November in Ragonia (2019)

 Hello again, my dear patrons and friends! Welcome to another monthly update on the life of an independent illustrator. And what an exciting month it's been!!  

As usual, I want to start the update by welcoming our new patrons, a record-breaking 33 new friends! Huge hellos to... (deep breath), Lauren, Chloe, Brady, Rachel, Kat, Bash, Msael, Candice, Lais, Jennifer, Anais, Joy, Carli, Becca, Venecia, Samm, Sheikah, Edward, Felix, Monica, Tildum, Eva, Mandy, Faye, Emma, Ava, Emily, Yu, Soraya, Iga, Maxine, Michele, and Chelsea! Hello hello and welcome, everyone, I'm SO thankful to have you here!

As with all patrons, you are encouraged to use this Patron as you like, comment as much or as little as you want, post in the community page asking for help/opinions from other patrons, request specific content, whatever you like! If you pledged at the $5+ tier in November, your thank you cards are sent out at the beginning of December after your first pledge processes. And! You're invited to be a part of my Close Friends stories in instagram, just send me a DM to @ragonia_! Thank you again you lovely lovely people!

Now let's see what happened in November in Ragonia. It's a long one, it's been a busy month!

My first sketch and final linework submitted to my client.

Verizon & iHeart Radio Photobooth Experience!

In October I told you guys about an upcoming project I'd accepted with Verizon & iHeart Radio, but was a little wary about how it was going to go. It ended up being an absolutely amazing experience, I was so delighted to be a part of it!

At the end of October a marketing/branding company working for Verizon contacted me about an experiential project idea they had. They were looking for a Seattle local artist to design a whimsical, doodle-y mural as a backdrop for their photo booth, and for that artist to draw the other half of the mural live during the event. (For reference, the director later told me she found my website by googling "Seattle illustrator")

Full view of the photo booth after I finished the right side!

The production phase was really quick (around a week from start to finish), so I'm very thankful the client didn't have a lot of changes and I was mostly just able to refine my first sketch for the final. My process for this project was creating the sketch in Procreate and then creating the final linework in a new-to-me app called Affinity Designer. Since my canvas size was so large I needed to work in a vector program instead of pixel-based Procreate, and Affinity Designer ended up being an excellent intro to vectors! It costs a one-time payment of $20, which is much cheaper than a subscription to Adobe Illustrator. If you find yourself facing your first project requiring vectors, and are looking for an alternative to Illustrator, I highly recommend Affinity Designer! (They're not paying me to say this, haha.)

The team also had me illustrate a couple of props to populate the space further, and then they printed and set up everything to perfection.

Live mural illustration!

The photo booth was set up to the side at a Verizon & iHeart Radio sponsored Fall Out Boy Concert at the Showbox. While the audience was coming in for the concert, I was using Posca markers to illustrate the second half of the mural. The concept was as if a local artist had drawn every element of a cartoon Pike Place Market and Seattle for the photobooth live at the event. I was too focused on drawing to see if anyone saw or cared that I was drawing in front of them, but I had fun doing it! Luckily the production team printed the live-drawing side with very thin guidelines, so it was fairly quick and easy to create the mural. 

It was hard on my wrists, though, so props to mural artists!

The cart with props for people to use for their photos, all illustrated by me!

A line of people waiting to use the photo booth!

Crowds of adoring fans cheering for me! Wait, no, that's Pete Wentz.

Just a girl in her illustrated photo booth, taken by the photo booth!

This project ended up being a lot of firsts for me, and I hope it's broken down a few walls that were scaring me away from working for bigger clients. It was my first time on a conference call with a client. It was my first time working with vector illustration. It was my first time creating a mural. It was my first one-week turnaround project. Boom! Vanquished! Come at me, big clients!

A couple of holiday portrait sketches from this year's batch.

Holiday Portrait Commissions!

As is my tradition this time of year, I've been spending November illustrating the holiday portrait commissions I received in October! Most people ordered digital portraits of themselves and their families, and a few people ordered traditional or printed copies of their digital portraits. Each one takes me around 5-6 hours total, and the most time-consuming part is the sketch phase. I'll be spending the weekend and next week finishing them all up.

I'm enjoying my simplified technique/style so much more than my portraits from last year, and raising my prices to something closer to 6 hours of work makes it feel so much more worth it. Thank you to my patrons who ordered a portrait from me, by the way!

A few listing photos sitting in my iPad's photo album. Also, spot my tiny face.

Etsy Holiday Update!

One of my biggest sources of stress this month was thinking I wouldn't get to updating my shop in time for the holidays. But of course, since this project was a priority I got it done fairly early in the month! 

All photos taken with, as usual, with my iPad camera on my kitchen table, and edited with the Snapseed free photo editing app.

Noissue custom tissue paper and water-activated custom tape!

This month I received my custom tissue paper and tape from Noissue, that they super kindly gifted me as part of their Collaborator program. I believe they found me through Instagram, and I'm so thankful to be collaborating with such a cool, eco-conscious company. I'm also proud to share that I'm on their Partner's page, along with many of my other favorite artists!

Most importantly, I'm super excited to wrap every one of my Etsy orders this holiday season in this cute tissue paper!

My three new babies, these cutie enamel pins!

In preparation for my shop update, I also received my three new enamel pin designs, the Feelin' Good Face, the Lil' Pig, and the Sass Cat! I ordered them through PinGameStrong, and I can't recommend them enough. The quality is great and their communication is so thorough.

I am IMMENSELY pleased with these little beauties! Thus far the most popular by far has been the Feelin' Good Face, which I think is funny because I ordered the design on a whim. Ain't that just the way?

Biggest order batch yet!

Thanks to my shop update this month I had my biggest batch of orders ever to go out of the shop at once. 40 orders shipped out in mid-November, which beats last Black Friday orders by 10! We growin'!

My 2019 GeekGirlCon set up!

So patrons! All of these crazy happenings this month were leaving me feeling like a little ball of complete stress. I felt like I wasn't going to have enough stock for the holidays, that I wasn't going to make enough money to keep doing this job, that I was failing everyone with my new products. But one event made me forget all of those stresses and somehow totally relaxed me: GeekGirlCon.

My first-time repeat convention, GeekGirlCon will always be special to me as it was my first convention last October, which was a very meaningful achievement for me (read about it here!) Coming back to set up this year gave me a sweet feeling of growing... establishment? Community? Confidence? As even though I was setting up alone, I actually knew people this year to stop and chat with, say hi to, that I'd met at other events, online, or the previous year. I also wasn't brand-spanking-new to tabling this time, had a much wider array of goods, and a full table to play with. 

My dear patrons, I can't tell you what a deep sense of confidence and joy returning to this convention gave me. And it's a feeling I never would have experienced had I not taken the leap that first time last year. It's a feeling that only comes from being in something for the long haul.

Display close-ups for my fellow Display Nerds!

The foot-traffic at this year's GeekGirlCon felt medium-slow. Nothing like Jet City slow, but I'm itching for some super busy conventions. That said, my sales were still a very close second to my highest earning Con this year, Rose City Comic Con!

Let me pull out my Square app to share some STATS! 

• My top-selling item was 8x8 and 8x10 prints, with my Cooking Witch being the most popular print. 
• My top-selling stickers were the Spooky Shit and Side-Eye Cat stickers.
• My top-selling pins were my handmade cat pins.
• I sold 141 stickers, 93 of which were a part of my 3 for $10 sticker deal. 
• I sold 8 Inktober originals. This is unusually high for my conventions, but I remember originals being popular at GeekGirlCon last year too (good thing I doubled and tripled my prices this year for originals!)

It was a good good good convention weekend, I didn't sell out of all my product which means I don't have to scramble to get ready for GeekCraftExpo and Black Friday. I'm feelin' good, my friends.

February 2018 | July 2018 | December 2018 | November 2019

50,000 Followers!

I'm also happy to share that this month I reached the milestone of 50k followers on my Instagram account! Follower count is relatively arbitrary, but it can help with a lot of things when you have an online business. I definitely think that my social media growth has contributed to my recently increased online sales and Patrons, and for that, I am especially thankful. Both of these things make it a lot easier to remain a full-time artist, which is absolutely my favorite thing about my life.

 The unfortunate downside to the growth is now I don't have enough time in the day to respond to every message or comment I get on Instagram. I was trying to stay caught up for a while, but now I'm realizing that responding to people on Instagram would be my full-time job now if I let it. And I have to be careful not to let it. 

One of my patrons asked if I could share some screenshots of my follower count growth since the beginning. I'm not sure if this is interesting or helpful, but for me, I always have a big boost in growth around Inktober and the holidays. I ALSO want to say, (because my partner's friend asked him about this,) I have never ever bought my Instagram followers, and I never would. There are some 'services' that you can pay to get you instant followers, but usually, those are fake/bot accounts, and what's the point of that. I've also never bought an Instagram or Facebook ad, but that's less skeevy in my opinion. Just saying!

(Check out some of my scoail media strategies/thoughts here!)

A couple of artists in the middle of the MLS Championship game.

Non-Art Life!

Wait, there's time for non-art life too this month? Not really! But I did:

• Meet up with some amazing Seattle-local artists, friends, and patrons for my first ever Brunch n' Draw! Thanks to all who could come, it was absolutely awesome!!
• Watched a lot of the Crown, Great British Baking Show, and Critical Role.
• Got a haircut! Used a Face Mask! Bought my first full face of makeup from e.l.f. at the new Target in my neighborhood! Self care!

Is that about it? That's about it! Work is life and life is work this month, and right now that's okay!

Whew, that's November so far. Didn't I tell you all in September that it was about to get busy? Don't worry, I'm sleeping plenty, eating vegetables, drinking water, and taking time to enjoy this busy beautiful season.

Before I go, an announcement! There will be no Arty Business article in December! I'll still post a monthly update, but the first monthly post will be a different event. If anyone wants to cancel their pledge and then return in January when Arty Business comes back, I totally understand. 

After 7 consecutive months of Arty Business articles, I thought we'd take a break in December and instead do something else fun and festive and different!  Partially I'd love to do this because my birthday is in December, I'm flying to Denver and then Virginia, and also November has been heckin' busy.  But also I just thought a nice holiday Patreon treat would be fun!  

Right now some ideas I have are:

• A patron-exclusive livestream holiday party! Let's hang and chat and drink wine and eat pie, just all of us!
• A sketchbook tour !
• An in-depth studio tour !
• A doodle tour of my huge doodle collection from middle school, high school, and college!
• An introductory post/artist post, where you can all introduce yourselves in the comments or community section. Promote yourself, follow some new artists, make some new friends!

What do you all think? What sounds the most fun for you? Got any awesome ideas or requests? Please let me know!

That's all for now, friends! Thanks so much for following along with my now-bustling little artist business, and thank you so much for your never-ending support.

Thankful for you, xoxo,

Ragon