Yishai's Album

I really like this photo! You couldn't ask for a happier customer than this, could you? The Bar Mitzvah boy's Mum asked me to make a guest book for her son and apparently he loved it! Mum said it was okay for me to show this photo of him here. Apparently Yishai loved the fact that the book was so personalised, which just reinforces for me the importance of finding out as much as I can about the person I am making the album for.  He certainly looks very happy with what he received!

Yishai's Mum asked me to show her son on the cover of the book, along with Monty the dog and their cat. Now Monty is a Newfoundland dog and is, um, rather large. I needed to enlarge my original sketch and make him bigger... and bigger. Yishai is also into monkeys - no, he doesn't have one but he has collected them since he was very little - and, like all the kids, my own included, he spends a lot of time on Facebook and on his iPod Touch. Mum asked if I could make the book Bar Mitzvah themed too.

I have shown Yishai with Monty and "The Cat". There is a computer in the background with Yishai's facebook page open on it, and a monkey gently swinging in the background. Yishai is wearing tefillin (or phylacteries, from the Ancient Greek meaning "to guard, protect") and there is also a tallit (a Jewish prayer shawl) in two of the corners.

I continued with some of these themes inside the book and added one or two new ones too. Yishai likes The Simpsons, so the first page featured the mischievous Bart. Next I added a bike, since he has recently started riding again, and once again showed the computer and his iPod Touch. The next decorated page shows a volleyball net and ball since that is the sport he likes to play and, finally, I added another sweet little monkey. 

Yishai's Mum was keen for me to blog about his guest book. She said that the whole family loved it, especially the pictures of Monty and "The Cat". Her eldest son's Bar Mitzvah book was the very first one I made and now their sister wishes I'd done one for her too! She is long past Bat Mitzvah age but maybe we should work on one anyway...