Prost Productions

Check this out, after I posted my blog about my wine labels all my wine followers on twitter did me good with some great retweeting and it got viewed by the Prost Productions guy, who asked me if I wanted to draw up a few Christmas wine cards, after we talked back and forth for a few days I finally got some time to work on something, one was perfect, one needed some photoshop work, and one needed to be dropped. We ended up with two really good cards and went into production, Prost Production as it was, you can find them here and here.

Spend some time on their site and read about them and read their blog and buy lots of cards!

It Just Takes Time: A Love Story About A Commission

Its no big secret that I used to have a “real job” as an architectural drafter for a big company back in San Antonio. Well at this job, just before I left, I met a girl that saw some of my work and really loved it. Remember, I used to draw at work every chance I got until I quit. Then about a year later I had a show at a hotel less than a block away from that office and I invited all my old friends from that office and they did make me proud to have worked along side them as they bought up about half my show. Well I talked to this girl at that show for a while and she asked about other work I do and sizes and prices and where she could see some more work.

Ok about a year later, which is 2 years later if you are counting, which you should because this is why I am blogging, I get an e-mail out of no where wanting to know about how my commissions work, yup from that same girl.

She wanted to talk about getting a series done to go over her couch but by the time we talked on the phone about it some thing amazing happened in her life which brings a more meaningful piece to mind. She was meeting her parents at a hotel bar in Miami and thinking that her boyfriend was still out of the country. To her surprise she found her boyfriend hiding behind a tall chair as she walked over to her mom. So he sits her down on the chair next to his and gets down on one knee and asks her to marry him. I being the hopeless romantic I am was moved by this story, as we chatted back and forth we came up with this drawing:

The red chair was the chair he was sitting in and the other one was hers. She wanted the name of the bar there and the “yes I do” that she said. I think this was a really cool commission, more in the vain of this one. Commissions like this remind me of the tattoo shows where the people come in and so much meaning goes into each piece. If anyone wants to talk about a custom drawing I’m here and you can check it out on my site.

Winterfest At Evergreen High School

We were up at 4:00 and left the house at 5:00, got to the show at 6:00 and were set up at 6:20. As usual we were all set up and watching all the other artists setting up. There was an older couple next to us and it was looking like they were having some time setting up (I did try to help as much as I could but they were proud and almost always turned me down). I commented to Hannah that I’m glad we have an easy set up and take down so we won't have much trouble when we are older and still doing these. The “KISS” method is what we live by, keep it simple stupid, we only have 3 big bins, 2 with art and 1 with bags and bubble wrap, then a tool box with everything to fix anything that might come up. We wheel it around on a dolly, we might need to get a better dolly though, but its good for right now.

here we are, #69 huh

We talked to the older couple next to us a lot about how life on the road is, they had a trailer and did art fairs and tent shows all over Colorado, which as some of you guys out there know, that is something Hannah and I would love to do, maybe even after we are done with our Denver stay. But that’s another blog and another whole chapter in the life of living as an artist working here at “Art By Nemo”.

our table

Ok so on to the show. We didn’t get much sales due to the nature of the beast, it was more of a craft show and since it has been going on for 31 years, people who came out knew what they wanted and had a list of names and stuff to buy already. Most people didn’t even give us a look over for some reason, although a lot of people did manage to come and check us out and they all were surprised to see the kind of work I am producing. We even had a few sales, but nothing like we have been having lately. I don’t really know if a craft fair is a place to try to sell fine art or not, I did see a lot of people spending money and tons of people came out to the event and the person selling the tall skinny Santa Clauses was making a killing.

rolling things in at 6:30 or so

Now I wanna ask all you tent show and art fair people about how they do in craft fairs? Is it harder to sell fine art at a craft fair?

around noon time and it was packed

Even though we didn’t do as well as we wanted to I think we will still try out the Summerfest show and see if we could build a following and grab some selling that way. Also we got lost on the way home cuz all the street signs had snow on them. It was the 1st time we were out in the snow like this. It wasn’t that bad but it was scary. When we start touring with our art we will be in Florida when its snowing here!