Last month I was asked by a good friend of mine to collaborate on a long-term project. He plans to write a significant number of short stories and asked if I’d like to illustrate them. Lately I find it had to find time for anything, but I’ve wanted to create new work, in new ways, for a while now…and I believe work is the best way to grow. So knowing that I would be creating new work on an almost constant basis for the next 2 years or so was the incentive that made me jump at the opportunity.

Next I had to decide how I would execute this series of work. I began to think what work I’ve missed doing since I’ve been illustrating professionally, and I really do miss printing. Linocuts, silkscreen, etc. all kinds of printing. I may also change up my mediums (media?) as the series progresses, but so far I’ve been working with linoleum block printing.

To this point I’ve done 7 illustrations and I’ve really enjoyed all of the stories. They’ve all been very different and have needed very different solutions, which is exactly the kind of exercise I’ve been looking for. The illustrations are below, if you’d like to read the accompanying stories, you can find them on the blog Hush If You Must. There are more stories than illustrations right now, but I’m trying to catch up!

If you’d like to know more about my process or my thoughts on any of the images, please feel free to write. I’d love to hear from you.