WORD!

I’m finally feeling like I’m getting things done, probably because I AM! The To-Do list is finally getting shorter (I never thought that would happen), and I sent out my newsletter on Tuesday. (Sign up now!) I wanted to give my mailing list first dibs on pre-purchasing signed copies of my books and giving them first crack at the big discount on the limited edition copies. Everyone gets a bit more than two weeks at the pre-sale price, which is a $100 savings. Lots of bang for your buck, as they say. But there was one piece of news I had to leave out of the newsletter that I will announce now.

UPDATE: I guess I should’ve also mentioned that the signed trade copies that are available for pre-sale on the Desert Dog Books website are for the same low price as Amazon with free shipping. Those of you that received the newsletter would have known that.

I had to keep it under wraps until it was officially announced, or I would have tooted my shofar since I’m pretty thrilled about it. I was awarded the Bruce Geller Memorial Prize WORD Grant for Shrapnel in the San Fernando Valley. This is an amazing honor and it still hasn’t really sunk in yet. This award is a project of the American Jewish University’s Institute for Jewish Creativity which supports artists living and working in Los Angeles. The funding for my project is one of nine awards given out for 2019. Pretty awesome!

Also, I’m going to be doing a blog book tour. I don’t have all the blogs booked yet, but check on my blog tour page in the coming days/weeks to see what’s happening.

Now I’m putting the colored pencil drawings inside all the editioned books. It’s the same drawing (of a cake stand?) that varies every time I draw it. I wanted it to be pretty consistent since the watercolors are already completely different in every single book.

All the pattern drawings are done. Maybe I didn’t mention that yet, since I finished them last Friday and took them to Jeff Kies, my framer (who is also an artist). He’s framing 15 little pieces. I have one oil painting to go, and as of 5:00 a.m. I was able to finish up the first 10 of the book drawings. The above isn’t really finished. They get slightly more detailed, but not by much. With everything else going on, I can do about four a day. I still have to go back to sign and letter them though.

Oh yeah…I was informed by Craig that I gave out the wrong RSVP number for the gallery in my newsletter. I gave out the fax number. Gah! I will remedy that in the show announcement when I send that out around the 1st, but the gallery number is (310) 828-6410. Sorry about that!

The oil painting is loosely sketched out onto the canvas and roughly looks like this (but don’t ask!):