Wolves in glasses and bow ties. Characters with large heads and small bodies. Chickens that weigh in at 266 pounds. Zany, collaged landscapes.

These and hundreds of other playfully eccentric scenes populate the alternate universe of Lane Smith, the award-winning illustrator of books that both adults and children tell each other to read.

Caldecott and Other Honours

Collaborating with author Jon Scieszka (rhymes with Fresca) on more than a dozen books, Smith illustrated “The True Story of the Three Little Pigs!” The groundbreaking best-seller portrays Alexander T. Wolf as a victim of circumstance and the media.

Smith also illustrated Scieszka’s “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales” — which earned a Caldecott Honour — “Baloney (Henry P.),” “Math Curse,” “Science Verse” and the “Time Warp Trio” series.

His illustrations have appeared in “Time,” “Rolling Stone,” “Esquire” and other magazines. He also created the fanciful characters for the Disney film “James and the Giant Peach” and conceptual designs for Ron Howard’s “Grinch” movie.

From Oil and Acrylics to the Mac

“I’ve always liked to experiment with different techniques,” Smith says of his art, which began in charcoal, moved to oil paints and acrylic varnishes, and now includes a Power Mac and Photoshop.

“I’m obsessed with texture. I like to contrast the painted with the printed, which I do on the Mac and Photoshop now, because I can use the same techniques.”

“I’m obsessed with texture,” he confesses. “I used oil paints for most of my early work in magazines and early books, but I stumbled on this technique of mixing oils with an acrylic varnish to create bubbly textures. I would blow dry it with a hair dryer and sometimes use sandpaper to create a particular effect.

Smith’s collage-like art often includes bits and pieces from old public-domain woodcuts and photographs. “I like to contrast the painted with the printed,” he says, “which I do on the Mac and Photoshop now, because I can use the same techniques.”

“Much More Control”

“With the computer,” Smith says, “the work I’m doing now is much closer to what I have in my brain when I start a painting. In the past I’d have an image in mind, and maybe I’d stumble on an interesting texture, so I’d follow it down that path.

“Sometimes the painting would turn out and sometimes it wouldn’t. But usually it wouldn’t be what I’d intended.

“But with the computer,” Smith adds, “I can think ‘I’m going to create this kind of sandpaper texture background and I’m going to put this collage here and have red over here and blue over here.’ And that’s the way it turns out. There’s still a lot of experimentation involved, but I have so much more control, which I love.”

Guessing Games

Sometimes Smith works in oils and acrylics, sometimes digitally. “Some children’s book purists,” Smith says, “have a prejudice against computer-generated artwork. They think maybe it’s cheating. But that’s completely false.

“The computer is like any other tool,” he says. “You have to be just as creative to use the computer as if you were sitting there doing it by hand, which basically you are. It’s all good. It’s all creative.

Next page: Digital Meets Classic Media