The Alliance Board Members.
 

I started this harebrained scheme with a small portrait of John, the president of the Arizona Art Alliance. The group has all the best intentions and pretty much every artist in the state knows about it, but no buyers! They manage to wrangle all the disparate art groups in the city together twice a year to sit and look at each other.

Because I have been trying to explain they need to gear their outreach to people who do NOT paint, so they might purchase something, I sort of lured them into my clutches with a surprise set of paintings of all the board members I could get into one place. These are Al and Cathy.

I am not sure how many other members I need to do, but I did get a tentative feeler (as was my evil plan) to let them feature me in their materials and website. Perhaps free hanging in their juried shows for a while, but I am so used to not getting paid I am beginning to think I am the "Godfather" of art: "One day I will ask a favor of you....."

dj*

Here is the last of the four so far. The first, John, was posted yesterday in his own thread

These are very nice, Debra!

Thank you, Julie (and I have the note you sent. Thanks for that too!)

I have four more photos today!
Lucky thing I went down. The last list of members is different than the one I was sent.
here is our liaison for the group representatives.
dj*

One more. This is Chuck.

They are great. I specially liked the last one you posted.

Last for a while. Two members missed the meeting. One apparently was ill and the other was out of town. BUT there is a lot of talk of another portrait. It is escalating. Unfortunately they are so thrilled by my bad inket prints I am giving them as a thank you that only three are actually purchasing them.
Good advertising, again, not so good at income.
dj*

The last of the actual board.
 

This project has, well, I hesitate to use the word blossom as it sounds much lovelier, but it has grown. I believe there were once ten members of the board, then they had two new positions since I checked. And they really want to recognize the support people, so...

I am trying to explain what I volunteered to do, and what is sort of above and beyond. At any rate, this is apparently the last OFFICIAL board member. I am going to try to say how happy I would be to do any other lovely person in the group IF they buy the painting. Times are tough, but there is a point where marketing ends and stupid starts.

HOWEVER I still think it makes a nice group for a portfolio and promotional piece, so mission is accomplished.
dj*

All of these are nice, but I like this recent one a lot more than the rest. It seems to have an interesting visual texture (not the paper itself) -- did you use some colored pencils here?)

I should also point out that I like your signature. It reminds me of japanese seals and their function in asian art.

Really good work, Debra! The marketing thing is tricky. Sometimes it comes down to either not doing the work, or doing it free of charge. It's hard to stop in the middle of the project and say, "Sorry, you'll have to pay me if you want more" when you envision the project all completed.