Blog / 2019 / “Put Your Art Out on the Sidewalk to Sell It.”

I want to be clear: I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with artists having a day job, only that it doesn’t make it any easier to be an artist. I talk in detail about the choice to have a second job or not in this video, and this article specifies how much is actually too much when it comes to pricing your art.

M Is for Moose already has a forever home—it was one of the paintings that was pre-purchased via the Kickstarter I did for the project. That said, if you want prints or other pretty items with this image, check out my Redbubble shop! The full book will be available in spring 2020, and you can check back here to see the series as a whole as it progresses.

Here’s what I’ve been reading since my last alphabet book update:

• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

  At first, I though this novel was just alright. I would have recommended it to anyone who loves nature and has ever felt out-of-place. By the end, though, I had to sit down and have a cathartic cry. This book is definitely worth a read.

• Un Appartement à Paris by Guillaume Musso

  Oooh look, someone’s telling the story of a genius male painter who is obsessed with a magazine-pretty female muse again, because the idea that all artists are tortured men who lack manners clearly needs bolstering. Seriously, if you want to see the artist’s profession portrayed as a poetic device (ie not realistically) but still in an interesting manner, please read Haruki Murakami’s Killing Commendatore instead. I didn’t always agree with the way Murakami depicted artists or portraiture as a genre, but Killing Commendatore is a beautiful exploration of love, legacy, and the mark we make on our world. (Plus, I’m not sure that Musso’s book is available in English, but Murakami’s is.)

• Scarlet by Marissa Meyer

  This is the follow-up to Cinder, which I talked about in this post. I like the way this series mashes up fairy tales and science fiction, and the humor as well as the French anti-fascist setting of this installment remind me of Kate Quinn’s Alice Network, which is an excellent read.

The first names embedded in this image are Madeline, Madison, Marcel, Marie, Mariko, Marin, Mark-Pierre, Martin, Mary, Mason, Matthew, Maya, Meghan, Melissa, Mia, Micah, Michael, Miigwans, Mila, Mira, Molly, Mookie, Monique, Montgomery, Muhammad, and Murray.