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Here’s a pen and ink piece from last year. People always ask if I do caricatures of myself. Well, duh. What good caricaturist doesn’t? Have a good weekend. Hope to see you at Mill Hollow Reservation Winter Days. Or at my Big Bonanzle Sale Sunday night @ 9 pm Eastern. Sorry folks. I’m very not well, so I missed out on posting new content today, except for this lame excuse. Suffice it to say, without any hype or qualifiers, today was one of the worst days ever. If I ever do a collection of a week’s worth of worst days, this will probably be on it. Meh. Hopefully, I’ll be back tomorrow. Today, class, you’re going to learn a little about business, buying art supplies, and a little something about how websites make money. In the past, in the right column of this very website, you have seen an orange rectangle-shaped ad that promoted the wonderful online art supply company Dick Blick Art Materials Dick Blick Art Materials I was very happy with the experience. I saved some money on the pens, had them shipped to my home, and they were packaged well with all of the pertinent paperwork included. So, like I said up front, you used to see their ad on the site, but it went away for awhile. Well, I suppose that’s my fault. The ad was an affiliate program ad. When I lead people to the Dick Blick Art Materials Not even on 5 dollar, pick up only Monday pizza day. Sigh. Eventually, Dick Blick Art Materials After bearing down and getting the site back up, and active, and hopefully interesting, one of the first things I did was to reactivate my connection to Dick Blick Art Materials If I’m going to recommend art supplies and such to my students, and if they don’t like the selection at our local art stores, such as Pat Catan’s and Michael’s (despite their fabulous name, I call ‘em Meh Killz), I can offer them a choice that I am actively using and can recommend with the utmost confidence. Want to kick the tires and give it a shot? Here’s their Hot Deals of the Week! I’m not a huge online shopper, so I have no hesitation in recommending this to my more luddite viewers as a method for obtaining art supplies. Have fun.
Make fun of Jay Leno. Hmmm… caricature time. Put more stuff up for sale on Bonanzle. Did you know I’m cleaning out my comic book and related merch collection out? I need cash and I need space, soonest. You can check out my booth, and if you’re willing to wait until Sunday, you can … well, I’ll let you read about it. Put artwork up for sale on my Etsy.com store. Return library books. Write something for the MikeTheArtGuy.com site. Check. Check the member count on the Mike The Art Guy group on Facebook. How can I raise that number? Tweet some nonsense. Take a nap. So I’m looking through my “draft” file and I found this mouldering there. I thought I had posted it, but I guess not. It was topical a year ago, but since it’s Lex Luthor, it’s still good for a laugh or six. “Lex Luthor Bailout” with Jon Hamm – watch more funny videos
I usually don’t endorse anything associated with Will Ferrell (like the site that this comes from), but in this case, he’s not on camera and this is a hilarious idea. At least it’s a hilarious idea to someone who has read Superman comics and followed the character in other media for 40 years. That bald wig, though… I dunno… Enjoy. Many of you know that I am a fan of historical fiction. And I enjoy the occasional comedy, also. Well, here’s a Reese’s Cup of comedy got on my historical fiction goodness. What if Ringo of the Beatles wrote the opening theme to the classic James Bond flick Goldfinger? Enjoy.
I was talking to someone on the phone the other day about the Disney Vault. The Disney Vault is a business technique where Disney only releases their major releases once every seven years. Seven years seems to be a good number. Not only is it the reverse of one dog year, but it allows a child to go from newborn to second grade (your mileage may vary), thus creating a market of hungry consumers for a product times 7. In another seven years, that market will hit puberty, lose interest in animated musicals, and show an interest in other things and people. But the loss of those consumers will be replaced by a bigger market of toddlers and young ‘uns ready to check out some Disney hidden (at least to them) treasures. The potential enthusiasm for such a product could have a potential to be at least 7, if not 700, times greater during a release, than if it were constantly available. So why am I thinking about this particular business model? I’m coming up on my fifth year of being a professional artist and some of my prints are getting to be that old, and have been available for that long. You see them at every show, every event, wherever I go. That may lead some people who have seen my work in the past to pass me by with a slight tinge of contempt bred by the familiarity of my previous work. “I’ve seen it before.”  To make a long story shorter, if not short enough, I’d like to set a model where I release only so many items based on a particular image, based on a pre-established time frame. Like six months. And then the image goes back into the vault for, say for example, five years. I’m to old to wait seven years. I may be dead by then, but five might work, or even 4, working on a full leap year cycle. So, to sum it up. I’m thinking about releasing my art images for six months, and then putting them out of circulation for 3 to 6 years, building up anticipation for said images to a degree that can’t be achieved by constant availability. This is similar to the Disney Vault Business model. What do you think? Please discuss. I get the daily About.com: Today email/newsletter, assembled by Jen Hubley. Usually, the newsletter has three or four major articles from the About.com website featured that are of topical interest. These articles cover a wide variety of topics, including lifestyle, business, the arts, culture, trends, and news. And there are tons o’ links to other topical content. I found today’s set of featured articles very appropriate to people who want to follow my lead and sell their artwork for whatever reason. The top article is titled “Making the Internet and Ecommerce Work For Your Craft Business”. Check it out. Let me know what you think. And yes, there are a LOT of ads, but the content is free and good. If you’ve been here before, you’ll notice that the website has slimmed down a bit. I’ve taken most of the content down for now, until I get a chance to review, reduce, redo, or just plain fix it. One of my goals for 2010 will be to make this website more appealing, more informative, and just plain better. In addition to improving the present content, I will be adding all kinds of new (or at least new HERE) content five days a week. And I’m not talking about just lame promotional junk, press releases, etc., but real content that will catch your eye, engage your other senses, and make you want to check out what exactly it is that I’m doing here. This includes short articles about whatever trips my trigger (as is appropriate to the website), videos (both mine and other people’s), photos, podcasts, and artwork. Not only do I do caricatures, fantasy, and comic art, but I also teach classes and do other type of presentations. That will be reflected in the new content on this site. In addition to class listings, many of my class materials will be appearing here. Along with short how-to videos. MikeTheArtGuy.com: The Podcast, will also be making a comeback and will be hosted here on this site. The show will feature interviews with working artists and other people of interest to the online artistic community. Two video projects I am still working on include a series of drawing videos similar to my old public access show, Drawn Out. Instead of interviewing the caricature subjects, I will open the phone lines to anyone who wants to yammer during the show. The other video series will be shot and edited in house and released online and will feature how to videos. And all of this will be free. Free as in, you can come here and view it all for no cost to you. Happy new year! I will be doing caricatures and selling artwork at the Mill Hollow Reservation Winter Days Festival (This Link will take you to an excellent online article about the event.) again this year. This is a fun event with ice carvers from the Joint Vocational School (part of their food arts/culinary program), a horse drawn sleigh, very friendly sled dogs, an open sledding hill, and some fun indoor events, including a tour of the historic Bacon House and winter refreshments such as coffee, cocoa, and cookies. The event runs from 11 to 4 pm on Saturday, January 16, and 12 to 4 on Sunday January 17. For more information, you can call Mill Hollow at 440-967-7310. Here is the official scoop from the Metroparks on their site. I will be, I’m assuming, in the Carriage Barn doing caricatures. The caricatures I do usually take about 10 to 15 minutes to do, maybe a little more time with color. Black and white caricatures are 5 dollars for head and shoulders, 10 dollars for full bodies per person. Color is five dollars more per person. I can put two or three people in a picture. I’ll also have some other items for sale, including sketches, prints, blank notecards, and possibly some sketch cards. Hope to see you there. |
Buy my original art and prints here! |
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