Tuesday 17 June 2008

3 Counties Show

So, I survived my first ever tradestand experience! Here I am in the stand on day one:

It was an enjoyable 3 days. Friday morning I was a bag of nerves, not knowing what to expect. Luckily a member from the pet portraits forum that I belong to turned up to say hi and we wandered off to see the horses and that calmed me down a lot. Hi Dawn!

Sitting and working on a painting with people watching was a very strange experience. I never quite got used to it over the weekend but I'm sure that, in time, it will feel a bit more natural. I certainly hope so! I even had a couple of art groups asking if I'd like to come and do demonstrations for them but I had to turn them down as I'm really not at that point yet! I had a lot of wonderful comments about my paintings which has helped my confidence and I'm now wishing I'd started doing tradestands a long time ago as I might not have taken so long in believing in myself!! A lot of flyers were given out so fingers crossed I get some commissions from this weekend but it was definitely worth the experience and we're now thinking of doing other agricultural shows next year too. Being my first tradestand, we've learnt a lot over the weekend that we will use for future tradestands and we've also been surprised by a lot of things, such as the fact that people are more willing to spend extra to buy a print framed so they don't have to worry about getting it framed when they get home. Chris also took a poll as to which was the people's choice painting and Meandering came out on top.

Sadly though, I can't now relax and recuperate as I have 2 paintings I need to get finished by the end of the week but we might take off a week in September, when we finally have some spare time, and relax then!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As this was your first experience of your own tradestand I reckon it all looks most impressive. Well done.