The Calendar and the Pomeranian

I ordered my Zazzle calendar today. It printed up great. In this picture I look insane because my wife insisted on taking a thousand smiling pictures and then a thousand not-smiling pictures.

Al Fresco Art Club Update: On the other hand, I was completely sane when I drew and painted this non-Pomeranian at the Al Fresco Art Club yesterday. I’ve drawn and painted a thousand Pomeranians and no two of them look alike, or like a Pomeranian. That’s the kind of talent I’m talking about — my talent for imperfection.

Al Fresco Art Club, December 8, 2019 -- The Zazzle Calendar Challenge

Today’s Al Fresco Art Club Day posed a unique challenge: create a calendar as a product for sale on Zazzle.com. The idea is that real artists sell their art, one way or another. I decided to create a calendar of my Deadbeat Club pen and ink drawings.

It took the entire day to scan about 30 images at 600 dpi, import them into Photoshop for a little cleanup, and then select 14 images out of the bunch for the cover, back, and 12 months. To keep the cleanup simple, I decided to go with pen and ink drawings. Many of the images I converted to 4-bit bitmap images to minimize the file size. The calendar is available at Doukatmerch on Zazzle.com. Check it out here.

Here’s an example of my pen and ink drawings.