wicca

Catching Up

Llewellyn, The Strand Magazine

A few moments to spare this afternoon, so I’ll post a few more samples from the past month. Above and below (in fact, all the black and white scratchboard pieces in this post) are from the annual ‘Witches Companion’ project that I’ve been doing for Llewellyn Publications for the past 8 or so years. (the color cover illustration I usually do in the fall of the year, and the interior illustrations are shared among several illustrators and tend to be due in January or February). This year I had a rather large batch of them (17 of them), but only a few of them were full page size.

This past weekend I had a few fiction pieces for The Strand Magazine (pictured below).

days 87-90 (end of the challenge)

Baker Book House, Llewellyn, Newsday

Day Eighty Seven


Today’s illustration was a quick turnaround assignment for Newsday that I did on Friday afternoon for the Sunday paper. This story was on ‘cyber terrorism threats’.

Day Eighty Eight


Finishing up the ‘funny animals’ for Baker this weekend. Next, I’ll be working on a complicated ‘what’s wrong’ picture for Highlights back cover assignment. Stay tuned.

Day Eighty Nine


I haven’t yet gotten the go-ahead on the Highlights job, so I began work on the ‘Witch’ book cover. Here’s a few sneak peeks at a couple of the elements while it is ‘in progress’.

Day Ninety (end of challenge recap)


Today’s illustration is a cover assignment for Llewellyn Publishing. I’ve been doing these for the past 5 years or so (click on the ‘Llewellyn’ category above to find the other covers). I also saved another version of the ‘roses’ on the cover that will be used as a back cover wraparound element (pictured below). You can see a larger version of the illustration above by clicking on the image.

Well, Ninety days later (and only took me 113 days to complete, once you factored in all the ‘days off’ I gave myself). I started this ‘drawing a day challenge’ back in June as a way of distracting myself from the horribly slow sales year I’ve been experiencing, and as a way to motivate myself to work outside the box, and to draw something every day regardless of whether or not I had an actual paying assignment. I have to say it was a positive experience overall. I found myself experimenting more, and then found myself actually using the new skills that I picked up in ‘extracurricular’ work and utilizing them in assignments. Work has picked up slightly in the three months that I’ve been doing this, which is a trend I hope continues, and I may just repeat this experiment again next year, should circumstances allow.