The Golden Tooney!

I can't believe I forgot to blog about this! My apologies for being stupidly out of touch lately! Back in May I attended the Cartoonists Northwest Tooney Awards. Cartoonists Northwest is a cartoonists group based in Seattle that has been around for more than 30 years! It includes many really wonderful artists and comics creators from all around this area and although I have only been a member for a few years now, I've known about them and have been friends with many of its membership for a decade or more!

Every year they honor individuals amongst the membership rolls for their work during the previous year and this year I was nominated for an award for the first time! Someone nominated my "14 Doctors" Doctor Who caricature piece in the illustration category. I was very excited when I actually won the award at the banquet! But I was further and VERY surprised a bit later when they announced me as the winner of the Golden Tooney Award, which is sort of the "Artist of the Year" award! I was really honored and just really happy! I get to join the ranks of past winners like Phil Foglio (who was present to MC the gathering), Mark Monlux, Donna Barr, Roberta Gregory...well, the list is a long and amazing one! It's a lot to live up to.

I'm just going to post a couple of the pics taken at the event and the "14 Doctors" piece that got the nod in the first place! And I just want to say thank you again to everyone at Cartoonists Northwest for giving me a truly memorable, wonderful day!

Summer Caricature Events!

This past weekend I did an outdoor festival called Covington Days, working for the Covington Arts Commission. It was a lot of fun and very busy! I ended up doing over 127 caricatures over the two day event! Before that, I had done a couple of other outdoor events that I worked, so I thought I should show a few pieces from each one to keep my little blog here up to date! One was the Taste of Tacome, a fairly huge outdoor festival right in my neighborhood...well, near it anyway. The other was in Blaine--QUITE a long drive from Tacoma since it's basically on the Candian border! My navigation software started using "meters", but it was still using feet. So it would say something was 100 meter away, when really it was only 100 feet away. That wasn't confusing at all... Anyway, it was a great event because it was for the Puppy Rescue Mission, uniting soldiers with dogs saved from the war-torn areas of the world where they had been abandoned. So, drew lotsa dogs! Anyway, here are some samples!

Covington Days



Taste of Tacoma



Puppy Rescue Mission



There have been a few indoor events recently as well, but I'm trying to keep to a theme. LOL This is how I spent MY "summer vacation", Teacher! (OK, I literally just turned 54...I don't get summer vacations anymore. *sigh*)

See you next time!