I’m starting a new artist book for children to be titled Numpurrs. On Storyberries.com I had done a counting book titled “The Crow and the Water Jug” and it’s been popular with readers so Storyberries wants another book related to numbers and math from me. So here goes…

As I mentioned in my last post I work in short bursts, 10 or 20 minute increments, small time segments that cover a Very Small Goal (VSG) towards a project. I do these short bursts of VSG’s almost daily. Other projects – and life – take up time so working in short bursts on VSG’s is my way to do some new creative project without requiring a large chunk of time.

For example on successive days my VSG’s were 10 minute tasks like; gather my legal pads, refill my fountain pen, look at past poetry about counting, brainstorm a “thesis”, write a list of VSG’s, gather reference photos, doodle possible illustrations, write drafts of a poem… and so forth.

For my “thesis” aka the root idea of my Numpurrs book I thought of how cats often bring presents to their humans of some, delectable morsel, from a cats point of view. Some mouse or bird brought as a gift to the human as a contributing dish for dinner. My cats have in the past been so, ahem, generous. I added that thought to the human concept of potluck dinners and how all the various contributions of dishes “add up” to an extravagant meal.

With that in mind I wrote draft after draft – sometimes in short bursts of 2 lines at a time – of my potential Numpurrs poem in my legal pad. Here’s a photo of my messy handwritten poem draft number 5 or so.

During this time I reached out to several friends and asked for photos of their feline companions. I asked friends because many have shared or can share stories of their cats personality. These photos will inspire lines of my poem and the potential illustrations. This was also just a fun topic to share with my friends. Here are some of my sketchbook doodles of cats, a way to “warm up” and begin.

Here’s a photo of my cat Hawkeye.

Everything at this point is in flux. I’m quite okay with this uncertainty – it’s an exhilarating part of the creative process made achievable by working in small chunks.

My evening reading to relax before bed is also tangentially related to my Numpurrs project. There may be a bit of additional inspiration in it – who knows. Besides it’s fun reading.

I’ll post my progress on my Instagram page during the week and write more details about my creative process here on Monday. We’ll see how much I get done – or not. Among my upcoming Instagram posts about Numpurrs you’ll see posts about my fine art exhibits that are currently up – and one still to come. So I’ve a lot going on this week. Full details about all of the exhibits are on my portfolio project pages.

Oh, I almost forgot: you can see The Crow and the Water Jug on Storyberries.com and you can also preview the printed book here.