Welcome to the chronicle of my latest project, a book series for and about my daughter Ruby June.  The idea came about as a result of an art show I am taking part in on April 29, 2011.  The crew where I work are all artists and we decided it was time for a staff art show.  My original idea was to do a large scale painting of a character I created as a mascot for one of the classes I used to teach.  His name is Fifties Dad, a visual representation of that ideal dad from the fifties.  Cool and calm under pressure but a total square.  I loved the idea of this guy saving the day in a host of outrageous situations, the first being an overwhelmingly massive attack from Atlantis.

I totally saw him with the huge, transparent, fish-bowl helmet, still calmly smoking his pipe while fending off Atlantis with a firmly preventative outstretched hand.

So I did a concept sketch and sat on it for a little while.  Then the idea of changing the character to my daughter struck me.  I thought, how cool would that be to have a huge painting of her (still very stylized) on her bedroom wall, preventing Atlantis from it’s impending attack on the surface world.  So I did some more sketches.