Category: Digital Painting

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Coyote Totem

CoyoteTotem

This painting of a Coyote is the latest in my Totem series.  The most recent before this one was the Bald Eagle Totem, finished in November of last year.  If you do the math, that’s almost seven months, which is far too long, especially if you consider that these are my favorite paintings to work on.  With the daily editorial cartoons, the portraits of people, the pet commissions, and the great deal of time spent on the preparation for the Calgary Expo this year, I’ve been busy and otherwise occupied, so the Totems were temporarily on the back burner.  The next one will be coming a lot sooner than December, I assure you.

I painted my first animal in this style in November of 2009, the Grizzly Bear Totem.  Hard to believe that it’s been over three years.  The funny thing is that the Coyote was one of the first animals I wanted to paint but for some reason I kept shuffling it down the line, painting other animals instead.  As is often the case, I may have the reference photos ready to go for months before I get to the actual painting, but this one has easily waited the longest.  It also took the longest to paint if you consider that I started it in February and it sat idle for months until I started back on it last week.  I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out, but as always, I’m already looking to the next one.

CoyoteClose

 

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Taming Painter 12

TigerSketch

In an effort to broaden my digital painting horizons, I recently bought Corel Painter 12 and am trying to get used to it.

Having been a digital painter with Photoshop for many years now, I’m very comfortable not only with the default tools, but with customizing and designing my own brushes so that I can paint the way I like.

By pairing and customizing Wacom’s hardware and Adobe’s Photoshop software, I’ve developed a very comfortable workflow and I know how to get the results I want with the tools at hand.  So if everything is working so well, you might wonder why I’m bothering with Painter.  The short version is that Photoshop and Painter are the industry standards when it comes to digital painting.  Some artists use only one of them, but many use both together, taking advantage of the strengths that each offers to produce the best results.  I would like to have that option.

I invested in some initial training with Lynda.com to try to learn the ropes, but it didn’t give me what I needed.    The class and instructor were fine, but when it comes to software, I seem to learn best by first doing something.  If I can’t figure it out by trial and error (usually a LOT of error), then I’ll go searching for articles, videos, and classes online.

The painted sketch you see above is my first attempt at painting in Corel Painter 12.  It took me a few hours as I tried a lot of the different available mediums, quickly realizing which ones I didn’t like and which ones had potential.

Painter 12 is designed to emulate traditional media.  If you’re a traditional artist, that’s probably great news.  But I’ve never painted with traditional tools.  I learned how to paint in Photoshop, so to use oil painting or watercolour in Painter was incredibly frustrating because I’ve never used them before and didn’t like the way they worked.  In all honestly, there were a few instances where I tried a brush and said, “Ugh!”, disgusted at the results.  When it came to the cloning tools, I abandoned them without even taking them for a spin.  I’ve never like painting or tracing over a photo and those tools are designed to do just that.  While some people enjoy working with that option, I’ve never done it in Photoshop and I don’t plan to start now.  Photos don’t belong in my work.

Now you might be wondering if this is just a blog entry to slam Painter.  Let me assure you that it’s not.  While half of my drawing and painting time was spent with a furrowed brow and clenched jaw when the tools were not working the way I wanted them to, the other half was spent with raised eyebrows in surprise and even a grin or two when I discovered a few things I really liked.  I might have even said, “hey, that’s cool” out loud a few times.

Once I realized that I didn’t have to use EVERY medium in Painter, I started to enjoy myself.  After all, I only use a small percentage of the features in Photoshop.  Painter is designed to emulate most traditional mediums so that it appeals to a wide range of artists.  But it doesn’t mean that a watercolour painter now has to learn oils and charcoal just because they’re suddenly available in the same place.

I found painting with the acrylic brushes really enjoyable.   They work the way I want them to and I plan to spend a lot of time painting with those.  The airbrush tool offers a LOT more options than the Photoshop airbrush does, so I’m really looking forward to incorporating that into some fine detail work.

I pride myself on having a really good handle on the Photoshop brush engine but the Painter brush engine is a whole new animal.  I’m bracing myself for when I tackle that monster.  Taming that beast is an absolute necessity because designing and using my own brushes is a big part of how I paint.

So what do I think of Painter 12 after only using it a short time?  I think it’s an impressive piece of software that I have no idea how to use.  Now, had you asked me the same thing about Photoshop ten years ago, I would have given you the same answer.  They do share many of the same shortcut keys and tool options, like zooming, panning, layers and other functions, but there are other operations that are completely different and therein lies the challenge.

When talking about this on my Facebook page, I said, “It’s as if somebody came into the kitchen while I was cooking and moved everything to different cupboards and drawers, changed labels, and translated the recipes into foreign languages.  I can still cook, but there won’t be any finesse to it until I get used to the new layout.”

Just like anything worth doing, it’s going to take me time to become good with Painter, just as it took years to become good with Photoshop.   When it comes to painting, neither one of them is a ‘press this button, press that button’ piece of software.  Digital painting is an art medium all on its own.  If I were learning how to paint with oils, acrylics, watercolour, charcoal or any other traditional medium, the learning curve would be just as steep, if not more so.

I’m off to a good start, but I’m under no illusion that I’ll be doing any commission or gallery work in Painter anytime soon.  Probably a lot more of the type of painted sketch you see above for the next little while.  But I plan to keep at it, work through the frustration and practice as often as I can.

When it comes down to it, that’s the only way to create better art no matter what medium you’re using.

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Sketch Paintings

Meerkat

One of the things I noticed at the recent Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo is that many of the artists were selling books.  Some were elaborately done with high production values (and costs, I’m sure) while others were smaller and  produced on a budget, but still looked great.  I’ve mentioned before that the Expo was a great learning experience and I’m still processing all of it.  In addition to drawing and painting, I also enjoy writing a great deal.  I’ve even got a couple of novels on the shelf I wrote years ago that I wouldn’t mind taking down and doing a rewrite with fresh eyes and a little more experience.  One of them, anyway.

Sailing and fishing my personal creative ocean day to day, the idea of publishing a book that combines my artwork and writing is something that is never far below the surface of the water.  As time passes, the idea keeps growing larger, is circling more often, and it’s clear that I need to haul this in pretty soon or I’m going to need a bigger boat.

While this future publication is still just in the idea stage, I do know that it will likely focus on my animal artwork.  What I like most about the books I’ve bought by other artists is seeing the sketches and work that isn’t as polished and detailed.  Since the goal for the majority of my animal paintings has always been to produce finished pieces for clients or galleries, I don’t actually have a lot animal sketches and paintings that weren’t destined for print.  I figured I’d better make time to do more of that work since I don’t want a book that is devoid of variety.

Had I gone to art school or started drawing animals when I was younger, I might have stacks of sketchbooks of this stuff in storage, but before the late 90’s, all I ever did was doodle.  After that, it was mostly editorial cartoon work and nothing I’d want to share now.  This painting obsession didn’t really take hold until sometime in the last ten years, well into my 30’s.  What I’d like you to take from that is that it’s never too late to learn new things and do what you love.

Grouper

In an effort to create these additional sketches and paintings, there are some great side effects.  One, of course, is that it’s wonderful practice.  With no client to please, I can spend a half hour, an hour, two hours and just stop whenever I want.  For somebody as obsessive as I am, just being able to stop and leave it alone, knowing there is plenty of room for improvement is an accomplishment by itself.  Secondly, it’s like a palate cleanser, a reset button in between larger projects, very much like getting up and having a stretch.  Having just finished two cat portraits for clients and moving on to another Totem piece, the meerkat sketch I did yesterday afternoon was a way of leaving one painting behind and starting fresh on another.

Finally, these are a lot of fun.  Pouring rain that turned to snow yesterday, which can happen any time of year in the Canadian Rockies, gave me no motivation to go on my afternoon walk in the woods.  Bored of training videos after about an hour, I just decided to make some fresh coffee (unusual in the afternoon), crank the tunes in the headphones, find a reference photo from a recent trip to the zoo and start drawing.  Before I knew it, it was coming to life and I was really enjoying myself.  Yes, I have deadlines right now, a long list of work I need to get done that will take me well past the summer, but making the time to do sketches like these on a regular basis is proving to be very good for me, almost like I’m taking a mini-vacation.

Expect more of these whimsical, cartoony characters in the coming months.  Who knows, maybe I’ll even turn one or two of them into a Totem painting later.

Giraffe

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Commissions: Lion-O and Gaia

Liono

For anybody that reads my random ramblings here on the site, it’s pretty clear that my favorite work is painting animals.  Whether they’re my signature Totem style of whimsical caricatured portraits, or the more traditional portrait look, I’m having my most fun when working with furry or feathered critters.  Once in awhile, I’ll even paint one that hasn’t got either (see Humpback Whale).

One of the great surprises of recent months is that more and more people want me to paint their pets, and in both styles.  While the portrait style is just as enjoyable, it’s a little more of a challenge.  When I painted my Wolf or Bald Eagle Totems, nobody was holding up a reference photo of one they know really well and deciding if I got the likeness right.  While a tabby cat very often looks just like a tabby cat, there are specific markings and features that have to be right or it just isn’t YOUR tabby cat.  Just as failing to capture the likeness of a person will collapse a portrait, the same can be said for missing the personality or likeness of a cat or dog.  Their owner (family member, companion, staff) will know the difference, even with the Totem style.

This past week, I finished these two paintings of Lion-O and Gaia, in order that you see them.  Each has different markings, fur textures, bone structure and personalities, so they presented their own challenges.  But both live in the same household, so the paintings needed to look like they belonged together on the wall.  The clients had choices to make.  Separate paintings or both cats together in one?  Totem style or traditional portrait style?  They chose the former of both options and I’m pretty happy with how they turned out, as are they.

GaiaFB

These clients were VERY patient.  We’ve been talking about this for quite awhile and they decided to go ahead with the paintings in January.  As you can figure out, it’s now May, so these paintings have taken awhile to get finished, but thankfully they weren’t in any rush, which gave me free reign to do my best work.  Much of that time was back and forth finding the right photos and they certainly did their part, giving me a great variety to choose from.  But even still, with the preparation for the Calgary Expo last month, my daily editorial cartoon deadlines and other commitments, I spent most days wishing I was working on these paintings but otherwise occupied with other parts of my business.

While I’m always taking commission work, lately I’ve been telling people that rush jobs just aren’t possible right now.  I would not be as happy with these paintings had I barreled through them and I would imagine the clients would not have been as well.  Currently I have a number of other clients waiting their turn for commissions and I’m booked up until at least the Fall.  I’ll be getting back to work this week on the Coyote Totem I started earlier this year and beginning my prep for the next commission of a dog portrait, this time in traditional style.  More animal cartoons, sketches, and rough paintings are planned in addition to putting the focus on more Totems.  It was a genuine shock to me recently when I realized that I have not painted a new one this year, despite the fact that I’ve got six of them waiting to be done, reference photos and all.

If you are interested in a commission and are willing to wait your turn, I promise I will make it worth the wait by doing the best job I can for you.   Here’s a link to the information and if you have any questions, feel free to send me a message via the Contact page.

Here’s a little bit of how it’s done, too.

 

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The Space Between Us

ChrisHadfield

A couple of months ago, I finished the above painting of Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield just before he became Commander of the International Space Station.  Just painting the image was worth the effort because I really enjoyed it.  But then Commander Hadfield saw it in orbit, sent me a short message and re-tweeted the link to his followers on Twitter.  A tweet from space is quite a thrill and I’ve actually had the pleasure of receiving two of them, the second after I did the editorial cartoon you see below when he took command.  Had it all ended there, I would have been pleased enough.

HadfieldCommand

Shortly after Commander Hadfield retweeted the link to the painting, however, I got an email from Tim Gagnon, a graphic and portrait artist who lives next door to the Kennedy Space Center.  Since 2004, Tim has worked with five Space Shuttle and nine ISS Expedition crews helping design their mission patches.  Tim had some kind words to say about the portrait and then asked me for a little more information about the digital medium and how the painting was done.  I was happy to send him some video links that I’ve done for Wacom, some time-lapses of my paintings and I shared a little more information inviting him to ask any other questions.

Tim told me that he designed a special crew patch for Expedition 34 at the request of that mission’s Commander, United States astronaut Kevin Ford, and he told me he would like to send me one.  He said that it’s the first crew patch since Apollo XIII to have a motto.  The expeditions overlap, so that Hadfield arrived at the ISS on Expedition 34 and then when he took command, it became Expedition 35.  I was thrilled at the offer, thanked Tim for his generosity, and gave him my address.  In exchange, I sent Tim my training DVDs on digital cartooning and painting to give him more information on that medium.

Much to my surprise, when the package arrived, there was not only the embroidered Expedition 34 patch, but the 35 patch as well.  Tim also included a sticker of the Soyuz mission that took Hadfield’s expedition to space.  I’ve had the mission patches for awhile, but haven’t posted it on my site until now, at Tim’s request.  He was waiting until he had the go ahead from Kevin Ford, who arrived safely back on Earth on March 16th.

Patches

Something many of us take for granted these days is the incredible level of connection we are privileged to enjoy.  Multiple daily tweets from space are exciting enough, but the simple fact that an instant message can be sent from one side of the globe to the other is truly amazing, or at least would be 100 years ago.  What I find so incredible is that a painting I did for my own enjoyment went to orbit, was sent back to Earth, was noticed by another artist in Florida and now I have these very special mementos of the experience here in my hands, keepsakes that I will enjoy for many years to come.  We really do live in an extraordinary time and we shouldn’t forget that.  It also shows just how small our world really is.

An interesting side note that I found amusing is that Tim’s grandparents were Canadian.

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Gathering Reference

    DSC_0534 I always look forward to visiting the animals at the Calgary Zoo. While it’s true that I can easily justify spending two or three hours at the zoo to take photo reference, it always feels like I’m getting away with something, because it never feels like work. Almost like I might as well be slacking off to go see a movie.  If I lived in Calgary, I’d spend a lot more time at the zoo, I’m sure, but the drive there and back takes just under three hours in good traffic, so I usually try to combine it with errands that are bringing me to the city anyway.  Fortunately, yesterday’s errand was a meeting AT the zoo, which was pretty convenient.  Or planned.  I’ll never tell.

DSC_0537

Yesterday, I took a few hundred photos and ended up with about ten that I wanted to keep. The beauty of a digital camera is that you can just keep shooting and sort them all out later, knowing full well that the vast majority will end up in the trash. I usually try not to have an agenda, so I make the rounds knowing that the best photos will be the ones where the animals are cooperating.

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It was a hot day, so the lions, tigers and bears (oh, my!) and other large animals were either hiding in the shade or just being lazy and lethargic in the sunshine. Who can blame them? So, weather does factor into it.  One Totem I really want to paint in the future is a red panda, and even though they were out and active enough, and I took a lot of photos, none of them were good. Same situation with a few of the other animals I was after. Bad angles, bad light, bad photographer.

But I did manage to get a few that I like, including the ones you see here. While none of them are good enough to be the prime reference for a finished painting, I plan to be doing a lot of sketching and painting studies in the future and these will do just fine for those. It is my plan that before too long, I’ll be able to create a book of my animal work, which means I’ll need to draw and paint a lot more of it.

Any excuse to go to the zoo.

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Poster Prints at the Calgary Zoo!

Poster

When it comes to this business of art, there is no manual.  Most of us are just winging it, making corrections each time a mistake or miscalculation knocks us off course.  Most of the time, it’s not some big disaster, it’s just evaluating the results from throwing stuff at a wall to see what would stick.

Last year, the Calgary Zoo started selling my matted Totem prints, the same ones that were sold at Two Wolves in Canmore and are currently in About Canada in Banff.  The prints did well at the other two venues and also sell well in my own online store.  The zoo, however, is a little different because their retail store is not a gallery, but a gift shop that complements the destination, so to sell matted prints at $44 in this venue was an experiment.  While they did sell, they weren’t exactly flying off the shelves.

Regular readers will know that I recently had a booth at The Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo.  In addition to the matted prints I normally stock, I also introduced a poster print.  Not a gallery quality giclée, but still an excellent quality print with a white border.  Hand signed, with backer board, in a plastic sleeve just like the matted prints, the price point is lower which allows for people who want to buy a print but aren’t looking to have the full matted and professionally framed look and expense.  They sold well at the Expo and also in an online sale I had recently on this site.  But since I ordered far too many for the Expo, I thought I might see if the Calgary Zoo was interested in giving them a shot, so I requested a meeting, which I drove in for this morning.

I’m happy to say that they were very well received and now all ten Totems that were printed for the Expo are now available as poster prints at the Calgary Zoo.   With fingers crossed for this eventuality, I had brought full inventory of each print with me today instead of just one sample, so these should be available right away.  The poster prints will retail for $25.00 each, so if you were one of the lucky ones who took advantage of the recent sale or bought at the Expo, you got a great deal on them.  Here’s hoping they do well at the Zoo and they ask me to restock their supply soon.

The matted prints will still be available online and at About Canada on Banff Avenue.

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Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo 2013

Banner

Only a few days left before I haul this banner and everything else into Calgary to set up my booth.  Having been to the Calgary Expo as a ticket-buying attendee a couple of times, including during last year’s ‘if something could go wrong, it did,” event, this will be my first year as an exhibitor.  With a mixture of paranoia and excitement, I’ve spent the last four or five months obsessing about every last detail, trying to anticipate anything and everything that could go wrong and preparing for it.  As the scorpion said to the frog, “It’s simply my nature.”

You could pretty much divide my career into two professions.  I’m a cartoonist, editorial and otherwise, but I’m also a digital painter.  While they both rely on the same artistic skills and the styles do intermingle, they’re actually quite distinctive in their differences.  As a cartoonist, I create and sell daily editorial cartoons and do custom cartoon style illustrations for clients.  As a painter, I create my Totem artwork, those whimsical funny looking animals that are printed and sold online, in galleries, retail outlets and licensed on T-shirts through The Mountain.  I also regularly paint commissions of pets for people.  They’re almost two different businesses.  And while the learned experts would say that an artist or business should focus on one thing and be good at that, they’re both large parts of how I make my living.  I enjoy them both equally, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, I’m good at both and would have a hard time letting one of them go.

For the Expo, however, the two styles don’t belong together in the same booth.  So for this event, I am a digital painter first and foremost and this is the work I’ll be selling.  If the animals I painted were in the realistic style of Robert Bateman, this venue might not be the right choice to sell my work, but because of the nature of my Totems, their caricature look that borders on the fringes of other artistic styles, I think this will be a good fit.  There are a lot of people looking to buy art at this event and I’m optimistic that mine will generate some interest with this crowd.  The fact that my Eagle Totem made it into the Calgary Expo Art Book this year would seem to support that theory.

Giclee

A survey this year of those folks who follow me on my Facebook page revealed my Top Ten Totems and I’ve been busy ordering, signing, assembling, and pricing the three types of prints I’ll be offering when the Expo kicks off on Friday.  There are 11″X14″ Poster prints, the quality you would expect to find in a book or on a poster (funny how that works).  I’m also offering 11″X14″ matted giclée prints.  These are exceptional quality, printed on high end paper with archival ink and materials.  These are the prints I regularly sell in galleries, the ones in the above image.  And finally, 12″X16″ giclée stretched limited edition canvas prints, complete with certificates of authenticity, gallery quality as well.  A couple of 18″X24″ framed canvas prints will be also be available.

OstrichWhen planning this booth, I went back and forth on which items to offer, how much of each image to print, how much stock to bring, what prices to assign to each, and what retail hardware and support equipment to buy as well.  I could end up bringing home a lot of prints, or selling out too early and have nothing to offer on the last day.  Both would be undesirable, although to be honest,  selling out wouldn’t be so bad.  There are so many variables to consider the first year and I’ve come to the conclusion that ‘best guess’ is the final say on almost every decision made.  I’ve had friends give me advice based on their experience, I’ve read articles online, in books, and magazines, but in the end, it will come down to not how somebody else has done at this sort of event, but whether or not my images will sell at this venue.  The only way to know that is to put my best foot forward, then wait and see.  Of course, having a very supportive wife who is taking a couple of days off to work the booth with me does make it a lot easier.  Fail or succeed, at least I’m not doing this alone.  She’s even going to wear an Ostrich Totem shirt.

I’ve always done well in my career by taking risks, especially ones that make me nervous and require me to stick my neck out.  The financial investment for this venture has been significant because I can’t bring myself to do anything half-assed.  If I’m going to take a shot, I need to be proud of the effort, win or lose.  I’ve spent the money, I’ve got more inventory in my possession right now than I’ve ever had, and now I just have to show up and put on a smile.

The Expo sold out of tickets a couple of weeks ago, and 60,000 people are expected to show up between Friday and Sunday.  It’s going to be a zoo, but also a lot of fun.  Some of the most interesting people you could ever want to meet will be invading the BMO Centre in Calgary this weekend, a number of them in costume.  This time next week, I’ll be exhausted, but it’ll be worth it.

If you’ve got tickets, you can find me in the Small Press section, Booth R 08.  See you there!

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Remembering Ralph

This week will see a lot of tributes to former Alberta Premier Ralph Klein, who passed away on Friday, March 29th.  He’d been a television reporter and radio personality for a good chunk of his career, the Mayor of Calgary from 1980-89, and in provincial politics from 1989-2006, the large majority of that time as the Premier.  Many Albertans just called him Ralph, a testament to his ‘man of the people’ persona.  He was loved and despised, depending on who you were talking to.

As an editorial cartoonist, I liked Ralph a lot.  He was fun to draw, was never boring, and I knew I’d miss him when he retired in 2006.  One thing about Ralph, you always knew where he stood.  Unlike so many politicians who will waffle on their ideals depending on the latest public opinion polls, you knew what you were getting with Ralph, even if you didn’t always like it.  He was human and he made unpopular decisions sometimes.  He also screwed up.  But the difference with Ralph was that when you called him on it, he’d either argue his point, tell you to get over it, or in some cases, even apologize.  There wasn’t a lot of bullshit with Ralph.

Like many Albertans, I have fond memories of Ralph Klein.  He did a lot for this province.  If you want specifics, just do a Google search.  You’ll find no shortage of anecdotes and stories about King Ralph this week.  One of my favorite personal stories took place right around his retirement.  Knowing his resignation was coming and having already thought about the cartoon I’d do, this is what I came up with.

2006Toon

Under the guise of the ‘official portrait’ I tried to include as many of the controversies and noteworthy events from Ralph’s career as I could.  There were his days socializing at the St. Louis Hotel in Calgary (written on the glass in his hand), the famous “shoot, shovel and shut-up” comment as well as the one about eastern “bums and creeps” straining Calgary resources.  In his pocket, the $400 Prosperity Bonus cheques he gave to every Albertan after the provincial debt had been paid off.

The cartoon appeared in the Calgary Herald and a number of other newspapers.  Shortly after, I received an email from someone who wanted a framed print of it, minus the ‘official portrait’ post-it note.  I had removed that feature from the image when I’d added it to my portfolio.  Two more print orders followed.  Sometime the next month, Klein was honored at Mount Royal College in Calgary and a day later, I opened the Calgary Herald to see the photo below.  Much to my surprise, one of the framed prints had been a retirement gift for Ralph.  I ordered a copy of the photo for my office.  Forgive me that I no longer remember the name of the Herald photographer who captured the scanned image below.

Ralph

I look at the caricature now and I see all of the flaws.  As I am a better artist today than I was then, there are a lot of things I would have changed and done better with this image, but every artist looking back on anything they’ve done could say the same thing of prior work.  So, I try to look past that.  It’s a good memory of moments in my career, both the time spent painting the caricature and knowing that Ralph was given a copy while he was still in good health.  This is how I’d like to remember him and I’m glad I ordered the photo.

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So you’re thinking about commissioning a pet portrait…

Don Diego

Last May, I posted a blog entry which outlined all of the details of commissioning a portrait of a pet.  I’ve found that so many people are reluctant to ask about pricing for fear that it will be too high and they’ll be embarrassed about having to say, “I can’t afford that right now.”  On the other side of that coin, so many artists are afraid of revealing their prices because they fear that it will turn people off or that other artists will adopt their rates and practices.  That’s a lot of fear going around for no reason.

To address the first part, I’d love to have an office full of Drew Struzan originals, but I can’t afford the $100,000+ that each one of those costs.  There’s no shame in that.  Many years ago, Drew himself had little money, but now, people are willing to pay that amount for his work.  And there’s only one original.  To address the second part, I decided to post my rates for commissions because time is money.  I don’t want to waste my time playing negotiating games only to find out the client isn’t willing to go ahead just yet.  I also don’t want to make it awkward for potential clients or waste their time, either.   As for copying rates, I can freely admit that this came about because I recently saw another artist’s pet portrait commission work and was asked for advice by a friend of hers about pricing.  Her work was stunning and I thought, “yes, she deserves to charge that fee.”  Then again, so do I and I never want to be seen as the cheaper alternative.  I ended up learning more from her.  And because our styles and mediums are very different, I wouldn’t consider her competition.

Also, I’ve become very busy lately.  I’m currently working on three different commissions, with one pending.  In addition to my editorial cartoon and illustration work, I’ve kind of swamped.  In the art world, that often signals that it’s time to raise the rates, so I’m doing that.  With my upcoming booth at the Calgary Expo, I expect even more pet portrait commission inquiries and I want to be prepared in advance of that.  In the interest of pulling back the curtain,  I posted some standard commission information in May and it has worked very well.  Having something to link to for client inquiries saves everybody a lot of time.

This short post is a segue to that post, one that outlines what I need in order to allow me to deliver the best possible portrait I can, and the prices have been updated.  All rates currently quoted to existing clients or ones who’ve already made recent inquiries still stand.  Here’s the link to the NEW pet portrait commission post.