Art agent and marketing guru extraordinaire, Jane Frank, the proprietor of Wow-Art, has been actively selling my older work for the past year and I’m very satisfied with our partnership. Ms. Frank will be at the 2024 Windy City Convention and will have a number of my artworks there, including the rest of my Llewellyn 2013 Zodiac Calendar art in her display booth.
Llewellyn’s Astro-Cal is one of those projects that many young fantasy illustrators seek to do at some point and it was a real delight to work with them. I really enjoyed interpreting the astrological canon of the signs— although my feminist lens caused me to erm…veer off a little too much from what was expected. So I had to completely redraw a handful of them.
Libra’s idea and design passed to the final stage but Scorpio’s rough sketch was radically transformed….
Scorpio sketch #2. A little more Mucha x Frazetta, perhaps?
The final art for Scorpio. ( And what the heck is a scorpion doing in a watery cave? Probably begging for a ride to the desert, that’s what.)
Ahhhhh, that’s better. I call this one, Spelunker. Let a girl have a knife. Hey, this one’s also available for sale at www.wow-art.com.
The project was ultimately quite enjoyable and as always, I learned a few things about myself in the process. It was around this time I noticed that the calendar’s art was trending to hard digital realism. My days to work in oils for freelance publications were numbered; the industry’s shorter turnaround times favored those working digitally. Pixels don’t need drying time and time is money. Such is the way of things… it’s logical that a technology as widespread as the internet would so radically change the way artists (and everybody) create work. Soon after this project, I’d learn to “paint” in Photoshop with a digital tablet for all of my publishing work (including a graphic novel). I’d be content to luxuriate in oils as a fine artist.
Leo, sold at the recent Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention, 2024.
Pisces, also sold at the WCCon.
Taurus.
Gemini. The buyer liked the quirkiness and the parrots.
In the meantime, you can go to Wow-Art and see the rest of these.