I needed a distraction from the stress of my broken hard drive, so I went back and completed the ASL sign for Abbreviate that I was working on before the crash. I made a cartoon of the Spaniard Inigo Montoya. One of his other famous lines from the Princess Bride Film was, “Let me explain! No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”
That line always makes me smile, so I felt he would make the perfect character to illustrate the ASL hand sign for abbreviation.
With his picture lost on the broken hard drive, I had to start from scratch. A plus to this second colouring, however, is I remembered to add details I had missed, such as the light scars on his cheek from the five-fingered man and the multiple words this hand sign also represents.
COOKIE TIME
My dictionary covers both meals and food types. I decided to begin work on the ASL hand signs for desserts, starting with one of my favorites, cookies. Illustrating a chef with gloves and a hairnet, I drew the changing positions of the dominant hand on the side of the image as I was concerned that making the one hand translucent above the other would confuse the final image. On the chef’s apron, of course, I drew the most famous cookie monster of them all.
PERFECT FAIL
My first formal education in ASL began with Conestoga College’s American Sign Language Course ASL1010. It was a great introduction to the language and the next step in my ASL journey. When my friends later asked me how I did after the final class, I lowered my head and held up the hand sign for the letter F. That is when, to my surprise, everyone congratulated me on my grade.
“No, wait,” I shouted as I pushed the F closer to them, “this doesn’t mean okay, this is the letter F. I failed the course!” How ironic that years later, I would learn that thrusting the F Hand sign forward meant perfect, the very grade my friends thought I achieved.
As I used my character of Mapman/ Louis Lane for Perfect, I used him again for Perfectamundo, this time placing him in his secret ID disguise, taking off his mask on putting on his cartographer glasses.
ANOTHER DRINK
After drawing the ASL sign for POP, I decided to complete this ‘Soda’ collection by adding the signs for Dr. Pepper and my favorite soda pop, Root Beer.
POPPED
In 2020 I placed Coca-Cola/Coke in my dictionary as I was fascinated by the story attached to it. I also added Pepsi to be unbiased. The beverage I missed, however, was the ASL hand sign for pop. Drawing another young consumer, I illustrated the multiple steps of this hand sign. With this finished, I’ve already begun the initialized sign for root beer, my favourite soda.
SIDE DISH
There will always be new words in American Sign Language to cover. While the publisher prepares my dictionary for release, I’m continuing with my ASL illustrations. Today’s cartoon is the sign for salad. The dictionary has the ASL hand signs for fruits and vegetables, but it missed the dish made with those ingredients. With the book also having hot dogs and hamburgers, it was time to create the salad for the side order. 
SURPRISE!
ASL Word of the Day, Surprise.
The portable hard drive that has all seven years of ASL artwork for my dictionary has broken down! Aahhh!
Now the publisher has the completed book. I still have some hard copies of the original art. The loss of the digital copy will not interfere with Publication. These facts, however, don’t stop me from desperately hoping for the repair and recovery of the hard drive. In addition to the loss of the book’s artwork and design, the hard drive contained countless other art projects and files stored inside its case.
BANANA SLIP
Sigh. A common trope with many finished art projects is returning to them later to see them rife with errors and mistakes. When the ten-page file for B words became corrupted, I chose to rebuild it from scratch. As I started on the first page, I found a typo in the original. Snicker, it’s funny that this slip-up in spelling the word Mimes is beside my cartoon of a Monkee doing the sign for Banana.
LOST TIME
When I began the dictionary, my ASL cartoons were additions to the textbooks, hard copies of lessons not recorded in print. As the dictionary grew, I returned to my schoolbooks to draw my own illustrated versions of each word to add to the dictionary. While a good plan, sometimes there was a word or two missed. One such word was the term, From Time to Time which I discovered when returning to my university notes for practice.
As a word regarding Time, I drew another cartoon Crash-Test Dummy coming back from his other job in car safety. To get a more detailed view of the hand sign than the textbook’s illustration, I studied the phrase in various dictionaries, discovering all the new meanings for this hand sign, teaching me even more.
PICTURE 4 PERFECT
As I continue to expand in my ASL studies, the artwork for my dictionary collection grows as well. Today I finished one of the many signs for Perfect. With many of the characters in my Dictionary displaying my various likes and interests, I decided to go back to an old cartoon character from my past work. Mapman (Louis Lane) was the Superman parody I published for independent print in college. He was a young cartographer expanding his horizons in college with Superhero studies. With my focus on correctly illustrating the fingertips of the hand sign, this version of Mapman is a tad off-model, with bare hints of his original character design. At first, I forgot his mask, then his gloves. That’s what happens when you’re out of practice. Perhaps I will return to this cartographer in the future, using my hero in a mustache again for other ASL hand signs.
