Homework Blues

 The last two days have passed in a haze of angst and homework. My son has gifted or advanced placement classes for nearly every subject this year. He allowed himself to get behind on a bunch of homework, so we've spent the last two days whining at each other about it. I haven't managed to get much done in that time, primarily because he sits in my studio and does his homework and he sits at my sketching desk.

I usually paint at a drafting table because I have some health problems including a hypermobile shoulder that sometimes flares up when I paint upright at an easel, and since I work with oil paints and oils are extremely detrimental to paper I keep one desk for oil paints and one for watercolor and pencil work. But if this homework issue persists I may get desperate and soak the oil desk in mineral spirits so I can sketch at it as well.

On Thursday I finished up everything for the calendar and put it up on Kickstarter. It will launch on Friday, September 6th at Noon Eastern Time. We're offering the calendar by itself, the calendar with a random vinyl diecut sticker, and the calendar with a grab bag. We used to always use the calendar Kickstarter as an opportunity to make grab bags of stuff left over from convention season but we haven't done that in so long I have a ton of stuff to use for the grab bags! I'm really looking forward to (hopefully) producing this project and more printed stuff. I might even start working on a new oracle or tarot deck soon...

The week ahead promises some more tolerable weather but this weekend it's hot and stormy. That's fine by me - the second part, anyway. It makes a good atmosphere for working on Halloween-themed sketches and getting the last batch of Halloween art done before I switch to Yule and Christmas art.

Today will see me bathing dogs and prepping to paint a couple rooms in my house instead of sketching, though. Only the most exciting stuff around here.

2025 Calendar

 Last year I started the Paint Witch blog to be more of a daily art blog, the sort I used to keep here about ten years ago. Instead it kind of morphed into an "everything" site. I'm always torn between

1. Have separate sites for everything even though it might make it more difficult for some people to find some things
2. Put everything in one site so it's all in one place even though it gets kind of jumbled after a while and becomes difficult to find some things

I used to have a bunch of different sites and accounts and over the years I think I overcorrected a little bit and trimmed it down too much. I know not everyone wants to be inundated with a daily e-mail of, "well, here's some stuff I made today... and taxes," so I don't want to overburden my Substack subscribers with what I might say on a daily basis. They probably aren't interested in every little sketch and thought that blips across my brain, although maybe they are?

It seems safest to me to just have a separate place for actually blogging, which is really out of style, but maybe it will make a comeback soon. Probably not, and like a lot of things, I'm jumping on a trend ten years after it went out of style.

Today and yesterday I've mostly spent working on the 2025 calendar. We haven't printed a calendar since the 2015/16 16-month calendar we printed in 2014 - calendars are confusing things to publish and it's all very timey-wimey and very easy to make mistakes even in just talking about it.

I was going to try putting it up on Backerkit instead of Kickstarter this time because Backerkit had posted their stance against generative AI, but their site is clunky, frustrating, and silliest of all they want you to have enough followers on Backerkit to fully fund a project before they will even review it. If I had 40 buyers lined up for this calendar, why would I crowdfund it?

Kickstarter it will be after all. Tomorrow I will copy over all the project details and try to get the ball rolling there instead. The rest of the day will be spent sketching pin-ups for Halloween. This will be the last batch of Halloween art I'll work on this year and I'll be sending them over to Tatiana at TDArtGallery to list them online. I'm not handling any sales of original work online anymore, and only limited sales in person. Tatiana is now the person to talk to about getting your hands on my originals.

Other than scrambling my brain laying out 2025's calendar, I haven't done a whole lot that warrants comment this week. I have petted a lot of cats, cursed at the weather forecast (record highs? blah), and petted more cats. I will keep you posted on all things calendars, sketches, and cats.

-Tiffany