October in Ragonia (2020)

BOO!  

Happy Halloween Eve, goblins and ghouls! It is I, your buddy in Silly Spookiness, Ragon! Coming at ya from my terrifyingly comfy studio in my parent's basement in Virginia. The leaves outside are yellow, my lips are painted black, my speakers are streaming my Witchy playlist, and my heart is full of the October spirit. (Okay, I'm forcing it A LITTLE but honestly I am faking it until I'm making it and I'm loving it.)

First of all I'd love to welcome our new patrons for this month to the Spooky Art Zone: Christina, LD, Julie, Mina, Sascha, Carly, Mary, Brad, Barbara, Eliz, Teresa, Kensi, Devin, Mariana, Ava, and Jennie! WELCOME! Thank you all SO much for your patronage, it honestly means so much to me. You, and all my patrons, are truly making a difference in my life as an artist. 

If you're in the Sage tier or higher and you opted into physical rewards you'll have a thank you card and sticker headed your way next month. If you're in the Rosemary tier or higher send me an email (ragondickard@gmail.com) with your requested photo to be made into a doodle! If you're at any tier THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU, and I hope you enjoy all my current and future posts! We have a good time here!

So with the welcomes concluded, pull up a chair with a glass of hot cider and let me weave you a tale about what happened in Ragonia during this finally busy and productive month.

My 2020 #HappyPlease prompt list. Feel free to use any time!

DRAWTOBER

If you read my monthly update for August and September you might remember that my partner and I moved across the country from Seattle to Virginia at the end of August. Therefore I spent most of September trying to set my business back up, ordering packaging supplies, buying a desk and computer, etc. With the move on top of *gestures generally*, I was feeling pretty drained in anticipation of Inktober, the yearly October drawing challenge that a lot of artists participate in on social media.

The only four pieces I've made for Inktober/Drawtober this year. Hooray!

Inktober does mean a lot to me, though, as it was one of the first things that got me back in the practice of making art and I always have a lot of artistic growth through the challenge. So this year I decided to make a very relaxed prompt list called #HappyPlease, with 15 gentle prompts to draw things that make me happy. I have so far only made four pieces, but I'm not disappointed in myself at all. I'll possibly continue to follow and share the prompts into November and December, and I welcome you all to use the prompts as well.

In summation, this year's Inktober has been nothing like my last three years, and I ain't mad at all. This whole year looks nothing like the last three years.

The final New Belgium Voodoo Ranger design.

NEW BELGIUM

This month I was contracted by New Belgium Brewing's PNW branch to be an Artist Ambassador for a Halloween Art contest they hosted this month. They invited people to draw their Voodoo Ranger character, share it on social media, the three Artists Ambassadors voted on their favorites, and the winners won a cash prize and some New Belgium Merch.

I initially took some pause at the idea of supporting an art contest, since most artists agree that using a contest to get artists to do free art for a company is problematic and devalues art as a profession. (Sometimes companies offer a contest for people to submit a logo design, or design for a shirt, or even design to be included in a movie (I'm looking at you, Star Wars) with only the winning artist being paid and then the designs being used to make money for the company.) After thinking about the New Belgium contest, I felt it was fairly different since the art would be of an existing property (Voodoo Ranger) that already belongs to the company, and the contest only functioned as social media advertising for New Belgium, not a product that New Belgium could sell and profit off of (like a t-shirt or tote bag.) As my friend described, it's essentially a Draw This In Your Style challenge with prizes. If New Belgium had planned to use the contest to get spec work for free, I wouldn't have supported it.

Overall I had a very good experience working with them, and the people who participated seemed to have fun. I just wanted to explain a little bit of my thinking here, as ethics and art is a tricky subject!

A re-worked greeting card that has been ordered and should be on it's way soon!

HOLIDAY PREP

Whew holiday prep! Redrawing, restocking, ordering, prepping for the winter! I restocked my Spooky Shit stickers (StickerApp), my Self Care Witches, Animals, and Cat Stickers (Diecutstickers.com) and tacked on an order of new stickers for my old Vampire Girl design. I also restocked my most popular Halloween prints (I stuck with my Seattle print company, Seattle Print Works.)

2018 Produce prints on left vs 2020 Produce prints on right. Similar, but updated!

I also took sometime to redraw some old things to order products for, including redrawing all of my Rainbow Produce Prints. This series was my first ever when I started my business, painted in gouache back in 2018. The earlier version was continuing to sell surprisingly well, but I felt it needed an update to match my current skill. Redrawing is also easier than making totally new art, and I definitely needed something easy this month.

Reworked this Sasquatch card as a holiday card - see the carved and overlapped style? I'm having so much fun with it!

I also redrew all of my greeting card designs and ordered them from Awesome Merch. (Because my usual letterpress artist hasn't been available this year, sad face.) I'm so excited for the cards to arrive, because I'm REALLY digging this new digital drawing technique that I've been playing with lately!

A piece of a cool upcoming project...

COMING UP...

As of this week I was approved for a very exciting project that will be released for the holidays. Exciting because it'll be my second highest paying job yet! Here's the story:

You guys know it's a busy time of year. So when someone emails me with a project with a quick turnaround during an already busy time, I quote them a price that I think would be too high for them to say yes to. That way if they do say yes, I'm very happy and it's worth it to do the project, and if they say no, well then I'm fine anyway as it is. That's what I did with the Verizon mural project last year, and that's what happened this time! 

A snippet of the project!

The first deadline gave me one day to do 1-2 parts of the project, and I am seriously excited about how the results came out. I'll give a snippet here but I can't wait to share all of it!

A piece I'm thinking of adjusting to put on a shirt or sweatshirt...

In other cool project news I was recently contacted by Kotn, a Canadian clothing manufacturer, to partner on a set of Ragonia sweatshirts or shirts! I almost said no to the offer, but then I started seeing Kotn in a few lists of ethical clothing manufacturers. On top of that, I had to leave my hand printed shirts in Seattle and would love to add more clothing to my products. I hope next time I update you guys I'll be able to share an awesome shirt design, as the project should be launching the first week of December.

The portrait style I plan on offering this year vs. what I offered last year.

I also am still planning on offering portraits for the holidays this year, hopefully I'll be listing a few in my shop in the next few days. I'm only planning on offering a 'doodle' style of portrait, as my more developed portraits tend to take me WAY too much time to offer a reasonable price, and I do want to be able to offer something. If you all have any questions about portraits let me know!

A picture of my sister and I that I've been using to play with the Procreate Glitch Layer function for fun.

OTHER LOVES THIS MONTH...

Palate Polish - vegan nail polishes with food names, I just got Cherry Pie and Nori to add to my other faves of Aphrodisiac and Jawbreaker.

Kurzgesagt - Science and 'Optimistic Nihilisim" Youtube Channel with beeaautiful excellent animations. It will either give you existential dread or make you appreciate life, free will, and humanity more, depending on your perspective.

Haunting of Hill House & Bly Manor - Spooky, psychological haunted house Netflix series. Excellent, memorable, unsettling and settling both, somehow. 

Monster Factory - New Monster Factory episode, jIM jELLY doing gymnastics. I cried.

VOTING - Please vote if you can, if you haven't yet. If you have a mail in ballot you haven't mailed yet, please drop it in an official drop box, not the mail. Please. Please.

It's been a surprisingly, thankfully good month- finally productive and feeling okay for a few weeks. I hope you, too, can find ways to feel okay, to feel grounded and fulfilled and good. You deserve it, you need it.

One thing I loved this month: a quick, socially-distanced visit from my patron and friend Katie, on her way from Maine to North Carolina.

What's something that's made you happy this month? Something you've enjoyed, or you've been proud of, or that you're looking forward to? Share in the comments, and let's rumble up a little more good feelings for all of us.

Thanks for joining me for this update! I hope you have a wonderful Halloween.