Class 870: Arizona Department of Corrections 2010

THE CLIENT: Me, the artist, Bill McDonald--and nineteen other Correctional Officer Cadets--exactly half of the class!

THE STORY: This illustration was rendered at the Correctional Officers Training Academy (COTA) in Tucson, Arizona in February of 2010 as a potential "T"-Shirt and graduation Class Plaque. This copper and hematite female bug is the famous trap door spider of Arizona. Our seven-point star is rendered as turquoise. These spiders never sleep. Neither should we.

I pitched this image to our entire of class of forty cadets. I couldn't imagine them not wanting this render silkscreened on a brown uniform "T"shirt or as our Class 870 graduation plaque to be hung permanently on the wall of our academy's auditorium. The colors and the design would have stood out from every other plaque ever hung.

My wife and I had just been wiped out with our retirement investments decimated by the Great Recession of 2008. By 01 January 2010, it was as if I was fresh out of high school and had to get a job. I was 47 years old when I went to the Peace Officers Standards and Training-accredited academy for Arizona correctional officers. I now work with the most dangerous of the most dangerous convicted criminals in Arizona to include our Condemned Row.

This is a tale of woe. I rendered this rough sketch of a copper female trapdoor spider in pens, markers, and Prisma pencils in week six of our seven week training academy during the last week of February 2010.

The department's seven-pointed star is supposed to be Arizona turquoise. The class needed both a plaque and a "T" shirt to commemorate our graduation. The class had to vote on my concept versus some other dorky design. The vote was split 50/50. Neither side would budge. I offered to pay the entire cost of the whole project. The opposition never budged. Twenty maintained a thumbs down.

The training series commander Lisa Oberle got offended. Our class was punished with a training cadre-directed plain basic text/clip art-only design that was dirt cheep. As for our plaque, it's on the wall there somewhere in the wood cut out of the State of Arizona.