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: