HELPER ARTS FESTIVAL

Here's my "booth" at the Helper Arts Festival.

Here's the low down: I sold 5 books in two days. 2 the first, 3 the second. I don't think that I was at the right venue. It was more of a "western jewelry festival" more than an "arts" festival. (not that jewelry isn't art). There were some painters and stuff, but not as much as I thought. But, considering the extremely LOW number of my target audience, young families with boys 5-9, I actually did pretty good. A HUGE majority of the foot traffic there was females 18-25 looking for jewelry.

My first event, I learned A LOT! From now on, I think I'm only going to do book fairs. Also, I think I will only do INDOOR events.

First day - I'd been set up for 20 minutes and it started the HAIL the size of quarters! My wife and I ducked under our table along with our books trying to stay dry, which failed. The second day, wind gusts kept blowing everything over. Let me ask you something blog readers: Is it a rule that your first show has to go terrible?

The one shining star at this show was a little boy named Paul and his mom. They were the first to buy my book. The mom was flipping through book saying, "Wow, this book has ninjas, pirates, dinosaurs, everything. Do you want this book Paul?" Then his eyes got really big with a great smile on his face and said "YEAH!" It was awesome. I almost got a little teary eyed. Thank you Paul and Paul's mom. You guys are awesome!

Warm Up Sketch 2

Another warm up sketch. Just wanted to draw an angry monster.

Warm up sketch

Here's a little warm up sketch I did today. It's...a...um...fox, wolf, raccoon thing. It's a Folfoon. How's that?

Commission

Here is a commission I'm doing for a friend. The final version has the girl's name, but for her protection I've omitted it. Not great with drawing girly things. I have three more kids to draw.

MY BOOK IS DONE!!!

My book is finally DONE!

Any ideas on how to sell this thing?

I'm going to go to some shows and art fairs and sell it there, but I'd like to sell them in more than one way. Maybe through etsy or something? I know they only let you sell homemade stuff on there, but maybe this counts, even though I'm not printing it myself.

Anyways, as soon as it's printed, I'll let you know. I think I'm going to set up an etsy shop.

Rejected!

I don't know if I've said this or not, but I'm breaking my book up into 2 books: boy and girl. Anyways, this illustration is a girl book rejection. I thought that a female clown would be cool to put in the book, but it's not quite fantasy enough. I needed something more fanciful. So, I only had the sketch of the girl clown and for kicks decided to give it a little color. So, for no real reason other than because I felt like it, I present to you this female clown. Enjoy.

Ninja Page

Ninja page from my book. I know what you're thinking. "Hey, I can't see him very good." Well, yeah, he's a ninja. That's the idea.