Two commissions and a massive project

My time these days is taken up sunrise to sunset. I am finished with one commission and getting close to finishing another. These come rarely and only when I'm busy and all at the same time. I had to turn down two others this year because even I know my limit.

Here's a peek at one of the  illustrations for a publisher of Kipling books:

I thought it turned out kind of cool. It's tough for me to make something "look like a woodcut" without actually cutting it but the scope of the commission just didn't allow for that kind of time investment. So I started the way I usually start, with a real subject, in this case a pine cone.

After a photo session with my pine cone, I imported into Photoshop and applied some filters until I was satisfied with a very lightly rendered image. Then I just traced it with a brush as if I was cutting it with my chisels. A bit time consuming, but the result is very woodcut like, perhaps more like a wood engraving and it has my "hand" style deeply embedded in it. Or so I think, anyway, it actually looks like I drew it and carved it.

Spring is here and I'm getting a bad case of spring fever. But more work is to be done.