I noticed that almost a year ago I said I would write something about the process I was involved in — illustrating my third book, Revolution.

Having successfully illustrated Capture Rapture (my second book), I was eager to take a break and find a collaborator for the next one. I approached Shannon Noel, a painter who also does faux walls — wonderful scenes that draw you into landscapes of the imagination. While she ended up not having time to do the illustrations for me, she sold me on the idea of giving the illustrations a story arc of their own, which would illustrate the progression of the poems more than each poem itself. This was very useful because of the nature of the poems in Revolution, many of which didn’t lend themselves to literal illustration. Also, in our talks, she keyed me in to some concepts that are basic to artists but weren’t to me — the idea of making thumbnail sketches for all the pictures, the selection of a palette of colors, the composition of a piece based on light and dark, how to create luminescence in a picture, how to study pictures to learn how to do all these things.

For Revolution, I chose the metaphor of how living things overcome manufactured structures. My set was a wall and a corner of pavement below it, and the sky above it. My characters were the things that grew up in the space over time. My medium was watercolor, cut, torn, and collaged. Here are some of the pictures:

So far in each of my three illustrating projects, I have started out feeling very daunted. Then I’ve gotten some hope and made some progress, then lurched to a stop, then overcome the hurdles and forged onward. In the end I’m satisfied with my work.