Well, that went better than I thought it would. I began my “gift exchange” project where people help support me and my daily creative habit, and I mail them personalized artwork. I’m already up to $60 on my Paypal account. I have some of the most amazing fans, I tell you. And I have two drawings to make and send away.

I’m going to figure out a way to add a “Wall of Supporters” somewhere on my website. Maybe I’ll find a spot on my Facebook fan page as well. I have a few ideas, but I’m not quite sure how I’ll be executing them just yet. More info will be available soon!

Hello! Super late post tonight. I was thinking of just posting this and then sharing it tomorrow. I dunno, I’m pretty tired. That being said, I do have a few things to talk about. First off, I’m still loving these design things. I think I could do these forever. Don’t worry though, I’ll move on. Eventually.

Today was a special day as I hit an important milestone. Well, maybe not a milestone, but for me personally it was an important day as I created a new page on my Facebook fan page as well as on this website. In the top right you’ll see a “Leave Tip” tab. On my Facebook fan page there’s a tab as well as an app button on the left side of the main artist profile page. I’ve spent a good deal of time researching how to go about asking for people’s hard-earned money in the best and most respectful way possible. Was this a normal thing to do? Apparently yes. As I see it all the time on many different types of websites. It’s often referred to as a “donate” button, but I definitely don’t want to think of it as a donation. I like to consider it a gift exchange.

How is it a gift exchange? For awhile I was trying to figure out how to sell my artwork, or make some kind of a living, through my work. I’ve been considering adding a donate button for a few months now, but it never felt right. I don’t want to do anything, ever, if I don’t feel 100% positive about it. I don’t want charity, I want to give people something in return. However, finding anyone out there, especially complete strangers, who want to buy any of my artwork just seemed incredibly daunting. It’ll no doubt be something I’ll try to achieve later in life, but for now, I was open to fresh ideas on how to go about making money doing what I love to do. My best friend, who lives out in the Yukon, suggested that rather than simply receiving donations, think of it as a gift exchange. They send you money to help you continue with your work, while you send them a personalized drawing in the mail.

Her idea kinda blew my mind. It makes perfect sense. I’m still unsure whether I’ll even receive a single “gift”, but the fact that they pay money to help me out, and I send them something, physically, in return as a thank you, just absolutely flips all the negative feelings I had about the whole thing. I’ll also be mentioning them (with their permission, of course) in blog posts and on Facebook, whenever I receive a gift. It’s always nice to get a little recognition when you help someone out like this. It’s a fantastic idea, and I’m not really sure if it’s been done before. I certainly haven’t heard of anything like this. It’s exciting.

Hmm… just entertaining a funny thought here, but what if I get an insane amount of donations. I mean, there aren’t many people that even know about this website, so that’s next to impossible. But I just mean… how busy will I be drawing and sending out all those pictures?

I’m having a lot of fun doing these designs! Thanks to my sister, I was able to find some awesome paper for drawing these. I used just regular computer paper for the “Zemus” design and even though it leaks through the page, it looks fantastic on the front. I also stole a few sheets to last me a few days! I’m going to keep this up for a little while and continue getting better at it. I can already tell that I’m getting into the groove of making these circular shapes.

I’m definitely going to color the “Zemus” design tomorrow. Not sure exactly how that’ll turn out, but I think it’s the natural next step. Just looking at these black hollow shapes just screams “Color me!”, like an empty coloring book. Growing up I had this “How to draw superheroes and supervillains” book and it had pages with the completed generic superheroes/villains and rather than try to draw any of these guys, which is what the book intended you to do, I would color all the finalized versions of each hero/villain. I wasn’t much into coloring books growing up (as far as I can remember) but I did love coloring those characters.

I’m still undecided on whether I should add a donate button or not. It would take a bit of setting up as I would have to link it to my credit card or something. Or more likely my Paypal account. It just seems weird. I made some artwork for a friend back in October and should be getting paid for it this month, so I definitely want to continue doing that in the future. It makes more sense to me to do the work specifically for someone and then getting paid for it, rather than “Hey, give me money for whatever.” That being said, the donate button will likely go unused anyways, and if I’m completely honest with everything I do, it should be fine. I just don’t want it to hurt my credibility or be looked at negatively in any way.

I’ve already asked this before, but I’m hoping for more responses; What do you think? Please give me honest opinions. Even if you aren’t too sure about how the donations work, just let me know what your initial impressions are if you go to an artist website/blog, and you see a donation button asking for money. Do you have an automatic negative reaction? I’m quite curious. Thanks! Enjoy the rest of your day 🙂

As you can see, I’m still trying to figure out exactly how I should be approaching these designs. I began today’s work by trying to add more to what I started yesterday with that hourglass type design. It was going okay for awhile but then my pen started running out of ink. It was getting frustrating, so I decided to finally try these fine tip Sharpies that I’ve had for awhile, and never really used much. I was hoping they would be more pen than marker when I bought them, but they were going right through the paper in my sketchpad and so I stopped using them. Tonight, I tried to find some paper that I own that might work well with these markers. I drew something sort of neat, but just wasn’t feeling it. It almost looks the same on the other side of the paper! Ugh.

So, now I need to find out what I should be using. Perhaps I should just ask the artist that inspired me to try making these designs. Once again (I posted about her page yesterday) you can find her artist Facebook fanpage right here. Do yourself a favor and check out her stuff!

I’m trying something new out today as I just doodled a bit on paper with a pen. I’ll keep adding to it for the next couple days or something. I think if I fill up the page it should look pretty cool when it’s done. So far so good.

This design was actually inspired by a recent artist I discovered. Her Facebook fanpage can be reached here and her work is pretty amazing. I think I’m going to stick with this stuff for awhile and see how I do. I think if I keep doing a little everyday I could end up with some pretty cool artwork. Especially if I add color! What do you think?