Adventures in Modelling, Part II

In the few figure drawing classes I'd attended back in the day, the model did about a zillion poses ranging from thirty seconds in length to maybe ten minutes - the idea was that you had to draw the person fast, before they changed position, and this forced you to develop an eye for proportion and gesture.  With a thirty-second pose, there was no time to get all fiddly over details; you just scribbled down the shape of their body as best you could.  Classes like these happened one or two nights a week for six or eight weeks.

The class I just modelled for was different.  It was an intensive week-long course where each student would end up with just one super-detailed drawing; my job was to sit in the exact same position the entire time. This is definitely not most people's idea of a good time, but I thought it sounded great!  You guys, I spend like half my life sitting around naked!  Nobody is better prepared for this job than I am!

Witness my intensive at-home training regime!

But seriously, I have an insane competitive streak and a flare for self-discipline, so I was totally looking forward to the challenge of holding perfectly still.  I would be the most motionless art model ever.  I'd be like a statue!  A squishy, sweaty statue!

On Monday afternoon I showed up to the classroom a bit early, as instructor John Viljoen had requested, so we could decide on a pose before the students got there - something that I felt I could maintain for long periods without getting sore.  I decided to just sit in the chair with my feet planted on the floor, my hands resting on my thighs, and my head more-or-less facing forward.  John marked off where my feet would go and I tried my best to memorize the exact position of my head, back, and hands so my pose would be as consistent as possible.

Then I changed out of my street clothes and into a robe, and waited for my cue.

Like I said before, figure drawing classes are very analytical...the artists tend to think of the body as just a collection of curves and angles to draw, same as anything else.  I sat on my pedestal and tried to think of myself as a bowl of fruit or a Ming vase instead of a publicly naked person.  It didn't take too long to get used to it.

Holding the pose was just as fun and challenging as I thought it would be...it was interesting to me to play around inside my head and think of different ways of keeping still and relaxed.  Mostly I imagined that my body didn't exist anymore, or was made of rock or wood or metal, and let my mind wander.  During the second or third posing session on Day One (John gave me breaks every twenty minutes or so) I actually fell asleep for a few minutes with my eyes open - I'd been so nervous the night before that I hadn't slept very well.

Thankfully, I did not twitch or drool.

Here are some other selected moments from my week of posing:

Sometimes during the breaks I'd wander around checking out people's work.

TWO different students told me this! Squeeeeeeee!!!!!!

On Wednesday or Thursday the temperature outside hit 37 degrees celsius.

John always made sure I was comfortable, every step of the way.  I couldn't have asked for a better experience!

I never once asked to take a break early (although I could have; John was very clear that I could cry "uncle" at any time), because staying completely motionless until told to move was the name of the game, and I was out to win.  The occasional stiffness and pain became something to fight and conquer - it was a way of keeping things interesting.  If posing were easy, it'd be boring.

And you guys!  At the end of the week, I had become art!

And also?  I got my first paycheque in about fifteen months!

And that's the story of my first gig as an art model.  I never thought I'd stumble across a whole new career path this late in life - something I love and feel like I'm really good at - but there you have it!  Turns out I'm a total prodigy at holding really really still. :D

Now: everyone go check out John's website!  Especially his incredible portraits!  Awesome, right?

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A week from now - Sunday, July 29th - I'm gonna be selling original paintings, greeting cards, and other quirky artsy goodies in Kensington Market as part of their Pedestrian Sundays event. I'll be on Augusta Avenue between Dundas Street West and Wales Avenue.  If you're in Toronto, you should totally come!

Adventures in Modelling, Part I

If you've been reading this blog on a regular basis, you are no doubt aware that I quit a stable, steady, full-time office job over a year ago and have been living off my savings (and a slow trickle of money from selling my art) ever since.  I've been talking about finding a new job for a while - something part-time, so I still have lots of time to paint - but I hadn't really found anything I thought I'd like.  I still have enough savings left that I can afford to be picky, so I've been taking my time trying to figure out what I really want to do.

And then about two months ago it hit me: I should totally model for figure drawing classes!


Why in the hell - you may ask - would someone with shyness and anxiety issues ever voluntarily be naked in a room full of people?


Well, here's the thing about figure drawing classes: they're not about judging the model's body, just seeing it - analyzing the body's curves and angles and light and shadow so you can accurately capture its form on paper.  I've taken a few of these classes in my day and the models were very much presented as "here is a human body for you to draw" (not "hey look, everyone!  It's a naked person!  WOOOOOO!!!!!") and the models were just regular people of all shapes and sizes.  And there are always a lot of rules to make sure the models feel respected and safe, like you have to refer to body parts by their official names ("breasts," not "funbags") and nobody but the instructor is allowed to speak to the model while they're posing.  So yeah, people would be looking at me, but they'd be on their very best behaviour and I wouldn't have to interact with them unless I felt like it.  Try getting that in a retail job!  


Plus, I love that I'd be helping people to understand human anatomy, just like The Boy (and all those figure models from days of yore) did for me; it feels like good karma.  And it would be so great for my work life and life-life to finally be aligned - everything dedicated to art.  No more awkward balancing act of Real Me vs. Corporate Me.


So, my decision was made: I would pursue part-time work as an artists' model.  I would pursue the fuck out of it.  I emailed pretty much every art school within commuting distance of my house and said I was available to model if they needed someone (I didn't tell you guys at the time because I wanted to wait until something actually happened) and, long story short, someone finally replied!  I just finished a week-long modelling job!  And...I really, really liked it!


TO BE CONTINUED...

Diary of a Trailblazer: Roncy Rocks!

This past Saturday I sold my wares at Roncy Rocks!, a street festival stretching all up and down Roncesvalles Avenue and onto a bunch of side streets.

I have cured my habit of standing with my hands behind my back.  Now my customers won't subconsciously fear being stabbed anymore!  Yay!

My designated area was right next to a stage that had musical acts and stuff all day.  I thought perhaps this would be a good thing because the performances would draw people in the direction of my table.  Turns out that while singing and dancing do attract people, those people just beeline for the stage to watch the festivities. They do not typically stop along the way to look at what the vendors are selling.  Also, I really need to be able to communicate with the people who stop by my booth - which I already knew, but which became even more obvious when I was trying to scream factoids about my art at people over the loud music. I did enjoy the performances themselves, but if I take part in Roncy Rocks! again - or in any other festival with music scattered around - I'll make sure I'm located a bit further away from the action!

I've also made a mental note to bring something next time to hold down the edges of the tablecloth so it doesn't flap all over the place in the wind.  I have some plain magnets that would probably work well for this - I can stick them to each other through the tablecloth so they weigh it down.  And OMFG I will never again try to lug all my merchandise to a venue in one big wheely-suitcase.  Those tiny plastic wheels are made for airport floors, not bumpy sidewalks and certainly not the steep stairs to The Boy's and my apartment.  I swear my arms are five inches longer today than they were last Friday.

And I think maybe my booth has too much for sale in it - cards and original art and necklaces and magnets and trinket boxes and postcards - and it might be overwhelming for people.  I'm considering paring things back a little bit in the future, maybe down to just cards, original art, and magnets.  What do you guys think?  Is a lot of variety a good thing or is it better to focus in on just a few choice items?  Please let me know in the comments!

Despite the slight setback of being located right next to the stage, I still managed to sell some stuff and to have some great little chats with people who really dug my work.  A few folks eagerly asked me if I sell my stuff anywhere else, so I got to plug my stall at the Arts Market, which is awesome!  I've been told by more experienced artsy friends that lots of people who don't buy something from you at a craft fair will buy something later, and indeed there does seem to be a pattern emerging of people asking about me at the Arts Market soon after I've been selling my stuff elsewhere.  Craft fairs are almost as much about advertising your stuff as they are about selling it - I think of it as leaving a trail of business card "bread crumbs" so people can find me later on when they're ready to buy. :D

I'll leave you with this photo The Boy took of a cute kitty who was slinking all around on Saturday morning, investigating everyone's tables while we set up for the festival.  The kitty refused to acknowledge our existence in any way, but took a liking to a random piece of string hanging off the underside of our table.

He reminds me of Birch...but pretty much every black and white cat reminds me of Birch.

p.s. Boy, if you're reading this, let me just tell you again how fucking spectacular you are.  I don't know where I'd be without your pep talks, your merchandising skills, your upper body strength, and your willingness to watch my table while I go to the bathroom.  Thank you.  <3<3<3

Diary of a Trailblazer: My First Craft Fair!

So, I know I haven't written here in a long time, and I'm sorry to have neglected you guys.  But there's a reason I've been incommunicado: I got in as a vendor at the May 27th Kensington Art Market!

BUY MY STUFF PLZ!

I've never sold my stuff to people in person before - just online and in a consignment store - so I had a lot of preparing to do, both physically and mentally.  I've spent the past few weeks running on a heady cocktail of fear, excitement, and too much chocolate as I dashed around buying supplies and making stuff to sell and rehearsing imaginary conversations with customers.  I probably only slept for twenty minutes total in the last fourteen days, but I'm pleased to report that the Kensington Art Market went well, I had fun, and I have all kinds of tips and experiences to share with you!

First off, you may remember that I have some issues with shyness and anxiety.  On one hand, I know that I need to actively sell my stuff at an art fair, not just skulk behind my table avoiding eye contact; on the other hand, I often get befuddled and don't know what to say to people.  Small talk is...not a thing I do.  So I've been pretty nervous, wondering if I could rise to the challenge of talking to strangers all day.  That was actually my single biggest concern in this whole thing.

Guess what?  I did pretty well!  When I was angsting about all of this ahead of time, I'd forgotten a key point: I wouldn't be making small talk out of the blue, with no common ground - I'd be talking to people who were looking at my art.  The art is the common ground!  So basically my old customer service habits kicked in and I'd engage people by telling them random little facts about whatever they were looking at.  Everyone I talked to was super nice and seemed interested in what I had to say.  Some people even gushed about how much they loved my art, and Art Market organizer Rupert Young even said, unprovoked, that my table looked great and I must've done a bunch of these shows before, so by closing time I think I was floating a few inches off the ground. :)

And, can I just say, for a socially awkward dork I'm quite exquisitely attuned to people's body language; it was easy to tell when someone was open to conversation and when they really just wanted to browse around quietly.  I hate pushy salespeople and never ever want to be one, and I'm confident that I came across well in that regard, so yay.

Having said that, I do wonder whether I should've stepped up my game a bit.  There's got to be a middle-ground between "Hi!  Here is some stuff for you to look at" and "What do I have to do to get this painting in your house today?" and I'd like to find it.  If anyone out there is a retail champion who knows how to "ask for the sale" without being a total pushy bastard, please leave your tips in the comments.  Thanks!

In other news, it was a great learning experience to see which items people were drawn to the most.  In this particular venue my greeting cards were the best seller by far, so I'm gonna come up with more card designs for next time so my customers get more variety - and maybe try offering postcards or prints, too!

The Boy, btw, was invaluable in helping me get through the day smoothly.  I knew that merchandizing was one of the things he did in his last day-job, but I'd never seen him in action before - throughout the day he'd periodically come around to the customer-side of my table, peer thoughtfully at my display for a minute, and make some minor shift that caused choirs of angels to sing and the whole display of merchandise to just...make sense.  I mean, I'm a visual artist - I have a good sense of balance, colour, etc., and can arrange items in a fairly pleasing way.  But The Boy has mad skillz and it was amazing to watch him deploy them.  Turns out he also knows a bunch of little psychological tricks that are good for selling; he told me, for instance, that it I'd draw in more customers if I stood behind my table instead of using the provided chair.  Something about seeming more attentive and energetic, I think.  He also thought I should stand with my hands lightly clasped in front of me (instead of behind my back, like I'm doing in every damn photograph from that day) but the pose didn't feel natural to me - my hands kept sneaking behind my back again.  I'll have to work on that.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with myself: considering this is my first time selling in a festival/trade show/whatever, I think I did pretty well on all fronts.  There is one thing I wish I'd done differently, though.  When I applied to be in this festival, I decided one of the things I'd sell is decorated wooden boxes (you know, for jewellery and knicknacks and whatnot).  I was thinking people might be more likely to spend money on something functional than on a purely decorative piece of art that just hangs on the wall.

Here are two of the finished products.  Totally cute, right?

The thing is, I'd never decorated a wooden box before.  There ended up being a bit of a learning curve, and I lost some valuable prep time redoing the first couple of boxes I made when I realized I should've used a different sealant.  So my biggest tip for my fellow craftspeople is this: when you're on a deadline, stick with what you know.  Even if you have a super-cool idea that you think will make a ton of money, put it on the back burner and use your time and energy to make stuff you can slam out without thinking about it.  Experiment with the new thing after your show, when you have time to perfect it.  Then you can unveil it at the next show.

More things I learned from the Kensington Art Market:

-The tape and scissors I brought with me were a godsend.  I think I'll prepare an emergency bag to take to all trade shows: it will contain tape, scissors, string, pens and some paper (and probably other things that will occur to me during future trade shows).  Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it, as they say!

-Packing needs to be a priority for me, especially since I don't have a car.  The Boy and my amazing friend Molly were kind enough to help me schlep my stuff on public transit, but I'd really like to trim things down until I'm totally self-sufficient, if I possibly can.  I'm gonna have to investigate racks and displays that fold flat and figure out how to Tetris all my products into the most compact and unbreakable package possible.

-I need to point out my stack of business cards and encourage people to take them!  I had a lot of people at my table who seemed really interested in what I do, but didn't buy anything that day...and walked away without my contact information.  *Facepalm*.

-Pop-up gazebos and tabletop patio umbrellas cost a chunk of money, but I should take the plunge anyway. I got a really damn painful sunburn yesterday (apparently SPF 30 sunblock is not adequate for my freakishly white complexion).  Actually, if I were sheltered from the sun at outdoor art shows, I could stop buying sunscreen and therefore a gazebo or umbrella would eventually pay for itself.

Not just a sunburn: an asymmetrical, patchy sunburn!  Wheeeeee!

-I got maybe one sale per hour for the first half of yesterday, and started to feel pretty discouraged, but then  things picked up a lot.  From now on I won't start speculating on whether an event was a success until it's actually over!

-Next time I do this (which is July 29th, btw - I enjoyed this instalment of the Kensington Art Market so much that I signed up for the next one!  Mark your calendars!) I'm gonna put a few bottles of water in the freezer the night before and bring them with me.  This seems like a better plan than bringing one bottle of tapwater with me and having to seek out a drinking fountain for refills, like I did this time!

-I'm also gonna use a tablecloth next time to hide all the stuff I stowed under my table!  I didn't realize how messy and distracting it was until I got home and looked through The Boy's photos.

I AM THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ!  PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MESS BENEATH THE TABLE!!!

So, okay, I know you're all dying to know whether I made a heap of money at this thing, or what.  Let me set up my answer with an anecdote:

One time, I was talking to a guy who told me - with obvious pride - that his wife had recently run in a marathon.  I asked how she did and he said "she finished!" which momentarily threw me off because I was expecting him to give me an actual number, like "she came in fourth!" or something.  Since I'm the least athletic person ever, I didn't realize that people don't generally run marathons with the goal of beating all the other participants, they run marathons to improve on their own personal best.

Starting a business is a marathon: it's an endurance sport, not a flashy fast-paced one, and the concept of "winning" is not cut-and-dried.  To be perfectly frank, the money I brought in from selling my stuff yesterday doesn't cover the amount I spent on my registration fee, let alone what I spent on materials, display stuff, and shopping bags.  But it's more money than I expected to bring in, the display stuff and shopping bags are a one-time purchase* that I can keep on using for the forseeable future, and my artsy friends who've done similar festivals tell me that if I keep getting out there and making a name for myself, I'll probably start selling more and more stuff at each event I attend.

In short: I didn't make a profit, and I likely won't get to the profit-making stage for a while, but I'm still in the marathon and still beating my previous bests.  I declare yesterday a WIN.


*It's a package of 500 bags.  I mostly sell smallish things that people can just stick in their purse.  It's gonna be a long time before the bags run out.

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By the way, I tend to update my Facebook page more regularly than this blog (I totally forgot to mention the Kensington Art Market over here until now, for instance, but I told my Facebook fans about it ahead of time), so you might want to head over there and "like" me if you haven't already!

Diary of a Trailblazer: Quitiversary!

Holy crap, I just realized it's April 6th - which means it's been over a year since I left my day job to focus on painting!

When I first quit, I had no idea my savings would last this long.  I mean, I thought there was a chance I'd still be a full-time artist in a year's time, but only if I were making a good chunk of money each month from said art.  But frankly, I'm not making too terribly much yet and what I do make goes right back into buying more supplies*.  The money I pay my monthly expenses with?  Pure nest egg, baby!

How have I made my money last this long, you ask?  I credit two things: happiness and hermit...ness.

Happiness, because I love my life so much that I don't often feel a need to "reward" myself with trinkets and goodies like I did when I was devoting like twelve hours a day to my office job**.  I mean, it was a very nice office job, don't get me wrong - great atmosphere, great people, opportunities for advancement, etc. - but I've always felt that full-time work takes up a cruelly ridiculous amount of time.  We shouldn't have to sacrifice our lives in order to maintain our livelihood!  And so I'd get out of work bummed that I had so little time to do the things that really matter to me, and I'd find solace in a $4 chocolate bar or a $400 pair of boots.  (Okay, the $400 boots only happened once.  But still!).

Hermit-ness, because being a homebody means I spend almost no money on restaurant meals, movie or nightclub admission, or (and this is the key difference between now vs. before) even laundry - I can easily stay in my pajamas for a week at a time vs. the old days when I wore a different office-appropriate outfit every day.  And since I'm not out in the world that much, I don't have a chance to see things in stores and want them.  I don't think I've bought a single new item of clothing in the past year except a bulk pack of socks, and that's only because my previous socks were getting threadbare.  Being a dorky loner has been great for my budget.

But I think I should start looking into having an income again***.  A part-time job, maybe, or temping...something that'll make my remaining money last longer while still leaving time for me to paint (and list paintings on Artfire, and hang paintings at the Arts Market, and make paintings into necklaces and magnets and prints and greeting cards to sell also, and blog about it all to you guys!).

TO THE RESUME UPDATEMOBILE!


*The best advice for entrepreneurs that I've ever heard: if you're gonna go into business for yourself, pick a field you love so much you'd do the work for free - because for the first long while, you will be.

**Only eight hours at the actual job, but then there's the commute time to and from work, doing laundry in order to look presentable at work, making lunch so I'll have something to eat at work, etc.

***Upon reflection, I probably shouldn't have shaved most of my head recently.  Hindsight.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOTH!!!

I've had my booth at the Arts Market for about three weeks now, and it's been an adventure!

First off, remember that giant piece of masonite that would later become my booth's back wall?  At the last minute I decided (well, realized) that the idea of taking it on the subway to save money was totally whackadoo and that it'd be faster and easier just to splurge on a cab (special bonus: I could also fill the cab with more merchandise and tools than The Boy and I could possibly carry with us while manhandling that board everywhere).  But the cab companies I called said that their largest car would accommodate items up to 6' long...and the masonite is 8' long.

"But I was finally ready to stop being cheap!!!!"

Soooooo, The Boy and I ended up taking the masonite on the subway, after all.  And then we walked with it from Pape Station down to Queen Street (I'd guess the distance at two miles?  Maybe?) because we didn't figure they'd let us on the bus with it.  I'd tied rope "handles" through the holes all along the outside edge, which helped a lot, but what really saved our lives in the end (or at least our poor sore hands) was each of us looping a belt through one of the top "handles" and using it like a shoulder strap.  It was still pretty harrowing though because it was a really windy day; on several occasions the wind shoved the masonite around hard enough to almost knock us off our feet.  I was a little afraid The Boy would be carried off entirely, like Piglet in that Winnie the Pooh story about the blustery, blustery day.

But we did make it there in the end.

Arts Market administrator Daniel Cohen is awesome, by the way!  He's happy to help each artist get their area customized the way they want - in my case, he attached some beams to the ceiling girders for me so my wall would hang properly.  Look how pretty!

Since then he and his crew have helped me hang a second wall, too!  I'm grateful for the assistance because even if I didn't need to actually alter the building's ceiling - which I'd never presume to do without asking - I'm terrified of ladders and would never have been able to get up as high as he did without either a) falling or b) fainting (which is still technically a form of falling...).  So now I have two beautiful walls hung up and I didn't even have to risk my cranial integrity. :D

Further adventures: last Sunday I brought a folding chair to the Market and sat by my booth all day, just to see what it's like there when I'm not focused on getting things set up.  Well, okay, I didn't sit all day - I also took some time to walk around and look at everyone else's wares so I can (hopefully) talk intelligently about them if given the chance - I want to support my fellow artisans!

I got to polish up my slightly rusty retail skills* with some customers (mostly by chatting with them about other people's stuff, but still!) and I met some of the other booth-owners, who were all friendly and fun and generally awesome.  One of my immediate neighbours, Marjorie, even told me some cool stuff about needle-felting - an art I've always admired but never knew much about.  It's so cool to be surrounded by such creative talent!  I feel so inspired that I'm thinking of resuming my long-neglected Shoutout Sunday posts so I can write about a different cool market vendor every week!

So yeah.  I think I'm settling into the Arts Market nicely.  It's starting to feel like home. :)

I'll leave you with this picture of me setting up the inaugural wall of my booth.  This is just a bit of a tease - a hint, if you will, of what wonders lie in store.  It's the booth equivalent of cleavage.

Bow-chika-wow-WOW...

*Believe it or not, despite my whole "painful shyness" thing I used to be a retail superstar.  Probably because I'm genuinely interested in helping  people find the perfect item - I don't have it in me to do the skeevy high-pressure thing.  Customers may have bought less with me initially than if I'd pressured them, but they liked me more and tended to give me repeat business so I figure I did better in the long run.  Selling my own products feels more awkward and scary than selling someone else's ever did, but I'll adapt.  Eventually.

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Can't get out to Toronto to buy my work in person?  Fear not - you can always satisfy your cravings for funky, original paintings in my Artfire store!  In fact, I have some stuff on Artfire that's too, shall we say, family unfriendly for the Arts Market, like this "ad" for a sparkly pink lipstick or this pirate flag with a twist, so you get to see a side of me that my in-person customers don't. :)  

Guess who just became a vendor at the Arts Market?

As some of you may already know, I've signed on for a booth at the Arts Market, an awesome little store on Queen Street East here in Toronto.  I start on Wednesday and have been running around like crazy for the last few days, getting ready.  

Stock is not a problem - I have paintings a-plenty.  Paintings stacked on top of dressers, paintings leaning against the walls, paintings in my dresser drawers.  Frankly, I'm afraid that my next major creative spree will finally bring the art-load to critical mass and The Boy and I will be immobilized by an avalanche of canvases and either starve or be crushed to death and the only way to remove our putrid, stinking corpses from the building will be to lift off the roof and haul us out using a crane.

So that's pretty awesome.

The daunting part, for me, is that my "booth" is really just an empty space - if I want any walls or fixtures in there, I have to install them myself.  I've never had to do anything like that before.  The freedom is exhilarating - I can customize my space however I want, as long as I stay within my designated 4'x4' turf - but boy, it's gonna be a lot of work!  Especially since The Boy and I don't drive, or even really know anyone who does.  We'll have to do a lot of schlepping on public transit, I think.

To give you a better idea of what I'm up against, here's a picture I just took while sitting on the couch and pointing the camera down our front hallway.

Pictured:

a) My childhood toy box with arts-and-crafts detritus and camera tripod on top (this is normally the area where I take product photos).

b) Desk lamp protruding into picture (I use this - and its identical twin - to light product photos).

c) Front door with pretty red tassel thingy that my ex got me when he was travelling in China.

d) Bedroom door.

e) HUGE FUCKING PIECE OF MASONITE STRETCHING FROM MY TOES TO THE HORIZON.

You don't really realize how big 4'x8' is until you have something that size in your apartment and have to choose between letting it block the bathroom doorway or the living room doorway.  It is huge, you guys.  And it will hang from the Arts Market ceiling and act as one of my booth walls.

Oh, funny masonite story (that's gotta be the first time anyone has ever said that phrase...): I was too cheap to bring it home in a cab so I wrapped a chain around the middle of it and lugged it home slung over my shoulder like a purse.   

A purse that weighs around forty pounds and is longer than I am tall.

I live at least half a mile from the home improvement store, by the way.  Maybe more.  Also, my apartment is up two flights of stairs.  Once I reached the landing, it looked as though the masonite wasn't going to fit around the corner (and/or the weight of it would keep dragging me down the same four stairs over and over again as though I were an modern-day Sisyphus with boobs and a kickass haircut) but obviously I was victorious in the end.

If you visit the market and check out my art (and if you live in Toronto, you totally should!  I might even be there in person and we can hang), you can look at my glorious turquoise booth wall and know that the one corner is rounded off like that because it kept dragging on the sidewalk while I was lugging it home.  It can be an inside joke between us.

Anyhoo, it's 10am and I haven't been to bed so I should probably go do that.

p.s. The Boy doesn't know it yet, but I'm gonna try to persuade him to carry the masonite to the market with me on the subway.  I think if there are two of us carrying it and I tie rope "handles" through all the edge-most holes, it might not be so bad.  And it'd save me like $50 in cab fare.  Yes indeed, this is a good and sensible idea.  

Diary of a Trailblazer: Watching the Odometer Turn Over.

Holy cow, you guys, it's 2012!!!  I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and that the coming year is bright and shiny and awesome for everyone!

It's been nine months since I quit my day job and embarked on this journey.  In some ways the time went really fast; every Friday I think "Wait, what?  It's the weekend already?" and I can still vividly remember how it felt to get up and go to work every day.  In other ways, it feels like time has stood still - like I'm in a bubble of safety where normal human concerns somehow don't apply.  Here in my bubble, I've always been a stay-at-home artist and I'll always be a stay-at-home artist.

But then I remind myself that I'm not actually living in a bubble apart from the cares of humanity; I've been paying for my rent, bills and groceries just like everyone else.  And my money will eventually run out and I will have to think of what to do next.  

Then I freak out and, hypothetically speaking, spend most of December rocking back and forth in the foetal position.

...Well, going foetal in-between packing and shipping orders, because orders have been flowing into my Artfire store on a regular basis.  That gives me hope for the future, and once again I want to express my eternal gratitude to all of you who have bought my art or told your friends to check out my store.  Your good word of mouth is totally saving my ass, srsly. <3

I think I'm starting to come out of my funk.  I did a small painting the other day, and I started on another painting right after - a pretty big one.  I haven't painted anything bigger than 5"x7" in aaaaaaages.  I'll post pics eventually.  

In the meantime, here's a Christmas morning photo of Birch playing in an empty gift bag:

It's like we got him his own apartment for Christmas!

Yeah, that's right, I also uncurled from the foetal position long enough to celebrate Christmas and New Year's with The Boy and some friends, and it was absolutely lovely.  And now the days are getting longer again (yay sunshine!), the hustle and bustle of Christmas has subsided (yay peace and quiet!), and I'm totally looking forward to this brand new year.

Cheers, everyone. :)

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Didn't get what you wanted for Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/etc.?  Treat yourself to some wonderful wall art from my online store!  Sushi and robots and furmaids, oh my!

Diary of a Trailblazer: Well Isn't This Cheery.

I'm a kinesthetic person - I tend to think of things in terms of shape and sensation.  And so if you asked me what motivates me to paint, I'd tell you it feels like the inspiration comes out of a tube in the middle of my chest.  But my chest is also where my emotions seem to sit, and when I'm stressed or sad or angry those negative feelings cause a blockage and everything gets all backed up.

Recently, I sat down to paint and nothing happened.  It's not that I lacked ideas.  I go through periods where ideas avalanche down on my head faster than I can get 'em onto canvas, and I always write the extras down so I don't forget them; I have literally pages of them.  I knew what I wanted to paint and I was sitting there with a blank canvas balanced in my lap and a paintbrush in my hand and I literally couldn't make my arm move.

My first reaction (as usual) was to yell at myself to fucking DO SOMETHING JUST DO IT COME ON.  When that didn't work, it occurred to me that I probably had a wad of sticky emotional crud pluggin' up my arthole.  So I stopped pressuring myself to execute the specific idea I'd sat down to paint, and instead sat there as calmly and non-judgementally as possible and waited to see what would happen.

And lo, like the cryptic fortune in a Magic 8-Ball, a series of images floated to the surface of my mind.  Suddenly, my paintbrush-hand was able to move again; it wanted to paint what I'd seen.  To wit:

And now I'm unblocked again, for the time being.  But I've also realized that I've been squishing down a lot of fear.  

Basically, I've been trying to deal with the reality that my future is very much up to chance.  I'd like to believe that if I work hard enough - if my paintings are prolific and amazing and I offer excellent customer service - I'll end up successful, but the bottom line is that I can't make anyone buy stuff.  I can only maintain and promote my store as best I can, and the rest is just...luck.  This idea doesn't sit well with my inner compulsive planner/control freak, hence the image of a fist clenching so hard that blood drips out.

Just to be clear, I don't for one moment regret quitting my day job to do art full-time. These past few months have been fucking amazing!  And that is the problem: I don't want to give up this freedom, but if my savings run out before I'm making a living wage at the art thing, I may have to.  And there's nothing I can do about it.  And that sucks.  And the suckitude built up and up and up until finally I had to paint a woman so filled with viscous black goo that it's forcing itself out of every orifice in her head.  

I suspect both paintings are basically a letter from my subconscious:

"Dear Meredith

You are repressing a lot of dark icky thoughts.  You need to address them before you self-destruct.  SERIOUSLY.

Love,

Your Superego."

I...don't actually know how to address my feelings of overwhelming...ness.  But I guess even acknowledging that I feel them is a start.

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Let's all stop thinking about angsty shit and daydream about something nice instead.  Like sushi!  Or paintings of sushi.  Or how quirkily wonderful my paintings of sushi would look on your wall.

I get by with a little help from my friends!

My first couple of Artfire sales came from friends of mine.  This makes sense, since my friends were the first people to know I'd opened a store and many of them already knew and loved my work.  Recently, though, I've gotten a couple of orders from folks whose names aren't familiar to me - which is exciting on a whole new level!


Did these new customers find me randomly on Google?  Possibly...but I think it's more likely that they found me through some sort of referral.  All else being equal, a person would probably rather give their money to a kind-of-known entity than to an anonymous Google result, right?  Also, in order find my store randomly you'd have to Google phrases like, I dunno, "cupcakes used as a metaphor for boobs" or "fortune cookie that disparages your sexual prowess" and I don't really see this happening.


I'm doing what I can to get the word out about my store, of course; I'm blogging and tweeting and Facebooking and trying to remember to mention my art to strangers whenever there's an opening (today when I was at the post office sending off my latest order, the lady behind the counter chatted with me about what I was sending and I ended up giving her a business card!  True story).  But frankly, I'm a gigantic awkward dork who finds the whole self-promotion thing pretty difficult at times; left to my own devices, I would take a long time to find and recruit any new fans.


Luckily for me, I have small army of amazing friends - not to mention the smartest, funniest, bestest Facebook fans ever* - and they've been giving me wonderful shoutouts on Facebook and Twitter and who knows where else.  Someone even submitted my Glitter Bacon Christmas Ornaments to Reddit, causing the number of views to explode in a matter of hours (which actually moved the bacon higher up in Google search results because Google favours pages with a lot of hits!).  By the way, shortly after the Reddit thing happened, I got my fifth sale.  I'm not sure if the two things are related but I'm damn sure all those views can't possibly hurt!


To everyone who "likes" me on Facebook or follows me on Twitter or reads this blog or who ever said anything nice about my art to me or anyone else (and those of you who've bought art from me, of course!) - thank you.  You are my lifeblood; you are the reason why my business is visibly beginning to build momentum and the reason I have the courage to keep on battling the blank canvas even when it's scary and difficult.  For the first time in my life, I'm able to clearly envision a future in which art is my main source of income.  You guys!  This could actually happen!

I'm not sure I've ever felt as happy as I do right now.

*Which reminds me: go "like" my page if you haven't already!  When I reach 100 fans, I'm gonna give away a piece of art - and I'm at 97 right now!