Salamander!

It's here!  Two of my paintings are on the front and back covers of the latest issue of Salamander, a national literary magazine published out of Suffolk University.  I've only read two of the short stories in this issue so far, but man are they good.  I even gasped with emotion at the end of Siobhan Fallon's Waiting.  

I'm continuing to enhance my illustration portfolio.  This is a book jacket cover that I'm making for a story I made up.  I've actually only made up parts of it, but they're the most exciting bits.  

I was really liking this painting until I mucked up the background on Friday and killed some of the magic.  So I ended up restarting the piece.  My goal is to adapt my fine art style to illustration work, while maintaining the uniqueness of that style and working efficiently.  The stuff that I was doing to the background ran counter to all of that.  But the process helped me to pinpoint and better articulate those goals.  So I've restarted in a way that I think will work better.  In the meantime, here's a close-up of the mucked up version: