I don't know about anyone else, but this last few months
have been especially challenging. Between kids leaving the nest, family health
issues and a reboot on my book, I've been operating at a higher stress level
and pace than normal. Unfortunately, real life goes on no matter what disasters
are happening around you and there didn't seem to be any relief in sight, so I
did what all of us do...worked right through it, cause' we're all
professionals, right? (flashback to David Wiesner at njscbwi). And for a while, I was able to successfully
juggle it all and bury my stress in my art.
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| Burying the Prize - Pencil Sketch |
Part of my "therapy" was working out the palette for the book and spending
countless, grueling hours teaching myself how to use my new digital tools. I
was now ready to bring my color vision
to life for Little Dragon!
I felt a tremendous
sense of satisfaction from the accomplishment and that had almost completely balanced out all
the stress from my personal life... when somewhere between finishing the final
sketches and right before turning in the final cover art, the Earth must have
shifted its rotation, causing a permanent state of full moon. Out of
nowhere, my cover art and almost all my
new tools, completely disappeared from my computer. The ones that remained, well, any time I would
select them, they would shut down Photoshop and destroy the file I was working
on. Did I mention that the cover art was due the following week? <Insert stress here!>
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| MINE! - Pencil Sketch |
My hubby, who never met a mechanical or technical device he wasn't
able to fix, was more than a bit baffled and no quick fix was in sight. Panic set in!
So what do you do when months of developing digital tools have
completely left the universe and the art is due in a few days? You take a breath, regroup, say lots of prayers and recreate the
tools......"old school!!!
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| Creating Textures |
I have to say, it was quite therapeutic to use all my organic art tools again, after
a year of focusing on digital. I didn't realize just how much I missed
them. After a couple of days of work, I was able to recreate
pretty close to what was lost in the
computer and the act of doing so, put my
mind back in balance. I also found another way to
use the two media together , which made me very happy and I'm thinking that in
the end, the art for the book may be
better for having the experience (maybe that was the master plan all along???).
Life...or at least kid lit, book life, was all good again...
and quite randomly, as mysteriously as the programs and the computer in general
, stopped working... it all went back to normal and I made my deadline! < insert sun shining and angels singing
here!>
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| From the book: Little Dragon - Sky Pony Press 2017 |
So, how do eggplants work into all of this? During
one of the days that I was having a bit of an internal, meltdown over
the situation, I decided to go to the local farm stand, get veggies for dinner
and just try to clear my head. Starring at all the colors and textures of the produce
that's out this time of year, is quite inspiring!
I began to make my
way through the little marketplace and I happened to notice all these beautiful
eggplants to one side of the wooden bins. On the other side, two eggplants that were
every bit as fresh (just a little weird looking) caught my eye. They were seemingly cast off to the other side,
rejected, in favor of the new, shinier
eggplants.
I decided against eggplant for dinner and started to walk
away, but my heart went out to the two rejects. I wondered what would happen to
those poor vegetables after being cast aside like that. Do they start hanging out with the wrong
eggplants and turn to a life of eggplant crime?...what was their story? So, I created a little photo shoot ( yes,
right in the middle of the crowded farm stand) to
highlight the heartbreaking reality of
what happens when good eggplants go bad.
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| ("The Meeting") When Good Eggplants go Bad By Deborah Cuneo |
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| When Good Eggplants go Bad By Deborah Cuneo |
