comic strips for the school newspaper, and self-published comic books. In college, my contributions to the campus paper were notorious and lead to my first commercial illustration job. That job lead to more work and eventually a career as a commercial illustrator and designer.

I work mostly in acrylic, color pencil, and ink. A digital camera comes in handy for reference and I use Photoshop to experiment with composition and color. I hope a kid somewhere has scribbled all over one of my books.

And I still enjoy drawing prehistoric beasts.