Ragon

Sunday Thoughts (Ep. 24)

Added 2018-09-17 03:46:34 +0000 UTC

Happy Sunday! Another week gone by, I hope it was a good one for you!

I’m writing to you, my friends and patrons, having just energetically cleaning my entire apartment with a classical record spinning on the record player I got for Christmas. A very aggressive classical record. Zach calls it “Beethoven’s Amped Up Mix”. I have a glass of the last of the Trader Joe’s boxed Shiraz and Zach is prepping our pasta dinner of what he calls “Summer is Dead Pasta” (using the rest of our summer squash.) Our little home is clean and ready for another work week. There, I’ve set the scene!

This week was taken over by one thing: a car. Zach and I have lived without a car for the two years that we live here, and we sometimes love it (when we hear about friend’s car repair bills) and sometimes hate it (when we want to travel anywhere outside of Seattle.) This week I watched my friend Sara’s cats while she traveled, and she offered to let us use her car. Zach and I were determined to use this opportunity to the fullest. Which mostly means we did all of the little driving errands we normally have to do on foot. Like drive down the street to Trader Joe’s and buy a bunch of wine and tofu and beer and pumpkins.

That’s right, I’m in full-fledged Autumn Mode. Pumpkins decorate our house. Pumpkin the cat has her Halloween collar on. Someday very soon I’m going to decorate for Halloween because I LOVE IT.

In terms of art that has translated into illustrations like this:

Which I developed further in to a repeat tile pattern:

Which I applied to a wide array of products on my Redbubble Print on Demand Account, which you can find here.

Have you heard of Print on Demand sites, like Society6, Redbubble, Shopify, CaseApp, Printify, or any other? If you haven’t, Wikipedia describes Print on Demand as:

A printing technology and business process in which book copies (or other [products]) are not printed until the company receives an order, allowing prints of singular or small quantities.

It’s supposed to be a great passive income for artists and illustrators, because all you have to do is upload the art file, edit the image on the products, and then the website handles the rest of the production, transaction, and fulfillment. For me, it’s more useful as a way to visualize my art on products.

This week I also got prepared or and attended my first Art Market: Back Bar Flea Market at the Crocodile. To get ready I bulked up my stock of prints, and prepared my first actual table display!

The night before I did a test run of my display on my living room floor, so I could set up quickly. I found these customizable wire display racks at Goodwill for $15! This gives you all a pretty clear view of what I offer at markets! Check out my big collection of stickers down at the bottom, I developed those this week!

The market was relatively quiet, a lot quieter than I expected for a paid market at a well known music venue so close to downtown. But despite that, I’m excited to have had my first market experience, gotten to know some of the other vendors in Seattle, and gotten a little inside knowledge about art markets around the city.

A cool customer with her handmade Ragonia Eye pin! She also bought $20 worth of stickers. Can you believe??

A few of the other artists at the event: Inferno Creations and Brown Thumb Shoppe .

Non-Art Life:

Zach and I seized the opportunity to use a car for the week and drove out of the city to Olallie State Park, to hike the Twin Falls train! We were looking for a hike that was relatively close to the city, and not longer than 3 hours (because we got a fairly late start.) This hike fit the bill! It felt wonderful to get outside of the city, and experience some of the beautiful, misty, evergreen nature that the Pacific North West is known for.