GenCon 2011 ReCap: Part 2

It has been about two weeks since GenCon and I am for the most part fully recovered and back into full-swing production mode. I had the great fortune to acquire a couple freelance jobs while at the convention as well as plant a few seeds that will hopefully bear fruit in the coming months. Exhibiting at a convention is a great way to promote oneself as an artist as long as the audience and attendees at the convention are the type of future clients you would like to work for. I went through most of my postcards at the con as well as all of my business cards, which means that I can finally design a new card.


I finished the bard and barbarian illustration just in time for GenCon and have now posted it on my website: www.reddaydream.com. This illustration features two sister characters from a D&D game I was a part of a while back. Be sure to head to my gallery to check it out. I think I took another good step forward with this piece and am excited to start the next round of illustrations. I also posted the cover-drawing I did for my GenCon sketchbooks in the drawing gallery on my site as well if you are curious to see a larger image of it.


As I started introducing last week while at GenCon I had the pleasure of meeting many fellow amazing illustrators, authors, and individuals involved in the gaming world. It was great to see Alayna Lemer again at GenCon. She is great illustrator who has done work for L5R and Dominion. I was able to briefly meet one of my heroes in the fantasy illustration world, Wayne Reynolds. I was ecstatic when I found out that he would be exhibiting this year. After debating it for a couple days at the con, I ended up splurging and bought one of his original paintings. I could not pass up the opportunity. The original is his painting for the Magic Card: Armadillo Cloak. Another individual I met at GenCon was Kelly Martin, an author who was promoting his two novels: “The Lucky Cricket” and “Thomas the Poisoner”. I was intrigued by his books and he by my art so we traded prints for books. I love books, so any chance I can get to trade some art for more great books is a wonderful opportunity, especially when they come directly from the author.

Convention Notes~ if you are looking to have your own artist table in the future:
After having gone through the process of having my own table at GenCon I observed a few things that I will definitely adapt in future shows. The number one thing I observed that seemed to help many of the artists around me have great shows is the selling and creation of original art. I am not one for quick sketching, but more than a few artists around me kept themselves busy and had many sales by offering convention sketches. Attendees really seemed to want original sketches in some form or another. If on the spot sketches were not available simply having smaller original art for sale was also very popular with attendees. Now most attendees that I saw were not interested in spending hundreds of dollars on a large original, but a small painting or drawing that was decently priced was well within their domain. So, I think next year I may try to incorporate sketch-cards into my product line. Canvas prints sold well, but framed prints seemed to not garner too much attention. A final observation that I made was that people like to rummage. So, if you have enough individual illustrations/prints to warrant having them standing in a box for people to flip through that would probably be better than having them laid out on a table.

I hope everyone out there is enjoying their last few weeks of Summer. X) gah…I can’t believe it is so late in the year already. I wish you all a great week and I will be back next week with more art adventures.

~As always if you have any questions on art or anything really or are interested in commissioning an illustration I can be contacted via email at lancered@reddaydream.com.~