Today marks the last day of the 2012 George R. R. Martin \/ A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE Calendar that I illustrated. This gig was one of the joys of my career, and I\u2019m grateful for not only the work but for George, Parris, Anne, Dave, the Brotherhood Without Banners, and all of the worldwide friends that made the experience one of the best of my life so far. The work is its own reward, but the cherry on top was receiving the Chesley Award for Best Product Illustration for the calendar\u2019s artwork.<\/p>\n

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This was the year I won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist, becoming the seventeenth artist in the history of sf\/f to do so. Again \u2014 incredibly grateful.<\/p>\n

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This was also the year that I launched a company for my creator-owned works \u2014 Lone Boy<\/a> \u2014 and the year that I produced a 2013 calendar of some of my best cover artworks, as the first product offering from Lone Boy. The next Lone Boy endeavor will be Loteria<\/a>.\u00a0I can\u2019t wait to create all of that artwork, and bring a new set of visions to it in the coming months.<\/p>\n

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2013 is gonna be a big year, and I sincerely thank everyone who has shared in my work to this point. I\u2019m grateful for being a part of the sf\/f genre community, and I\u2019m looking forward to continuing to make more big sf\/f art, while expanding my outreach in the weeks ahead. All best wishes in 2013 to all of my friends and family near, far, and around the world \u2014 may all of you experience the very best of times in this coming New Year. Let\u2019s keep trying everyday to make a better world together.<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey, 2012 \u2014 You were an amazing career year. Fortunate and grateful to have so many highlights packed into twelve months. Here\u2019s to continuing to put nose to grindstone in 2013, and hopefully becoming a better artist. Today marks the last day of the 2012 George R. R. Martin \/ A SONG OF ICE AND […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conventions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/thanks2012.jpg?fit=682%2C1024","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5te7x-13","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnpicacio.com\/onthefront\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}