Continuing progress on Alphapets Too my sequel to Alphapets by Clancy at the request of my fans and Storyberries – the publisher/distribution house I’ve been working with! (See my last post for details)

The Alphapets Too pet portrait project this week is brought to you by the letters E, F, G and H. Here’s my abecedarian poem to go with these letters and artwork :

Eddie elects just when to pounce

Floyd finds words hard to pronounce

Gilda greets most days with joy

Hammy has one favorite toy

Here’s the artwork (somewhere on each piece is an alphabetical letter):

I did portraits of a ferret, a galah cockatoo, a chinchilla and a hamster.

When I was in college, to make extra money, I did house and pet sitting for people going on vacation. One of my clients had 2 ferrets. They loved to romp and play with each other and with me. Plotting when to strategically pounce seemed a big part of the games. This experience was in my mind as I painted Eddie

Cockatoos can talk and can be trained to do it well. So as I painted Floyd I wondered if any of the birds found certain words or certain sounds more difficult than others. I’d imagine words beginning with the letter f would be hard to say with a beak.

After college I worked as a biological illustrator. I shared an office with a chinchilla and other animals. When I would insert my key to unlock the office door the chinchilla would make excited noises. We had a routine in which we would talk with each other as I made coffee then I would let the chinchilla out of her cage and would sit and comb her for a few minutes. Then I’d make her breakfast, put her back in her cage, feed the other animals and get to work. This joyful start to a day was on my mind while creating this portrait of Gilda.

I’ve not known a hamster so it was fun to research them. They’re much smaller than a chinchilla. And toys, chew blocks, are must have items for a happy hamster. So I imagined Hammy content with a favorite toy.

Like my original Alphapets this artwork, too, was created with ink, gouache and color pencil. I do these portraits on board, size 3.5 x 2.5 inches. The original art will be framed…eventually … and be a miniature art exhibit at the Aurora Gallery.

I will also be making an artist book titled Alphapets Too – in a format like “Alphapets by Clancy”. You can see print and ebook versions of “Alphapets” by clicking here.

And when I get it all done “Alphapets Too” will be available on Storyberries.com (Btw: there are two different stories by me currently on Storyberries.com- search the site by my name)

You can follow my progress during the week on my Instagram pages and see the juicy details of my creative process here in my Monday blog posts.

Thanks again for your support and encouragement as I work on this project!