My Scout Greeting Cards

Once a year I remind my readers that I have drawn some popular greeting cards for scouts, in case they know someone who is earning this special honor. My son is an Eagle and he had such a great experience with the Boy Scouts, learning great practical skills and making good friends, while reinforcing responsibility and good morals, that I am happy to share in celebrating their achievements.

I drew the whimsical Eagle Salute Congratulations card below first, for a friend of my son’s who achieved the rank a few years before him. When my son made Eagle and had his Court of Honor alongside his best friend, I painted the Eagle Scout on a hilltop scene. I’ve had one buyer write a review saying, “The card is beautiful and very good quality. I couldn’t be happier with my purchase!” To see the inside message and ordering info for them, see my Etsy shop here.

The journey to Eagle is guided by Scoutmasters, parents, friends and others who inspire and encourage the Scout to accomplish the challenges needed to achieve Eagle rank. Several customers have asked me to produce smaller thank-you notecards for Eagles to send to their mentors, and they are on my Etsy shop, click HERE. If the buyer wishes a special message printed inside all the notecards, I can do that with these cards HERE.

I drew these black and white notecards below, which are blank inside, for all occasions in scouting. A number of buyers have given these as gifts to scoutmasters and new Eagles. They come 8 to a box and are available on Etsy HERE.

Finally, for young Cub Scouts who are making the journey to Boy Scout, I drew this fun card with little eagles making their ‘Crossing Over’ ceremony. One buyer wrote, “This card is darling and captures the spirit of just how excited my grandsons all were becoming Boy Scouts. Although they are a long way from Eagle Scout, one of them confided how thrilled he was that, We were drawn as ‘little eagles’ on the cross-over bridge! Pat Achilles’s cards are so beautifully perfect!” These cards are available HERE.

All of my cards are printed in full color on sturdy glossy card stock – the congratulations cards are greeting-card-size, and the thank-you notecards are smaller, invitation-size. Envelopes are included with each order, and the cards take standard first-class postage. The cardstock is made from partially recycled paper and my cards are printed in the USA – in fact, they are printed in my hometown! My thank-you notecards are blank inside so a message can be written by the sender.

I’ll mention, if you are in my area of central Bucks County, PA, you can just email me and pick up your cards, to save some postage. And for special orders of quantity, size or message just send your questions by clicking HERE to go to my Contact page.

Looking at Illustration: Arthur Getz – April 1957

I’ve been flipping through more Arthur Getz cover art from The New Yorker and came upon this beauty from 1957. Let’s take a look.

Art by Arthur Getz. Prints available through https://condenaststore.com/art/arthur+getz

Mr. Getz was an expert at capturing small moments of New York City’s outdoor culture, and what is more ubiquitous in NYC culture than the sight of heavy construction parading right under the nose – or just over the heads – of the citizens? This scene of the renovation of a brownstone is as busy with textures and colors as a paisley tie, but hangs together beautifully thanks to his composition and palette.

The first thing I notice in Getz’s composition is how he directs your eye. Your view naturally starts at the upper left where there are sunlit construction workers and juicy detail in the nearest brownstone’s lovely oriel window. From the top left your eye slides down the chute and the wood planks, past the palisade of old doors to the dump truck; you inevitably climb the intricate façade of the buildings to the right of the truck, up and up to the hazily blank sky, where you can’t help but land with a thud on the bulls-eye of the whole scene, the wrecking ball. It’s a superb construction, sweeping your eye all around the view.

In landscape painting there is a general rule that warm colors advance and cool colors recede. This scene adheres to the rule with great success, with the warm brownstone tones closest to us, the middle ground scene of doors and rubble painted in slightly cooler shades, and the background sky and skyscrapers in the coolest, grayest tones – even that yellow apartment building is about as chilled a yellow as you can get in paint. I love how the artist ties together the scene by splashing periwinkle blue here and there – on a couple of the doors, under the scaffold, the brownstone handrail, the debris chute, one plane of the roof gable, and even high up on the top balconies of that yellow building. Getz’s loose but masterful treatment of the brownstone’s architecture is so admirable too, from the carvings and rustications in the massive sandstone shapes to his seemingly casual squiggles indicating the elegant wrought iron balustrade of the staircase.

Finally let’s point out Mr. Getz’s effective use of angles to make this scene dynamic and yet balanced. There are a number of strong diagonals echoing through this composition, that drive from the upper left to lower right, as I’ve indicated here:

They are formed by weighty, dark masses within the picture and give it a dynamic leftward and downward push. The scene does not ‘fall over’ from all that thrust though, because Getz brilliantly balanced all those forces against one thin, gangly yet very important element: the crane arm holding the wrecking ball. Its push is from lower left to upper right, and because it is a dark structure against the lightest part of the picture, and is more finely detailed than all the dark chunky shapes, and it holds that formidable feature of the portentous wrecking ball, it balances all that leftward thrust and makes the scene satisfyingly stable.

Arthur Getz created a stunning snapshot of NYC life here, marrying its iconic brownstone architecture with the careless jetsam of city construction zones. I would call this one of his best works ever for The New Yorker.

I wrote another cover review which you can read HERE. To see other New Yorker covers by Getz go HERE .

— Pat Achilles

For Artists: Comparing Etsy and Zazzle

I have updated this article to reflect new policies by both Etsy and Zazzle – please see HERE for the new article.

My Work Featured on ‘Writing and Illustrating’

I am quite honored to have my illustration work featured on ‘Writing and Illustrating,’ a fun and very informative blog on publishing by author-illustrator Kathy Temean. The interview, with lots of samples of my work, is here.

Please feel free to leave comments and questions at the bottom of Kathy’s blog, I will be checking it throughout the weekend.

A hearty thank you to Kathy for her help!

 

A Recommendation: The King in the Stone

I just finished reading The King in the Stone by Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban. I found it to be a terrific adventure tale set in a fascinatingly real, yet magical kingdom – the world of Spain in Late Antiquity, during its tumultuous tug-of-war between kings and warlords. I’ve not seen any other stories that deal with this era and that made it even more intriguing.

While the heroes in this part of Spain’s history are as well-known to Spaniards as King Arthur is to the English, I really knew nothing of this culture before I began reading. But the author masterfully drew me in by weaving an alternate reality into her story: the protagonists, a young man and woman in the throes of a precarious romance, are modern day college students who actually travel back in time to early Spain. I related to them as contemporaries, and saw these Spanish legends unfolding alternately through Andrea’s eyes and then Julian’s eyes – it was like watching a movie where you can read every emotion and thought in the character’s minds. The author is outstanding at creating surprising yet believable twists of the plot, and I loved how the alternating viewpoints created delicious tension as I tried to guess what would happen next.

The author is from Northern Spain herself and her deep affection for the people and countryside is apparent. It’s also evident that her research of the past era was extraordinary – I found her vivid descriptions of the legendary Pelayo, Witiza, Arab leader Mununza and village life of that time added a lot to my enjoyment of this universe she has created.

The main protagonists in The King in the Stone are youthful, but I (middle-aged) still found their story appealing, relatable and downright riveting. There are many supporting characters in the story as well, of every age and temperament, fleshed out beautifully in conversation and action. There is genuine romance and courageous sacrifice in this tale, and I especially welcome the story’s acknowledgement of the nobility of motherhood. I give the book a five-star recommendation for anyone who enjoys romance, historical fiction, and adventure stories. For further info see Amazon here.