From Steven Matulewicz:
This is what I wrote for my Father Yule gift swap:
If you could have anything, no matter how absurd, what would it be? (never hurts to dream, am I right?): What I really want for myself is not something you could put easily into a package. That being said, what I treasure most are things that are from the heart that show a piece of the soul of the crafter. What is your craft? Knowing I have been gifted a piece of your self would mean quite a lot.
What does receiving this painting as my swap gift mean to me? Honestly I have been sitting here for over an hour and cannot accurately describe my honor, my humility, my gratitude in this being my gift.
…I wasn’t expecting anything like this when I made the request. The picture represents an activity I like to do (i.e. poker), it has many different Realms nations in both animals and in tabards. It is a truly inspired piece. It in many ways represents multiple levels of the game I love and the friends I cherish. I don’t have the best track record with gifts for the Swap. But this, this in my heart makes up for the many years I did not even get a gift. I am having it professionally framed and it will have a place of honor in my home.
From Nataliya Kostenko, the artist:
For your viewing enjoyment, I present my masterpiece: Realms Animals Playing Poker! My D&D group came up with this idea for me when I asked them what a good gift for my Cecil’s swap assignment (Steve/Sagart) would be–something to decorate his game room.
I thought just a re-paint of Dogs Playing Poker with tabards would be boring, so I tried to put in animals that corresponded with each nation (though I still defaulted to dogs for groups that didn’t have a strongly associated animal that I knew of, haha). From left to right, we’ve got: a fancy dog with some whiskey in a Neden tabard, a fluffy wolf with a cigar in an Invictus tabard, a little white bird above him in an Eagle’s Rook tabard, a majestic stag in the Voraniss face paint and tabard, a fashionable lion in a cool hat and Rhiassa colors, below, a small, buff dog in a Grimlock tabard, a gambling-saavy owl in a Blackwood tabard, a cute manatee in an Ashenmark tabard, and a cheerful dog in a Chimeron tabard.
Though I’m more or less pleased with how it came out, I do wish I’d had more time to touch up some of the messier details and add more nations (sorry to anyone I excluded, it was just a time thing). I paint pretty slowly so it took several days and many, many hours.
