You might know him as our resident cartoonist, or as the film director, but now he's adding one more title to the list - illustrator! We sat back the other day, grinning, all of us, at his jumping-out-of-his-skin excitement when he was asked to illustrate three stories for a soon-to-be-published book!
Really? For real?
Yes!!
Soon, though, true to form, he was serious and down to business, asking all the appropriate illustrator-needs-to-know kinds of questions. And the research, that started too - photos, internet searches, rough sketch studies, animal studies, perspective studies - he's covered the work table many times over the last week or two with all that he's gathered.
My grandmother, who is only a faint memory to him, not only left us with her delicious, simple recipes and her own sketches and artwork, but also with written memoirs of her life growing up in the Depression, of her marriage to my grandfather, and of them raising their family together. Thanks to one of their daughters, all her writings have been gathered together and prepared for publishing - priceless memories of a remarkable woman, a gift to her following generations.
It's honoring and somehow fitting, that this boy would get to illustrate some of her stories, because a good measure of his artistic talent and creative thinking came straight down the line from her. Who could have known that these two talented people, connected, yet separated by two generations, would get to collaborate in the pages of a book?
Oh, I can hardly wait to hold it in my hands!
