On the downhill side

Continuing to work on the large book project, and after a couple weeks, am now finding myself just past the halfway mark and coasting down the other side. But in keeping with the contract for this particular job, I won't be sharing any of the illustrations until after publication. In the meantime, I'm continuing to squeeze in other work in the margins, and here's a few of the pieces I've finished up in the past week. Above was an 'apocalyptic' illustration for US Catholic that I did earlier this week, and below is another of a pair of illustrations that I did for the American Bar Association last weekend (the other one being the 'Lincoln Speech' illustration from the previous post).


The above image was another 'commencement' illustration for the Chronicle of Higher Education (been doing work for them for over twenty years, so I've amassed quite a pile of 'cap and gown' images in that time. And finally, below, is an illustration I did for the Weekly Standard this morning.

Workin'

Finished up the 'Little Amish Girls' project this week, and started on the 'Little Pioneer Girls' project (which should keep me busy for the next month or so). At the bottom of this post are the remaining 'Amish' illustrations, and the 'Pioneer' illustrations will have to remain under wraps for the time being. Above is an illustration for the ABA that I finished up this morning, and below is a Chronicle assignment I did earlier this week.

Changeover

The week ended with an email from the art department of one of my publisher clients, with the go ahead to finish up one of the big projects that has been sitting on a back burner for the past month. I'm at about the 3/4 mark of the 'Little Amish Girl' book project, so I'll be redoubling my efforts over this weekend to get this one cleared up so I can begin work on the next project. I'll be changing over from 'Little Amish Girls' to 'Little Frontier Girls' but with a similar line art style, and unfortunately, this is another project that I'll be holding off on samples until publication, so the posts may be slowing down, but rest assured I'll have a busy schedule over the next six weeks or so. Here's the 'Amish Girl' output over the past week in the meantime.







And, while all this ongoing publishing work has been keeping me fairly busy, I'm still working on the infrequent magazine assignment here and there. Here's a few sketches for some upcoming illustrations for the ABA:


And, since summer is fast approaching, I've begun thinking about some 'busy work' to keep me occupied during the inevitable summer slow period (although with this book project, I may not have a slow period this summer). I've decided to continue with the 'portrait theme' that I did last year, except I'm going to concentrate on a list of 'Famous People pre-1900' that I found on my Zazzle store, and put these portraits to work on tee shirts mugs etc, on the off chance there are fans of these obscure personages. I'm starting with the 'Architects', and the first one in the series was Filippo Brunelleschi. As my schedule has changed since I did this last week, I may not get to another one until sometime in June or July.

Back to work.

Promising start to the week

Got a call from a couple old clients I hadn't heard from in a long while over the past weekend, one of which I finished up this morning (pictured above, for the Wall Street Journal, click on the image to see a larger version). Been kind of down in the dumps this past month, with business remaining quite sluggish for the first quarter of the year, and it was nice to get back to my 'wheelhouse style', with a project that was a joy to work on.

Otherwise, I've been immersed in more book project work that have to remain under wraps for now (and expecting sketch approvals on another one any day now). I started work on the 4th 'Little Amish Girl' book that I'm doing for a local publisher, and below are a few samples from this project that I've been working on over the past week.






I had to make some drastic decisions regarding my online marketing plans in the past few weeks, and ended up dropping one my listing sites. I've decided to put the advertising funds that I would have spent on that website, and put out another postcard in the near future. This was a self promo piece I did a couple years ago, but have yet to make use of, and will likely be sending these out in the next couple weeks.