Tag Archives: Gesso Squad

Postcards

About a week ago, I was let go from the local community college where I was working as a graphic designer. I was responsible for doing the newspaper layout for their student publication using Adobe InDesign.  Their reason for letting me go was because I was gone for two and a half weeks while on recovery after having had brain surgery. During that time, they needed to start another issue and hire someone else in my place. I wasn’t at all surpised to hear this at the time. In a way, it worked out, I as I didn’t have time to devote to the layout due to my recovery and working four other jobs. When I returned home from the “dismisal meeting”, I opened my mailbox. My eyes widened as I pulled the little blue and green postcard from the metal locked box. Writer’s Digest, a organization dedicated to helping writers, write better was having their annual self published book competition. The deadline was April 15, 2011. As I clasped the postcard in my hand, I remembered I recieved the same postcard for their competition last year in 2010. At that time, I was still writing my book and couldn’t enter…until now.

Today, I mailed out a copy of Gesso Squad & The Stone of the Sun in the mail to them with the entry form and fee. I figured, what do I have to loose? My book will be exposed internationally, and I could even win something…maybe the book fairy will be in my favor….we’ll see…

Origins

For the last 15 years, I’ve written stories about my cartoon characters.  I wanted to create a Young Adult series of books which there was educational content associated with it. Originally, I had thought of doing something with a diverse group of super heroes but didn’t know what would make them differetn from every other super heroe group seen in comic books and television. When I first concieved the Gesso Squad series I was still in graduate school, hunched over a computer screen while typing up a art lesson plan.  When the lightbulb appeared above my head in the library, my characters danced around inside my head in a parade of colors.

The name of the group Gesso Squad sort of arrived in the same manner as the concept for the series, this time, it didn’t happen in a library. My sketchbook sat in my lap as I drew the original five characters.  As I wrote out possible group names, I went through a list of 26. I read the list again and read each name while looking at my characters. I ended up doing this twice until I landed on #16 which was Gesso Squad. It seemed to fit their individual personalities and retained an element of art terminology which I felt was vital to the series.

At the time I began writing out lesson plans for each chapter I decided early on to research artists & scientists whom I had no previous knowledge of.  This ruled out what I cosidered to be artists most people already know about: Jacob Lawrence, Michaelangelo, Leonardo DaVinci, Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera.  I do take time to mention Paul Gaugin, the post impressionist painter, in Chapter 11. 

As part of my own teaching philosopy, I feel it is important to mention the artists mentioned above, but to also include all the others from various regions of the world.  In addition to teaching interdisciplinary subjects in a fun way which the students can relate to the work being presented. If they are able to make a connection to the work in anyway, they, I believe retain the information much longer.  Gesso Squad & The Stone of the Sun is the first in three books which discuss various artists, scientists and cultures from around the world.

The first chapter is available to read here: http://www.gessosquad.com  The rest of the book will be out in February 2011.