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Posted on June 5, 2013June 5, 2013 by Patrick LaMontagne

Coyote Totem

This painting of a Coyote is the latest in my Totem series. The most recent before this one was the Bald Eagle Totem, finished in November of last year. If you do the math, that’s almost seven months, which is far too long, especially if you consider that these are my favorite paintings to work on. With the daily editorial cartoons, the portraits of people, the pet commissions, and the great deal of time spent on the preparation for the Calgary Expo this year, I’ve been busy and otherwise occupied, so the Totems were temporarily on the back burner. The next one will be coming a lot sooner than December, I assure you.

I painted my first animal in this style in November of 2009, the Grizzly Bear Totem. Hard to believe that it’s been over three years. The funny thing is that the Coyote was one of the first animals I wanted to paint but for some reason I kept shuffling it down the line, painting other animals instead. As is often the case, I may have the reference photos ready to go for months before I get to the actual painting, but this one has easily waited the longest. It also took the longest to paint if you consider that I started it in February and it sat idle for months until I started back on it last week. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out, but as always, I’m already looking to the next one.

Posted on May 29, 2013May 29, 2013 by Patrick LaMontagne

Taming Painter 12

In an effort to broaden my digital painting horizons, I recently bought Corel Painter 12 and am trying to get used to it.

Having been a digital painter with Photoshop for many years now, I’m very comfortable not only with the default tools, but with customizing and designing my own brushes so that I can paint the way I like.

By pairing and customizing Wacom’s hardware and Adobe’s Photoshop software, I’ve developed a very comfortable workflow and I know how to get the results I want with the tools at hand. So if everything is working so well, you might wonder why I’m bothering with Painter. The short version is that Photoshop and Painter are the industry standards when it comes to digital painting. Some artists use only one of them, but many use both together, taking advantage of the strengths that each offers to produce the best results. I would like to have that option.

I invested in some initial training with Lynda.com to try to learn the ropes, but it didn’t give me what I needed. The class and instructor were fine, but when it comes to software, I seem to learn best by first doing something. If I can’t figure it out by trial and error (usually a LOT of error), then I’ll go searching for articles, videos, and classes online.

The painted sketch you see above is my first attempt at painting in Corel Painter 12. It took me a few hours as I tried a lot of the different available mediums, quickly realizing which ones I didn’t like and which ones had potential.

Painter 12 is designed to emulate traditional media. If you’re a traditional artist, that’s probably great news. But I’ve never painted with traditional tools. I learned how to paint in Photoshop, so to use oil painting or watercolour in Painter was incredibly frustrating because I’ve never used them before and didn’t like the way they worked. In all honestly, there were a few instances where I tried a brush and said, “Ugh!”, disgusted at the results. When it came to the cloning tools, I abandoned them without even taking them for a spin. I’ve never like painting or tracing over a photo and those tools are designed to do just that. While some people enjoy working with that option, I’ve never done it in Photoshop and I don’t plan to start now. Photos don’t belong in my work.

Now you might be wondering if this is just a blog entry to slam Painter. Let me assure you that it’s not. While half of my drawing and painting time was spent with a furrowed brow and clenched jaw when the tools were not working the way I wanted them to, the other half was spent with raised eyebrows in surprise and even a grin or two when I discovered a few things I really liked. I might have even said, “hey, that’s cool” out loud a few times.

Once I realized that I didn’t have to use EVERY medium in Painter, I started to enjoy myself. After all, I only use a small percentage of the features in Photoshop. Painter is designed to emulate most traditional mediums so that it appeals to a wide range of artists. But it doesn’t mean that a watercolour painter now has to learn oils and charcoal just because they’re suddenly available in the same place.

I found painting with the acrylic brushes really enjoyable. They work the way I want them to and I plan to spend a lot of time painting with those. The airbrush tool offers a LOT more options than the Photoshop airbrush does, so I’m really looking forward to incorporating that into some fine detail work.

I pride myself on having a really good handle on the Photoshop brush engine but the Painter brush engine is a whole new animal. I’m bracing myself for when I tackle that monster. Taming that beast is an absolute necessity because designing and using my own brushes is a big part of how I paint.

So what do I think of Painter 12 after only using it a short time? I think it’s an impressive piece of software that I have no idea how to use. Now, had you asked me the same thing about Photoshop ten years ago, I would have given you the same answer. They do share many of the same shortcut keys and tool options, like zooming, panning, layers and other functions, but there are other operations that are completely different and therein lies the challenge.

When talking about this on my Facebook page, I said, “It’s as if somebody came into the kitchen while I was cooking and moved everything to different cupboards and drawers, changed labels, and translated the recipes into foreign languages. I can still cook, but there won’t be any finesse to it until I get used to the new layout.”

Just like anything worth doing, it’s going to take me time to become good with Painter, just as it took years to become good with Photoshop. When it comes to painting, neither one of them is a ‘press this button, press that button’ piece of software. Digital painting is an art medium all on its own. If I were learning how to paint with oils, acrylics, watercolour, charcoal or any other traditional medium, the learning curve would be just as steep, if not more so.

I’m off to a good start, but I’m under no illusion that I’ll be doing any commission or gallery work in Painter anytime soon. Probably a lot more of the type of painted sketch you see above for the next little while. But I plan to keep at it, work through the frustration and practice as often as I can.

When it comes down to it, that’s the only way to create better art no matter what medium you’re using.

Posted on May 24, 2013May 24, 2013 by Patrick LaMontagne

Sketch Paintings

One of the things I noticed at the recent Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo is that many of the artists were selling books. Some were elaborately done with high production values (and costs, I’m sure) while others were smaller and produced on a budget, but still looked great. I’ve mentioned before that the Expo was a great learning experience and I’m still processing all of it. In addition to drawing and painting, I also enjoy writing a great deal. I’ve even got a couple of novels on the shelf I wrote years ago that I wouldn’t mind taking down and doing a rewrite with fresh eyes and a little more experience. One of them, anyway.

Sailing and fishing my personal creative ocean day to day, the idea of publishing a book that combines my artwork and writing is something that is never far below the surface of the water. As time passes, the idea keeps growing larger, is circling more often, and it’s clear that I need to haul this in pretty soon or I’m going to need a bigger boat.

While this future publication is still just in the idea stage, I do know that it will likely focus on my animal artwork. What I like most about the books I’ve bought by other artists is seeing the sketches and work that isn’t as polished and detailed. Since the goal for the majority of my animal paintings has always been to produce finished pieces for clients or galleries, I don’t actually have a lot animal sketches and paintings that weren’t destined for print. I figured I’d better make time to do more of that work since I don’t want a book that is devoid of variety.

Had I gone to art school or started drawing animals when I was younger, I might have stacks of sketchbooks of this stuff in storage, but before the late 90’s, all I ever did was doodle. After that, it was mostly editorial cartoon work and nothing I’d want to share now. This painting obsession didn’t really take hold until sometime in the last ten years, well into my 30’s. What I’d like you to take from that is that it’s never too late to learn new things and do what you love.

In an effort to create these additional sketches and paintings, there are some great side effects. One, of course, is that it’s wonderful practice. With no client to please, I can spend a half hour, an hour, two hours and just stop whenever I want. For somebody as obsessive as I am, just being able to stop and leave it alone, knowing there is plenty of room for improvement is an accomplishment by itself. Secondly, it’s like a palate cleanser, a reset button in between larger projects, very much like getting up and having a stretch. Having just finished two cat portraits for clients and moving on to another Totem piece, the meerkat sketch I did yesterday afternoon was a way of leaving one painting behind and starting fresh on another.

Finally, these are a lot of fun. Pouring rain that turned to snow yesterday, which can happen any time of year in the Canadian Rockies, gave me no motivation to go on my afternoon walk in the woods. Bored of training videos after about an hour, I just decided to make some fresh coffee (unusual in the afternoon), crank the tunes in the headphones, find a reference photo from a recent trip to the zoo and start drawing. Before I knew it, it was coming to life and I was really enjoying myself. Yes, I have deadlines right now, a long list of work I need to get done that will take me well past the summer, but making the time to do sketches like these on a regular basis is proving to be very good for me, almost like I’m taking a mini-vacation.

Expect more of these whimsical, cartoony characters in the coming months. Who knows, maybe I’ll even turn one or two of them into a Totem painting later.

Posted on May 21, 2013May 21, 2013 by Patrick LaMontagne

Commissions: Lion-O and Gaia

For anybody that reads my random ramblings here on the site, it’s pretty clear that my favorite work is painting animals. Whether they’re my signature Totem style of whimsical caricatured portraits, or the more traditional portrait look, I’m having my most fun when working with furry or feathered critters. Once in awhile, I’ll even paint one that hasn’t got either (see Humpback Whale).

One of the great surprises of recent months is that more and more people want me to paint their pets, and in both styles. While the portrait style is just as enjoyable, it’s a little more of a challenge. When I painted my Wolf or Bald Eagle Totems, nobody was holding up a reference photo of one they know really well and deciding if I got the likeness right. While a tabby cat very often looks just like a tabby cat, there are specific markings and features that have to be right or it just isn’t YOUR tabby cat. Just as failing to capture the likeness of a person will collapse a portrait, the same can be said for missing the personality or likeness of a cat or dog. Their owner (family member, companion, staff) will know the difference, even with the Totem style.

This past week, I finished these two paintings of Lion-O and Gaia, in order that you see them. Each has different markings, fur textures, bone structure and personalities, so they presented their own challenges. But both live in the same household, so the paintings needed to look like they belonged together on the wall. The clients had choices to make. Separate paintings or both cats together in one? Totem style or traditional portrait style? They chose the former of both options and I’m pretty happy with how they turned out, as are they.

These clients were VERY patient. We’ve been talking about this for quite awhile and they decided to go ahead with the paintings in January. As you can figure out, it’s now May, so these paintings have taken awhile to get finished, but thankfully they weren’t in any rush, which gave me free reign to do my best work. Much of that time was back and forth finding the right photos and they certainly did their part, giving me a great variety to choose from. But even still, with the preparation for the Calgary Expo last month, my daily editorial cartoon deadlines and other commitments, I spent most days wishing I was working on these paintings but otherwise occupied with other parts of my business.

While I’m always taking commission work, lately I’ve been telling people that rush jobs just aren’t possible right now. I would not be as happy with these paintings had I barreled through them and I would imagine the clients would not have been as well. Currently I have a number of other clients waiting their turn for commissions and I’m booked up until at least the Fall. I’ll be getting back to work this week on the Coyote Totem I started earlier this year and beginning my prep for the next commission of a dog portrait, this time in traditional style. More animal cartoons, sketches, and rough paintings are planned in addition to putting the focus on more Totems. It was a genuine shock to me recently when I realized that I have not painted a new one this year, despite the fact that I’ve got six of them waiting to be done, reference photos and all.

If you are interested in a commission and are willing to wait your turn, I promise I will make it worth the wait by doing the best job I can for you. Here’s a link to the information and if you have any questions, feel free to send me a message via the Contact page.

Here’s a little bit of how it’s done, too.

Posted on May 10, 2013May 10, 2013 by Patrick LaMontagne

The Space Between Us

A couple of months ago, I finished the above painting of Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield just before he became Commander of the International Space Station. Just painting the image was worth the effort because I really enjoyed it. But then Commander Hadfield saw it in orbit, sent me a short message and re-tweeted the link to his followers on Twitter. A tweet from space is quite a thrill and I’ve actually had the pleasure of receiving two of them, the second after I did the editorial cartoon you see below when he took command. Had it all ended there, I would have been pleased enough.

Shortly after Commander Hadfield retweeted the link to the painting, however, I got an email from Tim Gagnon, a graphic and portrait artist who lives next door to the Kennedy Space Center. Since 2004, Tim has worked with five Space Shuttle and nine ISS Expedition crews helping design their mission patches. Tim had some kind words to say about the portrait and then asked me for a little more information about the digital medium and how the painting was done. I was happy to send him some video links that I’ve done for Wacom, some time-lapses of my paintings and I shared a little more information inviting him to ask any other questions.

Tim told me that he designed a special crew patch for Expedition 34 at the request of that mission’s Commander, United States astronaut Kevin Ford, and he told me he would like to send me one. He said that it’s the first crew patch since Apollo XIII to have a motto. The expeditions overlap, so that Hadfield arrived at the ISS on Expedition 34 and then when he took command, it became Expedition 35. I was thrilled at the offer, thanked Tim for his generosity, and gave him my address. In exchange, I sent Tim my training DVDs on digital cartooning and painting to give him more information on that medium.

Much to my surprise, when the package arrived, there was not only the embroidered Expedition 34 patch, but the 35 patch as well. Tim also included a sticker of the Soyuz mission that took Hadfield’s expedition to space. I’ve had the mission patches for awhile, but haven’t posted it on my site until now, at Tim’s request. He was waiting until he had the go ahead from Kevin Ford, who arrived safely back on Earth on March 16th.

Something many of us take for granted these days is the incredible level of connection we are privileged to enjoy. Multiple daily tweets from space are exciting enough, but the simple fact that an instant message can be sent from one side of the globe to the other is truly amazing, or at least would be 100 years ago. What I find so incredible is that a painting I did for my own enjoyment went to orbit, was sent back to Earth, was noticed by another artist in Florida and now I have these very special mementos of the experience here in my hands, keepsakes that I will enjoy for many years to come. We really do live in an extraordinary time and we shouldn’t forget that. It also shows just how small our world really is.

An interesting side note that I found amusing is that Tim’s grandparents were Canadian.

Posted on May 9, 2013May 10, 2013 by Patrick LaMontagne

Gathering Reference

I always look forward to visiting the animals at the Calgary Zoo. While it’s true that I can easily justify spending two or three hours at the zoo to take photo reference, it always feels like I’m getting away with something, because it never feels like work. Almost like I might as well be slacking off to go see a movie. If I lived in Calgary, I’d spend a lot more time at the zoo, I’m sure, but the drive there and back takes just under three hours in good traffic, so I usually try to combine it with errands that are bringing me to the city anyway. Fortunately, yesterday’s errand was a meeting AT the zoo, which was pretty convenient. Or planned. I’ll never tell.

Yesterday, I took a few hundred photos and ended up with about ten that I wanted to keep. The beauty of a digital camera is that you can just keep shooting and sort them all out later, knowing full well that the vast majority will end up in the trash. I usually try not to have an agenda, so I make the rounds knowing that the best photos will be the ones where the animals are cooperating.

It was a hot day, so the lions, tigers and bears (oh, my!) and other large animals were either hiding in the shade or just being lazy and lethargic in the sunshine. Who can blame them? So, weather does factor into it. One Totem I really want to paint in the future is a red panda, and even though they were out and active enough, and I took a lot of photos, none of them were good. Same situation with a few of the other animals I was after. Bad angles, bad light, bad photographer.

But I did manage to get a few that I like, including the ones you see here. While none of them are good enough to be the prime reference for a finished painting, I plan to be doing a lot of sketching and painting studies in the future and these will do just fine for those. It is my plan that before too long, I’ll be able to create a book of my animal work, which means I’ll need to draw and paint a lot more of it.

Any excuse to go to the zoo.

Posted on May 9, 2013May 9, 2013 by Patrick LaMontagne

Poster Prints at the Calgary Zoo!

When it comes to this business of art, there is no manual. Most of us are just winging it, making corrections each time a mistake or miscalculation knocks us off course. Most of the time, it’s not some big disaster, it’s just evaluating the results from throwing stuff at a wall to see what would stick.

Last year, the Calgary Zoo started selling my matted Totem prints, the same ones that were sold at Two Wolves in Canmore and are currently in About Canada in Banff. The prints did well at the other two venues and also sell well in my own online store. The zoo, however, is a little different because their retail store is not a gallery, but a gift shop that complements the destination, so to sell matted prints at $44 in this venue was an experiment. While they did sell, they weren’t exactly flying off the shelves.

Regular readers will know that I recently had a booth at The Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. In addition to the matted prints I normally stock, I also introduced a poster print. Not a gallery quality giclée, but still an excellent quality print with a white border. Hand signed, with backer board, in a plastic sleeve just like the matted prints, the price point is lower which allows for people who want to buy a print but aren’t looking to have the full matted and professionally framed look and expense. They sold well at the Expo and also in an online sale I had recently on this site. But since I ordered far too many for the Expo, I thought I might see if the Calgary Zoo was interested in giving them a shot, so I requested a meeting, which I drove in for this morning.

I’m happy to say that they were very well received and now all ten Totems that were printed for the Expo are now available as poster prints at the Calgary Zoo. With fingers crossed for this eventuality, I had brought full inventory of each print with me today instead of just one sample, so these should be available right away. The poster prints will retail for $25.00 each, so if you were one of the lucky ones who took advantage of the recent sale or bought at the Expo, you got a great deal on them. Here’s hoping they do well at the Zoo and they ask me to restock their supply soon.

The matted prints will still be available online and at About Canada on Banff Avenue.

Posted on May 7, 2013May 7, 2013 by Patrick LaMontagne

Mighty? Maybe not.

With the Adobe Max conference going on in L.A. this week, there are many in the design, photography and other digital creative industries that are actively talking about all things Adobe. Most of the talk is surrounding the Creative Cloud and the subscription model. In fact, I’ve seen and participated in some heated discussions the past 24 hours about the pros and cons. Most of these arguments look very much like online political bickering, complete with name-calling, passive aggressive rants and the usual ‘my way or the highway’ arguments that are the staple of social media discussions. Having expressed my opinion already, I don’t feel the need to repeat it all here. Bottom line is that anybody who uses any of Adobe’s software will have to subscribe to the new model or eventually watch their tools become obsolete. Time marches on, adapt and overcome, deal with it. The corporate mind is made up and unlikely to change. We’ll just have to agree to disagree and move on, since we should all probably be working anyway.

One of yesterday’s announcements that caught my eye was Adobe’s introduction of Project Mighty. A pressure sensitive pen for the iPad and iPhone, connected to the cloud, allowing people to draw and take notes on the iPad. Before I talk about my impression, here’s a video that explains it, just so we’re all on the same page.

At first glance, this looks like it might be something very innovative. In fact, I’ve had a number of people send me email and private messages since this was announced telling me I must be excited about this and asking what I think of it. The only reason I assume they’re asking is that my medium for the majority of my work is digital and that I’ve also done a fair bit of iPad art over the past couple of years. So having only seen the same video you just watched, my first impression is that the Mighty doesn’t strike me as memorable, at least not in this first edition.

I’ve tried a number of iPad pens over the last year. Some of them have a plastic disc that rests on the screen, many have rubber eraser type nibs in varying sizes, and even one expensive disaster purported to be pressure sensitive, but ended up just being a waste of $80.00. The battery didn’t last and it relied on raising and lowering the volume of the device since it communicated through the iPad’s microphone. To quote Mr. Scott in Star Trek, “The more they over-think the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”

In my experience with art on the iPad, the strength lies in a well developed app, because the hardware is a compromise. The iPad just wasn’t designed to use a pen and Apple has consistently showed no interest in answering the scores of artists who have been begging for one. As Steve Jobs famously said, “It’s like we said on the iPad, if you see a stylus, they blew it.”

But with a good third party stylus and a well written app, you can still draw and paint well enough on the iPad. The best apps that I’ve used to date are procreate, artstudio, and Sketchbook Pro. I’ve been able to work around the pressure sensitivity quite well in all of these apps simply by varying the brush opacity while I paint. Coupled with a good stylus, I find painting on the iPad to be quite enjoyable, despite having to wear a light glove so I can rest my hand on the screen while I draw. The pen I settled on after trying many of them, is the Wacom Bamboo Stylus and it works quite well, despite the limitations of the iPad itself. The paintings you see here were done on the first generation iPad with the Wacom stylus.

What surprised me most about Project Mighty is that it doesn’t appear to involve Wacom at all. I’ve been using Wacom tablets and displays since the 90’s and while each new evolution is better than the last, the one consistent thing I could always count on was that there was no better name in pen and tablet tech than Wacom. I would defy any digital creative artist to challenge that statement. The industry standard for pen technology has long been Wacom and if this pen was a cooperative venture between the two, I would have expected Adobe to lead with it, so I can only assume that this was an independent creation. It was my understanding that the two companies had a symbiotic relationship as most Adobe users I know are using Wacom tablets or displays in their work. Wacom’s lack of involvement in Project Mighty (unless it’s some deep dark secret) is perplexing.

One of the biggest complaints I hear when reviewing any stylus or app for the iPad is that people want it to work like their Wacom tablet. Same features, sensitivity, and functionality. Unrealistically, many artists want the power of a robust computer mixed with a Cintiq 24HD that is light and allows them to take it anywhere. Someday, I’m sure, but I still think that perfect device is a long way off. Then again, we might see a hint of that soon.

On February 28th, this status update on Wacom’s Facebook page created quite a ripple through the digital creative world. “We’ve heard you shouting out loud for a Wacom mobile tablet for creative uses. Well… we’re listening. We’ve read your email and spoken to many about an on-the-go dream device. It will come. This summer. We’re working 24/7 on it. And yes, it has a real pressure-sensitive professional pen, smooth multi-touch, an HD display, and other valuable features that you haven’t seen in other tablets.”

With this tease still resonating, I won’t be buying into Project Mighty. When it comes to digital pen technology, I’m willing to be patient and wait for whatever Wacom has up their sleeve. We might finally see tablet hardware that doesn’t ask artists to compromise. If Wacom’s previous track record for stealing the show is any indication, I expect many artists will consider everything that has come before it to be just an opening act.

Posted on May 2, 2013May 2, 2013 by Patrick LaMontagne

Avalanche Movies Rolls Credits

A few years back, I found myself considering a part-time job. In my late 30’s, working full-time at home as a freelance artist, it wasn’t about the money, but getting out of the house a little more. As much as I like working for myself, I missed having coworkers, even though when I had them, they drove me nuts.

The only place in Canmore I wanted to go for an evening job was Avalanche. Make a little extra money, sure, but best of all, I got to be around movies, something near and dear to my heart. I’m hardly the type of person that can discuss great cinema, tell you anything about Fellini or discuss the hidden nuances in Woody Allen films. In fact, I can’t stand Woody Allen films. I just love movies.

But Avalanche also has a reputation. People like working there and that’s something you can’t fake, because they seem to like their jobs even when the owners aren’t around. In a business well known for hiring teenagers and young adults, I was easily the oldest guy there. Little did I know, the ownership was changing just as I was hired on, and I’ll admit that I thought I might have made a mistake. But Jeff assured me that the owners weren’t just handing it off to anybody, they were making sure that it went to people who would keep the culture of Avalanche alive.

Enter Patrick and Camille, and I had no reason to worry.

I already had a work ethic; it’s something I take pride in. But working at Avalanche, it didn’t take long to realize that everybody else there did, too. Many of these ‘kids’ worked harder and knew more about customer service than most adults I’ve met and worked with. For a lot of them, this was a coveted first job and with a lineup of their peers in this community waiting to take their place, few took it for granted.

My time at Avalanche was short, just over a year as I realized I was too busy for a part-time job, even though it was only a couple of nights a week. But I enjoyed it and am thankful for the experience, because though I left a while ago, they still treat me like one of their own. I even came back that year to work a shift with another former staff member, so everybody else could go to the Christmas party and we were happy to do it. How many employers would you do that for?

To understand what kind of environment and direction Avalanche has provided to kids in this community, you need only look to the adults many of them have become. Responsible and hardworking, they’re the type of people you want to know, hire and work with, because they know the value of doing a job well.

Customer service is a talk they walk at Avalanche. Rather than just point a finger to a corner of the store when you ask for a movie, staff will take you right to it or go and get it for you. That direction comes from the top. Even as a customer, I still can’t walk by a crooked DVD case on the shelf without straightening it.

The place always smells of popcorn, free for the taking while you peruse the store, and if once in a while a batch gets burned, it’s usually because all of the staff are helping customers and didn’t get to it in time. But a new batch isn’t far behind.

Only a fraction of late fees are ever collected. Most of the time, they’re forgiven outright. The only time you can be guaranteed to be asked to pay them is on the many occasions when they’re donated to benefit a local charity or cause. And in this community, people are always happy to give more than they owe.

Walking into Avalanche, you never have to worry that you don’t know what to get. I can’t tell you how many times Camille, Patrick or Jeff have taken the time to walk around with us, pointing out movies we should see, often sleeper hits we’ve never heard of and then thoroughly enjoy. It’s gotten so they even know what we like. One of my favorite movies is “The Way.”. This movie so inspired me that I painted Martin Sheen’s portrait from it. I may not have ever seen it, had it not been recommended to me by Camille on one of those walks through the new releases. That portrait now hangs in Sheen’s home in California.

Every dog in Canmore knows Avalanche. Not only is it one of the few places where they’re welcomed to come on in, but there’s a never-ending bag of dog cookies behind that counter. Even if you aren’t renting or buying a movie, dogs are always welcome to stop in for a treat, if they just happen to be on their way by.

For someone who lives outside of this community, you might view the closure of a movie rental business to be inevitable. In the age of digital downloads and faceless automatic rental kiosks, it might seem that this business model has seen its day. Not here. As mentioned in their release, Avalanche is only closing because “our location is no longer available to us.”

You don’t just go to Avalanche to rent a movie, you go because you might run into someone you haven’t seen in a while. It’s one of the still locally owned gems in this town where they know you and they’re happy you stopped in, even if it was just to say Hi. If this is the end for Avalanche, it will be mourned by this whole community. Small towns have a way of disappearing one business at a time and while we all want the modern big box chain convenience, nothing comes without sacrifice and we lose a bit of ourselves each time it happens.

Hopefully somebody out there will want to write the sequel in another location. If you’re that person, Patrick and Camille would like to talk to you. If you want to know where to find them, just follow your dog.

Posted on April 29, 2013April 29, 2013 by Patrick LaMontagne

Calgary Expo – The Wrap Up

This weekend found me running my first retail booth at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. All day Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I was selling my wares to attendees of the second largest event of its kind in Canada, along with many other artists and vendors. As this was my first ‘con’, here’s a bit of a review to show how the reality of the experience met with my expectations.

At this event, I was selling prints of ten of my original creations, my Totem paintings. I prepared as best I could by reading blog entries and articles online by those in the know. A talented animator friend, Jennifer Llewellyn has had a booth at this Expo six times now and she graciously shared a lot of information with me both before and during the event. There’s a distinct culture at this sort of show and as I’d requested a booth beside hers when I registered, Jenn served as my guide throughout and was a big help to me.

The first year is where you’re going to spend the most amount of money if you want to do it right. I wasn’t content to have a booth that looked bargain basement as many will do to save on expenses, so I put my best foot forward. I bought retail grid walls that stand on their own, had a professional banner printed, bought bins to hold my prints, and other assorted retail hardware. For product, I offered poster prints for $15.00 apiece, with backer board, artist bios and cellophane sleeves. I also offered the usual matted giclée prints for a discounted show price of $35 (regular $44) and my limited edition 12″X16″ canvas giclée prints at a discounted show price of $220.00 (regular $295.00). As this was my first foray into the show, I had no idea how much inventory I would need. Considering that I regularly keep prints on hand for online sales and supplying the local retailers who sell my work, I figured I should aim high, so that anything I didn’t sell would just become part of my regular inventory, stock I would need anyway.

Last year, this Expo experienced some significant growing pains. The Fire Marshall essentially shut it down on the Saturday of the 2012 event, as there were far too many people inside the venue. Many who had bought tickets and waited in line weren’t allowed in and others who had just stepped outside for some lunch or some air were locked out for the duration. I was on a research trip to this event last year, and I experienced the lockout firsthand. Our weekend passes became null and void early Saturday afternoon. This year, they capped the number of tickets at close to 60,000 and sold out well before the Expo itself, increased the size of the venue, and vowed to fix all that went wrong with last year’s event.

So how did it go? Well, lets start with the cons of the con, from this vendor’s point of view.

My only reference to how things should have gone was from other artists who had done this event before. As the weekend wore on, a number of them said that this was one of the slowest years for sales. Saturday is supposed to be one of the biggest and best selling days, and yet even though I was in a good location, there were hours on Saturday afternoon (yes, hours) where it felt like a ghost town in our corner of the world. The first two hours of Sunday morning were exactly the same. Quite discouraging as I was looking at the many prints still sitting in bins in my booth, wondering how many of them I was taking home with me. Speculation seemed to be that because they had spread the celebrity guest signings and panels out to other buildings and with the limited ticket sales, many people didn’t make it to the vendor booths in the small press section (where I was located) or if they did, they didn’t make it back when it came time to make their purchases.

A big question mark was whether or not I was even in the right place to sell my particular brand of artwork. Here was a typical situation my wife and I noticed throughout the weekend. A person would walk up the aisle in front of my booth, scanning left and right as they walked. When they saw my work, they’d smile or laugh, say something like, “Oh, cool!” or “These are great!” They’d come over to the booth, look through my book, ask questions, and appear thoroughly engaged with the work and have many complimentary things to say. Then they’d often say “Thanks” and wander off to the next booth or say, “I’ll be back later on.” Both my wife and I have worked in retail years ago and have experience with the ‘just looking’ crowd but when the reactions seemed very genuine, we couldn’t figure out the reluctance to buy by many of the enthusiastic visitors. Money didn’t seem to be the issue as our pricing was comparable to the wares of many other artists. One of the most common comments we got was that my work looked like nothing people had ever seen before. As an artist, that’s a great thing to hear, but whether or not it also prevented them from buying it because they didn’t know where to put it, who knows?

One quirk of this con is that when people had multiple day passes, they didn’t want to be carrying their purchases around with them all day, so they said they’d come back later in the day or on Sunday to buy. Anybody who has ever worked in retail knows how that goes. One way around that was we offered to hold on to their purchases until they came back for them and that did work for a few of them, especially one woman who bought a canvas print of the Ostrich Totem. Others, however, just never came back.

Something that really began to annoy us as the weekend wore on was cellphones. We easily had half a dozen potential good sales ruined by somebody getting a text or phone call while they were talking to us. The phone would distract them and they would wander off while taking the call. Or if they stayed at the booth, following the call or text, their entire demeanor changed, as if that distraction had broken the spell of their interest. Cell phones are not your friend when you’re trying to make a sale.

These were the less than ideal parts of this show, but now I’ll talk about all of the positives that came from this event.

There was a noticeable difference in the organization level of this event this year. There were a lot of volunteers, all of whom were exceptionally helpful, friendly and receptive to feedback. We heard nothing but good things from attendees and vendors with how well the folks at the Expo handled everything this year. They really should be commended on how they turned lemons into lemonade following last year’s event and I personally made a point of thanking a few volunteers for their efforts and I noticed a number of other vendors did the same.

First and foremost, there is no substitute for experience, and the amount I learned about trade shows and expos this weekend is immeasurable. It was truly an education, one that was quite enjoyable. One of the best parts of this event was that my wife, Shonna worked it with me. She even wore her two Ostrich Totem shirts proudly on Friday and Saturday. The pic at left was Sunday. Her opinion and insights are always of value to me and the fact that I didn’t have to come home and try to explain everything to her is a relief. She went through it all with me, saw and heard everything I did and worked just as hard. Her help and support was incredibly valuable to me at this event. I could have done this without her, but I wouldn’t have done it nearly as well and it wouldn’t have been as much fun, because yes, as hard as we worked, it really was a good experience for both of us.

One of the benefits of having a booth at the con is that even though we didn’t get to see as much around the venue as I would have had I been an attendee, eventually a lot of the people came wandering down to our end. So, we still got to see many of the creative and elaborate costumes, a highlight of this show for many.

Neither Shonna nor I are big on crowds at the best of times. While I have plenty of experience in sales and working with people, having worked in retail and hotels before I was a full-time artist, these days I spend the majority of my working time alone in my office and I quite enjoy my solitude. But having a booth at a show, you have to be ON all the time. Smiling, laughing, saying Hello and making eye contact, inviting people in, being friendly and engaging, making people feel welcome to come and look at your wares, answering the same questions and telling the same stories over and over again for three days straight. I wondered if I still had it, and thankfully I did. Best of all, I really enjoyed myself and so did my wife. The people were the best part of this Expo because they were all there to have a good time. Even if they weren’t buying, it was fun to talk with them, hear their thoughts, and explain my work to them. Everybody I talked to seemed to really like my paintings and style of artwork, which was a nice boost. Every artist wants to find their own look and I’ve successfully done that.

Commissions! We couldn’t believe how many people asked about commissions of their pets. While many seemed content to just take a card, Shonna had the bright idea to start taking email addresses from those who made inquiries and today I’ll be sending a lot of personal messages to people with the blog entry link that explains all of the information about commission work. If even a small percentage of those who inquired take the plunge, I’ll be busy painting custom pet portraits for a long time.

Suggestions! It is very clear that a panda and giraffe need to be added to my Totem list. A number of people asked if I had those paintings. Others I found intriguing were a Hedgehog, Alpaca or Llama, and a Lizard. All of these would be enjoyable to paint and add to my funny looking menagerie.

Networking! We spoke to many other experienced trade show and expo artists who were very happy to share the information they’ve gathered. One couple who attend many of these shows as vendors stood at our booth when it was slow and took Shonna and I to school. They told us which shows were profitable, which ones were not, which ones were expensive and vice versa. We honestly didn’t meet anyone who was in a bad mood or wasn’t genuinely willing to share information with us and we tried to do the same. There is a thriving community of professionals and amateurs on the show circuit and we were welcomed into it.

Validation! Everybody is warned to have cash on hand to purchase items at the show. Most vendors will not have the ability to take credit cards. I went with the Kudos system, however, so I could take credit card payments on my iPad and I’m glad I did. More than half of my sales were credit card transactions. I would not have sold the canvases I did had I only taken cash.

People really did seem to like my work. We got used to seeing big smiles and exclamations of, “Oh, look at these!” and “These are wonderful!” from people. They would also say things like , “they look real, but cartoony. How do you do that?” And best of all, the adjectives. Everybody sees something different in the expressions of my Totems and since I have no idea where the personality comes from as I paint, nobody is wrong. The same Totem would be called, ‘sarcastic,’ ‘angry’, ‘scary,’ ‘mischievous,’ ‘happy,’ and ‘goofy,’ among other things. They would tell me and others what the Totem was thinking. “Oh he’s thinking, don’t worry, I’ll eat you quickly,’ and ‘what are you lookin’ at?” I loved it.

On Sunday, a gentleman approached me about licensing my Totems for a specific line of products (that’s all I’ll say for now), took me to his booth, showed me what he was talking about and I was very interested. I’ll be talking to him again today via email. Best of all, some of the work on his products was that of another artist at the show, so I went to her booth and asked her opinion of the arrangement. She gave a ringing endorsement, so I can go into these negotiations with a better understanding of the person and company I’m dealing with. Apparently this sort of thing happens at a lot of these events as well. And the reason I was approached? He had never seen anything like my work before.

To sum up, having a booth at this Expo was a LOT of work and expense, both in prep and at the venue, but it was well worth my time. Because the Internet and social media is so much PR and hard to tell where the truth lies, I’ll be honest. While I still came away with good sales, I did not make money at this event, but both Shonna and I are fine with that. The reason is that the first year is the most expensive and costs range from buying the prints and retail hardware to food and lodging and other expenses, all of which have to be considered on the balance sheet. I brought WAY too much inventory, but only because I had no way of knowing where to draw the line, having never done this before. I’m so glad I didn’t try to sell T-shirts and postcards as well this first time out. The great thing is that none of the inventory goes bad. It sells at the Calgary Zoo, About Canada in Banff and in my online store on a regular basis. All it means is that I have plenty of stock for awhile and I don’t have to buy anything in the near future. So I didn’t really lose any money, especially because I didn’t go into debt for this show. All of my expenses have been paid, so this wasn’t a hardship.

In the end, this was an investment in experience. The knowledge we now have could not have been learned without taking the risk and it was well worth it. Was this the right venue for my work? I still don’t know. Will I do this particular Expo again next year? I’m still thinking about it, leaning toward the affirmative, but I still don’t know. Sometimes a first year or two is required just to get people to know your work and develop a following. Will I be doing other trade shows like this to test the waters? Most definitely, especially since I already have the booth fixtures at hand. We’re already looking at a number of possible venues and figuring out our next move.

We came away from this event with a lot to think about and I’ve taken a new step in marketing my work. Best of all, I took another risk and that’s the only way to move forward. In the next couple of weeks, I’ve got a fair bit of post-con work to do from emailing potential clients about commissions and negotiating a licensing deal, not to mention reassessing the inventory I have in stock and figuring out the best way to make use of it. It was a really good weekend and I’m glad I did it.

Even before this show, I had a lot on my plate, so right now, it’s back to drawing and painting, which is what got me into all of this in the first place.