Dan Kirchoff
Book Interior Illustrations
There’s more to illustrating books than doing the covers.
Well, that’s not what comes to mind when you think of book illustration, but it’s true. While the book covers generally get the most attention, these interior drawings are crucial to a reader’s enjoyment of any particular title. These range from maps to full-color illustrations of wildlife, as you can see below.
Late 2023, I was asked by a former McGraw-Hill colleague to help with a self-publishing project by a minister. He wanted to rewrite the Gospels as if they took place in 1970s Maine. This is a map of the state, showing scenes and inset maps significant to the story.
Here’s a closer view of the left-hand page of the above spread...
...and here’s a closer view of the right-hand page.
This is a 2023 illustration of the Penobscot River Watershed along with a few scenes of the area (plus a requested sea monster) for the anthology “Rivers of Ink,” featuring authors in the Bangor, Maine, area. Executed in pen-and-ink.
This illustration is of predators for a children’s book on puffins, the colorful birds found on the islands off the coast of Maine (and other places as well)
Another illustration for the puffin book, this one a cutaway of a puffin’s burrow, including an entering puffin and an egg in a nest deep inside the burrow.