Over the past few years, you may have noticed more individuals and businesses abandoning social media promotion.
Buzzwords and terminology aside, social media got everybody hooked on free marketing. Then they changed their coding (aren’t we all tired of the word algorithm?), so customers only see your posts when you cough up the cash. And good luck even then. It’s the drug dealer business model: give ‘em a taste, get ‘em hooked, make ‘em pay.
I was happy to switch to email marketing because social media has become a toxic mess of nastiness and polarization. More importantly, it got to a point where the work to reach followers — and make no mistake, promotion IS work — wasn’t paying off.
As I’ve kept a blog on my website for over 20 years and enjoy writing long-form posts, I prefer to connect with my collectors and followers via email. I get much better feedback, and with no need to focus on useless likes and shares, it feels less frantic. It’s more like driving toward a destination at a reasonable rate of speed instead of weaving back and forth like an angry drunk, looking for the fastest of ten crowded lanes.
When it’s your primary means of interaction, it’s essential to be consistent and send regular emails. Whether sharing new paintings, works-in-progress, reference photos I’ve taken, or writing about inspiring excursions, I need to keep an open window into the work and a view behind the scenes.
Over the past week, I’ve received a few subscriber emails asking if they’ve missed an issue of A Wilder View, because they haven’t received anything from me in a while. I usually try to send an email every week or two. As I write this, it’s been about a month. So, what gives?
Frankly, I’m burnt out. I’ve got the pedal pressed to the floor, the wheels are spinning, and the engine is roaring, but it feels like I’m not going anywhere.
I’m working on two commissions, and they’re both going well. I’m genuinely enjoying these pieces, but I don’t share commissions in progress, as my clients deserve to see the finished paintings first.
This is one of the reasons commissions are a financial investment (i.e. not cheap). When I’m working on a custom painting, it means I can’t work on other art that contributes to my income from licensing, products and prints. Commission clients pay for the painting but also for my limited time.
To be fair to both of my current clients, they’ve each said, “No rush.” While I appreciate that freedom, it takes no time for leeway like that to stretch into several months, which would be an abuse of their generosity. They’ve paid substantial installments, so it’s only fair I make their work my priority.
I have a good friend in BC who ordered a custom canoe from a craftsman here in Alberta. He paid his deposit and was assured it would be ready within a reasonable time frame. It has now been several years, and every frustrated call or email results in a fresh excuse. What was supposed to be a commission that would bring him joy is now a subject he avoids because he’s so angry about the whole thing. He feels like he’s been taken for a ride and ripped off.
I refuse to be that artist. When I pay for something, I want results. My clients should expect no less.
It’s also why I pay my bills as quickly as possible, especially to other small businesses. I know what it’s like to chase unpaid invoices and royalty payments. It makes me feel like a schmuck asking for money I’m owed, sometimes more than once, and it builds resentment. I don’t want my suppliers and customers to share that experience.
The other work occupying my limited time is my daily editorial cartoons. I draw 6-8 every week for newspaper clients across Canada. Lately, the news has been fast and furious with significant events, so planning cartoons can be challenging when it’s been one late-breaking story after another. It cuts into the time I’ve budgeted for the painted work. That’s tough sometimes as there is no growth potential in that part of my work, and it will eventually vanish completely. But it’s a deadline every day and still a necessary part of my income.
This past Sunday, I had drawn two cartoons in the morning and was going to paint all afternoon. Then President Biden announced he was no longer running for re-election, and suddenly, I had to draw a new cartoon for Monday morning. While drawing each cartoon takes a few hours or more, I first have to come up with the idea, which also takes time.
Adjusting course, I planned to paint all day Tuesday but woke to find out that the town of Jasper had evacuated for a wildfire. Suddenly, I had to scrap the cartoon I’d already drawn and sent Monday afternoon for the Rocky Mountain Outlook. Given how our communities are so alike, I had to produce two new cartoons (one local, one syndicated) on the situation and get them out quickly.
Having been through an evacuation in 2013 (water, not fire), and the odds are a little too good we may one day go through that again; I feel for those people. It’s a frightening thing to leave your home and not know if will be there when you get back. As the fire has breached the town of Jasper, and structures are burning, some people will lose everything. What makes it worse is when insensitive, small-minded keyboard warriors post stupid things like, “It’s only stuff.”
That sort of glib comment is neither helpful nor kind.
I have several paintings in progress, a few I expected to be done by now, which is frustrating. Because each features several animals, they take much longer, contributing to the feeling I’m not producing enough finished work.
I have stolen an hour here and there to work on palate cleansers between the two commissions, the two rough bear paintings in this post. One of these sketches is part of a larger painting I wanted to have done before the end of this month, but it’s not happening. Hopefully, I’ll have something finished to share before too long.
In the meantime, I hope you’re having a good summer despite the oppressive heat and wildfire smoke in some places. After a cool and comfortable rainy June, our July has sucked up all the moisture, and our brown grass and crispy trees could use some precipitation.
Here’s to steady rain for a week or two. Soon.
Cheers
Patrick
Because of my current workload and deadlines, I haven’t been able to get away for reference photos lately. Shonna and I want to see our families and visit 
When I got to the new polar bear habitat, I was surprised to find both bears sparring with each other in their smaller splash pool. They have a much larger pool, but this was clearly where they wanted to be. Baffin and Siku seemed to be having a great time, wrestling, biting, and pushing each other under the water.
Though I have just finished a polar bear painting and haven’t time to start another one, I took plenty of references for future projects.
Finally, at the other end of the zoo, I caught the red pandas awake and playful and took photos that will no doubt inspire paintings down the road. One had found a perch high in a tree, balanced over a branch, in a comically lazy pose. There’s painting potential there.
After only a couple of hours, I was more than ready to head home, sort through the pics, and finish drawing an 
I dropped off a large print and sticker order to the 
Titles are challenging. While I prefer to come up with something funny or endearing for each painting, I also need to consider my clients and their customers. Simple identifying titles are often better, especially as my portfolio grows. I already have two polar bear paintings 
The paintings I was already working on need to be done by the end of next month so I can order puzzles and products for the markets. Then there are the sketches, paintings and writing for the book, six editorial 
Sure, I’ll bitch about being too busy sometimes, but I chose this. Though the landscape will change, as will the work, and it’s unlikely ever to get easier, I plan to create art as long as possible. I don’t know if I could do anything else, now.
I’m grateful for so many of you who follow my work, comment on my posts or write emails, sending me wildlife pictures and thoughts about something I’ve shared or the artwork in general. With so much content available to us, that anyone volunteers to receive my
This photo always makes me chuckle. That evil-looking stare straight down my lens, the squinting focused eyes, the chunk missing from her ear. She reminds me of a gangster saying, “Come closer. See what happens.”
I’m happy with how it’s turned out so far, and I’m also hoping to offer the finished piece as a puzzle later this year.
So, when I’m working on several paintings at once and more involved pieces featuring multiple animals or more detailed backgrounds, paintings that take much longer than a whimsical head and shoulders portrait can be uncomfortable. It feels like I’m not getting enough done.
The finished piece will be a lot more detailed than the images in progress you see here. But the vision for what I’m trying to achieve is clear in my mind, and I’m having fun discovering each of these faces.
I rarely visit the 
Parks Canada officials would have euthanized Bear #16 in 1996, but the Calgary Zoo had an opening, and he has lived there ever since. In the wild, a male grizzly doesn’t live far past his 20s. Skoki is now 37 years old. He is an old bear and looks it, but despite obvious age-related deficiencies, he’s healthy.
One day in June last year, after dropping off prints, I found Skoki active again. I followed him around his large enclosure until he did something I’d never seen before. He walked the length of a log until he came to a larger log that crossed it. He straddled the one on which he’d been walking and put his paws up on the crossed log. He looked like he’d just bellied up to the bar and was waiting for service.
This painting has been rattling around in my noggin for quite a while, and I’ve drawn several sketches, including the ones in this post. All the reference I’m using for this work in progress is Skoki, but I’ll make the five bears different heights, weights and colour variations so they don’t all look like the same bear. Other photo references will help me do that, and I’m planning more sketches like these to explore my options.
I started one of these Skoki sketches a little while ago and figured I’d try a full pose of how he sat that day. Before I knew it, I had drawn more detail and realized the image below was becoming its own painting.
Because I don’t paint a lot of backgrounds in my work, I’ll often begin some paintings in grayscale so I can get the light, shadows and contrast right. Later, I can add colour using various techniques I’ve discovered in over twenty years of digital painting.
We stayed up waiting for the northern lights Friday, but with none arriving by 11, we retreated to our separate spaces. I’m indeed one of the old guys now.
The next morning, I admitted that just before I knocked on a dark, quiet trailer, I wondered if I was painting a target on my chest. Nobody likes to be woken from a dead sleep. Thankfully, all agreed it was worth it. After all, that’s what Saturday afternoon lawn chair naps are for.
On Saturday, several hummingbirds made rounds at three or four feeders Babe and Sue have around their home. Having never before captured decent shots of these tiny speedsters, I must have learned a few things over the years as I came home with several potential reference photos, more than you see here.
While these photos are edited, of course, that convenient red background is Babe’s little barn garage for his trailer, as a couple of the hummingbirds landed and sat on the safety wire surrounding the deck of the house.
My first instinct is to paint several of these poses, a line of little hummingbirds on the same wire, and devise my own vibrant colour scheme for each bird. I’m sure that seems like sacrilege to any hardcore birders, but my art doesn’t represent reality. I guess I’ll see what happens when I get into it, whenever that might be.
Regardless of how or when I paint from these pics, I enjoyed stalking the quick little critters. The best part about taking wildlife photos strictly for reference is that it doesn’t matter if the backgrounds or lighting aren’t great. Where a wildlife photographer might not see an image worthy of sharing or printing, all I care about is the detail and whether it inspires a possible painting or two.
And that’s my cue to head back to the drawing board. Next time, I’ll have some new artwork to share, or at least some works in progress.
If your art becomes popular enough that people like it, share it and buy it, somebody will steal it. Some creatives stamp ugly watermarks across every image they post to try to combat this, but what’s the point if you need to go that far?
Several years ago, my friend Kathryn alerted me to a woman on Vancouver Island using my Otter painting as the logo for her business. It was on her business cards, a sidewalk sandwich board, window decals and advertising. When I called the owner on it, she said she Googled ‘royalty-free images’ and my otter came up. I asked if Mickey Mouse had come up in that search, would she think Disney would allow her to use him as her logo? My signature is still on the image on that sign! She angrily told me I was being unreasonable and said if I had been nicer, we could have come to an arrangement.
Another company in the same area had my Moose and Grizzly Bear paintings on their chocolate-covered candy labels sold in a local store. The company’s owner in Eastern Canada said they’d hired a graphic designer to make the labels. He just stole my work online and passed it off as his own.
From what I’ve found, she stole my Coyote, Grizzly, Black Bear, Moose, Squirrel, Peanuts and Smiling Tiger paintings, but likely more than that. While the first five are no longer bestsellers, and a couple are even retired, my Smiling Tiger and Peanuts paintings are two of my most popular, bestselling and frequently licensed images.
After a whole career dealing with this kind of thing, I am firm-footed in ‘fool me twice’ territory. Her reply almost stopped me from writing this post, but she’s standing proudly in that photo with six large canvases of an art style I’ve spent years developing. And 24 hours after her apology, my work is still visible on her social media with mentions of her amazing paintings. Very sincere.
From early prep to tear down, Expo went so smoothly that I kept waiting for something bad to happen. My booth location was ideal, my neighbours were friendly, and all the vendors I spoke with seemed to have a good show.
I always come away from this show inspired to draw and paint, with an overwhelming gratitude for those who allow me to keep doing it. Like most artists, I’m an introvert who spends most of my time alone with my work, so when I meet people who enjoy it, it refills the creative tank.
During the first two hours on Thursday, I saw many regulars flood my booth. It was chaos, it was bedlam, it was awesome. The only downside was that these were all people I wanted to spend extra time with, but they all showed up at once. I had the best Thursday sales I’ve ever had, and most of those were from longtime collectors and subscribers to 
I’m working on five different paintings right now, a few that feature multiple animals in the scene, and I aim to include those on future puzzles later this summer, 1000-piece options many of you have been asking for.
The difficulty with commission work is that, aside from advertising the work to future clients, there is no market for the finished paintings. Most people don’t want a portrait of somebody else’s dog; they want one of their own. And when I’m working on a custom painting, that’s time away from everything else. So, a commissioned painting is an investment for both the client and the artist.
Each client and commission is different, and specific details often make a painting more fun. Chase was a retired police dog in California with a titanium tooth. It was important to the client that the tooth was evident in the piece.
