Pricing my work

For the RAG week Village Fete I made and sold handbound books with ink illustrations on them. As I didn't end up selling that many as it wasn't very busy in college, I am going to set up a folksy to see what response I get from the online creative community.


At the fete I priced the books at...

• A4 Sketchbboks- £3.00
• A5 Sketchbooks- £1.50/£2.00
• A6 Sketchbooks/Notebooks- £1.00
• Grizzly Bear poster- £0.80
• Postcards- £0.60
• Notecards- £0.20
• Grizzly Bear Zine- £0.50

For the online shop I am pricing the books slightly higher as it is a different audience and context I am selling them in. I need to make sure I earn money for materials, time and make a profit. I am pretty clueless about pricing my work so I talked to Marianne about it in my tutorial and we decided on some prices...

• A4 Sketchbboks- £7-50
• A5 Sketchbooks- £5-00
• A6 Sketchbooks/Notebooks- £3-50

I haven't put my name or a link to my blog anywhere on the books so I need to make a bussiness card or possibly turn the postcards into a alternative bussiness card with my details on it. 

I need to find out about postage costs too, how much it will cost to send each book and buy envelopes/stamps etc. 

First step though, set up Paypal and then get my Folksy page and everything up!

Leeds Love Affair

I got really excited as Leeds Love Affair tweeted that they had bought one of my Edith Piaf prints from the People You Should Know exhibition! They posted a photograph on twitter about the exhibition and my work, its really exciting as I have never had anyone buy my work before. It is a confidence booster, and plus lots of people follow this blog so will see it. They are now following me on twitter too which is really cool as they post about all kinds of things happening in Leeds. Having a twitter does have its benefits! I am happy.

They also wrote a full blog about the exhibition, its really good to see the exhibition, all Emma's work and our work being talked about and appreciated after all the work and preparation that went into creating the exhibition. It advertises it more as well so more people may come visit during the week!

Link to the full article-
http://leedsloveaffair.blogspot.co.uk/

Side by Side

I'm trying to improve my photoshop skills have been quite limited so throughout this project I have been trying to learn more about it and ways to use it. I feel myself and my work would benefit from this. I have been playing around with this illustration, adding colour and experimenting with layers, possibly turning into an image ready to screenprint.

I also know how to prepare an image for screen printing now, separating each colour into a separate layer and printing each layer in black and white. This is very useful as I am really enjoying the screen printing process and feel I am learning and improving my skills in this area. The experience of screen printing my Edith Piaf piece for the People You Should Know exhibition was a learning process as my first attempts were not so good so I had to re print them.

I have been wanting to get stuck into printing all year as I have never had the opportunity to develop skills thoroughly in this area so I am pleased, I feel much more confident to go to the print room and prepare images to screen print on my own without being guided all the way through as previously.

Ante Bookfair 05/05/12

Yesterday I went and helped out Loosely Bound at the Ante Bookfair in Shipley. They run a zine workshop for kids so I went along to help out and it was very fun indeed! The kids got really into and had the best imaginations. Working with them to create stories, adventures of aliens, creatures, drawings of everything and anything, they came up with some crazy and amazing stories.

I drew the name Freddy and I asked a girl called Izzy, who is 7 years old, what does Freddy look like? And she said he has really long hair and a tiny body. So, here is Freddy!

Some of the drawings and zines the kids were making.

A pink monster who is really good at Karate, by 7 year old Izzy.

A Muck Monster called Katie, by Izzy.

Adding more to the Pink Karate Monster.

I drew a character called Mr Stripey, Izzy came up with the rest of the story for Mr Stripey Adventures!

Marriane's son Jake's drawings in his zine. He was really interested in space and we talked a lot about the sun and moon and galaxies. 

Jake and Robbie making and drawing.

Izzy's brother called Bill, who is 6 years old, came up with this story about a knight in his castle. The little yellow door is the entrance and inside is his castle full of dragons. He also drew a lot of super heros with special powers, called Super and Hero. We also debated about whether Batman can fly, it was 50/50.

I was a bit nervous about today but I had a really fun day and the kids seemed to really enjoy the workshop! They were so creative and imaginative, the stories they came up with were brilliant. I would love to do workshops like this again and more often.

Focus Points

My good friends Garnets are wanting some artwork done for their double single release in a couple of weeks. They want the artwork to be done without hearing their songs, just given the titles. 'Dance with the Chloroplasts' and 'Mother and the Daughter'. I've sketched a few ideas down so far, I really want to produce something good and professional so I want to take give myself enough time to do so.

There are a couple of other things that I really must do and have been meaning too for ages now but this week has been taken up by finishing work for the People You Should Know exhibition on Friday. I am pleased with the comments book I produced and I'm satisfied with my Edith Piaf print, though I think it could be better. Getting stuff on etsy and finishing my zine are a must for this week! I feel these tasks have been dragging on forever.

Blogger has also decided it won't let me upload any more photos so I am slightly behind on my blogging, I need to figure out how it will let me upload more!

To summarise, this week I will be...

• Producing Garnets Illustrations for double single release.
• Getting stuff on Etsy!!
• Finishing bear zine.
• Carrying on with illustrations/making and producing work.

Tutorial

25/04/12

The tutorial today was really really helpful and I am feeling much better and confident about what I am doing. I was really honest with Marianne about how down I was about the crit before Easter and it really affected what I was doing. I started to question everything and becoming unsure. I have been doing work over Easter but at a slow place and lacking in motivation.

Marianne encouraged me and has given me some guidance and confidence in what I am doing. I am also feeling much better about using the printroom which will help push my work further. She re assured me that I am doing the the right things to produce work and it is okay to question myself. It is part of the journey of the project and a learning process.

I need to build up the pace and finish making for the Corn Exchange exhibition and other things such as the zine etc. I must include all this in my evaluation and reflect on my practice.

I feel much better and hopefully my work pace will speed up as I become more motivated. Marianne also mentioned about some Zine workshops that are being run by the people who did Loosely Bound and that they need people to run the workshops. I think this would be really fun and exciting and a good experience so she said she will get in touch with them and find out how to get involved!

Travelling Book Project

This is a really cool project. Four Artist's; two from Belfast and two from America, posted a journal type book to each other every week. They completed a two page spread each week and sent it on to the next artist, throughout this time not having contact with each other besides sending on the book. I think this is such an exciting idea and I have read about it being done in a few different ways around the world. Similar to the 1000s journal project but with less people creating the content. The book becomes fatter and fatter, full of all kinds of content, the book becomes the artwork in itself.

http://www.lookatbook.com/