The Artist's Path - Part 1

A few weeks ago was Wondercon, one of the many lesser iterations of Comic Con. I have been doing Wondercon and Comic Con for the last 6-7 years. As part of Wondercon, Wendy, of I Heart Guts, decided to host a panel on independent toy designers. She was nice enough to ask me to be on the panel. She had hosted a similar panel at the NY Comic Con last year, which I was able to attend but not be a panelist on. The panel in NY was great, very inspiring. It really got me thinking about some of the ideas and experiences I thought I might share with aspiring artists.

So in advance of the panel at Wondercon, I made some notes and put together a few images. At the panel, I attempted to take the second chair, so that I would talk second. I always find it better to try to build on what was said before. As luck would have it, the first panelist was late, so I got the uncomfortable position of going first. I fumbled through 5 minutes, saying a bunch of stuff in a fairly disjointed way. I got to make some of my points but not in the way I would have liked. The rest of the panel was great but in the time restrictions we only had time for a few questions. Since I was set up at the show, I had to hurry back to my table.

In the past few weeks, i have thought about what I wanted to say at the panel and realized that 5 minutes was not enough time to properly present my thoughts. So that is what leads to this first post. I have long had this blog but up to now, I have just used it for announcements and image postings. With this series it is going to change a bit. I am going to present my history as an artist and many of the lessons I have learned along that path. Hopefully this will be of interest to fans of my art but also maybe helpful to all the struggling artists out there in the world.

Next I will run through some of my history. My memory can be terrible, so bear with me. And as Mark Twain said "Never let the facts get in the way of telling a good story."