2012: Year of the Commission

In 2011, I did three commissions. In the whole year. In the first two weeks of 2012, I've done four. I get the feeling this year is going to have quite a bit more steam.
(Forgive me, these aren't all Celtic work. I take the commissions as they come.)

This first thing was a character sketch commission that a friend asked me to do for another friend of his as a gift. The guy's Witchblade character. A paladin for a something-or-other god.
This second is a tattoo design for an old high school teacher of mine, combining three of his things: Metallica, WWII, and Batman. (My high school teacher is a dork, but a very cool one.)
This was a bookmark that a friend from college wanted to give as a gift to her boyfriend, another old friend. The Ogham writing in the middle reads "DRH" for David's initials. He actually requested the bookmark, which is pretty exciting. I've never had that happen before. It's acrylics and metallic acrylics on parchment, and laminated.
And finally, a revision of the personal logo for Jared (aka "Sablehawk") including the shield with the tree that he's using for his website. My impression is that he'll be using this as his avatar on a gaming site he's setting up.

Recent Commissions

When you're a freelance artist and art isn't your main professional pursuit, work can be kind of sparse. I have gotten a couple of commission recently though, and they've been fun to work on.

In backwards order, because I have more pictures of the second:

This first set of designs was done for a guy named Jared. He's looking to start a craft business making Viking-style drinking horns, and he wanted to be able to brand both a personal design and a business logo on each horn. His family crest animal is a Northern Goshawk, so he wanted something that would reflect that tradition. These were what we came up with:
Somewhat earlier in the year, I was contacted by a young woman on DeviantART who wanted to commission a tattoo design for her friends. They wanted to get matching tattoos of Celtic wings on their backs, and had seen this design elsewhere:
...but they wanted something a little more traditional Celtic-looking. And for my part (no offense meant to the original artist), I would never ever allow a friend to get anything that looked this sloppy tattooed on their skin.
...I guess that did sound a little offensive. Sorry, anonymous other artist.

Anyway, I came up with the design piece-by-piece:

And finished with the whole thing together.

(By the way, if your interested in using this design or anything like it, contact me first, and I'll put you in touch with the person who commissioned it. Same goes for the logos up above.)