All about books by children’s illustrator Jim Harris. Jim’s biography, tips for art students, advice and techniques for illustrating picture books. Jim Harris Children’s Books Home Page Tips and Techniques for Art Students Frequently (and Infrequently) Asked Questions about becoming a children’s picture book illustrator. Facts and trivia about a job as an illustrator -- from best-selling children’s artist, Jim Harris Email Jim Harris. Link to Jim Harris Fantasy Art, Caricatures, Portraits and Sporting Art. Jim Harris – The Story of a Children’s Book Illustrator. Learn how Jim became a picture book artist. Creative Writing Tips from Author and Illustrator, Jim Harris Day to Day Life as a Children’s Book Illustrator. Information for students learning about the day to day life of a picture-book illustrator. Illustrating a Picture Book, Start to Finish. The step by step process of illustrating a children’s picture book. Activities for Kids. Classroom reading, writing and math activities with pictures from Jim Harris’s children’s books.

Jim Harris gives painting tips from Three Little Dinosaurs. Information for art students -- about how to use acrylic and oil paints and about cleaning your paintbrush!

Three Little Dinosaurs

 

Go on location with Jim Harris and see how to develop a central character for the Cajun fairy tale Petite Rouge.

Petite Rouge

 

Jim Harris gives tips for young artists from Jack and the Giant. Funny insights about the process of writing and illustrating a book for children.

Jack and the Giant

 

See the adorable puppy characters that fill another Jim Harris’ wiggly-eyeball book. Ten Little Puppies who can’t seem to stay out of trouble! New 2009!

Ten Little Puppies

 

Jim Harris gives pointers on creating vibrantly colored children’s illustrations in a little talk about the use of saturated and unsaturated colors in the Southwestern fractured fairy tale Tortoise and the Jackrabbit.

Tortoise and the Jackrabbit

 

Illustration techniques for students from The Trouble with Cauliflower. Tips for young artists about how to use texture in illustrations for children’s book paintings.

The Trouble with Cauliflower

 

Art tips from The Three Little Javelinas. Jim Harris tells about the jokes illustrators play with their young readers and tells the stories behind some of his most famous picture-book characters.

The Three Little Javelinas

 

Illustration advice by artist Jim Harris from the book The Treasure Hunter. Jim gives tips for art students about using overlapping to make paintings and drawings look realistic.

The Treasure Hunter

 

So, if I become a children’s book illustrator… what kind of people will I be working with? Read Jim’s answer to this important question in his discussion of the humorous picture book, The Bible ABC.

Bible ABC

 

Dinosaur's Night Before Christmas, a holiday story as told by Jim Harris - the perfect Christmas gift for dinosaur lovers

Dinosaur's Night Before
Christmas

 

Jim Harris shares illustration techniques from The Three Little Cajun Pigs. Learn how to illustrate a picture book using visual rhythm and diagonal lines.

Three Little Cajun Pigs

 

Tips by illustrator Jim Harris about using parody in children’s books, based on the Southwestern title, Slim and Miss Prim. Thoughts for creative students about illustrators’ spelling woes, too!

Slim and Miss Prim

 

Jim Harris tells about starting out in a career as an illustrator. Funny stories about life as a ‘starving artist.’

Towns Down Underground

 

Jim Harris Introduces… 

Dinosaurs Night Before Christmas. Jim Harris tells the story of Santa’s adventures with a giant T-Rex who tries to take over Christmas.

Dinosaur's Night Before Christmas

Well, here’s my idea of a really fun Night Before Christmas story.  See what you think…

 

To start off, it’s the night-before-Christmas in Middletown, USA, and Dad is doing a little late-night video-game testing  --  just the necessary pre-Christmas tweaks any normal Dad would do before wrapping up the kids’ new video games --  when a mysterious growling, which seems to come from somewhere way up in the clouds,  alerts him to the fact that Christmas is going to be just a little different this year. 

Dad, the cat and the bassett hound take a look at some strange visitors on the night before Christmas. Sure doesn’t look like Santa’s regular team!

Specifically, eight monster dinosaurs are approaching at warp velocity… and they aren’t delivering presents.  Nope, with names like Cracker, Splinter and Fang, and led by the meanest T-Rex you ever saw, they’re stealing little kids’ Christmas gifts and (even worse) making off with Christmas dinner! 

Massive, sharp-tooth dinosaurs are chasing Santa and his reindeer all around the North Pole.

So what’s a Dad with a grain of sense to do? 

Why, hide in the closet.  What did you think!!! 

Obviously, it’s up to someone else to save Christmas. Someone with the courage to stand up to a charging T-Rex.  Someone with a plan to save all the kids’ presents.  And most importantly, someone with the technical equipment to send the real Santa on his way with a whole new (and improved) team. 

But who?

Dad and Mikey get a good look up their living room chimney on a Dinosaur’s Night Before Christmas. Are those really Santa’s shoes?

Meet the small and unlikely hero in Dinosaur’s Night Before Christmas, the holiday tale written by Jim Harris (with inspiration from Clement Moore’s classic ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas) and illustrated with detailed, humorous art to create a festive adventure with a reptilian twist for adults and children alike.

 

Buy the book Dinosaur's Night Before Christmas at Amazon.Buy an original illustration from Ten Little Dinosaurs.

Link to Jim Harris Children’s Books Home PageEmail the page ‘Dinosaur's Night Before Christmas’ to a friend.

Images and Text © 2010 Jim Harris. All Rights Reserved