I just finished a deal for a friend where I designed a logo for the fire department he runs for the Burning Man Flipside event and had it printed to some t-shirts. Having to take time away from other art related work for it, especially while I've been sick the last few weeks, made me realize something with utter clarity. While I can definitely use the money such commission work brings in, I simply end up despising it. More and more I find I dislike being told what to do when it comes to my creativity. A faint notion of that part of my personality has been what kept me from trying to be more "mainstream" with my art. Getting into galleries puts a lot of limitations and demands on your work because you have to play to whatever audience they are targeting if you expect to make sales and, thus, keep your work on display there. This same vague notion was what also made me nix the idea of ever becoming a book cover artist. I simply don't want some art director dictating what I do. I've always been one to cherish my creative freedom because, a long time ago it was the only real freedom I had. It was my one escape from a life that was often more like a waking nightmare. So now that I know what it's like to be all grown up and in charge of things, I'm even MORE loathe to let other people control my creative urges.  It seems to be getting worse as time goes on and I make my way toward the inevitable role of bizarre, crazy, bitchy old bat.

So, with this going on I decided to save myself further aggravation and just not take any more commissions or design jobs. I left the services page up on the bizarre chance I MIGHT want to go back to doing commissions some day in the FAR future. But for now people will just have to settle for looking at and buying what I want to draw.

Wow... I'm tripping out at how close it's getting to Oasis (FL), Opus (CO) and Apollocon (TX). I'm hoping I do decently at all three. But, as usual, I really go in expecting not to and I'm ecstatic if I sell a single piece that way. It's really much better than expecting to do well and being disappointed when I sell nothing.  Some people call that pessimism. I call that seldom disappointed.

I'm not even entirely sure what I'm sending to Oasis or Apollocon yet. I do have a couple of new prints to send out, but I have so many prints and ACEOs now that picking 8-12 items for one panel is starting to become rather difficult. Unless sales go up, I simply can't afford more panels to display on, so I just keep trying to rotate stuff around by region as I can, sending a mix of the older & more widely known pieces mixed with newer ones people in a region probably haven't seen yet in the local shows. Apollocon, being a home town show like Revelcon, is likely to get some prints having their first showing. I also have a bit more space at Apollocon because I don't have to pay the high cost of shipping two panels worth of work.

More soon than I want to think about it'll be time to hit the street again for the Via Colori Street Painting Festival in September. I find it hard to believe it's already coming up again. This year is going FAST....


Work, work, work. Between the day job, creating art and then having to wrestle the business end of all this, I just go nuts. But I manage.  Some stuff I've been working on in the last few weeks while waiting on approvals and other things with the logo I was working on:

1. "Winter Light", anthropomorphic arctic fox image.
2. "Sahara", anthropomorphic rat dancing girl (don't ask LMAO)
3. "Dream Bot", a cartoonish lil robot painting I've been working on off and on for a long while.
4. Random coloring of people's line art from SheezyArt.com's "The Coloring Book" club because I've had an overwhelming need to just do something because it's FUN, dammit!

I keep telling myself to get off my ass and update the prints page again, but it's got about the same priority as getting off my ass and going to use the exercise room here in our apartment complex. Yuh... that has about the same likelihood of happening any time soon as I have of winning the lottery. *snicker*

Anyway... I just wanted to let folks know I'm alive if not entirely well.

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