The project I'm currently working on is multiple decades in the making. A visionary creative mind, who was a college instructor of mine (and is now the global chief creative director at a big old fancy pants LA design firm) looked at my work back in 1998 and immediately went to children's books. At that time, I was very interested in my own fancy pants aspirations though, and I was sure I was meant to be a painter. Think Gagosian in the 80s. Think Mary Boone. Think huge canvases in Chelsea galleries. My friends and I were going to have Jean Michel Basquiat's rise to stardom without all that troublesome substance abuse and/or dating Madonna. Well, a few gallery shows here and there have been fun, and lessons have been learned in the subsequent decades, and though most of us are still making art, none of us are the art stars of the contemporary scene. 

Most of us are still making art, and there's something to be said for that, but what form our art should take has been a constant struggle, or maybe an ongoing development is a better way to phrase it. Many of us get by on classroom examples and the work we do with our students. Some of us dabble. A little of this and that, based on the time we have. 

My art continued to take on a narrative tone. Paintings continued to have an illustrative quality. During the pandemic lockdown, I did a whole treatment, mostly because I had time. It can be viewed on my website. It was an education, but I'm not sure it's a finished book. 

Then came Scrapped. The words. The pictures. It all seemed to work together. Today I finished the sketches for the dummy. Soon I'll layout the dummy in a digital format and have it ready to start shopping around. Stay tuned.