Prior to leaving for Surtex, I launched my new illustration site. Go check it out at karynservin.com. It is very pretty! My husband coded it and did a fantastic job making it very light weight using CSS and other acronyms that mean little to me. I do know, that it has pretty code for those who care. Now, with the site launched fresh and new. I am going to start knocking on doors, sending postcards or emails to publishers, essentially marketing. Wow, marketing my own art, what a thought.
Surtex was full of a lot of the same stuff, same agents, and same artists. But I saw that technology is having an impact. Lots of crisp vector work, and obviously computer generated patterns, designs. Still a good dose of traditional painting, but more of the flat colors, stylized, contemporary work. I saw the same broad trend in the National Stationery Show. Lots of minimalist, 2D, flat shapes and embellishments. Not a lot of painterly work in the Stationery Show, by far less than Surtex. The painterly work I saw was not traditional, lots of bright palette work. So, this can be good for those of us who work with a painterly quality, or it can be bad because the market wants Ikea, stylized design!
Next steps. Send submissions, find new markets, knock on doors.
