How I Follow and Plan For October Art Challenges

Plus: Dispatch from my latest tabling experience

It’s been a week of the October Art Challenges! I am having a lot of fun with this, honestly, it has been so nice to have daily little projects to work on to detach from work and the world.

Last weekend I tabled at the Punk Rock Market at the Downtown Santa Ana Art Walk and had a ton of fun!

This event is monthly (the Punk Rock Market are taking a break for November, but there will be a huge Dia de los Muertos art walk event in DTSA that you should check out if you’re in the area) and I really love it. It seems like the art walk has grown over the past year in such a cool way. Everyone is out on a Saturday evening, the downtown area is buzzing. It is awesome to see all the different vendors and artists, there are live bands, it is a ton of fun and the best vibe. I adore Santa Ana, my family roots are deep in Santa Ana. The Santa Ana water tower is located in the school yard of the school named after my grandpa! He was one of the first lawyers to start the OC Hispanic Bar Association. He worked his way up from nothing and became a lawyer who fought for the rights of bilingual and English learning students.

For an outdoor set-up like this, I bring my own table and chairs, and I lug everything from my car using a foldable wagon. I cannot recommend a folding wagon enough if you vend at events! It has been a life saver. I used to try to fit everything into a rolling suitcase and then carried some boxes, but that was killing me. Investing in a wagon was well worth it. I also use it when bringing in groceries and other things other than vending. Buy a wagon!!!

I also use a wooden crate to not only carry my stuff in, but create more space on my table. I can attach prints to it and put my little gambling machines on top of it. I had a lot of people stop and look at my table due to visual interest. Trying to cram as much as I can onto a small table surface can be hard, and I’m constantly trying to change it up and make it work better with what I have.

It also helps to have a wireless light! I bought a table lamp from Amazon (booooo we hate them, but honestly I didn’t know where else to get this item! I don’t blame people at all for using Amazon when they are limited in their choices to support other businesses to get what they need. The world is evil and corrupt and we do what we can). I charge it before doing events and it illuminates my table so nicely once the sun sets. It also helps to be under a streetlamp, which I lucked out on at this particular day.

I’m so grateful for the folks that came out and supported me at Punk Rock Market! Here are the other markets and zine fests that I have coming up that I will be tabling at:

Alright, onward to the zines and drawings from this past week and a peek into how I am making this monthly challenge work:

1. How do I know what to draw each day?

I made a list comprised of prompts that spoke to me from multiple sources, including: Badtober, Peachtober, Season of the Bad Guys Club, Chborozinefest, Crush + Touch Inktober, and Scraptober.

I have plans for zines in addition to drawings. I wrote up this list on a piece of cardstock that I taped into my sketchbook that I can refer to and cross things off once I’ve completed them. I actually got a head start on some of them, but I am now back on track with it being a daily practice.

After coming up with my list of what I will be making, I write out notes and sketches of my ideas in my sketchbook:

Plus, there’s a peek here of some notes I make about zine fest and market set ups!

I don’t always go with the notes that I have in my sketchbook, usually based on the amount of time I have to work on the final product. I had to scrap my initial strawberry zine idea because I got called into jury duty.

I find that doing simple, loose sketches and having visual plans really helps, even if the sketches end up “unfinished” or I end up going in an entirely different direction when I work on the final art piece. I also will take the sketches and use them directly as a basis for the final illustration. Here is how I created the drawing I’ll be posting tomorrow, using the sketch straight from my sketchbook that I took a photo of and uploaded into Procreate.

This past week, I made:

A Kite Zine! This one is one-of-a-kind and will not be reproduced. I made it from cardstock, yard, and some foam stickers I had from another project. The inside tells a story about a bear flying a kite and a bird getting tangled in it and then they fly the kite together.

Drawings!

A poppy zine, which will be sent out to Mail Club Patrons along with some other zines I make this month.

This was going to be a zine, but it ended up being a full little illustration that you can fold open of a strawberry and the inside being inhabited by a squiggly squirmy lil worm.

I’ll be sharing more of the zines on Friday, along with a download for paying members.

I’m looking forward to continuing the challenge, and gearing up for future events, as well as my upcoming birthday later this month 👀

Speaking of, I got myself early birthday presents for the 75th anniversary of the Peanuts comic strip and first appearance of Snoopy last week. The last time I got a tattoo was 2016! I immediately want to get more tattoos. Shout out to MJ Nicole from Slowpoke Tattoo in Anaheim. I got the first appearance of Snoopy because duh, he’s the best and he’s my favorite. I also have wanted to get a memorial tattoo for my dog Sam where he’s surrounded by flowers and this Snoopy with a flower will fit into my future tattoo plans really well of having more dogs and flowers on this arm. The Woodstock is for my mom, who loves Woodstock and also loves the Peanuts. She called me Baboo as a little kid (short for another family nickname, Babushka because I looked like a little plump bundled grandma when I was born I guess, but also for “Sweet Babboo” from Peanuts which is what Sally calls Linus). We went to the Schulz Museum this year together and last year we went to Knott’s together to see the Peanuts characters. Now I can look down and see the heart from Woodstock and be reminded of my mom sending me love and support!

Signing off for now, thanks for scrolling through this long read this week! It’s a busy month!