Issaquah Artist Puts His Stamp On Youth Classics -- Family And Friends Used To Illustrate New Postage Series

Some sharp-eyed Issaquah residents may recognize pictures of Jim Lamb's family in the post office this week. But not to worry: they're not on wanted posters, but on a series of stamps called Youth Classics that show scenes from four U.S. novels.

The stamps went on sale last week.

Lamb, 47, is an Issaquah artist who uses his family and neighbors for characters in his paintings. So when he needed a young boy to pose as Huck Finn on the 29-cent stamp celebrating Mark Twain's book "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," he didn't have to look very far.

He just had his 10-year-old son, Tim, pose. There is Tim with a fishing pole on his shoulder, overlooking the Mississippi River and watching a paddle boat go downstream. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm needed a young girl, and Lamb's 13-year-old daughter, Kristi, fit the bill perfectly.

"When you're an artist, you use whoever you can," Lamb said.

Besides Huck Finn and Rebecca, the other two stamps illustrate Louise May Alcott's Little Women and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie. Lamb used his wife, Cathy, and daughter Lisa, 8, as well as Kristi for the Little Women stamp. A neighbor, Lise Monroe, 12, served as a model in his Little House stamp.

This is the second series of stamps that Lamb has been commissioned to draw for the U.S. Postal Service. The first was a stamp to commemorate the 200th anniversary of New Jersey. That was in 1987, back when a first-class stamp still sold for 22 cents. The Post Office issued 194 million of those stamps.

Lamb has been a free-lance artist for almost 20 years and has lived in Issaquah for nine years. His work is displayed on everything from cereal boxes to Seahawk posters to greeting cards and movie posters.

His name was submitted to the Postal Service as someone who might be able to do the Youth Classics series because of his earlier work on the New Jersey stamp. Lamb said he did three pencil drawings before being selected to do the classics. The Postal Services gave him the titles of the books he was supposed to illustrate, but how he did it was left up to him.

Lamb said he went to the library to read the books. "I had read Mark Twain but never Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," Lamb said. "I read through the books and came up with a feel for the story. These aren't actual scenes from the books."

"I do landscapes, so you will see some of that influence in the stamps," he said.

The original paintings were only 6 inches across, or five times larger than a stamp, so Lamb didn't have much room to work with. That suits him fine because he likes to work in tight places.

The stamp series should be available at most post offices.