Back To Work

Wow, it's been nearly two months since I last posted! I'd feel guilty about that, if I didn't have good reason. Many of you know that my wife Traci is in the battle of her life, fighting metastatic melanoma. Stage 4. Sucks. Truly. However, she's a battler, and although the odds are stacked, she and I are maintaining a positive attitude. She's mostly stable for now, and stable in this type of cancer is a good thing. We continue to fight, hope, pray, whatever works.

Immediately following the New York Comic-Con, Traci was admitted to the hospital for a scheduled treatment. I won't go into the details, but it was to be a very intense and difficult one, and she was scheduled to be there for 5 days. Unfortunately, there were some major complications, and it was very dicey for a while. She wound up being in the hospital for a total of 13 days, and nearly 4 of them were spent in the Medical Intensive Care Unit. You can imagine how scary that was. Once she was released, it was a long road back to relative good health. She's still working on it, actually, so I've been heavily involved with my family for the better part of the past two months. Work has been a low priority, and in fact, I haven't even thought about it much since January. Taking care of my wife and son has been my full time job, of late.

However, before all of that, I did have a few projects that I completed, and it's my intention to show them here in the next few weeks. Also, I plan to gear up for a new work push beginning next week. As my wife is recovering, I'm trying to get back to my normal routine, as much as I can. So hopefully (or tragically, depending on your point of view!), you'll be hearing more from me again on a regular basis.

So, to get the ball rolling, here is an illustration I recently completed:



It's the second assignment I've had from WWE Kids Magazine, and as with the first, working on it was an absolute pleasure. The Art Director I work with there is fantastic, and I hope to continue working with him. Anyway, the gist is that it's a quiz, and the kids are supposed to guess who the wrestlers are, based on their boots. I thought it was kind of a funny thing, with the bathroom stalls, and the interesting designs. It was certainly a challenge to not only get each of the designs for the boots down, but to make them all distinctive, as well as recognizable. No easy feat (no pun intended) when so many of them are black! The issue is on the stands now. For more info, you can check the WWE website, here.

One other note: I've sold a number of my illustration prints, but I still have quite a few available, if you're interested. Just scroll down to the post below this one for pictures of what's available, as well as for details, and info about how you can order. As a bonus, just to show me you're a loyal reader, if you contact me with the subject line, "Print Sale," I'll give you my convention deal pricing, plus shipping! Have to pay for those medical bills somehow! I will be creating a specific section of my website soon, where all of my for sale items will be available, but for now, I'm doing this the low-tech way. Contacting me from my website via email is the best way to do this right now, so please bear with me, as I get everything set up. Thanks.

I'll be back soon with more art. I hope you'll be here with me!

Best,
Rich