… get your lovely art for sale.
Today I’ve started on the long and arduous process of adding some of my original artwork for sale on this site. It’s just shy of two years ago now that I started drawing again for the first time since I was a kid. I was away in Nepal at the time writing a book (don’t judge, I own a backpack but I’ve never had a gap year) and when I finished it I wanted to try something that didn’t involve words. Not that I don’t love words but they do take a lot out of you, especially when you get enough of them together to tell a story.
I’ve not stopped sketching, scribbling and art-ing since.
Last year I started selling some t-shirts. Just an experiment really, a test to see if anyone would be interested. Enough people were for me to keep going with it and turn my hand properly to creating Laika Revolution as a ‘brand’. And that’s still going on. Along the way though I’ve run into a bit of confusion over where to go with things. The t-shirts and other more design based bits and pieces are fun and, on rare occasion, profitable but I also enjoy just creating art without slapping it on something as a product. In fact ultimately I’d like to make doing that one of my main focuses, maybe even earn enough from it to free up time to do more. How to do that though is something I haven’t been sure of.
I’m not formally trained in the slightest and while I think I can do what I do well there’s a whole heap of stuff I can’t do at all and which other people can. Maybe that doesn’t necessarily matter if you go into the proper art world but it definitely turned me off a bit. On top of that there’s the very limited experiences I’ve had with the rarefied heights of the creative world. Much like publishing it seems cliquish, not very welcoming and pretty elitist and even though I know (relatively) normal people who’ve found a way to function in it they’ve had to jump through a lot of hoops to do so. Maybe it’s a measure of cowardice on my part but it’s certainly, in part, a personal preference too that I don’t really want to pin my hopes or efforts on going into that. At the same time though I do want a place to share my art as art which isn’t about commodifying it in the same way as Laika Revolution is.
Sticking it here, presenting it under my own name as I do with my books, has always been the obvious choice but that too has raised some questions for me. Boring ones which, I suspect, aren’t of interest to anyone. Questions about my writing, my identity, what I can create and what I should create. Basically even though I do still write and will never stop – moving myself towards visual art still felt (and feels) like a bit of a betrayal of what I’ve done before. Of the work I built a large part of my identity around even. So to place the art on par, or even ahead of, the words seems like a big thing to me. Not that it is, or that anyone else would see it as such but there you go. We’re all striking our own precarious balance around who we see ourselves as I suppose.
Anyway, today I’ve started putting up some original work for sale here, on my personal site. Basically I’ve just done the techy back end bit so far, the actual pieces will be coming over the next few days but if you’ve got a moment it’d be great if you could go here and have a look. Maybe even share a link if you like.
As I say, I’m not stopping writing. In fact I was, ironically, the most productive I’ve ever been in the months before I started drawing. I’m even sitting on a finished novel and a novella length sequel to Laikanist Times at the moment. But I’m putting my name to my pictures now too, letting them be part of what I do and who I am in a more personal way. Again, pretty dull to everyone else but a bit of a step for me.
Anyway, hopefully you like what I do in all forms and you can expect more updates of all sorts here soon.
– Dylan