Nothing quite like the endorphin rush of finishing a tricky picture. Even if “finishingâ€? actually means “finally finishing the #!&# line-art and i’ve still got a few days, if not weeks, of colouring to do before it’s really finished-finished.â€?
I’d post the line-art, just because i’m so bloody proud of myself for finally getting that… that… that thing done… but i’m trying a wee bit of an experiment, in which i create a whole body of work and keep them all secret (er, as secret as possible) until one day when i release them all at once. So, i can’t really post it yet – the current tentative drop date is 30 June, though some very limited preview images will come before then.
It’s all rather irritating to me because i don’t like hiding my art, even for a wee bit. What’s the point of creating something if nobody sees it? But, the sad truth is – my stuff doesn’t sell. Well, it does, but not nearly well enough to support even a starving artist (much less an artist with a ravenous appetite.) And i’m no professional salesperson, but to me, a lack of sales says one of three things:
– People aren’t seeing my work
– People are seeing my work, but don’t like it
– People are seeing my work, and like it, but aren’t particularly driven to buy it.
I know it’s not the first and i doubt it’s the second, so i’m going to be trying some much-more-aggressive-than-usual marketing techniques. Holding back a bit and then releasing a whole group of pieces at once is just one of those techniques.
The worst that can happen is nothing sells, which is what’s already happening. Oh, and i may go mildly insane doing twice as much artwork as usual – seeing as i plan to do both the pieces i’m keeping hidden for now, as well as pieces i’ll publicise as soon as they’re done (hey, if i drop off the face of the ‘net for three to six months, everybody will forget about me by the time i’m ready to show the Secret Stuff, right?) And there’s a chance that my marketing will be too aggressive and i’ll come off as a bit rude. So – broke, crazy, and rude. I s’pose i can deal with all that.