Happy Mother’s Day 2024!

Time marches on. The 2024 Mother’s Day card for my dragon-loving better half. Every year I try to accomplish a few things. As always, I’m aiming to draw better today than I did yesterday, so I’m trying to demonstrate an improvement in skill. I also try to do a better job capturing the likenesses of our kids in dragon-ish form, having them age and grow, too. Lastly, I choose a setting based on some family adventure we’ve had in the last year. This year’s card references our somewhat last minute weekend camping trip to Acadia National Park in Maine last year. We drove 5ish hours late Friday night, arrived in a lightning and thunder storm, spent Saturday at the park with a drive up Cadillac Mountain at the end. Sunday we detoured on our way home through The White Mountains to a hike a trail with some of the largest trees in New England. It was a lot for one weekend on short notice, but awesome and memorable, which is what matters. Some years deciding what trip/adventure to use is more difficult than others because there are fewer of them, and it’s only bound to get more challenging as the boys get older and have increasingly more complicated lives of their own. I’m hopeful the need to make these cards once a year will perhaps give us an excuse to make the effort to continue adventuring as a family in the years to come.
Having said all that, of course the main goal for these cards is to remind my wife she’s loved and appreciated. Life gets busy and hectic. Her job in particular has been very frustrating and stressful for more than the last year, and it has been getting more so week by week. She puts up with a lot and makes tons of sacrifices for our family. She not only makes us better, but she makes all of our lives possible, particularly my pursuit of an art career. The tradition of making these Mother’s Day cards for her, though they aren’t nearly enough to show my gratitude for her, is a special one. For me, at least. It started in 2004, and during nearly a decade when our kids were little and I wasn’t getting into the studio at all, it was the one piece of art I made sure I made. The kids are older and require a bit less from me every day, so I’m able to spend a lot more time making art these days, which I owe completely to my amazing wife.