A sacrifice to the porcelain throne.

As I mentioned in my previous post, a number of the gifts I gave away this Giftmas were given new homes without being documented (I originally had a really weird section here where I went crazy comparing the prezzies to illegal aliens and it got suuuuuper out of hand. It was kind of funny, but kind of weird. Kind of... really weird. So it's gone, now. Poof!). Luckily! Brandi so graciously has provided us all with photographs of the portraits she and her husband received from me this year! Yay!!!!

About a year ago, when they moved into their house, Jimmy and Brandi started getting fun with decorating all their rooms with paint and pictures and curtains and all sorts of stuff that has made their place seriously gorgeous... But for the life of her, Brandi was unable to find any wall-art that would match the color scheme in their bathroom.


(This one's Brandi! She thinks I drew her low on the page because I often draw people looking terrifying, but actually it's because she's a munchkin and I originally was going to draw her and Jimmy on the same page together and have it so neither of them was fully captured on the page because I think extreme height differences are hilaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarious and deserve to be celebrated.)

Their bathroom has a super-rich red that's a couple of shades darker than what most people would look at and involuntarily shout "RED!!!!" as well as a very nice soft, light brown, and white. She'd pitched to me a good long while ago the idea of commissioning some portraits of her, and her husband, and their super fabulous dogs.


(This one's Aulbee, he's such a sweetheart! And a proper gentleman, to boot. Possibly one of the best groomsmen at their wedding, although that's a hard title to claim given the sheer awesomeness of that lot.)

Our plans got a little out of hand, and I decided that I wanted to make the pictures SO SUPER FABULOUSLY SPECIAL and was going to hand-make paper with her out of some of the leftover cotton from their southern belle/Irish as all hell wedding [which we should still do!!!!!!!] and use it for the portraits to make it sort of a secret specialness that was super cool.


(Here's Jimmy!!! He is both super Irish, and super tall. You may think that sash is a little too much, but I promise you... This is based on real-life. He was pretty much dubbed little Mr. Irish king of the universe in a pageant or something, as far as I have decided based on photographs and a wild imagination. I hope that he rules his subjects wisely.)

We kind of got carried away with the idea, but never got an actual chance to do it so the paper has, sadly, continued to go unmade. However, that doesn't mean the portraits should suffer for my laziness and short attention span!!!! Which is why I made them these anyway, despite it being somewhat divergent from the plan.


(Meet Bama! She's kind of a derpsauce pooch, and as sweet as she can be... well... I am cruel and imagine her looking like this in my head. This is, almost certainly, my favorite of the portraits for how ridiculous it is, and how seeing that tongue flopped out never fails to make me giggle.)

Now despite the fact that these are goofy pictures, and just ink on watercolor paper mounted on some random heavy-weight red paper I found and guestimated being a good match for the bathroom that I completely intended them to be displayed in... They immediately went and had them mounted, framed, and displayed in a place of honor in their hallway.




You walk into their house, and these are basically one of the first things you're going to see. I am kind of stunned, and incredibly flattered! ...The downside is, though, that there's still nothing hanging in their bathroom, and I'm not sure what to make to fix that problem for fear that it will be too fancy again and and be put in another place of honor. Oh, woe is me with my terrible, horrible problem of being appreciated. =>.<=

Seriously though, I'm super flattered and super glad they like them!