I suppose this is a good time and place to start my art blog. I've been meaning to for a while, but....well, I just never *quite* had the motivation. After a year and a half of trying (and failing) to shove my foot in the metaphorical online art door, I think I FINALLY may have done it. Sorta.
See, I've been tinkering around on shirt.woot.com for a year. I made my less than grand introduction in the dessert derby by doodling a bunch of anthropomorphic blueberries plummeting to their deaths inside a blender. Since I only got like ten votes at most (and I suspect they were all pity votes, seeing as I submitted everything in the wrong format and proceeded to whine about not understanding how to do anything), I was more than a little discouraged to continue submitting designs. I mean, there are plenty of intelligent and well spoken people gracing the pages of the woot, but there are also many, MANY trolls. I got a few less than friendly comments/replies to my comments, and I sort of developed a queasy stomach for the site. THAT led me to migrate around the online tee market, and I found designbyhumans.com. I submitted some things on there, and they seemed to be better received than my work at woot. Of course, i was using (and still use) a different alias. I think I only did that initially to try and start a reputation anew, free of the blueberry disaster.
Time went on, and I started joining art sites and submitting designs like I was freaking getting paid to do it. The funny part about that whole thing was, I wasn't getting paid. AT ALL.
I finally decided that the world of t-shirt design was not for me (something I did not want to accept; I've always thought of myself as someone who knows how to make things people will WANT), and I began my farewells. I stopped submitting at sites altogether, and when the dust had settled from my frenzy, I sat alone with shirt.woot. I logged in, curious to see what the new derby was. Thursdays at noon had once been my favorite moment of the week. I saw the theme: Fake Band tshirts, and thought "what the hell. One more entry won't hurt." So I put on Harry Potter and sketched mindlessly until I got sort of tired and decided to call it a night. I threw the design on a tee and put it up for votes.
.....I went back to check it a little while later, and I was in the New Hotness list! My Goodness! Not only had I never before been there, but I'd never even broken 150 votes! On ANY art site I'd joined over a year ago! I was so excited, I almost broke my computer by accident. I went to bed, fantasizing about gaining a good reputation on woot. something I thought to always be less than tangible. For me, at least. It kept climbing and climbing, and my jaw just dropped closer and closer to the floor. I had showers of compliments, something I was never used to, and didn't know how to handle, really. So I did it in the most polite and deliberate way I could: I answered each person who commented with a post of my own.
My entry has plateaued at this point. It will probably fall out of the top ten by the end of the week. But the fact remains that I was in it at some point. I still can't believe 342 people would wear something I drew. I've had my time to soak in life in the tee contest world, and I just have to say....I think people take their fans for granted. I had someone tell me that they'd buy my shirt anyway, even if it didn't win.....and it was the most flattering thing ever. Just when I was about to leave this and move on to more successful pastures, I found this golden nugget. And now that I know what it feels like to have people support me and truly appreciate my craft, well, I think I'll keep submitting.
I feel like the little designer that could. Except that I didn't actually....do anything. :P
