Monday, January 07, 2008

A sea of spots

At long last I finished my deadline last Friday, all the art save the jacket is completed for What Can You Do with an Old Red Shoe?, my poetry/recycling/craft book! I am very excited. The project was a massive undertaking: I wrote poetry for the first time, wrote step-by-step instructions for green art activities, and painted about a million tiny, tiny, tiny spots of art.

At first I thought doing a book full of spots would be less work than a regular picture book, since there was less paper to cover, but ultimately doing such tiny, detailed illustrations was pretty demanding. But I am happy with the result and can't wait to do recycling oriented presentations and workshops around the book.

Here is how everything looked spread out on my floor. I like to look at everything at once before I turn in a book, it gives me a sense of accomplishment. Although sometimes it also feels bizarre to think that such a relatively small amount of paper demanded so much attention and obsession...





These are some of my favorites from the stack... Jack the bunny who recycles his worn out blanket:



Andrea the cat who makes planters out of her shoes:



Jon the cat who makes a re-usable calender:



And Peter the bear who makes tin can lanterns:

8 comments:

Jarrett J. Krosoczka said...

Anna- These look great! I can't wait to see this book!

Congratulations on meeting the deadline!

-Jarrett

Elaine Magliaro said...

Anna,

I'm looking forward to seeing the book when it's published, too! I hope you can sit back and relax for awhile now.

Anna Alter said...

Thanks guys! I am definitely taking some down time. I just went for a long leisurely walk in this crazy weather- it is 66 DEGREES IN BOSTON!!

gail said...

Congratulation! This is a huge accomplishment. The deadline and the amount of work! The book sounds so cool. I'm looking forward to reading it.

66 degrees? Wow, you might even be warmer than Phoenix today! Crazy is right.

gail
Oh, and thanks for the close-ups!

gail

laurasalas said...

Oh my gosh, that art is fabulous. Can't wait to see this book--congratulations!

Libby Koponen said...

These are beautiful. I hope you will be selling the originals when the publisher is done with them....and I loved seeing them all laid out on the floor.

Meghan McCarthy said...

Isn't seeing your work all together a crazy thing?

meghan

Meghan McCarthy said...

Isn't seeing your work all together a crazy thing?

meghan