My Sketchbook Project is finished! It was actually done ahead of the April 30th deadline, which is when it had to be postmarked. The paintings and cover was all glued at 5 minutes past midnight on Tuesday and was mailed Thursday afternoon. The post office tracking showed it arrived at the Brooklyn Art Library on Saturday afternoon. They are to catalog and digitize the books by the end of June when they depart on a multi-city tour and will end up back in Brooklyn to become part of their permanent collection. When mine is published online, I'll post the link here.
By the time I was finished with putting the book together, I felt burnt out and just wanted to be finished. I spent the last 6 months working on it, since January exclusively. My usual medium of acrylic paint wasn't allowed so I had to learn how to use gouache paints, which were very different. I also used markers, watercolors, crayons and pastel pencils, usually a combination on a single picture. Acrylics allow you to cover mistakes,but the other mediums don't, so I often had to redo the entire picture if the mistakes were too big. It was challenging to say the least. Some of the pictures did not come out as well as I'd hoped, because the new paints weren't able to do the shading and effects that I'm used to. It was frustrating, but I did the best that I could within the limitations.
I'm hoping that as the memory of the difficulties fade, that I'll feel more of a sense of accomplishment. In any case, I'm glad that my art will be in a permanent collection and that a different audience will see it.

April is zooming by and I'm now in the homestretch of the Sketchbook Project. I've spent most of the month alternately painting and gluing. The latter being what happens to the finished pictures, as the paper in the official sketchbook is too thin for painting on both sides, so I do paintings on other paper and then glue them in. I found a nice fabric/paper glue called CraftBond by Elmer's and it works really well and is flexible and waterproof when dry. When the paintings are all installed inside the sketchbook, I'll glue a printout of one of my coral reef paintings on the outside for a cover. I even was able to add the title "Animals & Aqua" onto the picture using the 'Paint' program on my computer. I'm midway through the last 2 original pictures & am hopeful of finishing in the next week. I'd really like to be able to get it in the mail before the April 30th deadline, because I'm worried about getting sick & not making it to the post office in time.
I'm also trying not to panic, because I know that will make everything worse. Just a little bit more to go.....