This was the first mailer I sent out showcasing the new ‘digital’ artwork that I had been working with over the past year. I don’t remember the exact date these went out, but they were an 8 page folded color booklet, with a heavy card stock outer cover, die cut with a window that let part of the illustration peek through, and then I also got an embossing tool and would punch ‘Tim Foley Illustration’ into the cover so that there were faint raised letters under the die cut window. These covers were printed with contact information and the address to my website (my website was still hosted through AOL at this point, and had a ridiculously long and hard to remember address). I don’t remember how many of these we sent out, but they were probably one of the fanciest mailers I ever put together (and was probably the least effective — I tend to stick to plain old postcards these days).
My 2nd full year at Digital Illustration, and I’m starting to settle down my styles a bit, but with still a great deal of experimental dead ends, and missteps. My color calibration skills left me with a lot of work that seemed extra ‘pale’ on the color spectrum this year, but otherwise, the technical end of improving my ‘scratchboard’ techniques and especially my cartoon skills were growing by leaps and bounds during this year and the next.
Gemini Publications, 1999
Most of my regular clients whom I had been working with the past ten years began using my services at a much more frequent rate, and new clients were coming on board with regularity. I continued doing several book projects for Instructional Fair this year (each with their own separate blog posting), plus did a few full color children’s books under that company’s “Rollicking Rhymes” imprint. I also continued doing ‘Mystery Portraits’ for Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine (oddly enough, I seemed to be on a hiatus for a few years from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine while I worked with this competitor, but they would return the following year). Newsday, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Legal Times and Gemini Publications all kept me quite busy, and I was still doing quite a bit of work for my evangelical clients around this time, although it was starting to decline just a little bit (maybe I was starting to feel like I could afford to pick and choose my assignments).
In the latter half of the year, I began getting work from what would soon prove to be my biggest client over the next 15 years, The Wall Street Journal. I started out doing small scratchboard spot illustrations, but the assignments would grow in complexity and style as the years went on. A lot of ‘bulls and bears’ as I would often quip to friends.
Wall Street Journal, 1999
Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine, 1999
Newsday, 1999
Strang Communications, 1999 (a rare return to the ‘pastel style’)
Chronicle of Higher Education, 1999
Life Drawing Class, charcoal and conte crayon, 1999
