The Little Land -- my new book project!

After a long, dry spell of no professional-type arting, I actually have a book project again! Very big huzzah for the artist's life, the long quiet hours of drawing and listening to my early music Pandora station and the long quiet hours of painting and listening to audiobooks or podcasts. (Wordless music for drawing; for painting, wordliness is essential to keep the KFKD radio from broadcasting its unhelpful taunts in my head.)

So I finished the art for the cover yesterday and sent it off. Here it is. I am pleased with it, mostly, though I still amn't happy with how I struggle to paint water. Also, not sure about stripes on bug -- think I should've gone with spots after all.

The book is a sweet little Robert Louis Stevenson poem. Though I love the references to "the land of play" and "the fairy land afar, where the Little People are," there are nine spreads for art and not a lot of detail in the text. For example, "to the pleasant land of play" is the text for an entire spread, and another simple line "Where the clover tops are trees/and the rain-pools are the seas." is the text for TWO spreads. It's gonna be interesting trying to come up with imagery substantial enough to hold these little phrases aloft. Still, it feels a lot like the spare text for The Shelf Elf -- gives me the scope to draw just about anything I want in these scenes. I'm thinking I'll come up with some little internal story for the "Little People" to be experiencing, and this story can unfold in the details of each spread. We'll see.

Sketches due in less than two weeks. No pressure.