3 Hog Night - Update

A while back I created a T-shirt design for Lake Country Neighbors, a community group in Emory Texas for their annual food bank fundraiser. I sent off the design, got copies of the T-shirts back and then waited. For months. The shirts were done so far in advance that I almost forgot about it except that the shirt made it into my son's favorite shirt rotation. I kept looking at the date , realizing the event had not happened yet until last week when I realized that it was THE week. Well. I got this note from Pam Bowden who coordinated the event (at least my involvement in it). I asked how things went and here are excerpts from her reply.

my pigs as cutouts on stage at the event

It was a success!  We made over $8300 for our food pantries.  In a small town like Emory, that was quite a feat!  It's more than any pig roast we've done to date... Your t-shirts were everywhere and we made Styrofoam pigs for the stage that looked like the pigs on the shirt.  As I said before, this is our favorite pig to date.

Lake Country Ladies rockin' the pig shirts

Also, it contained this bit of bad news:

Our fund raiser could not have come at a better time.  The weekend before our event, someone broke in to the fenced area where the Good Samaritan's trailer was stored and stole it along with a lot of other items.  This is the trailer we use to go to the East Texas Food Bank and pick up the food for our local pantry.  This was the second time it has been stolen in less than a year.  It seems the harder we try to make things better around here, there's always someone ready to take it one step backward.  Needless to say, some of this money will go to a chip to put in the trailer.  At least next time we'll be able to find it and hopefully prosecute some thieves.

Really? Stealing the trailer from the Good Samaritan? I hope they catch these goons. Regardless, it is always nice to be able to lend a little help to such a worthy cause. I was happy to have contributed to the success of this event and the possibility is open to have a piggie shirt sequel next year.  HAMlet anyone?

Anyone wanting to donate or see how else they might support the Lake Country Neighbors, a worthy cause in east Texas- click here

5x5 Invitational

I have been invited to participate in a fundraising event for the new Westmont Museum of Art in Santa Barbara California. Each participating artist was asked to create something on a 5" x 5" piece of  Rives BFK paper and return it for the show. The piece could be a doodle or a more involved creation. All pieces are to be auctioned off to raise funds for the museum. Deadlines are looming, so I didn't feel I had time to do a full blown painting, but this was a nice warm up to the day. I decided on a little freehand version of my Devil-Fish and colored it a bit with Prismacolor pencils. The exhibit will open on November 30, 2011.

Get the full blown  Devil-Fish demo here.
  

Letter to Santa

Pip's Letter to Santa - Acrylic on wooden snowflake, 6" x 6"

The flickering glow of the lantern gives off just enough light for Pip to dash off an urgent letter to Santa. The barnyard is in CHAOS! Can Santa please send some peace for Christmas. That's how my book "The Barnyard Night Before Christmas " begins. This week's Illustration Friday theme is "mail". A couple of years ago I was asked to participate in a charity auction to benefit the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. It was called Robert's Snow and was named after illustrator Grace Lin's husband Robert Mercer. At the time of it's inception, Robert was in the midst of his battle against cancer, which sadly, he lost. Each artist was given a wooden snowflake to paint in any way they chose. I based mine on the opening spread for my book where lead character Pip the mouse writes his Christmas wish to Santa. The snowflakes were approximately 6" across. They were all auctioned off online and the proceeds went for cancer research, which was close to my heart, having lost my own father to cancer during the creation of "Barnyard".

Buy "The Barnyard Night Before Christmas" here

Quick Draw Result

Steampunk Anglerfish Spaceship- Acrylic and metal leaf, 11" x 10"

As I mentioned last week, I participated in a fund raiser auction at the Reagan Academy in Springville, Utah last Friday night. About a dozen artists gathered to create a piece of art in a roughly two hour time frame (many thanks to artist Julie Olson for these photos). The art was then auctioned off at the end of the event. I cheated a bit and did my under painting of this Steampunk spaceship beforehand as well as creating a distressed faux leaf textured border. This one fits in with previous pieces I have done using this technique.  It's always a bit stressful to "perform" on such a time line, but I enjoy these demo sorts of events.

Me "faux" painting- I was already done by the time this was shot.

Usually I don't have to worry about it being finished at the end of the time, so I found myself working quickly to make sure that all areas of the picture maintained an equal level of "finish. I think this is good advice and a worthy challenge. I have heard it said by many artists that you should approach your work in such a way that you could stop at any moment and the picture would look "finished". In other words, don't overwork any part of the piece at the expense of another. I found myself analyzing what strokes would best describe the effect I was trying to achieve. I would have preferred another few hours, but time ran out quickly. Given more time, I would go back in and strengthen the transitions between light and shadow and make the lighting more dramatic, but hey, I had two hours. I took an extra ten minutes or so as the auction got underway to put on a few highlights and a signature and then it was sold to the highest bidder. Last year the auction raised about $8000 for the school.

Steampunk Space Race

I am doing a quick draw fundraiser this Friday at the Reagan Academy Art and Basket Auction in Springville, Utah. I will have approximately two and a half hours to paint something that will then be auctioned off.Last year I did a version of a catfish, but this year I thought I'd do something with a Steampunk aesthetic. If you aren't familiar with Steampunk, it is an alternative reality interpretation of science fiction where technology never advances beyond steam power. Of course there are still all the versions of things we have now, such as vehicles and devices but just steam powered. It is a really fun look to play around with because of all the brass fittings, leather, rivets and other textures. I pulled out this drawing I had tucked away from an earlier project that was never used and figured it was time to dust it off and finish it. I'll probably do just one of the ships on Friday and complete the full paining later. I will be selling other cards and signed children's books as well, if you are in the area, drop by The event runs from 6-9 pm on Friday November 19th. The address is 1143 West Center Street in Springville.

Snow? Really?

"Pip's Letter to Santa" - 6" x 6"-acrylic on wooden snowflake

OK, so it was May 24th yesterday and I woke up to snowflakes- giant snowflakes which didn't stop until we had three inches of the fluffy stuff on the ground. What cruel trick to play on all of us who have had tomato plants  in the ground for over a week now. It was the record latest measurable snowfall ever at the airport (they seem to like to measure snow at the airport- go figure) Anyway, seeing all those flakes made me remember another snowflake that I  did for a charity fundraiser called Robert's Snow. A bunch of artists were all given 6" blank wooden snowflakes to paint or decorate and the flakes were all auctioned off to raise money for cancer research. My flake was in memory of my father who had just passed after his own battle with cancer and I based it on one of the characters from my Christmas book The Barnyard Night Before Christmas. By the way, the snow was all gone by afternoon and I hope I don't see any more in my yard before November.