That is the illustration I whipped up in response to this email I received:
"Michael, my 5 year old, is in Kindergarten and I am helping organize a project where the students are going to create a class book which is going to be hardbound. The title of the class book is "When I Grow Up..." Each student will have two pages in the book, one for illustrating and the other for writing a couple of sentences describing what they want to be when they grow up.
What I thought would be a great addition to this book (which all the parents are going to purchase) is if you did the illustration for the front cover. I thought of you right away because I figured you would come up with something clever for a children's class book that fits the theme. When I mentioned this idea to Michael's teachers, they were so excited. The theme, by the way, is "When I Grow Up...".
Your picture will be used for three class books as there are three kindergarten classes (60 kindergartners). The illustration should be done in marker according to the publisher because they scan these pages in and they say marker turns up best. It does not have to be anything fancy like when you submit to illustrator contests, etc. Just something cute to complement the children's work inside. We can also mention in the front pages of the book your name under illustrator. It could be your published work, technically."
I don't think it actually counts as published work, but I thought it would be a fun project, and the homeroom moms even came up with a small token payment, so I felt appreciated. I rarely, if ever, have used marker in my illustrations, so the challenge was to acquaint myself with the media, (and the particulars of its color distribution), before working on the final piece.
