To Mr. Fooster, it's the small things that count. He heads out the door
one Tuesday morning with an old bottle of bubble soap in his pocket and
no particular destination, and wanders around asking questions of the
world around him: "How come we never see baby pigeons?" "Who figured
out how to eat artichokes?"
The 112-page hardcover book
Mr. Fooster Traveling on a Whim
brings us along this casual explorer's whimsical journey, with its
eleven chapters of prose by author, musician and producer Tom Corwin,
and fifty-four illustrations by graphic designer and illustrator Craig
Frazier.
Craig Frazier's Mr. Fooster was brought to life on the
pages of Moleskine cahiers. Craig is a firm believer that "ideas don't
always come when you call them, so you have to be able to grab them
when they arrive and jot them down." He considers his notebooks
"external hard drives" thanks to the comfort they provide. "If I can
get a sketch or thought onto paper, I breathe a sigh of relief that it
didn't get away."
Craig started sketching Mr. Fooster in
October 2005, shortly after Tom Corwin shared the initial draft of the
text with him. When Flying Dolphin Press/Doubleday bought the book in
December 2006, Craig got started on his self-imposed assignment of
52-plus pen-and-ink drawings. He used Moleskine pocket journals for his
'planning' sketches and notes, and the extra-large cahiers for the
final drawings. The final illustrations, he notes, "required a
completely different mindset to create. They required a certain
solitude that transported me to the places within the drawings. It's a
mesmerizing space when it happens. I created many of the illustrations
in a cottage we own on the California coast. The surroundings in many
of the drawings are derived from its tranquil and unique landscape."
Corwin
and Frazier's visual novel was published in June 2008. At the book's
release party, writers, reviewers, journalists and artists each
received a pocket-sized plain cahier in kraft, with a black foil-stamp
of Mr. Fooster blowing a soap bubble. The graphic was, of course,
created by Craig Frazier, and resembles that of the actual novel's own
cover.
