I've mentioned often how the Larry Evans maze books influenced me as a kid. His first two books were published in 1976 and 1977. I was 10-years old. The introduction said to not solve the puzzles with pen or pencil, so I was able to run the mazes over and over again. I would practice drawing my own mazes. When learning perspective, I would attempt rectangular tube mazes similar to the works in his books. Hose mazes, landscape mazes- I have been drawing mazes ever since.
My original Evans books were lost, probably to my younger siblings. Recently, as I was finishing my first book for Chronicle, I thought it might be fun to see those early books again. Once I shipped my final work, I hit eBay to see if I could find those books from my childhood.
eBay finds of the books I grew up with. That’s my pencil work in the background.
Evans professionally made architecture renderings and most of his mazes were ruled with strong one-, two- or three-point perspective. Needles to say, it was all manual pen and ink. No computers. How badass is that?
Evans did a few landscape mazes like this one. These were a huge influence!
I have since met a collector of Larry Evans originals. He sent me some photos of the works in his collection that included pieces I've never seen.
If you want to read a cool article about Evans's publisher Troubador Press, I linked it to a post here-->
The book 3-Dimensional Mazes is also available at the Open Library —>
