That's done, now what?

where we can go this way or that way

Yesterday afternoon at about 4:00pm I clicked send on an email that contained the last two files I made, front and back endpapers, for The Night the Buildings Switched Places, the picture book I’ve been working on for what seems like years.

In fact, I guess it has been years. This book came to me as a Word document in March 2024. Here is a graph/timeline of how work progressed on this book since March 2024.

The graph is (haha) edited for humor and not entirely accurate, though I bet every single picture book illustrator reading this is nodding their head in approval right now. Actually, this book was just really difficult. I’ll write a big long post about it all when we get close to publication, in around a year, but for now let’s go with the graph.

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This book was the final project I got from my agent of 21 years, who I left a year ago, and I have a feeling that if I were to look behind the graph and get more specific with the dates and numbers I’d see that the turning-myself-inside-out that I did in April of 2025, when I left Steve Malk at Writers House and landed with Jen Rofé at Andrea Brown Literary Agency, coincides with some up/down pattern there. This book and the work I did for it very much represents moving from one life, bound by two decades of previous work and relationships, and a new life, represented by an agent who says things like, “if you don’t take the swing you won’t get the hit.” This art is that swing.

Over the last ten weeks, as the work has intensified and as I pushed everything aside and did nothing but draw colorful little buildings running around under a cackling moon and a judgey sun, I’ve been keeping a checklist of stuff to do which includes mundane task-like things such as “fix Sacha’s digger” and “the ceiling,”¹ as well as “write the novel” and “Substack.”² It was refreshing to wake up this morning with this indecision in front of me. I’m done with the book! Do I do this? Do I do that? Do I go for a run? Can I have a second cup of coffee? The answer to all of these things is yes.

Yes I can.

Now what?

Completing a big project feels freeing, like I’m running through a field of grass and flowers in the sunlight. I can do all of this. Check check check it off my list!

I’m writing this here as a newsletter, as things I’ll probably be writing and posting about over the next few weeks and months. But it’s also here so that I put it all back in my now-empty vacuum of a brain, and start thinking about these things again.

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Sitting Around Talking About Art Supplies

The Youtube channel (and Substack section). Let’s talk about this for a minute. Making videos is a ton of work. The channel had a pile of success of the bat, and the videos were a delight to make. The second one, episode one, technically, about the Blackwing pencils, has 21,000 views! More recently they’ve been getting in the neighborhood of 1500 views and everything flattened out. I have thoughts on what I can do to reach more audience, and I need to think about how to go about it. The point of this Youtube thing is to make videos, make content, that I enjoy and like making. Not to chase a mysterious algorithm that may or may not be my friend.

So I have 3200 subscribers. I’ve been invited to be an affiliate and ambassador for five different companies³ and I’ve made $60 from you people buying stuff you would have bought anyway. The channel crossed the monetization threshold several weeks ago, and I’ll be getting paid to the tune of $140 next week. Not much, but had you told me on March 6 that ten weeks later I’ll be getting 140 Youtube dollars, I would have laughed. I plan to ge a t-shirt made that says “art supply influencer.” (checks that off the list.)

I’d planned to get a video done every week for the first eight, which I did, but I missed the last two weeks as I’ve been completing this book. Did the world end?

No, it did not.

I’ll definitely get a video made next week. Probably comparing the $75 Blackwing Pen and the $85 Studio Neat Mark 1 to each other, and to a regular $3 Uniball Vision. I feel like if I put “Blackwing” in the title, I’ll get views. We’ll see.

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The Walk

Like the videos, this graphic novel, which I’ll be writing and drawing in full view here on Substack, began with a bang. Thirty of you subscribed, thank you. And I bet you’re wondering when this will get going. The answer is “now.”

Well, not now, now. I have nothing new to post at this moment. But I’ll have a new post up next week which will go into the source material for this astronaut graphic novel and where the whole thing began. Stay tuned for that, and if you’re not yet upgraded your subscription here to get The Walk, get on that.

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Baseball with Dad

I’m waiting for feedback on sketches for my seventh A Little Golden Book, called Baseball with Dad. This book is due in late July. Not much to say about this one. Also in July is my sixth LGB, called I’m a Drone. Here’s the cover for that. Yes, it’s about a drone. We’ll talk about this later.

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Maybe a mural?

My friend Keanan lives near a playground in South Philadelphia that is need of a mural. I’ve always wanted to paint a mural, so hopefully we can make this happen. I’m thinking along the lines of my collages, but with paint. If it happens, you’ll read about it here.

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Speaking of collages

I haven’t made a collage or even cut paper since I made that second giant robot last summer. It’s been in NYC for the last several months hanging on the wall at the Society of Illustrators, so that collage was a success (checks off list). I have several ideas for new collages and after spending the last several months drawing drawing drawing, I need to shift gears and think about color and space and shapes differently, again.

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Writing stories!

This should be top of the list. Like with the collages, I had to back off of the stories for a bit this year. Multitasking is hard. But starting Monday morning I’ll be out on the porch in the a.m. with a cup of coffee and my laptop, staring down Mr Grasshopper, a Stinkbug, and a Beetle who plays the accordion.

I know, this is a violin. It’s an accordion now.

Not to mention that on my checklist is a note to rent a cabin somewhere and spend five days catching up with my hundreds of pages of first-draft chapters and notes for middle-grade illustrated science fiction novel about the end of the world.

how the end of the world looks

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teach a class?

I’m putting together an online illustration class. It’s not a drawing class. It’s like an introduction to concepts around illustration. Style, narrative, sequence… This is early-stage stuff, and I’ll post more about this soon. But bookmark it in your brain if you think you might be interested. I’m going to need six to ten guinea-pigs at some point, with whom for a vastly discounted price, I’ll be testing out the curriculum and the process. The idea right now is four classes over four weeks, like 60-90 minutes each class. I’ll use Zoom for the live stuff, and Substack chat for posting between classes.

And yes, there will be homework.⁴

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Just regular old sketching!

Another nice aspect of completing this book is that I can get back to just drawing for fun. I have new pencils and pens that I’ve not even opened the packaging for, and I miss the morning warm-ups. I did play around last week for a few minutes, with some robots and Procreate texture kits from True Grit. I’ve always been skeptical of the texture stuff from them, and I don’t really know what I’d do with this kind of thing other than posting them on social media. Which, granted, is actually a real thing just like anything else. But the textures are pretty neat. These two are from the Infinite Pulp collections and Halftone Zine Machine.

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No real cat content this week, so here’s a drawing I made back when we first got the cats, run through True Grit’s texture zinger dealie thing. She still sleeps on top of me, all the time.

Thanks for reading, and if you’re in the US, have a great holiday weekend. I’m going to a baseball game.

1. “Sacha’s digger” is a hori hori that has a wooden scale which has dried and rotted. I will be cutting some teakwood to replace it. Simple but I just haven’t had the time. “Ceiling” refers to hiring someone to fix the ceiling in our upstairs bedroom, which I fell through when I was trying to chase squirrels out of our attic in January. True story. I wish you’d been there to take pictures.

2. “The novel“ is the middle-grade science fiction novel/graphic novel that I have been “working on” since 2019, about the end of the world. “Substack” could refer to any number of things. This post, for example. I’m checking it off.

3. Blick Art Supplies, Blackwing pencils, Studio Neat, True Grit Texture Supply, and Paperlike, though Paperlike just sent me stuff for free (which yes I’ll talk about later because it’s good stuff.)

4. Maybe you’re thinking, well, I’m an illustrator already. Is this for beginners or people like me? Or maybe you’re thinking, well, I’m not an illustrator at all. Is this for people who don’t do that at all? The answer is yes, both, and probably. If youre interested, reach out and say hey.