Things I am thankful for

I have attached an image of a Thanksgiving card I am preparing to send out to friends and family. Everyone who reads my blog (all five of you) will be receiving a card from me. If anyone else is reading this and would like to receive a card please just send me a comment with your name and home address!

This is an image I have wanted to create into a card for several years. Over the years I have filled several sketch books with doodles in which I planned out this card. The sketches have never worked to my satisfaction and I always question myself and ask, "Does anyone actually send out Thanksgiving cards?" Each year Thanksgiving has passed me by making all of this moot. Happily, this year I managed to find one day to get all of the drawing done. Now I just need a few evenings to paint the white details.

The Thanksgiving Parade in New York was one of those things that I LONGED to attend when I lived in Chicago. Now as a New Yorker I just try to keep it in mind and avoid Times Square and Broadway on Thanksgiving. Often it is very cold and the street is always packed like a sardine can. One has to admire the Radio City Rockettes. Rain or shine they show up every year wrapped in short little fur coats and hats, but only wearing nylons and tap shoes. I'd have thought they'd have learned from the previous years and said, "Hey ladies, how about we wear pants this year?"

The card above is a scratch board illustration of the Dakota on Central Park West and 72nd in New York. This is the famous building where John Lennon and Yoko lived and where Mia Farrow as Rosemary cried out, "His eyes! What have you done to his eyes!?"

The large balloons in front of the building are stand-ins for the cartoon characters who float down the parade each year. I expected to run into legal trouble from The Networks if I put in Sponge Bob or Kermit so here is Nicky the Simple Squirrel, Georgie the Over-Indulgent Turkey, and Wilhelm the Aggressive Penguin. (All the names come from a non-fiction book I'm reading on the lead up to World War I.)

Later this week I will be posting some of these cards onto my Etsy site. Please check them out there along with some of my other work. I am thankful and proud to say that I have sold two items off of Etsy. The two images of the vegetables below were sold and will soon be hanging in someone else's kitchen.

Stationary Show at the Javits

Today I took a trip to visit a friend of mine at the Jacob Javits Center on the West Side in New York City. She was in town representing her company for the Annual Stationary Show. This show is always a great way to see what is new in the stationary, paper, greeting card, and gift wrap business. She suggested that I should bring my portfolio to show to other business owners. I put something together quickly. Once I arrived I realized that I had essentially brought a "knife to a gun fight". (...A very New York Metaphor!)

The Javits Center seemed like several football fields end to end with miles and miles of booths showing beautiful cards, artwork, and gifts. I was over stimulated to a point on par with a walk through Times Square or the Strip in Vegas. (When I told my friend I was overwhelmed she asked "But can you ever be just 'Whelmed'?")

After several hours walking through this environment (which felt larger than some American cities I have visited) I had a collection of promotional material from companies I admire, business cards from companies I would like to submit my work to, and a small mountain of promotional crap that was forced upon me by over eager vendors. Some very nice vendors agreed to look over my portfolio and I left my email address for a few company owners. I do not seriously expect to hear anything from them but my field trip today gave me a MUCH clearer sense of what is being created and bought in this market.

Along with this post I have uploaded an illustration I created of the south east corner of Central Park. This bridge is one of my favorite spots in Manhattan. It appears in the movie "Sweet Charity" and is even mentioned at the end of Orson Well's broadcast of the "War of the Worlds". The building to the right is the Plaza Hotel. I might go back and add a few layers of color to this illustration in the near future.