Everyone has Monsters.

They’re those voices in your head that whisper discouragement and negativity, those stucknesses and blocks and fears that keep us from moving forward. I’ve got a few of my own, and I bet you do, too.

The little guy on the left there is one of my Monsters — he just wants to be friends, but his big scary teeth can get in the way of safe snuggling. Still, having seen him out in the light, I know he doesn’t really mean any harm.

The brilliant Havi Brooks has an awesome-looking new product in the works: The Monster Manual and Coloring Book*. And I really, really want it! But it’s tax time and money is tight, so I’m doing a limited-edition offering to help fund my own Monster adventures:

Draw Your Monster

We’ve all got our Monsters, real and imaginary. Do you have lurking fears that you’d like to bring out into the light? Is your dog sometimes a wicked creature? Do you just really want a cartoon of a cute monster?

I’ve got you covered!

For $59, you, too, can have your very own Monster — I’ll even mail you the original, or a high-quality print if we end up going digital.

What I’ll need to get started:

• A snail mail address for your original monster to be mailed to you.
• To talk about your Monster! If you’ve already got a vision of your Monster, great! If not, we can email back & forth until we have a clear idea of your Monster’s form. Questions to start with:
  • Fuzzy? Lizardy? Bat-winged? Multi-eyed? Insectoid? Tentacley? Fog? Wall? Creeping Black Void?
  • Is your Monster growling, hiding, making puppy eyes? Sheltering, blocking, posing nonchalantly?
  • Color preferences?
• Generally speaking, I will decide the medium (ie, pen and ink, watercolor, whatever) based on the special needs of your Monster.

I’ve temporarily reopened commissions for these — if you’d like one, just buy my Be a Cartoon package and let me know you want a Monster instead.

*Not an affiliate link so there nyeah.

Dance of Shiva Cards

First, I’m excited to see a project that took me a long time and a lot of painstaking work finally get off the ground. Frank Mitchell made a set of Dance of Shiva reference cards, and he hired me to illustrate the 8 arm positions in 64 combinations. I also made the results press-ready for him, so all he had to do was approve the images and then sit back while I sent it all to press (and pay the bills, heh). There was a card back and box art, and while I haven’t seen them in person yet, I’m crazy excited.

Cartoons

It’s been a week of getting back to cartooning, and I finally finished up most of the pending projects I had.

Elizabeth Halt asked me to draw her and her gorgeous puppy, Atlas:

And then my friend Rey wanted to be immortalized as a Weeble:

And finally, I drew up one of my Monsters (a la Havi Brooks), to show that he’s really a friendly, wee chap that’s worried for me:

Beach Cottage

Finally, I’ve got a sneak peek for you at the header for Cottage Copy‘s new look, an original watercolor including the Cottage Copy Spaniel and Holly’s dream beach cottage:

(Click to see it in all its full-size glory)

The actual title of the class is “Stuff Havi thinks you should know about how to get really really great testimonials and referrals,” but that’s a little long for a blog post.

I took this class when it was live, many months ago, and have just recently been reminded of how great the info in it is, so I thought I’d do a review. I’m doing “Other People Tuesdays” on the blog as an experiment, alternating guest posts with reviews.

Back to Havi’s awesome class. First of all, if you’re at all familiar with Havi, you’ll know that she’s a big fan of making things as easy on everyone involved as possible, and her advice about referrals and testimonials is no different. She gives you several ways to get both, too, that work in different situations; I won’t give them away here, but I’ve used all of them to great effect.

Actually, I used the full suite of Testimonial Techniques just recently, when I was gathering people’s reactions to being Cartoonified for my portfolio. A couple of people sent me great testimonials when they got their cartoons, and it started me thinking that I’d like one to go with each of the images on the page. I began to despair, thinking of how hard it can be to get even people who otherwise love and adore you to write up something like this, and then instead of giving in to that feeling, I went and looked over my notes from this class.

If you click the link above, you’ll see that each one has a unique testimonial that fits neatly in the little box. I couldn’t have done that without the info in this class.

Havi’s advice is also brilliant for helping you get past that initial gulp of fear and into the ease of asking, too.

The Twitter version of my review of Havi’s class: The stuff in this class works, if you remember to use it.

PS – If you do go buy the class, Havi’s given permission for me to give away the secret:
Selma is her diva of a duck and business partner (she has her own wardrobe of fan scarves). Stu is her voice-to-text program who delights in tormenting her with really entertaining misunderstandings. Either one of these bits of info will get you $100 off the class, so don’t forget to use them!