When my sons were very small I gave up painting in favor of sanity. I however kept sketching. One of the projects I worked on was an idea of doing simple line illustrations with the idea of having them printed in a raised process for blind and partially sighted children...a sort of art in braille. When I had a variety of illustrations together I approached some people at the Maryland School for the Blind [we were living in Baltimore at the time]. I was informed that most reading material was being provided through computer now and there was no more need for hard-bound books, braille or my idea. But if I was still interested in pursuing it I could try to find a publisher somewhere. To say I was disappointed would be understatement. Simple-line may sound simple. It isn't. It's a distillation, a honing, and it's more often than not a process rather than just slapping a couple of lines on paper and saying Voila!

What turned out to be an even greater challenge was trying to find someone who could print using a raised line process. At that time, the late 70's-early 80's, the only people I knew of were the Japanese. I sent off proposals. Many were returned with polite refusals. Some were returned unopened. Some, never returned. Ah, well.

I thought of greeting card companies later but never followed up. They use the process on cards, afterall but life happened and well, enough said about that.

Anyway, I still think it's not a bad idea. I think all kids would enjoy feeling the picture. What brought all this to mind was a post by Carl,  http://www.guidingeyes.org/. They were working with the Maryland School for the Blind and The Columbia School for the Blind out of Wash DC. Amazing people.

Here are some examples. They're all I can find of the old work. Who knows where it all went? LoL. It has been many years. Anyway, the first two are simple covers from the neighborhood newsletter. In the one, it has Santa as an Arabber. This, as far as I know is a custom unique to the neighborhoods of Baltimore. http://www.baltimorestories.com/main.cfm?nid=4&tid=157  And the last two, illustrations from a children's book about a neighborhood baseball team about kids from an inner city area who have a team but no uniforms. The first of these pics show the kid getting hit with an idea just before he gets hit with the pitch and then the second the coach making sure his arm is ok. As you can see none of these are great illustrations in and of themselves. They weren't meant to be. They were meant to be templates for the process of raised line printing.  But it never came to be.

It was an idea that was born at the end of the printed era and the beginning of the computer age. But I thought I'd share. Just a little nostalgia from yesteryear.