ramblings, loose ends, and unfinished business

The craziest month of the year is about to start. I haven't gotten word about the Chicken Festival yet, I think I will email them. If I'm in, I need to get crackin. Heck, I need to start prepping for Draft Horse Classic!

I'm really into this scrimshaw stuff now, I think my art biz is going to make a big change in direction.... I posted some work on an engraving forum and got really good responses, and I just posted some work on a knifemakers forum. Keep your fingers crossed. I'm working on the lion-in-color and it's going okay but I'm running into some problems for which I need to find solutions. Putting multiple colors onto one piece is definitely leading to some "color pollution." I had tried to seal off the white layer with a couple coats of paste wax but the sky blue is filling into the white areas a little. I can see that working dark to light would help solve this, but I just don't think in terms of dark to light! So I've been asking around to see what others do and will probably have to do a fair amount of experimenting. Maybe just more layers of wax (it's so thin you'd never know it's there at all).

I got word the other day that the local art club is looking into opening a gallery in town. That's great news but they want a yearlong committment, and I can't take that risk. In the worse case scenario, if nothing sold, I'd be out $1450 over the course of a year. Noooooo. If it was a shorter committment, three months maybe, I'd consider it. Or if I was sure my stuff would sell.. But, I'm just not convinced that my stuff is going to sell locally, I don't think it's the right market. I hope they are able to get the building though and I hope it works out for other people.

I don't know if anyone has noticed that I neved finished up that digital image that I said I was going to do with the Light Brown Leghorn... There are a lot of loose ends. I start series of work but find they don't yield much of anything, and then they fizzle. The Wakeup Call turned out great, that one came pretty easily to me. But the rest of them have not. I love love love love love drawing the chickens, I'm not so thrilled with creating digital backgrounds, it just feels like I'm overworking these somewhat minimalist illustrations, and I have a tough time with that. Plus I don't know what the heck I'm doing in that market, and I think what I'm realizing is that I myself really am not cut out for dealing with the "mass market." I was send off down that path but I don't know where to go from here, and maybe that's not the best place for me. If I want to pursue that, I think the bottom line is that I would need an agent. And that might ultimately be very successful for me.

But lacking knowledge of that side of the business, I backed off, and am barreling into an entirely different world of more "industrial arts" with this overwhelming feeling that I'm heading toward exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. Don't worry, I'll still keep drawing chickens (and horses, and dogs, and anything else anyone wants) ;-D