Under Construction! Interview with Mike coming soon plus some fantastic before and after pics!
This is the story that started just prior to COVID-19 lockdown and carried through the length of the pandemic, serving to ground and keep sane, and is ongoing today. It’s the story of a budding young high school artist turned Navy pilot turned commercial pilot turned artist wanting to do more creative contributive work, of an athletic, healthy, lively, go-getter, nonprofit founder, educator, multimedia artist, filmmaker and academic burned out, run down, expended, stricken with failing mobility, recovering from a long series of surgeries, and of how the two shored up the other to make a difference in the world gone mad.
In June of 2021, I placed an ad for artists interested in joining a fair-share collaboration on some emergent learner books. I ran these ads on Craig’s List and on several social media platforms: NextDoor, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkIn. I ran them in several states across the country and in several other countries for broadest range of artistic style, perspective, and background. I hoped bringing in more artists would double and even triple my curricula and book production. I had several finished scripts in the wings waiting but couldn’t get to them fast enough and at the current rate, wouldn’t for years. The best laid plans, aye.
Several people contacted me, but very few were able to follow through and commit to a severe vertical learning curve, especially when earnings were entirely contingent on book and curricula sales that wouldn’t, couldn’t even begin until the product was finished. Others were deterred by extensive revisions due to the learning curve, and still others left early on, unable to admit that while they wanted to do illustration work, they did not want to have to learn anything. They just wanted to draw. They simply weren’t interested in committing themselves to learning how to tailor their artwork to cater to specific intention- illustration learner-accessible books, lesson plans, other learning tools, and curricula.
Then Michael Holland applied, a white cisgendered, binary 70+ year-old retired life-long naval and commercial pilot, who saw the world from a stereotypical, flat, white patriarchal position and perspective, though he fell on the progressive liberal side. We were the most unlikely collaborators. His desire to learn was there, but his skill was basic and rudimentary. He possessed limited digital art skills, knowledge, experience, and language; knew little of cloud work and the various art and google platforms, programs, applications, and software; had not learned, yet, how to make the most of his technology through applications. For all these reasons, I hesitated to say the least. Taking him on would mean a lot of commitment, time, and work for me, though no less for him, and I was desperate for the help, and in the end, something made me like him right away, and a voice inside said help him so he ca help you. I warned him it would not be easy.
“Neither is flying jets in war zones.”
I warned him I would not make it easy on him or listen to any whining or excuses.
“Neither does my wife.”
So, I agreed to take him on. He would study with me and apply each Monday lesson of varying duration to an assigned book project. He agreed to the terms of the fair-share, project-based Educational Internship and began working immediately.
The project was to illustrate a pre-scripted Pre-K through 1st-grade comic storybook series, Big Pig, Little Pig, Book 1, about a lost little wild pig who finds a lone big pig who teaches Little Pig how to be a wild pig in the best possible ways that Big Pig knows. Via text and image, young readers learn about wild pigs: what they eat, about their environment and ecosystem, even predation of and by wild pigs and about the friction between wild pigs and humans, all in a fun comic book story style.
On top of the technical, skill, and literacy illustration learning curves, Mike had to work hard to break free of some concrete preconceptions. His only understanding of swine was of Charlotte’s Web: a chubby, pink, rosy-cheeked, cherub-ish pig and piglet. Unfortunately, this was not the kind of pig the book called for. Each of our Zoon sessions over the last three years sent Mike back to the drawing board with new research orders, image viewing requirements, and suggested revision work. Through hundreds of these one to five-hour editorial instruction and development sessions, all, of course, archived for review and analysis of artistic skill and project evolution, Mike began to develop his tech and illustration skills and the beginnings of his artistic voice. Then lockdown happened, but every week, Mike and I met via Zoom like clockwork, with the exception of two months when I struggled with COVID and two he and his wife struggled with it.
I watched Mike’s art go from flat to dimensional, then from still life to animated and emotional, and finally from formulaic to free-hand expressive. I watched his artistic voice enter the world, and Big Pig, Little Pig come to life. In the beginning, I shared my original artwork for the book through Google drive. Mike had a tough time accessing and navigating the drive, but he kept at it until he formed the necessary muscle memory. He followed the artwork I’d shared as guideposts and slowly added himself into the work and altered it and made it more than it was and made it his. Smooth as this sounds, there were some bumps and rough patches.
At one point, I became so utterly frustrated and hopeless in the face of zero progress and what felt like an infinite loop of Little Pig camouflage markings which lasted no less than six months with no resolution in sight, then it was the ears, then the eyelashes, then the eyes, and the tongue and the mouth, and for some reason, like many newbies to the business as they flex and stretch, he kept changing things that didn’t need changing, which meant starting from scratch on the editorial process for each image, repeatedly. Around 1.75 years into it, I hit the pause button and assigned him a new project, a set of four pattern sentence books: The Ocean, The Jungle, The Wetland, and the Desert. I felt these would give him a chance to break out of the Big Pig Little Pig spin cycle and exercise his imagination on a new plain. It worked. Mike finished three of the four books which are now available on the web as eBooks and are currently being converted to printables for print on demand. The fourth title remains unfinished at this time because I deemed his skill progression warranted going back to Big Pig, Little Pig.Midsummer 2023 after 2.5 years and three completed books under his belt, more confident in his skill, and with a more defined sense of his artistic style and voice, Mike returned with me to Big Pig, Little Pig. He decided immediately that he no longer liked the previously approved illustrations because he felt they did not measure up to his new self-expectations and that he hadn’t visually developed the characters enough. This, of course, meant starting over from not quite scratch but close. Six months in (the third-year mark) and we’ve revised and finalized new art which replaces all previously existing approved art and added eight more pages to the book, and Mike has created much more dimensional, realistic, Big Pig and Little Pig characters which I believe are going to engage early readers and propagate reader investment, building a series following for the Big Pig, Little Pig stories. We hope to have it finished and ready for launch no later than June 2024 then get right into Book 2: How Big Pig and Little Pig Became Family.
So long, Mike, My Friend!
It is with deepest sorrow that I bring this story to an end. My comrade, colleague, fellow artist, and friend, Michael Holland has passed away October 7, 2024. He will be sorely missed.
We were two spreads away from finishing Book 1 when he was diagnosed with stage four liver cancer. Ever positive. Promising we’d finish the book, and I didn’t care about the book except that if we finished it, it’d mean he’d still be alive.
He was a great guy. Always had positive things to say. Always worked long and hard on his art and developing his style and voice. Such a calm and kind person. Deeply and dearly loved and appreciated his wife and friends. I am so grateful to have had the chance to know him and to have work with him.
Cheers, Michael. May your next ride be as exciting and filled with the love, kindness, and respect you always gave freely to others.
I’ll be producing a candid film of some of our most memorable zoom moments from our editorial sessions. A memorial film, I’ll also be posting the rest of his art for Book 1 so everyone can enjoy and appreciate it. He’d of gotten a kick out of that- his own sort of gallery showing.
Trace Taylor 