attention shoppers

where we're drawing things to sell

First, I want to warn you, this post is trying to sell you something. If you don’t buy things, or maybe if you don’t like stuff in general and all you do is just keep your money in a jar under your bed, you may move along. Nothing to see here.

But if you’re like me, and you basically make a daily choice between either feeling kinda down, or pressing the “purchase” button to buy that thing you want, then keep reading. I might have a surprise for you at the end.

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Do you ever look up recipes on the internet, say, something really basic like a marinade for barbecue chicken, and when you find one on the google that looks pretty good, you click the link and then, once you accept the cookies and turn off the seventeen pop-up ads that appear¹, before you get to the actual recipe, you have to read a story (or scroll through, I never read them) where the writer, whoever the writer is, tells us how much her kids love marinade, and how it reminds her of summertime, and her husband won’t eat chicken without this marinade, and basically it’s 750 words to get to the recipe?

Well, I’m not going to do that.

This post is about selling art on my web shop, and here is the link.

Are you still here?

I leap back and forth quite a lot between working digitally, with my iPad and Procreate, and traditionally, with actual art supplies. I love the portability and the results of making illustrations on the iPad, but I don’t love the process. I don’t particularly like drawing on glass, and while I keep notifications off on all of my devices, the iPad will gladly remind you, constantly, that it is, in fact, a device, and not a sketchbook or a drawing board.

On the other hand, I like nothing more than spending a day putting actual ink on actual paper and dealing with the mess and the unpredictability and the lack of undo. However actual art supplies take more time, and they need some commitment. I can’t take them with me, wherever I’m going, like I can my iPad.²

Going back to my book My Hero, in 2021, my last eight books have split pretty evenly between being illustrated digitally, and with actual art supplies. I’m part of the way into another picture book now, illustrated entirely on the iPad. But then I have three big projects lined up after that where the jury is out. One of these is the series of insect stories I’ve been writing. Another is the astronaut graphic novel I’ve mentioned. As I work out the stories for both of these projects, I’ve been drawing a LOT of bugs and a LOT of astronauts. I’ve been drawing these with pens and inks, and a lot with Procreate. Here is a gallery of sketches. Can you tell what’s what?

Okay, you probably can.

Over the last week or two, I’ve been focusing heavily on the analog side of all of this. These two projects are big ones. Neither of them has a home yet, but I am planning at least three insect books, and each will be 72+ pages. The astronaut graphic novel script is at 128 pages. On one hand, I want to make the most of my time and get these projects done, predictably, professionally. On the other hand, I want actual… things out of this. Actual drawings. Proof of life? I love looking at original illustration work, and I like making actual illustration work. I like drawing on paper, and I’ve been working hard at getting better at it, getting as good at that as I am drawing on glass.

So to that end, I’m producing a LOT of actual drawings, on actual paper.

What’s your point?

My point is that this is starting to pile up. Mostly, it’s work in sketchbooks. Pages and pages and pages of sketchbooks. But also, it’s actual little drawings that I sort of treat more formally. With the thought, “gee, this could be framed one day.” But then I finish it, scan it, post it on Instagram, and I put it in a folder somewhere. And I’ve decided I’d rather you have it. And frame it. Or put it in a folder somewhere.

So I’m starting a new thing. I’m going to post new drawings to my web store every week. The actual drawing. Currently, there are several pencil drawings that I drew during the pandemic. Yesterday, I put three new ink drawings up: one of a skull and a bug, one of a scheming wren with a hat, and then, my favorite, in the spirit of the season, Death saying Hello.

things currently for sale

I don’t know how pricing will work. Maybe the price is too high and you’ll put it off, and then in a few weeks, when no one buys anything, I’ll decide to lower the price, and you’ll be glad you waited. Or maybe someone will snag the one you want while you were waiting it out. Or maybe they all sell out tomorrow, and next week, I double it. No idea. I’ll let the market decide this one.

But here’s the good part

Two good parts, actually:

1. Everyone who spends $100 at the web store by October 31³ gets a signed copy of On Top of Linguine included.⁴ Free. So you can sing along with my singalong.

2. I’m sending this newsletter out today at 3:30pm. The first reader to pick up one of those three drawings up there gets a collection of the “old war dead” prints. These aren’t original pencil drawings, but they look like it.

   

   old war dead

My plan is new art for sale every Wednesday, around noon. I’ll post a note here, as well as a story on my Instagram.

Let’s see how this goes. Thanks for reading all the way to here.

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Totally unrelated, as distractions are, my bike vests got delivered! I designed these for Paper Trail Bikes, a great shop here in Philadelphia, and they were produced by Voler. It looks like I’ll be doing a lot more work with Voler next year, as well. I’ve always wanted to do some surface design, and I love a good bike vest.

smokin hot

1. Really, what’s the deal with the ads on recipe sites?

2. I drew a chunk of the final art of the Eyeball book one day at a Subaru dealership while waiting for work to be done on my car. And three pages of Pigs Dig a Road was colored in an Airbnb in the Poconos last fall.

3. versus the people who just skipped to the web shop back there at the beginning, see…

4. I only have fifteen copies, so maybe not everyone. May I be so lucky.