BOOKS NOW AVAILABLE! + BOOK THOUGHTS PT. I
The book is now officially out of pre-order and available. You can find them in the store here. A HUGE thank you to those that got copies already. This is an entirely self-published endeavor, so those first orders really helped instill come confidence and help convince me I didn’t just make a rather large and doomed investment. The life of an artist!
Having said that, I thought I’d write a little bit about the process of making the book. (The idea of appearing to be a mysterious and genius artist is appealing and everything but that doesn’t help anybody…so I’m recommitting myself to being more open and forthright about my paintings, art in general, and the challenges of being a self-taught painter in the age of short attention spans and small screens). But I digress…
I started thinking about working on a book seriously after my show in New York in January of 2018. Everything about that show went wrong, from the literal Bomb Cyclone that hit NYC on the day of the opening to FedEx mis-delivering and heavily damaging a crate full of paintings on their way back to California. Our AirBnB came with a wind tunnel. My wife immediately got sick. Walking around New York is the best unless it’s 8º and you’re dressed for a foggy day in the Bay Area. I tend to think in pretty binary terms in times of high anxiety, so it was either stop painting and become a carpenter (no skills or experience FYI) or find an artistic outlet that didn’t involve immediately working on the next show.
So I started compiling all the paintings I had done in the last 10 years, thinking about design, looking at other art books, and just generally trying to figure out some direction. I was also able to talk to a number of friends with book experience early on and weigh the pros and cons of how to actually publish the thing. Here’s the breakdown as I saw it: I could work with a publisher, in which case the process would be tons easier, and I wouldn’t be responsible for paying for the whole thing. I could go the Kickstarter route, which would require a ton of additional work but would significantly lesson the financial risk. Or I could do it myself.
all work usually starts here: thumbnail sketches / & checkboxes
all work usually starts here: thumbnail sketches / & checkboxes
Working with a publisher was ruled out pretty quickly as the prospects of making any income on the book just seemed way too unlikely. By no stretch of the imagination do I think I’ll ever really make a good living doing this art thing, but I’m self-employed and the idea of spending so much time on something (in addition to the decade it took to paint the contents, and the previous decade it took learning how to art at all) just didn’t sit right. I was also a little weary about sharing creative control, as my favorite art books are the weird ones; those that seem much more personal than just a catalogue of images (HR Giger’s, ‘www hrgiger com’ and Grime’s, “Iron Will” to name a few). The Kickstarter option is a great one and seemed like a no brainer until I actually started thinking about awards tiers and promotional videos. The model served me very well years ago when my moving truck was stolen (referred to as “the Purge” from here on out) but that was essentially charity. I needed it. This is an art book… I felt terrible asking for help yet again with something that wasn’t directly related to a personal disaster. Perhaps unfair to compare the two, as if I established some sort of precedent for support, but I just couldn’t get comfortable with it. So that left self-publishing. I would own and control the entire process, from every single creative and financial decision, to the very large drain on my savings account.
So before I continue, I want to thank those that have ordered books again for your support and also to those that may pick one up in the future (i’m going to be selling these for a long time). You are directly supporting me as an artist. As of this time there is no money going to publishers, or distributors, or to online marketplaces. You are paying for the book production — and the rest goes back into the art machine. This would be (and is) important to me when buying a book from an artist I like, so there it is.
Coming in the next post: keep the per book cost low by producing a lot!