Read my 5-part essay on the visual facets of book covers here. (This essay was originally published over several weeks at the Page Chewing Forums.

A long time collector approached me with a commission to illustrate and print a booklet of three short horror stories written by his nine year old granddaughter. The stories concern smart phones. The scary bit is that a nine year old knows how dangerous these devices can be. I dislike smart phones so creating this horror art was delightful fun. The three interior works are pen and ink and the cover is digitally rendered based on a forth drawing. The young author wrote under an alias and I could not resist inventing endorsements and contributors for the back cover.

"Take the Long View" has been juried into the American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA) 19th National Exhibition and is on its way to the Albany Institute of History & Art where it will hang with other ASMA juried maritime works from Sep 8 to Dec 31, 2023. Then it will travel to the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona, MN where it will hang from Jan 19 - May 12, 2024.

Some years ago, while touring England with Janny during one of her book tours, we visited the Lake District. I saw a sign "Visit the DERWENT PENCIL FACTORY". As I have used their pencils, decided to visit. A representative described how specific degrees of clay are mixed with graphite to achieve various pencil "lead" hardnesses with 9B - softest (no clay) to 9H - hardest (lots). Much of the cedar used to make pencils had come from de-commissioned railroad cars from Henry Flagler's Jacksonville to Key West railroad with the cars made from Georgia cedar trees.

What I found most interesting was the floor display diorama showing a graphite mine entrance, all shiny with graphite dust rubbed off by miners. Outside stood a life sized, armed British Redcoat mannequin. The caption for the scene read that mined graphite was used to line the stone molds used to make cannon balls and artillery shells, as graphite is slippery, does not stick the hot ore to the mold, and does not burn. Each miner was searched under guard as they left the mine to insure no graphite was being smuggled out to be sold to foreign governments for their ammunition production. The term BLACK MARKET originated in the smuggling of graphite. Artists using graphite instead of charcoal or ink in their work during that time would likely be suspected of buying smuggled goods.

So, the pencil we use has a history of being a guarded military resource, the mother of the Black Market, and caused artists to be suspected as outlaws.