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Hello, again. Where to begin? Well, we can re-cap the last post with a screnshot of the Dolly Parton portrait on SFWeekly.com:

For now, I was very lucky to have found a bit of a time-passer this week. One night ( I think it was Monday), I was tired and bored so I was looking at our bookshelf for something to read. I remembered I had printed out PDFs of some art books years ago that I had only flipped through. I grabbed one titled "Creative Illustration" by Andrew Loomis and gave myself a bit of a re-fresher. Awesome. So much good stuff in that book and I'm only finished with Chapter 1. Its a goldmone of info, and you can't buy it at Borders or Barnes & Noble as its out of print (from like the 1940s). I have a couple Loomis books that I printed out years ago. ANYWAY, this brings me to my point: I happened across TWO Loomis books in an old shop called "Beacon Reads" along with what looks to be a pretty awesome book on pen-and- ink and another on cartooning and illustration:

Hello, all!

Today marks the three month anniversary of chris-whetzel.blogspot.com! Hooray! We're doing it! The goal is to keep this blog going strong for a whole year. I won't lie; its pretty tedious and often gets put on the back-burner, but its definitely keeping me working.

So whats new since the last post? Well, chris-whetzel.com is newly updated with two distinct portfolios. New images have been added to both portfolios as well as the News section being updated. The new Graphic vs. Linear division of artwork had paid off as it seems to help art directors. This became apparent after getting an email from the art director at SF Weekly where he requested a portrait in the "graphic style." Wonderful!

This portrait was to go with a music article on Dolly Parton who has started her own recording lable and will be performong in LA on the 5th. It was an interesting read, and the art director wanted me to specifically work from the excerpt "the biggest, brightest Dolly she can be." Sadly, since the commission was for an alt-weekly, the budget wasn't as high as I had hoped. But I really wanted to do a celebrity for the portfolio so I took the job after some negotiations. The lone sketch was approved:

So, yeah. A fun piece, a really easy-going art director, and a good addition to the portfolio. A three-pointer! *Swish!

The only bad thing was that this commission came through the day AFTER I had just sent my promo card files to the printer. Drat! This would have made a better one than my choice of the Crisis Magazine image a few posts back. Especially if I had colored it. Ah, well. Speaking of the cards, they just arrived. And I have to say: I am losing my patience with overnightprints.com. Many of the cards were off-center on multiple sides and text was right on the edge of a few even though I had stayed within the "safe area." Grrr. Its really frustrating and luckily I was able to trim some down and still use them. But really, its just more incentive to try the USPS print-and-mail service. Think thats gonna be the way I go for the Halloween mailer.

Another thing I'm considering for the future is using AdBase. We all know how awesome it is and I'm considering subscribing to that as opposed to the ispot. I can only do one right now, and I really can't decide. Decision, decisions. Hopefully, whichever I choose will fund the other. I think I'm going to wait for a bit as my list is freshly updated, and I should be fine for a spell. I want to see the response to this next mailer before I do anything. Don't want to spend money I don't have :)

And that's that. It promotion and drawing this week! Oh, and I'm still working in the spare time between jobs. Its a little harder with Aliyah being home all day, but I must be strong! That, and I'm just getting over a cold from last week so its been twice as hard to get cracking. Nonetheless, I managed to get out another "linear" piece for the site at the last week. Sorry I waited so long to post it:

I like it. The piece is for a community pork cook-off and fair, one of the options given to me to illustrate from Cleveland SCENE way back in May. Its nice to work in full-color as well as limited color. I think one makes the other better. And I think its a good subject to add to the portfolio as its not a typical theme.

All this with web updates, building a small site for my personal drawings, and re-building/updating Aliyah's site has kept me busy. It seems there is always something to do, even though there's nothing to do in this town :) Let's hope the mailer going out tomorrow brings in more work to occupy my time as well. Fingers are crossed!

Enjoy the Day and thanks for reading!
Chris

Check out the Graphic Arts Federation. (I'm typing this while wearing one contact and leaving the other one out.) I've been going around all day this way..needless to say, feeling very disoriented.
A tip....never sleep with your contacts in your eyes. I forgot to take mine out two nights ago and have been suffering the results in my left eye. extremely painful and a bit dangerous. My eye is finally beginning to clear up, but at my age, this has not been a joke. I hope tomorrow brings a clear view, and no pain.