The ongoing ‘Dad Health Drama’ continues for a third straight month, now complicated by the fact that he is now living in Cleveland at my sister’s house (a six hour drive from Grand Rapids), and oddly enough, business now chooses this time to pick up speed, and I’m busier than I’ve been at any point this year. I’ve not had much time to post here or on my Tumblr site for the past week or so, but I’m going to try and get current as best I can today. I’ve been working on yet another book project that I can’t share samples of here due to contractual obligations, which has been keeping me fairly occupied on a daily basis (due date for this group of 80 some illustrations is early December, after which I’ll be taking a long overdue short vacation for my 30th wedding anniversary). In the meantime, I’ve also been doing quite a few projects with shorter deadlines for some old established clients, and a few new ones as well. Above was a fiction illustration for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine which I did last week, and below is an illustration for the Chronicle of Higher Education, that I did this morning.

For a new client, over this past week, I’ve done a series of 10 illustrations (mostly portraits, but with a few ‘organizations’ thrown in as well), and since it was titled a ‘Rogue’s Gallery’, I attempted to emulate the look and feel of old mug shot photos.

Another new client dropped in my lap on the same day, and I did a christmas card design for them (pictured below, and click on the small image for a larger detailed version), which spread across a three fold layout, printed with silver ink on a blue card stock (unusual, in that I actually supplied them an inverted negative image to print, since they were using a light ink on dark background).

Also, last week, I did an unusual ‘outer space’ scene for US Catholic, an illustration for the Wall Street Journal on soaring bond values, and one for Barrons on Central and South American investing (all pictured below).