I don't share this area of my work life often...

I don't share my portrait work on my blog much. I don't know why...I guess it's because this area of my artwork world is the oldest part of my business and I sort of fried myself on it a few years back.

Prior to the housing market decline I was overwhelmingly busy creating house portraits. I sold my renderings to realtors as closing gifts for their clients and to a handful of mortgage companies as well. And then of course my largest customer base was the average everyday customer who was either buying their dream home or selling the home in which they lived for many years and raised their family.

I still get a large number of house portrait orders during the holiday season. And in the spring and summer some of my devoted realtor customers still use my services since that's their busy season. But overall that area of my business has slowed a bit. But I'm okay with that...as I said doing so many house portraits over the years really did become overwhelming and I lost my appeal for that genre of my work life.

Well...that is until recently. A month or two back I got an order for something unusual...not a house portrait but for a vintage popcorn cart. This was something unique and out of the ordinary and it sparked my love of creating portraits again. Here's how it turned out:

Here's the photo of the actual wagon...I love it! I love anything vintage and this wagon was obviously well cared for over the years.

The customer informed me that she and her husband sold popcorn from this darling old fashioned cart at a variety of fairs and festivals during the summer months. They plan to have the drawing I created reproduced into their marketing materials, such as business cards, flyers and letter head. A very interesting idea. I hope to get a chance to see how it works out for them.

So even though my portrait work has been slow I'm hoping it picks up a bit with the warmer weather on the way. That coupled with the positive news that the housing market is improving will (fingers crossed) bring more orders my way!

Okay...now I have to get busy wrapping up orders to be shipped. More fun to come soon...until then,