Huh! And here we are. Fifteen
Will any of us be employed this time next year? Will there be any need or want for art and artists in a
I will get back to making art; you should probably do the same. If you ever have any questions about my work, this blog is the best place to direct them.
That is all for another exciting week on the blog. See you back here on Monday! Until then...
Somehow, this is my 2000th post here on the blog. I haven't been paying attention, and I was shocked last week when I realized today would make post 2000. While I am not sure I imagined doing this blog this long, once I begin something, I generally stick with it. And so we find ours here today. To honor this achievement, here is a photo of where I make my art these days, my studio.
Hitting the 2000th post made me think about when I hit the 1000th post in 2015. It took me February 2009 till April 2015 to hit 1000 posts and April 2015 to July 2023 to hit 2000 posts. That is roughly 137 posts a year for fourteen and a half years. Not too shabby! To see how things have changed, here is the image of my workspace back in 2015. As you can see, I have definitely upgraded!
As a side note, I was looking carefully at what was on my workstation in 2015, and I could see that I was working on the Concussion Rifle piece that I did for the Star Wars card game. Fun memories of being paid very little for a LOT of work. Concussion Rifle painting is one of the few pieces of art I have made for a client that I decided to keep. There are a few Easter eggs in there and some personal connections, so in the end, I could not part with it.
Here is a list of the number of posts that I published each year. Please note that 2023 is not accurate as I took this screen shot prior to a number of posts going live. You can see that my posts have dwindled a bit over the years, starting with 2018. This is because I began stepping away from freelance work and focusing on the Grand Bazaar. I didn't have a constant stream of client art to share and post about. Also, as the year ticked by, I have found myself with less and less time available for big posts about complicated topics - though I plan to continue those as often as possible. I have one or two planned for the near future. I am not sure anyone finds this stuff interesting, but I sure do. And I appreciate everyone that continues to visit the blog - it means the world to me!
Do not forget that this week is Gen Con! I will be away at that and will not post again until next week. If you are attending Gen Con or are in the Indianapolis area, I would love to see you at booth 16 in the Gen Con Art Show! That is all for my 2000th post; I wonder how long it will be till I hit 3000!
That is all for another exciting Monday on the blog. See you back here after Gen Con! Until then...
Yesterday, fourteen years ago, on February 17th, 2009, I started this blog to chronicle my journey as a monster artist. My journey had already begun, of course. 2023 marks my twenty-fourth year of being a professional artist making monsters. In nearly a quarter of a century, I have checked a lot of goals off my list, but some still remain. The remaining ones may never get checked off, but that is okay. I have done so much more than I ever imagined possible. The creation of The Grand Bazaar of Ethra VanDalia has more than made up any dreams to work on a specific product line or with a particular artist. It has been a crazy journey, and I have shared nearly all of it on this blog. The ups, downs, successes, and most definitely the failures have been recorded and documented here to help others and to hopefully shed some light on the realities of being a working artist.
Next year will be a big one for me, but there is plenty that I need and want to do before I can think about that. I hope you are enjoying the ride. It has been a labor of love to keep this going and posting as regularly as possible. I imagine there will be some lean times ahead, especially as book two gets closer to completion, but that is a few years out. I have some more meaty posts planned, and they will be along when I can make the time to write them. Thank you all for hanging around and digging through the archives of posts. And as always, if you would like me to speak about a particular topic or talk about something specific in a blog post, all you need to do is leave a comment on the blog or reach out to me on social media.
That is all the time I have today. I must get back to making art!
That is all for a surprise Saturday post on the blog. See you back here on Monday! Until then...
Thirteen years ago, on February 17th, 2009, I started this blog to chronicle my journey as a monster artist. Today's post makes my 1986th post on the blog, and we are just shy of 2000 posts. Somehow, after all these years, I still find myself needing to post here. Social media has so many other avenues to scream into the void, but yet I still try to post here as often as possible. While it sometimes happens these days, I beleive that the days of posting three times away are gone. I am not creating the volume of work that is needed for that. Well, that is not fully accurate. I am making art, but that art is for me, for my books, and takes a bit longer to make then what I make for clients. I will spend a month making a single piece that will mean a single blog post. I would need something for another eleven posts to fill out a month the way I used to.
Thank you one and all for all the support and incouragement and for sticking around all these years to following me on my journy. I hope I have been able to make in an enjoyable one for you and that I have offered up something halfway informative. Looking forward to another years here. I am sure there will be some interesting things to share a long the way.
That's all of anthere exciting Wednesday on the blog. See you back here next week after Pensacon. Until then...
A year ago this week, my shipment of The Grand Bazaar of Ethra VanDalia arrived. Two massive stacks of books were on a truck and finally at the end of their long journey from China. It was the end of one chapter and the start of the next. It was a shining moment in an otherwise dark time last year as the global pandemic raged. It has been a year, and some things are different, and others are very much the same. The pandemic still rages because of human failings, but the book has slowly gotten out into the world. Not in the way that I imagined it would at the beginning of 2020 when the Kickstarter launched. I still haven't participated in any in-person conventions or events since February 2020, but with IX only a month and a half away, maybe I can be in the same place with my books and showing them to people finally. To celebrate the first anniversary, I did a new photoshoot with the book.
Here are some of the images from last year of the books arriving. It was touch and go for a moment as they were unloaded, but the driver knew his palette jack and truck and got them on the ground in one piece.
Here are more images from the new photoshoot for the book. The previous images were fine, but I knew they could be better. I had been kicking this job down the road for a while due to deadlines and life, but it finally all came together. Will these be the last time I take pictures of these books? No. There will always be more.
Lastly, I have a new video featuring a look at the inside of the book. A little sneak
That's all for another exciting week on the blog. See you back here next week! Until then...
Twelve years ago, on February 17th, 2009, I started this blog to chronicle my journey as a monster artist. Today's post makes my 1729th post on the blog, and to be honest, I am not sure how I managed to get to this point. Twelve years ago, I was rebuilding my career after it crashed following four years of reliable and consistent work. A couple of things happened all at once. First, most of the art directors I worked with were fired, quit, or moved to other endeavors. Second, the projects I had been working on came to an end, changed their production structure, or were outright canceled. Third, my skillset was not where it needed to be to work on the projects still avialable.
I considered calling it a day and moving onto other work opportunities. The four years of work were terrific, I had never expected to do as much as I had done, and I still was surprised to find myself working in the tabletop gaming industry. Instead of abandoning what I had grown to love, I decided to double down, focus on my skillsets, look for new and varied work opportunities within the industry. What acquired from that point until now has all been documented here on the blog. All the ups, the downs, the successes, and most of the failures - there are a couple of those still to share, but NDAs stand in the way.
In these twelve years, I went from a desperately eager artist that would take any and all jobs at horrifyingly low pay rates to some guy that says 'no' way more than 'yes,' has worked on all the projects he had dreamed of of working on. I somehow wrote, illustrated, funded, and published a book that was over twenty years in the making, and I have started on the next two books.
It's all here, more or less in these 1729 posts, all my secrets, processes, and mistakes. For what it's worth. I would like to think there is content here that can help others and help those making their way in the art industries, but there is a lot to dig through, and it is all through my personal lens. I know that a lot of this is a way for me to process the journey and a form of self-promotion, but one can hope that even a single piece of my yammering could be helpful.
I realized I never posted one of these past few years, which is fitting for 2020. The past few years were rough on the blog. I had little time and even less work to share here as I focused on completing my book and then the pandemic, but I made an effort to get things going again here. I do not know what the future holds for the blog. Maybe I say this every year, but as client work slows and I focus on my books, there are fewer and fewer immediate events to share. Perhaps I will use the blog as a way to share things beyond myslef and as a way to encourage myself to make sure I have new work, or at least process posts, to share regularly.
Who knows where we will be in Feburary 2022, but if this blog is still chugging along, I will see you here.
That's all for another exciting Wednesday on the blog. See you back here on Friday! Until then...
306 pencils!
Used pencil jar. This jar contains nearly all the pencils I have used up since mid 2005 when I started working for Wizards of the Coast. Even I don't know how many are in here (yet, I will be counting them for this contest).
A selection of prints, a sketchbook, and a selection of miniature that I designed!
A closer look at the loot!
Owen's monster, RAWR!
