art show planning!

Well, I won't have my "official" notice until next week, but I can tell you officially enough that I will have a booth at the Draft Horse Classic again this year, and I'm SOOOO happy about that! I had a booth for seven years, and then in 2009 I was in Kansas, and last year I was in Wyoming. I wouldn't trade either of those opportunities away, but I've REALLY missed DHC and it'll be good to be back. I don't have the art show schedule yet so I'll be posting all that info later, but the Draft Horse Classic is September 22-25 at the Nevada County Fairgrounds in Grass Valley, CA.

So... since in the last couple years I have only done scrimshaw-oriented stuff, I need to start getting my brain in gear for an art show so I don't forget anything. I know I have some things I need to order, and that'll include some new images for note cards. Yeah, I have note cards. I really only tend to sell them at shows, I don't deal with them on line. I used to like to "release" a few new images every year, and since it's been a few years, I may do 6 new cards this year. We'll see... I have been through a number of printing companies since I went into the art biz, and I have one I like now but I'm paying more for it and I think I'll end up having to raise card prices over-all because the new ones are going to cost more to print than what I used to spend on it.

I'd really like to be able to do something with scrimshaw other than have original work. That's so hard. It's not like you can make a print of it. Nothing compares with holding an original, so I've held off on putting images onto cards or postcards or anything. Any thoughts? I know someone who sells baseball-card size prints of engravings... maybe something like that? They are so SMALL though, I really don't want to have to enlarge an image a zillion percent for a good photo, that kind of defeats the novelty of how tiny the original work is!

I'd also like to be a little better set up for working/demonstrating something during the show this year. I always do work on something (a drawing), but it's difficult for people to see what I'm doing, and it's fairly uncomfortable to sit there on those tall chairs and work. I like to be up at customer-level though, I'll have to think about that. I'd love to demo scrimshaw, but then I'd need to bring the scope and a sturdy table. Oh there are just so many options!

Feel free to throw some ideas at me, I'm pretty scatterbrained right now but I don't have very long to get this all sorted out! :-)