Aftermath: Visionary Tattoo Arts Festival

One of many giant posters of my flyer for the show!

Holeeeey crap whatta weekend! 

The Visionary Tattoo Arts Festival in Asbury Park, NJ was a fantastic experience!

This show was on par with some of my most successful comic conventions and I look forward to designing the flyer for and attending next year's show.

(Which means I need to top this year's flyer, which is one of the best things I've designed ever- but no pressure. ;P)

Asbury Park by the way is ADORABLE. I'm by no means a beach person, but I absolutely must come back and enjoy the sights on an actual day trip (and it's only 1.5 hours away by NJ Transit!). Not only is the Asbury Park Convention Hall a beautiful, grand building but the boardwalk has cool stuff like a pinball museum (that I regrettably was too tired to go into after the show). 

The beautiful and historic Asbury Park Convention Hall

Taking place right on the beach at the Asbury Park Convention Hall, the Visionary Tattoo Arts Festival  was a helluva show. This being my first tattoo show I attended professionally I was set up with a booth right at the entrance of the show and right in view of the stage where they had burlesque, suspension, sideshow and a pinup contest that I actually got to judge in for the title of Miss Asbury Park! They even blasted rock music on the show floor and served beer and liquor at the concession stand. HELL YES. It was a welcome little break from comic shows (not that I don't love my comic shows...) and recharged my batteries creatively and gave my confidence in myself and my work a much-needed boost after a few not-so successful shows this year.

My booth!

My artwork and merch was incredibly well-recieved. Which when you consider how 'scary' all the bikers, metalheads and heavily modded folk at a tattoo show would be (and some were at first glance) it was great to see how happy and friendly everyone was. Moreso even than some comic shows I've attended. I brought a 4" thick stack of postcards, 100 moo mini cards and 200 stickers and they were ALL GONE by Sunday evening. It was crazy! My booth location was beyond cherry. Everyone who entered the show had to pass by me and my wares. 

The shirt for the show featuring my artwork!

It was kinda like this at the show:

(not really but it's hilarious anyway...)

I def want to thank Shannon and Jon Jon of Triple Diamond Tattoo in Brooklyn did an AMAZING job of putting the show together and inviting me to take part in the festivities. Seriously I can't wait til next year. I'm already planning on having Little Asian Sweatshop as my booth buddy so we can just tag team the show floor with our super sales powers. And I can take more breaks, cuz omg 12 hour Saturday shifts physically destroyed me. But made the 8 hour Sunday shift a piece of cake. Go figure.

12 hour Saturday shift: Before

12 hour Saturday shift: After

It was also strangely freeing being at a tattoo show compared to a comic show- other than my friends directly involved with me at the show and a handful of artists I had no idea who anyone was. And other than me plugging the fact that I did the poster for this year's show no one had any idea who I was either! No childhood heroes to stalk? No established comic artists to win over? No editors to pay mind to? No worrying about what potential job creator just watched me be a jerk to a table barnacle? No cosplayers? No FANDOMS? NO CON DRAMAZ? 

(At least not from my perspective. I'm sure the regulars have all sorts of inside info on what happened after hours and at the hotel bars and after parties, but I was in a fool's paradise. Which was a welcome change of pace to the 15 years of anime and comic conventions I've attended.) 

Tattoo show hours DO NOT FUCK AROUND

It was also awesome to be at a show where everyone who attended had a point of reference for familiarity with my work already coming into the show, with the flyers, tshirts, coasters and billboards all emblazoned with my sword-swallowing mermaid, tattooer Tillie and victorian-styled logo. As opposed to the underlying feeling I constantly had something to prove as I tend to feel at comic shows, I was able to relax, hang out and enjoy the scenery. It was interesting too to be one of the few artists attending who wasn't a tattoo artist and thus was free to interact with walk-up customers instead of hunched over a person's leg or back to the rear of the booth. I definitely would like to look into even more tattoo shows in the future to vend my merch at, as it seems a perfect crossover for me.

So yeah, any tattoo shows interested in a swanky flyer for themselves get at me! Maybe we can work out a deal? ;)

The Visionary Tattoo Arts Festival!

Check it out, all! I did the flyer for the Visionary Tattoo Art Festival going on in July at Asbury Park, NJ and will also be a guest artist all weekend and will be vending my wares as well as Little Asian Sweatshop's. I hope to see you there!

I completed this flyer in about a week and a half, the deadline was pretty tight with the shop that runs the show getting approval for it to go on later than normal because of damage to the beach from Hurricane Sandy. So this is the 'unfortunate' result of me being bad at time management and artwork negotiations/consultations with friends who are fans whose enthusiasm for my work is contagious. Especially when they're feeling my ideas and give me lots of creative control. Before I've put pen to paper I've promised them (and myself) the moon and stars because you know, I'm THE Paige Pumphrey! I can do MAGIC! AND it involves impressing a subculture from which I at one point in my life felt excluded from? Oh MAN, ALL THE BUTTONS.

We wanted to make the branding of the Festival more light and beachy and family-friendly as opposed to previous years where it had a more 'come out and get some nails in your dick/metallll wooooooo!' vibe. After being shown examples of the beautiful facade of the Convention Hall, with it's Victorian sea monsters and copper plating, I was inspired to make the design an early 20th century/Victorian themed beach poster. Looking at the works of JC Leyendecker, an all-time favorite artist of mine, as well as the art and feel of the Battleship Bay area of Bioshock: Infinite (which my husband has just arrived at in the game) I knew I had quite an undertaking. My clients also really liked the layout of my Saints and Sinners flyer for my artshow a couple years back- of having two characters framed by very detailed typography. We chose a sword-swallowing mermaid and the Asbury Park mascot Tillie (who is similar to the Coney Island funny face) in old-timey swimwear to be the 'hosts' of the flyer.

Rough sketches of the mermaid and Tillie.

Tight pencils.

Inks. (Scanned in Photoshop.)

Flat colors.

Slowly starting to lay out the flyer. Originally I was going to use Victorian clipart to save time, my husband however looking over my shoulder suggested it would look soooo much better if I drew all the filigree and framework out. Begrudgingly I agreed with him.

Printing out what I had at 40% opacity, I drew out all the elements by hand- the banners, the gold railing, the sun-shaped caption for the date. I even added a sea monster as a call back to the building facade.

Scanning the sketches for the elements, I traced and built them out of vector shapes in Illustrator, then ported them over to Photoshop for placement on the actual flyer. You can notice some of the changes elements went through during the process.

Coloring in all the elements individually, adding shading, texture and slowly figuring out my palette. In the end the only clipart I ended up using was the background filigree and the seashells on the the gold railing. 

November 2012- Lil Bub and lil' bags

Hey! Sorry I haven't updated in a while! Been busy this past month with some varying projects, Thanksgiving, lettering away at some manga, attempting to regularly go to the gym and trying to actually be social n' stuff. Which I know, weird...

Selfie in the bathroom of Double Down Saloon

I also got to meet a CELEBRITY this month!! 

Being internet cat sensation and most amazing creature on the planet-
Lil' Bub!

There was a meet n' greet to a roomful of cooing girls (myself included) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn at the BARC (Brooklyn Animal Rescue Center) where Lil Bub was selling 'kisses' for a dollar and 30% of all sales of Bub merch went to the center.  So I bought a tshirt and tote and got to hold her tiny polydactyl paw. It was magical!

As for projects I am working on lately, I just recently completed some new designs for my best friend Fenny's design house Little Asian Sweatshop, and we've got some crazy stuff planned! We've finally started figuring out how to utilize the Spoonflower website- which if you haven't heard about, is a really cool printer of direct-to-garment REAMS OF FABRIC.

Luchadora Fabric!
Drawn by me, designed by Maria Danalakis!

Little Asian Sweatshop and I have BIG PLANS for 2013, including Paigey-designed bags and even apparel further down the road. We're concentrating first on a line of make-up/pencil/stash bags with matching liners and zippers.

Little Asian Sweatshop already has Luchadora makeup/pencil bags in stock
on her etsy site!!

And we're already taking the bag design a step further with art that I am composing with the intention of being on the bag from the start, including these tattooed sailor mermaids:

Be sure to keep an eye out for this and future bag releases!!

I have a lot more bag designs planned, and also hope to get some of my other artist friends on board with their own via LAS once we've perfected the method for creating these. Then we plan to move on to purses, totes and eventually even apparel including dresses and tops! Very exciting!

Mermaid and Works in Progress: Late July '10

First off: Finished a cute little simple mermaid I plan on using on jewelry and magnets. A non-'boobies out' version will be available... eventually. Or maybe you should stop being such a prude. ;)



I also have two personal pieces I'm working on.

A pinup of Michonne from my favorite comic series right now, The Walking Dead. Weird trying to marry something so dark and serious with my chipper and cartoony style. Art rule I have: if you have a katana and are wearing sneakers, they will always be Onitsuka Tigers.



Also a 'Nancy from Sin City'-esque topless cowgirl in chaps. I might do 2 colorways on this, one that's Nancy-looking with blonde hair and black chaps and one that's more like Sluefoot Sue from the old Disney Pecos Bill cartoon. This one is actually taking a bit longer than expected because I'm trying to do the fringe super smooth in Illustrator with vector points. Which is kind of like creating art with math, not very fun but it makes it look very precise.



I think I posted it before, but in case I didn't or you missed it, I'm closing down shop for commissions until next year to focus on personal projects and a potentially huge project in 2011 that I hope to get off the ground over the holiday season. Unless I have already talked to you or you already gave me money, I am not taking fresh commissions until next year.