The U's Are Unveiled

I thought I'd pop in today and post the latest pages of the ABC Book I'm working on for my grandkids.

Once I finish a page on cardstock, I scan it to my computer and then put the original in a plastic sleeve in this binder.  (I'm sure this is how all the professional children's book authors go about their business.  Or maybe not.  But since I think of this book as a gift of love for my grandchildren and nothing more, this system is working for me.)

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have been inserting scanned images of some of my old artwork into the book wherever I can, with a dual purpose: 1. It's a good way to preserve some pieces that have sentimental value to me but are not necessarily ever going to hang on a wall; and 2. It saves time!  (And maybe with a little help from these old friends I will finally finish this project, which had its humble beginnings a quarter of a century ago!)

For the right-hand page, I re-purposed an acrylic painting I did of my husband tossing our firstborn son into the air, inspired by a grainy snapshot I'd taken of them on my Instamatic camera. 

I painted this 16 x 20 canvas in 1984, when I was the mother of one baby boy and could find stolen minutes during naptimes for such pursuits.  (By 1988 I was the mother of four little boys, and minutes became harder to steal; so it would be a number of years before I picked up a paintbrush again.) This acrylic painting used to hang in our upstairs hallway when we lived in NH.  I don't think I have a place for it here in VA, but I like the idea of it living on in the pages of this ABC Book.

I wish I could say that now that the U's are uploaded, I'm almost finished with the project.  But I haven't exactly been going in order.  I still have to do I, J, K, N, O, Q, and R before I get to V, W, X, Y, and Z.  But I am officially over half-way done--and that feels almost like a miracle!