Yuletide Vignette

I Should Apologize in Advance for This One

Framed Art and Coffee

I guess this post is particularly for my more local friends:

Tomorrow (Saturday the 6th) a big batch of my original art, including a good number of the watercolors from Julia's House, will find a place on the walls of Happy Creek Coffee and Tea in Front Royal. Some of it will be for sale! I just brought some of the pieces home from the frame shop (Sun Studio Framing in Front Royal) and they look very fine. Here's a little peek:

The art will be on display for the rest of December, but if you come by Happy Creek tomorrow, from 3 to 5pm you can catch me giving a little presentation about the work and an showing a small sneak peek at some of my upcoming projects. Click this link here for more information.

Snowy Days, Podcasts and Watercolors

Note: This is the LAST CALL for the Memory Dragon game! I’m going to close down the shop late tomorrow or early Friday and start putting together the orders so that I can get them out in time for Christmas. So if you were hoping to nab a copy you can still CLICK HERE TO ORDER.

And now back to our regularly scheduled blog post:

The Hatke Family has been snowed in to our little farmhouse since Sunday. The girls have enjoyed days of snowmen and sledding and snowball fights (and hot chocolate and movies). I’ve enjoyed those things too, and I’ve also taken the opportunity to catch up on some freelance work and commissions. Here are some ink-and-watercolor seed packet designs I worked on for a friend:

And here is a Christmas card design another friend commissioned. This one was fun to put together:

Finally, yesterday I had the opportunity to have a fun Skype conversation with the fantastic Jerzy Drozd for his Comics Are Great podcast. We talked about writing heroes, depicting the guileless good guy, the recent Superman movie and much more. Here’s a link to the show:

COMICS ARE GREAT EPISODE 92.

Claus the Mighty

His beard is white, his sword is sharp, his magic is thunder:

Nicholas was...

A bishop in warmer lands, uncounted lifetimes ago. Now blessed (or cursed?) with something like immortality he wanders the Frozen North doing small kindnesses, leaving small gifts, vanquishing terrible things.

And all the time he waits.

He waits for the day when the cities crumble and the Dark Things rise and he is allowed to charge, laughing, into the last great battle.

Ho!

Ho!

Ho!

---

Happy Saint Nicholas Day! The format of the description above was taken from Neil Gaiman's hilarious, dark interpretation of Santa from the very short story "Nicholas Was..." which you can read here. By format I mean it starts with "Nicholas was" and ends with "Ho, ho, ho."

Good ol' Saint Nick, patron not just of children but also of archers! And thieves. I take heart. This guy was made to look after the Hatke House.

Oh, and thanks to everyone who ordered a copy of Memory Dragon! There's still plenty of time to nab a copy of your own!

The Return of Memory Dragon

Memory Dragon is back! I’m reprinting the game this year at an excellent independent local print shop and selling it here for a limited time for the approaching Christmas Season.

Each Memory dragon game comes with 48 cards: 2 copies each of the 15 dragon cards, 5 wizard cards, the princess card and the three symbol cards, flame, star and heart. The cards come in a beautiful, wizardly hand-sewn bag made by Anna. Note: Bags this year will be different than those shown above.

The set is good for all kinds of made up games, but it definitely makes a fun and challenging version of the traditional memory matching game. The way we play is to make wizard matches worth double, since there are fewer of them. The princess, since there is only one princess match, is worth triple or more.

Memory Dragon Card sets are $25 plus shipping. Orders will be closed by Friday the 13th.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT MY LITTLE ONLINE STORE.