Today’s Heifer International fundraising watercolor is a literary hare!
Writing her memoirs, no doubt! An entire chapter is dedicated to yesterday’s fox and what a doofus he is. Also what sell-outs bunnies are.
This one sold instantly (wow dang), but there will be more on the way this week! If you have a request for a particularly fun animal you’d like to see me do, post it in comments and I’ll throw it into the hat.
And, just to start keeping records, Animals For Animals has now raised $80. That’s enough for four rabbits or half of a llama!
People have started asking if I’ll produce prints of the animals for sale. The answer is yes, but I want to encourage sales of originals before I start selling reproductions (although I would like for proceeds from print sales to go to Heifer as well).
Stay tuned!
Every year I try to make a Christmas donation to my favorite charity – Heifer International, a wonderful organization that purchases animals (from bees to buffalo)as well as veterinary care and training for impoverished families the world over. (Read more on their site.)
This year it’s a bit harder for me to donate than usual, since I’ve made the transition to being a self-supporting artist. Many of the friends with whom I used to go in on an animal purchase are in the same financial situation.
It seemed to me that this was an opportunity – for me to make things, for you to purchase something lasting, and for a family in the larger world to benefit from it! For the month of December, I will be creating and then selling watercolor paintings of animals (as often as I can manage!). When I finish, I’ll count up what’s been raised and then buy the most animal possible!
My offering today: an enemy of many of the animals Heifer sponsors, a fox! Little does he realize that his dastardly deeds will ultimately be doing good.
This craft fellow is on sale at Etsy for $40. It is a lovely little painting, and I will guarantee arrival by mail to any part of the world in time for Christmas, and that it will be packaged fancy-like.
Hey hey hey, guess what I got sixteen boxes of in the mail today? If you guessed it was sixteen boxes of the second printing of Bite Me!, then you win!
As an extra “thank you” to everybody who ordered while the book was reprinting, trusting all the while that I was not going to run off to Cabo with their hard-earned $15, I’m including a nifty print I whipped up just for the occasion. I promised “Claire and Lucien bein’ silly”, and lo, hopefully this qualifies:
Oh, those crazy kids. Two peas in a pod, really. A dead, bloodsucking pod.
It will be a delightful 6×10.5 inches so I can slip it into your book order all handy-like. If I have any left over, I’ll put the extras online next week for those who might be interested.
Hm, I wish I had a little more time to fidget around with this one, but a rampant cold, a sudden and violent rush on Grammar Nerd stickers, and preparing for APE got in the way. But regardless, this page is a change of pace even from all the pace-changing that’s been happening of late. So close to the end of the chapter, guys! Sooooo cloooooooose.
APE! You’ve heard all this before, but just in case you missed it – I’ll be at Table 440 with Kate Beaton l’infame. Topatoco have carefully delineated where we will be on this handy map. Thanks, lads! Bless them and their ways.
I’ll be there all weekend, with the last thirty or so copies of the first printing of Bite Me! (plus special deals for those who pre-order the 2nd printing) and all kindsa merchandise and original art and also I will do sketches for a low low price until my hands fall off. I also have work up at the Cartoon Art Museum.
This is my last convention of the year thank goodness, and it looks to be a very fun one. I’ll see some of you there!
WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK. Unless you live in one of those European countries where you regularly see ads on the sides of pharmacies that are more explicit than this.
No page next week because I will be at the Small Press Expo this weekend! I’ll be hunkering down at the table of Carol “Klio” Burrell of SPQR Blues excellence. Look for her in the program and come sample our exciting historical fiction wares.
Among the wares I’ll be selling is this new 7×10 print, which you can click to see at full size:
Other than the page prints, this is the first bit of genuine Family Man merchandise I’ve created. I hope to have more such things this year while (my agent and) I determine how I’ll be making Volume One, aka Chapters 1 & 2, available in print.
I’ll see some of you in Maryland! And the rest of you, in the virtual funny papers.