Less than 60 days to go: The state of things

Posted in Tough Guy 2010 | 0 comments

If this is your first time to the site, welcome! Let me explain what’s going on here:

I am going to be running in a very challenging race in January in the UK. The Toughguy race is something I have known about for years, but have never had the willpower to really make an effort to get there and compete in. I have let myself go as an adult, gained some weight, and have a career that has me seated most of my day. Something happened recently that made me decide I needed to get off my butt and do this.

My wife and I got pregnant.

With the pressure of fatherhood coming in the spring, I felt two things. One – That I would not have the time to ever do this once the baby gets here, and two – I don’t want my son to be raised by someone who didn’t have the backbone to do very challenging things when he needed to.

To help keep me motivated, I picked a charity – Free Arts NYC – to make sure I stayed on top of things. If it was for more than just myself and my own ego, and even better, kept myself out in front of everyone at the same time, then I couldn’t possibly quit or let things slide. So far, it’s worked. I’m very happy with how things are going, but I am still a long way from where I want to be physically, and a fair amount away from where I am doing real good for my charity. I have raised over $540 so far, and by the time I am done with my big project, I will be nearly double that. My goal is $3500, and I think I can get there with your help.

While I am not going to turn down general donations, I do feel odd about just being handed money in this economy, so I want to offer up what I hope is a fair swap of my time and professional skills for your hard-earned money. I am offering vector portraits (see further down this post for samples).

$35 will get you a head and shoulders portrait, $50 will get you a full body shot, or two head and shoulders pieces. All come with a simple background included.

Because I make these in vector format, they can be resized to any size you could possibly need. I recently sent one person a 22×33 inch piece they can now have printed as a poster.

I can also work in other styles, and have worked with people who have requests for things that fall outside the standard head and shoulders to find a price that is fair – If you have any questions at all about anything at all regarding my work and how I might help you, please feel free to drop me a line at drew.gilbert@gmail.com.

- 35$ or more gets you one head and shoulders portrait, with a simple background.

- 50$ or more gets you two head and shoulder portraits, OR one full body portrait, again, with a simple background.

I am also tracking my training progress with videos,  I have created a playlist where you can watch them all from the beginning (I am up to six so far)

Click here to watch all the videos.

I will be continuing with the portraits I have been doing after I complete a much larger animation project that has been taking up my time. They have been a blast to do, and everyone seems really happy with them so far. If you haven’t been catching the ones I have done on my Flickr stream, below you can see a slideshow of them all up to this point. Click here if you are unable to view the gallery

Many of these can be seen drawn from start to finish on my Ustream page, but I took the one I did to help promote myself (Drawing Edward Cullen from Twilight) and set it to time lapse so people could actually see the work done quickly (Honestly, I can’t even sit through watching myself draw in real time, I am SHOCKED that some people have done so. This is much more paletable.)

Click here if you are unable to view the video.

I hope you guys have enjoyed following me thus far, it’s been extremely rewarding and very challenging, and I am very slightly worried for my short term well being. Please continue to follow along, and I will do my very best to entertain you along the way. You’re continued encouragement and eyes on this task keep me going, and I am simultaneously resentful and thankful that you bastards are keeping me honest.