This weeks work 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 Q, R, S and T. Here’s my abecedarian poem to go with these letters and artwork :

Quinn qualifies for the fun race

Rico really likes outer space

Sailor stares right at the thumb

Toodles tries bites of the plum

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

I did portraits of a turtle, butterfly, goldfish and an iguana.

While I was rereading Aesop I was also thinking about possible characters for the letter Q. So Quinn is a turtle who is a foot race enthusiast.

My portrait of Rico was inspired by the expression “the butterfly effect” which, roughly, is about how we are not alone in this world and our actions, however small, affects others. Also in my mind as I painted was the idea that we are literally made of stardust, that chemically humans are no different than the rest of the natural world. We are all interrelated.

While I was reading inspirational quotes and etc spirit-lifters I read, again, this quote from Albert Einstein “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing itself to be stupid”. So here’s Sailor whose name reflects his true abilities.

Long ago on a planet far far away (or so it seems now) I worked as a biological illustrator. One of the many animals I shared an office with was an iguana. Often I would bring food scraps from home to share with my animal office mates. The iguana seemed particularly happy when I brought fruit. So Toodles is portrayed as enjoying a plum and possibly plotting to get more.

Like my first series “Alphapets” this artwork, too, is 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 details of my creative process here in my Monday blog posts.

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