Newsflash!

In the past 2 weeks I've accomplished 2 goals that I've been putting off for 2 YEARS. Firstly, I finally had some business cards printed. It's going to be so awesome to hand someone a card now instead of scribbling my contact information onto a post it note or God-forbid, napkin. Second, I finally made my own website!! This is probably the biggest news since you're pretty much a nobody in the art world these days if you don't have your own website. I will say that making the business cards was a lot easier than making the website. Mind you, I didn't make it from scratch but even using a template was a major pain in the butt. My computer would slow down like crazy every time I'd start to work on designing my website so it took about 4 days (and 3 template changes) to finish it. But I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out and all of my friends have been telling me that it looks awesome so I'm happy. It you'd like to take a look, just go to:

www.iggystarpup.com

In other news, I recently did my first photo shoot as well. I know how important image is for an artist so I thought it was about time people start associating my art work with me. So I asked my friend, Mr. Daniel Funkhouser, if he'd be able to take some photos for me to promote my business and he obliged. Next on the order of business was to get the perfect DRESS. For ages and ages I'd been wanting a Wednesday Addams-esque dress but I had never been able to find one. I rarely order cloths online but I thought I'd take a chance this once since I wanted this photo shoot to be perfect. I did a search for black and white peter pan collar dresses and found the most amazing dress on Modcloth. It was a little more than I normally spend on a dress but I figured I'd wear it forever so it would be worth the money. Also, Modcloth has a handy dandy feature where real women post their size and how the dress fit them "in real life". Everyone concurred that this dress was true to size and that they absolutely loved it. That was enough for me so I went ahead and bought it. I am super happy with this dress and am now a forever Modcloth customer.

Anywho, I'd been working on one of my anthropomorphic animal illustrations of a kitty wearing a black and white peter pan collar dress sitting on a tombstone in a grave yard. Since I'm using "Courtney Doom" as my professional name I thought, "That would be a cool idea for my photos!" So I asked Daniel if he knew of any interesting cemeteries around town and he said he did. We got there around dusk and I was kind of nervous since I'd never really modeled for anyone before but he did a good job of making me comfortable. It helped too that since I was going for a gothic look I didn't have to smile for the photos. We only had about an hour before the sun went down but Daniel said he thought we'd gotten some good  shots. Since I had had to sit so long without moving though, I had become a perfect buffet for all the local mosquitos and went home with about 10 bites (but it was worth it.)

My friend finished editing the photos a few days ago and sent me over the best ones and I couldn't be happier! I love how they turned out. I'm very lucky to have so many super talented friends that are able to help me out with stuff like this. Very lucky, indeed.

So yeah, I hope that the combination of the business cards, the promo photos and the website finally being out there that I'll see an increase in my audience and ultimately in my sales. Being a professional artist isn't easy but I think I'm doing a pretty good job.

Wish me luck!

Mwah!