New Year 2015 – Ready or not, here it comes!

I too have not formed my plan for the upcoming year, but I am not going into the new year plan-less. A brave post from one of my bravest friends.

LittleBrownFarm

The Winter Solstice has passed, promising a gentle walk toward Spring.

Hanukkah has ended with the flicker of the lit candles and warmth of family.

Christmas has passed leaving tons of wrapping paper and memories in its wake.

The winter holidays of “Happy Holidays” are coming and going, colliding and passing.

It is the tender time as this year draws to a close and the New Year looms on the horizon.

Soon people will make their resolutions, put down their cigarettes and candy bars and pick up weights and tennis shoes (and kale, don’t forget the kale!).
Kale! The superfood!

They will promise to eat healthier, more local, more home prepared meals.

People will resolve to be more patient, more kind, more generous, more conscientious.

They will vow to improve their savings or decrease their debt.

The fabrications they weave will all begin with the best of intentions.

This year…

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On Ethics and Elephants

Elephant in the Room? What? Where? Oh, that Elephant

In the interest of full disclosure, I must point out that I never thought about marketing in terms of the ethics involved. When I think about marketing my books to an unsuspecting public, the thing that leaps to the front of my mind is the “ick factor.”

Writing and cartooning are recent additions to my creative work. I’ve been painting more years than I care to remember, and it’s been my “day job” for the last 25 years. Almost seven years ago, pandas knocked on the door, demanded entry, put their feet up on the coffee table, and insisted that I write stories, draw cartoons, and perpetrate blasphemous adaptations of Sargent and Whistler paintings, all starring pandas.

They were really most insistent.

Arrangement in Black, White, and Gray //Anne Belov //all rights reserved

Selling paintings is mostly, although not entirely, different than selling books.  I’d have to sell  hundreds, if not thousands of books to equal the sale of one decent painting. And so marketing raises it’s (often) not so lovely head.

A recent post by Jane Steen got me thinking about the ethics of self publishing in general and about marketing my work in particular. I am, to say the very least, a reluctant marketer. By following a number of blogs about both the art and the business side of writing, it led me to realize that I was going to have to make peace with marketing, like it or not.

My cartoons appeared on my blog, The Panda Chronicles for almost four years before I published The Panda Chronicles Book 1: Your Brain on Pandas. My method for getting the word out was intuitive and organic. When I started my blog, I finally dove in to Facebook, and sought out panda fans, to see if they thought my panda-centric humor was funny, or whether they would chase me through town with pitchforks and burning torches, tar and feathers at the ready. (They liked them! Huzzah!)

I shared my cartoons freely and my fan base grew. I got an unanticipated bonus by reaching out to people on an individual basis because fans became connections and some friendships (real ones) have grown as a result of this, with meetings and gatherings of panda fans in real life.

The panda Faithful at San Diego Zoo in 2013

To be honest, this is a rather time consuming way of selling books. But I am a glutton for connections, maybe because I spend so much of my day holed up in my studio painting and drawing. When I look at the alternatives: auto tweets, constant buy my book/services links, guest posts which are barely disguised infomercials, I realize that the ick-factor detector is a pretty good ethical guide.

I think we must continually ask ourselves how we respond to marketing appeals by others as we try to figure out how to sell our work. Everyone has different threshold levels of what is offensive or annoying, but if it offends me, why would I do it? I’m still trying to figure it all out, and if I listen to my gut and avoid doing things that make me uncomfortable in the marketing of others, I think I am on the right track.

The sands that publishing is built on are shifting. As more people publish their work independently, we have to figure out how to be ethical, not only in the actual writing, but in how we tell the world about it. We are all on our own, trying to figure out just how we going to continue paying the mortgage, but we are also in it together.

My practice of making connections has served me well, in personal satisfaction and real bridges built, if not yet in monetary terms.  My followers number in the hundreds, rather than the tens of thousands, but they are real names, some even come with faces attached. I have decided to trust that what feels like the right path both artistically and ethically.

What do you think?

hey! Buy my book!

You can see more pandas (for free!) at The Panda Chronicles. You can also…um…find out where to buy my books there.

Day Two of the Froggwell Biennale

Another day at the Froggwell Biennale….

froggwell

Huzzah!

I woke up yesterday morning, with the usual feeling of dread before a big event, “can’t I just stay in bed? Will anyone notice if I don’t show up?”

But I roused myself and I’m so glad I did.  It was a little bit of a slow start, but by early afternoon, there was a steady stream of people heading down into the garden. Flanking the path into the garden are several sculptures by Sharon Spencer.

As you head down the steps, a carved granite column by Sue Taves greets you along with more of her massive stone pieces.  Makes me glad to be a painter, since I don’t need a forklift or strong young men to help move my work. Continue through the garden to see more of Sue and Sharon’s works, as well as the whimsical constructions of Dan Freeman.

One of the things I’m most happy…

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Let Them Eat Cuppycakes!

I just had to spread the panda -love (not to mention the frosting) around the interwebs! Frosting on the keyboards! Huzzah!

vsomethingspeaks

Everyone loves celebrating with cake! And Pandas are no exception!!

Panda fans are being treated to adorable images of pandas around the world celebrating their birthdays with inventive and stunning panda cakes. Bamboo, fruit, vegetables and honey are just some of the ingredients in the cakes these fur balls are enjoying.

Birthdays are not the only time for pandas to have cake. In keeping with Chinese tradition, baby pandas don’t receive a name until they are 100 days old. This special event is also celebrated with cake.

I wonder what other important events pandas would like to celebrate and what special cakes they would like?

Anne Belov and the pandas at The Panda Chronicles are well known for their love of cupcakes, or, as they call them, cuppycakes. For the benefit of all pandas and their fans we are studiously, and with no thought or care for our waistlines, devising and taste-testing celebration…

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Connections: An Unexpected Treasure (With Frosting)

Well, I’m learning to play well with others….

vsomethingspeaks

I am so happy to have Anne Belov of The Panda Chronicles and the recently released picture book Pandamorphosis as a guest blogger. Last week I talked about my love of pandas and Anne is one of the wonderful people I met on this journey! We are also collaborating on a book together 🙂

I’ll let Anne introduce herself and talk a bit about her work and our upcoming project!!

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Connections: An Unexpected Treasure (With Frosting)

Generally speaking, I’m not known for playing well with others.

At least, not in my creative pursuits. I spent my art school years learning to be a painter, and as everyone knows, painters paint alone in their garret, living an isolated, tortured existence. Cutting off your ear is considered optional.

But then a funny thing happened a few years back: pandas entered my life and I became…um…obsessed with them. (For more about that…

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A Personality Of Pandas

Huzzah! please read this marvelous post my my compatriot in pandamonium, and co-author of the upcoming as soon-as-we-can-get-to-it collaboration, The Panda Chronicles Cuppycake Cookbook: Favorite recipes of the Panda Kindergarten.

vsomethingspeaks

1988 was a pivotal year for me; I started university, met my long term partner Paul and the Giant Pandas Fei Fei and Xiao Xiao toured Australia. We went to see them at Melbourne Zoo because they are Paul’s favourite animal. The one stuffed toy that Paul has kept since childhood is a bedraggled panda. He has always loved this very special black and white bear. I would also come to love them but in a most unusual way.

panda ball

Into The Darkness
2000 was another pivotal year for me. I graduated from university and promptly caught a flu that would plague me for years and would almost destroy my mind, body and soul. After years of antibiotics and no respite from the flu I contracted Post Viral Syndrome – PVS (a form of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). Not much is known about PVS, in fact doctors didn’t diagnose me…

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Ever Wished That Calvin and Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson Would Return to the Comics Page? Well, He Just Did.

Not only would I set my hair on fire, I would also rip my own liver out with my teeth. You rock, Mr. Pastis. (We already know that Bill Watterson does.)

I'm Too Stupid to Travel

Bill Watterson is the Bigfoot of cartooning.

He is legendary. He is reclusive. And like Bigfoot, there is really only one photo of him in existence. 

Few in the cartooning world have ever spoken to him. Even fewer have ever met him.

In fact, legend has it that when Steven Spielberg called to see if he wanted to make a movie, Bill wouldn’t even take the call.

So it was with little hope of success that I set out to try and meet him last April.

I was traveling through Cleveland on a book tour, and I knew that he lived somewhere in the area. I also knew that he was working with Washington Post cartoonist Nick Galifianakis on a book about Cul de Sac cartoonist Richard Thompson’s art.

So I took a shot and wrote to Nick. And Nick in turn wrote to Watterson.

And the meeting…

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The End of a Perfect Day

I drove toward Langley with the windows down and the music blaring. 70 degree days are rare in a Pacific Northwest spring day, and even rarer in April. I’d gotten some work done, so I felt good about taking the evening off.

No, wait that’s not right… let me start again.

I spent the evening in a room with over 200 people, gathered for a common purpose.

Hmmm, sounds like a school board meeting.

One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer
Oil on panel
A. Belov //All rights reserved

Pouring rain would have been more appropriate than this cloudless blue sky. We 200+ people gathered to say goodbye to our friend Jude, who less than one month ago lost her battle with lung cancer.

Everyone knows the old stereotype that at your funeral, no one will say a bad word about you.  That was certainly the case tonight.  The difference is, that everyone was right about Jude.  She was good, 110%. Those of you with long term friendships know that sometimes you think your friends are jerks, and that they annoy the hell out of you.  Never in the 20+ years that I knew Jude, did I ever wish she was one bit different.  We, her friends, more than likely gave her plenty to complain about, but she rarely (if ever) did. As I listened to friends, family members, and her co-workers from the Everett Clinic say goodbye to her, and read us their remembrances, something became very clear:

She had this effect on every one of us.  She was smart, she was funny, she remembered what was important to you and about you and you felt like you were the most important person in the world to her, and when you were with her, you were.

I met Jude and her husband Chris a year or two after they had moved to our little corner of paradise.  I was single at the time, and struggling in the first few years of tossing my crappy job aside in order to paint full time.  I had countless dinners at their house, they came to my shows, bought paintings, and welcomed me into their family.  We went for walks, and leaped about in aerobics class. We watched Princess Diana’s funeral on TV together.

As years went by, we got busy with other activities, I started seeing someone, Jude’s job got more demanding, she started playing tennis, but we always kept in touch, even if we didn’t see each other as often as we’d like.  But when we did, it was as if no time had passed at all.  We could just get down to what ever needed talking about. That is a rare thing and I’ve learned to treasure that kind of friendship when I find it. She gave so much.

My friend and advisor is gone.  I can hear her voice in my head, complete with  Philadelphia accent. “Hey! Cut out the whiney stuff! You have stuff you want to do. Don’t wait. Do it now. Don’t let anyone stop you. You are amazingly talented and there is no time to waste. Listen to me, I know.” 62 years is way too early for you to go.

Goodbye Jude. I love you to the moon and back.

HOW OLD WILL I BE IF I DON’T DO THIS NOW?

Thanks to Cordelia’s Mom for inviting me over to hang out on her blog. Hey, where did all those cuppycakes go?

Cordelia's Mom, Still

Whatever could be better than cuppycakes?

How about my first ever guest poster, and a very special one indeed!  Please welcome artist Anne Belov (a/k/a Bob T. Panda of The Panda Chronicles).

Anne Belov is a wonderful painter and illustrator whose work, both the serious art work and the satirical panda illustrations, brings joy to anyone who views it.  In fact, Anne allowed me to use her painting “Nothing Overlooked” in my February 6, 2014 post.

I can’t wait for Pandamorphosis to be published – just check out the pictures from the book, two of which are being posted here with Anne Belov’s permission. Don’t they make you want your own copy, for yourself, your kids or your grandkids?

Click here to  learn a little about Anne Belov, to view some of her wonderful artwork, and to read about her upcoming book, Pandamorphosis, which will be out later this year (hint…

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2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog. Really, I couldn’t have done it without them!

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,200 times in 2013. If it were a cable car, it would take about 53 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.