Tag: A Wilder View

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A New Bear for a New Book

I’m happy to reveal this new painting of Berkley, a bear near and dear to my heart who lives at Discovery Wildlife Park in Innisfail.

I hadn’t planned on painting another bear so soon, as I have commissions I’m desperately trying to get completed, but the book needed the right cover, and the right cover needed a new bear.

After years of delays, procrastination, and perfectionism, my first book is well underway.

My publisher, Alexander, owner of Renegade Arts Entertainment here in Canmore, first started talking with me about a book ten years ago. Leaving out the details and roadblocks along the way, all of which were self-created, I finally got tired of my own B.S. excuses.

I usually see Alexander at Expo each year, as he’s always there with several of his authors, and he brought up the book again this spring. I admitted that I figured he was probably tired of hearing me say, “soon, I just have to…”

But he was his typical gracious self and told me it would happen when it happened.

So I decided it was happening now.

We went for lunch the following week and agreed on some immediate deadlines, including a full book mockup and the marketing material he’d need to begin promoting it on his side of things.

Most pressing of all, he needed a cover.

I tried several existing paintings in the mockups, but none of them seemed right. Eventually, I realized I needed to paint a new bear for the cover of my bear book.

My friend Serena at Discovery Wildlife Park helped me gather some new Berkley reference, because she’s the only bear I wanted on the cover. Fortune favoured me, and I got the shots I needed earlier last month.

As my work is all about personality and connecting with character, I had to think like a customer, and that meant a closeup of her face for the cover. The full painting, however, will appear inside the book, and I’ll have prints available before too long.

Now that this is out there, there’s no turning back.

The book will be an 8X10 softcover, around 70–80 pages. I still have a few pieces to complete, along with additional sketches I want to add. There’s also some writing and editing to do before this fall, when all of this needs to be finished.

You’ll read more about the project in the coming months, and I’m excited, and more than a little relieved, that this is finally a real thing.

Alexander knows the importance of the Calgary Expo in my world and volunteered last week that he’s planning to have advance copies available for my Expo people in April, ahead of the official book launch on May 12, 2027.

There’s still a lot of work left to do, but I’ll manage. Scary stuff, in the best possible way.

Cheers,
Patrick

 

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Believing Those Who Believe in Me

Even though it’s exactly what I asked for, it’s still one of the hardest things to accept.

Most of the year, it’s just me in my office. Drawing cartoons. Painting wildlife. Wrestling with video software. Digging around for licensing leads. Sending cold emails to marketing departments already drowning in submissions. I know damn well that the first round (second, third, fourth) won’t get a response.

I try to game the subject lines, choose the right images, write the right words. Not too short, not too long, not identical to the last ten pitches they skimmed before clicking delete.

Rejection is part of the job. Silence is even more common. You don’t know if anyone even opened the email, so you drop a reminder in the calendar and move on until the alert pops up months later telling you to try again.

I write posts like this one, see the subscriber numbers, take some comfort that I have a very good open rate. Comments are rare, but emails trickle in after each edition of A Wilder View. It’s a slow burn, just enough air and heat to keep the embers alive.
Then I show up at the Banff Christmas Market or Calgary Expo, and suddenly the whole thing flips. Real people in real time. Compliments, conversations, connection, an inferno compared to the barely glowing coals of my daily grind. I never feel ready for it, and part of me is looking for a fire extinguisher in case I can’t keep up.

I see familiar faces. People who come back year after year, or just stop by to say hello. The other day, two people I recognized walked up while I was inviting someone to subscribe to A Wilder View. One of them jumped in to say she should sign up because she enjoys the emails as much as the artwork. That meant a lot. And they were carrying the Otter tote bag they bought at Expo earlier this year.

It was great to see you again, Sydney and Craig. Thanks for sticking with me.

I never quite get used to seeing the same people returning for more. Gregg, who first followed my work from Regina and now lives in Canmore, still buying calendars for himself and his adult kids. La and Brandon, who sent me a photo earlier this year of my Otter tote bag sitting with them on the banks of the Seine. Sally in Australia, who often places her sizeable order in the fall, and I cross my fingers it arrives for Christmas (got there in plenty of time this year). And new people like Marianne, who practically emptied one of my tabletop print bins last Friday so she could take prints, coasters and tote bags back to Louisiana.

In the first draft of this post, I listed dozens of names, people I now know because they’ve allowed me to make a living doing this. But it read like a conference roster, and the more I wrote, the more I worried about who I’d forgotten.

As my email list grows and more of you discover my art each year, I can’t remember everyone’s name, and it honestly bothers me if I have to ask you again when I see you. I worry it’ll look like I don’t appreciate the support, even though several of you waved that off over the past couple of weeks, saying nobody expects me to remember every name.

But I’d sure like to.

So, I hope I’ve made it clear, in person and here, how much I appreciate that so many of you spend your hard-earned money on my funny-looking animals. I’m glad they make you happy, or at least give you a smile when things feel heavy.

Because you do that for me.

Cheers,
Patrick