Paragraphs of Yellowed Print

I've been re-examining my poem for the last couple of days (now that it has come back from my editor), and reached a point in the story where I had long ago cut the following lines. It's the same point in the poem now where I need to rewrite some  missteps after permanently cutting this (below) and losing storyline movement, (note: the rhyme is not very complex as this never went through very many drafts):

as floorboards from the rocker creak
a crooked finger prods your cheek
while wrinkles stretched across his frame
twitch wildly from the candle flames

his grimace shoots past tattered tomes
of leather cracked like ancient bones
while tinged and brittle documents
shed paragraphs of yellowed print

While this was more in line with the mood of the poem, and I loved the imagery - it didn't fit the location of the action which at this point takes place on a front porch the night of Halloween. (Unfortunately the whole landscape and set of objects sound more like a castle than the small doorstep of a single family home, and I just didn't feel it worked). 

While most lines are wiped out during the writing process, (and there are pages and pages of discarded lines sent to the voids of space), I suppose I had thought I might put this back in, and so it lingered at the end of my document for months. Obviously at this stage, it's definitely history, but I still enjoy this little snippet, and wanted to take a moment to recreate it here on the blog.

Japanese Toy Sketchbooks

for a completely random thought, (and i have no idea how i discovered this site the first time) but the following is a wonderful database of old japanese watercolor sketchbooks from the 19th and early 20th century showing a collection of toy designs... search long enough and you will find lots of great creatures and some spooky masks...

http://ningyodo.library.pref.osaka.jp/index.html

as for events here - excited to receive the first run of notes back from the editor on the poem. which leads me to wonder at what point editors see both text and illustrations for an image heavy book...? i have another doc that pairs the stanzas with the images, but hesitate to send it. it seems working on the illustrations has made it hard for  me to concentrate on the poem itself... and i would hate my editor to fall to the same fate.

in the meantime, just doing some tweaks to the look of this blog... and thinking how i will approach an official website...

Sketchy Beginnings...

By way of brief introduction, (jumping past the last few years), some time ago I was searching for a subject that would give my fine art ventures a lighter side, and perhaps stoke my wan business sense toward an area that more strongly interested me... which, to make a long story short... turned my wandering eye toward one of my all-time favorite realms --- holiday arts, (especially Halloween).

To cut forward to today, my most recent goal (among a few others) is to now publish an illustrated Halloween poem. The artwork is done, and the editor is combing over the text... and I'm guessing my main subject matter here will now be the adventure of production, and beyond...  with news on some type of publishing result.

As for now, I just wanted to get this initial post pushed forward, and to post a couple of rough sketches from the project's early days of conception:

The first is a pencil drawing scanned from the sketchbooks, and the second is a vector version using Illustrator CS5. While I really enjoyed these (and wanted the vector version to be seen), the look of the art took a different stylistic turn. And, since I want to venture occasionally into various processes, I thought these made an appropriate start for future subjects that may concern the development of the book and my holiday art in general...

Thank you for stopping by, and I'm welcoming of any thoughts concerning DIY publishing, experimental book formats, and/or 3rd party publishers.

Aaron