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Deck Tails


A project of mine that's been percolating for ever so long is "Deck Tails," a book chronicling my wild life with wildlife.


It all started when sneaky raccoons ran off with one of my crocs (my outside gardening shoes that I'd leave at the back door.) So one FB I posted a "letter" from one of the coons explaining the transgression.


We lived on the border of a regional forest and there was never any shortage of wildlife. Lotsa coons, some skunks, foxes, squirrels, and more!


The wildlife squabbled among each other. Raccoons tried to blame everyone else for their shenanigans. My favorites were the skunks, one of whom I fed by hand. The fox was intellectually superior, sporting an impressive vocabulary and penmanship skills (until the coons stole his penmanship book).


When I moved to Washington, no more skunks and few coons, but there are now deer and bears in the mix.


I have a stockpile of many letters, with the intent of making a book from them. But because of the nature of the text, it would need to be a picture book, with the animal on one page and the letter on a facing page. So, I needed the animal images.


What you see above is a first draft as I experiment with artistic treatments. In this example, I used acrylic pour strips in a mixed media collage. I think that's the media I may go with--I'm looking for an approach that is unexpected, fanciful.

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