On rejection.

How can I live? Oh the pain of a breaking heart slowly being ripped to pieces, excruciatingly torn, bit by bit like bloody string cheese...

Kidding.

Really.

The title just sounded so melodramatic I couldn't help it.

This is more about "rejection."

As in, dang it, I didn't sell a dang thing in the comic con art show! And even with the Aaron Brother's buy one frame and get the 2nd for a penny sale, those frames were still freaking expensive!

(My initial velcroed panel. That failed. Upon which I migrated to a pegboard panel, incurring greater expense in the realm of picture frame wire and gluesticks. But it held!)

But what I've learned about the comic con crowd:

• They like dragons.
• They like things under $10.
• They don't care if a piece is a scan and printout rather than the original as long as it looks like the original. They just want the image. Take that art world with your obsession with originality!
• Fan art. You care for a character? You'll buy the character. I did two years ago.
  
• If you're selling for more than $20, it better have dragons in it. Or be a freakishly huge amazingly dark painting of Darth Maul that sold for $600 last year. (But $300 for a canvas copy edition of 500 of those fantasy dragons? Come on!)
  

What will I do next year?

• Cough up the $35 bucks for a panel to show again.
• Have a website. And business cards. Because it's not really "getting your work out there" if people have no way of remembering you much less finding you again.
  
• Resist the lure of those pretty black magnetic frames. They're too heavy. Better to mount the pieces on matboard so it doesn't flop, then put em in a plastic sleeve so they have a shiny come hither look.
• Practice drawing and painting portraits. Of well-loved characters. It ain't selling out folks. It's practice. And I get to stare at and recreate gorgeous faces from Battlestar Galactica, Lost and Heroes. Tell me that isn't enticing.
  

It was a great experience though. I freaked out a bit beforehand because putting your work out there is always nerve wrecking. Oh self-confidence, how you evade me!

But yes, great experience. The process of selecting what to put in, arranging it artistically (presentation matters! Less so at comic con perhaps but still!), pricing the work (I hate this part. Hate it.), then trying not to feel like a complete rejected loser when every frakking bid sheet remains empty day after day...

But I got my validation by meeting a fellow artist and having a very fun convo with her and her friend. We liked each others' work. Whoot.

The arts (including theater) have schooled me in the whole "rejection" thing far better than college apps, scholarship apps, 16 years of school or even physics ever did. And if I keep going in the arts, well, I'd better get used to it.

It ain't rejection hun, it's a learning experience! (But does anyone really believe that in the first few minutes after being turned down? I think not.)