One of the things at the top of my to do list the last couple of months was an illustration project for a magazine—three illustrations for a story: one full page, one half page, one spot. Due in September, so I worked on them today.

There’s no compensation for this project except a free ad, so I kept it simple and quick. No pencil sketches for rough drafts. No painstakingly hand drawn creations. No detailed renderings to exactly match the story descriptions. It was all mostly mood stuff, to capture the tone and feel of a story called “The Green Man”—a brief fantasy of forest beings showing themselves to a human woman, written by Tala Bar.

I managed to create three pieces I liked, all of which you see here. As quick as they were, they took me some time. I still wanted them to look decent, rich in texture and colors, evoking the dreamlike mood of the story.

And when I had finished, I polished them off, uploaded the high resolution versions to my server so that I need not stuff the magazine editor’s inbox with ridiculously large files, created a new username and password so he could have access to download those same high res versions later, and responded to the original e-mail he sent me when he first assigned me the illustrations, giving him the download links and the access information.

My e-mail to him promptly bounced.

Hm. That was curious.

I Googled the magazine, and I clicked to a dead site.

Uh. OK, that’s weird.

Further down the Google search results page? I found this.

Uh-oh. Then, sigh.

I just wasted the morning.

What really irritates me, though, is that no one bothered to tell me anything. I didn’t hear a word from Paul Campbell that the magazine was folding. Not … a single … word. The fact that it folded means absolutely nothing to me. I honestly couldn’t care less. Magazines come and go, and it’s mostly because the people who run them sometimes realize too late the amount of time, money, and effort that goes into such an endeavor.

But for pity’s sake, let your contributors know or something. I just spent all this time that I can never get back doing illustrations for nothing. Nothing! I could have been working on a cover, on an illustration for an entirely different magazine, or on a web site design template for someone in desperate need of one.

Now all these illustrations are good for is fodder for the blog.

Sigh.

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