the fifth print fair
A little over a week ago, Raspberry and I had a table at the Inprint Festival and it was our fifth print fair. The last print fair we did was in July 2014, so it's been quite a while. Since then, Raspberry has repeatedly asked if we could do another, to which I always replied that she had to make new work. For her, the new work came in many spluttering spurts and there was practically nothing new for me, so the thought of doing another print fair was something on the back burner. Not to mention, having a baby around complicates things too.
Anyhow, with Ares at sixteen months now, I thought we could take another shot at doing a print fair. I knew about it for a good two months, but as is always the case, the bulk of the work I did for it came in the two weeks leading up to the actual day. Ha, talk about procrastination! The day itself was tremendously successful. I'd had my doubts, given the location of our table at the venue, but I'm glad my concerns were unfounded. We were consistently busy through the afternoon, and at one point we actually had people lining up to pay. That's practically unheard of!
For the first time, Raspberry was doing custom, on-the-spot drawings for £1 and they proved to be quite popular. She initially offered cat drawings, but they evolved into customized drawings, including one of a peacock with a blackish body because it'd forgotten to wear an apron and had spilled paint on itself. She had some people specifically seek her out and she sold out of a couple of her prints, including some she's had since the very first print fair we did back in March 2013. To say she had a successful day would be an understatement.
This was the first print fair where I had new work in eons. I've been attempting to move away from making maps so this was the first time I debuted some illustrations in the form of two prints and a zine (my very first one ever!). I was nervous about doing so, as I've never actually publicly shown any of my drawings before, not since I last drew more voraciously in junior high. But people seemed to like them, and that's motivated me to keep working at it. This was also the first time I sold more than just one of my sets of photos and that was certainly encouraging. I even met a guy who works for the Open Eye Gallery, who said they'd like to showcase artists' work in their shop and floated the idea of maybe having my images there. Not that I've heard from him, but that'd be amazing! I also met a girl who actually sends snail mail and she bought four of my envelopes. Snail mail enthusiasts are few and far between, so I was excited to have met her. As usual, I did have the maps for sale, but I tested out the idea of having people make me an offer for them instead of having a set price. It didn't work out, but the maps only very occasionally sell at the print fairs, so I'm not torn out about it. While I didn't have as successful a day as Raspberry did, I did quite well and have absolutely no complaints. Coming off the high of the day, I know I definitely want to keep on working on my illustrations and see where that takes me. That said, I'm excited to do another fair (not that there are plans as yet to do so, but I'm excited at the potential for it!).
(Oh, and on the way home, we saw a rabbit beside the hospital, which I think is quite a perfect way to end the day!)