So here's the final Christmas card. Jeremy likes it, so I feel I've done my job. Yay!

Now I've been told that I should just show what I'm doing without telling the story behind so I'm considering doing just that. I haven't figured out what I'm going to do, so if any body (meaning the very few people that read this blog) has thoughts, then let me know. Should I keep it personal or should I be professional with this blog (while starting a new and improved personal blog). So let me know and I'll take any suggestions that I get.

So it's a small entry today, we'll see what happens in the future.

New Project! Yay!

Ok. Story time...

As you all have figured out by now I still have a day job. Maybe one day I can do this for a living but until that day, the grind goes on. One day, a customer of mine (who knew I was illustrating a book) asked if I could do a Christmas Card for him. At the moment I was still doing the book, but I said as soon as I was done I would do it.

Now a little history about Jeremy's card (Jeremy, of course being the before mentioned customer)...

Jeremy has this friend Lenny
Every year Jeremy has a Christmas card in which we Photoshops Lenny's face onto some hilarious Christmas image. So Jeremy asks me if I could draw a Christmas card where a bunch of elves with Lenny's face are wrapping liqueur bottles and the like. I say ok, and now here we are.

I'm not going to say that I'm really good at caricatures but I've done a few in my day. The challenge here was to make it funny but also not insult Lenny. I do like what I do but I'm not a big fan of getting my ass kicked.

So I worked for a little while and came up with a couple of different versions....
I went with a combination between the middle two. The one on the left I tried the style from the old Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer stop motion special we all know and love. But I figured that since I'm not actually making the character and taking a picture of it, the humor would be lost. The one on the right is not what I was wanting at all. That is why I went with the mixture of the middle two.

Next time we'll see what I can do with what I have so far....

The End?

Sorry again about the lack of updates. Again there wasn't much to say about things that I couldn't show. But I'm not here for excuses, so on with the story about the book I illustrated...

I'm done. Yay!

THE END....?!?

Ok. I'll give you more detail.

First, let's flash back to Election night...

Jill (one of the authors) wanted to get together and figure out how large each of the drawing were going to be, so we decided to meet up on Tuesday the 4th of November. I had completely forgotten about the possibility of history being made that night along with the fact that I live in Chicago and could have gone to Grant Park to see Obama's acceptance speech. On the night of the meeting I had realized what day it was and wanted to reschedule but this is a job so I bit the bullet and did what needed to get done.

So I went to Jill's house and we all (Me, Jill and Billy) discussed each illustration and the size they should be when I inked them. Luckily she had election coverage on so I didn't feel bad about not canceling. Nothing to exciting happened during that meeting, we just went over everything that I had done and things that I still needed to do (changes, etc.). After we were done we all just sat around her T.V. watching the outcome of the election.

The next couple weeks went by and I inked what needed to ink and changed what needed to change. And this brings us to Friday the 22nd....

I had finished all the inking that needed to be done and Jill and I went through them all trying to figure out where they belonged. We also printed them out so that she could write notes about where the drawing would go and we would discuss any needed changes. After the meeting there was a few more changes that needed to be made, nothing too difficult.

I spent that weekend finishing everything up. When finished I burned them to a CD and gave Jill the CD when she dropped by my day job.

Last week I heard back from Jill. The editor loved the pictures, which is the main thing that I was worried about. So when I heard that a lot of stress that I was feeling evaporated instantly. So now I'm all done with my first major project of my new career as a free-lance artist.

But that's not it for this blog. I'm working on a Christmas card now and after that I have a tattoo that I'm doing for a friend. So there is more that I can talk about, and probably have more to say since I can now show the process on how I got from point A to point B a lot more in depth. Unfortunately with the book I wasn't able to show anything to you guys but with these other projects I have that freedom. So tomorrow I'm going to talk about the Christmas Card and show you some of the sketches and the story behind the card.

Ok guys. Talk to you later.