Yet another catch-up post (not ketchup…that would be messy) from before xmas. As I’ve stated in other posts, I’ve developed this habit of digitally painting portraits of people’s pets (Mr. Flangheddy, the best freshmen and junior year high school English teacher, would be proud of my alliteration). This time around, it was for my cousin and his wife’s dog, Ivy. She was the first dog they had as a couple, and her passing was really tough for both of them. I had planned to do my usual painting and surprise them with it. However, after I had already started working on it, my cousin contacted me about doing exactly what I was already doing so he could give it to his wife for xmas. So far, I’ve had the previous images printed up on canvas and stretched to a frame (my friend Kim at Riverside Art in Sommerset, MA does a wonderful job), but my cousin wanted to somehow incorporate Ivy’s collar. After some back and forth between he and I, and then myself and the print/frame shop, we collectively decided to print the image on watercolor paper, then matte it in a shadow box, with the collar included. The final product (which I forgot to snap a picture of at the family gathering) turned out great and it was well received.

Here she is:

Toby-Gray-ivy

Ivy was a lovely husky, full of personality.

 

In other news, I still have several more posts lined up, with more being added as I keep chugging away on other projects, so keep an eye out for those over the next several weeks. I finished up the cover to L.S. Gagnon’s 4th Thea: The Little Witch installment (which I may have mentioned last time?), and am currently working on four story illustrations from the 4 original Witch Series books. The idea is to use them in a display at an upcoming book convention to help attract potential readers. The books are about witches, warlocks, and magic, but probably not in the way most people think. She’s hoping the images will pull people in before their preconceived notions about witches form their opinions for them. I’m finishing up the one for book 2 and have started (and restarted, and restarted…) the illustration for book 3. I think I still have a week or so left, so hopefully I’ll be able to hit that deadline.

Once that project is wrapped up, I actually have another paying client interested in working with me! Getting paid to make art is pretty cool. After that, I’m hoping for a triumphant return to IPMDT finally. I have a few new t-shirt design ideas (and all that work of setting up the ETSY shop…), , I’m still supposed to design a “class B” shirt for our Boy Scout troop, I plan to wrap up 10 Things, maybe make some forward progress on Revery (most likely just scanning all the storyboards and tweaking layouts and things digitally), plus (this kind of excites me) my IT/research/awesome-wife department (The Wife Department is now a thing, because I said so) has been getting more creative lately (which I love) and we might have a project or two to play around with together at some point. Speaking of the wife, I haven’t forgotten about her xmas gift, which I will finish before xmas 2017…

…I should probably get to work…