Happy to say that streamlining my art shows worked out last week! After making sure to end work right on time (tough since I was essentially the manager that day), I changed into fancy clothes, grabbed food at the Whole Foods hot bar, ate it on the subway to Brooklyn, and arrived at the opening Ink at the Honey Badger Motel Art Gallery at a fashionable time of around quarter after 7. Success!

There were already lots of people there, and I got to see cool art and mingle with other artists. It was so much fun and I stayed til the very end! Happy to say that my AER HEAD art was displayed in a prominent place - you see it across the room right when you walk in! Lots of people were telling me that they liked to see the process of how the art was made, as the gallery hung the original art above the prints. I got so many compliments on the quality of the color prints! The colors are so vibrant and the watercolor paper made people guess if they too were originals.

Want to see the show and hear artists talk about our work? There are 2 batches of artist talks at Honey Badger this weekend! My studio mate Bill is in the one on Friday, and I’m in the one on Saturday May 9th at 8pm. It also looks like it’s a ladies night with all women speakers :) This show is only up for a short run, so go see it this weekend!

Honey Badger Motel Art Gallery

145 Sterling Place

Brooklyn NY 11217

Blake and I are exhibiting at HURRICON that same Saturday! What is up with everything happening on the same day again?! May is just happily insane, but here’s where more planning comes in! Hurricon is in East Rockaway. NOT the beach, as I first thought (I was thinking of Far Rockaway). While “The Rockaways” are in Queens, East Rockaway is actually in Long Island, and the venue (Bethany Church) is not anywhere near a beach! I learned something new, and thank God Blake has a car lol

For any event, it’s best to plan backwards. The convention starts at 10am, so we should aim to be at the venue to set up at 9am. I live in Brooklyn and Blake is in Jersey, so he’ll pick me up on the way to the show. Given that it’ll take an hour driving from my place, I need to be ready to go at 8am, so I’ll wake up at 7am to pack lunches and get ready. I always have my merch and other supplies packed the night before.

After a fun day of selling comics and drawing sketches (super excited for this template I just sketched!), again we’re working backwards for the next event. My artist talk starts at 8pm, so we should aim to be at the gallery around 7:30. We need to pack up from the convention, drive to downtown Brooklyn, find parking, grab a bite, and not be late. Looking up directions, again it takes an hour to drive from Hurricon to Honey Badger. Luckily, the convention ends pretty early at 4, so if we pack up, change clothes and aim to leave around 4:30, that still gives us ample time to drive an hour, spend another hour finding parking, another hour to eat, and making it to the gallery in a non-frazzled state. Can we do it?! Does this sound crazy? This is my life lol! I’m very blessed and thankful for many wonderful opportunities and people in my life. I hope to see you at Hurricon or the artist talk this Saturday!

Hurricon is at Bethany Church, 100 Main St., East Rockaway NY 11518.

Also if you’re around the Hudson Yards area of Manhattan, check out the New York City Group Art Show at Enoch’s Cafe! It runs for one more week til May 14th. Blake and I checked out the show this past Sunday and it has a really cool mix of NYC themed art for locals and tourists alike. I have my “How Do You Spell GOWANUS” art in the show. Enoch’s is a pretty cool venue too, and has a vibe much like the late Caffeine Underground.

Enoch’s is at 480 10th Ave, New York, NY 10018.

And don’t forget the Tower Show is still up! Only 2 more weekends to view it and snag some unique Brooklyn art. This show is open Saturdays and Sundays from 12-6 PM through May 17th at Union Channel: 240 3rd Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217.

So how do you plan things? Are you a spontaneous free spirit that may have some tips for me to relax? Or are you a super planner like me? Do you have a physical planner, phone planner, or no planner at all? Reply to this email, or post a comment and let me know!

The full artist lineup for INK at the Honey Badger Gallery is here! Besides my studio mate Bill Roundy, I don’t know the other 16 exhibitors, and am excited to meet them this Friday at the opening. I hope to see you there too!

Honey Badger Motel Art Gallery

145 Sterling Place in Brooklyn

Opening Friday May 1st, 7-9pm

I’ll have 6 pieces in the show: 3 original artworks spanning AER HEAD 1-3, along with the corresponding color prints. I once again went all fancy and printed on high quality watercolor paper from Solas studio. The frames are glass too (oo la la!) Exhibitors will have some of our comic books for sale as well as the wall art.

But I have a happy problem: I’m in too many shows now! In a New York minute, I applied and got accepted to another art show: a NYC themed show at Enoch’s cafe, but it opens the same night! At first, I thought I could try to make an appearance at both (this is how my brain works). But after logically thinking about it, I’m deciding to focus on being present at the Honey Badger opening this Friday May 1st. Openings are the most important night for a show, but I’m only one person!

NYC is great but too big. I work teaching on the upper east side until 6pm. I thought at first I could change clothes, grab a bite, travel to Enoch’s (takes at least a half hour), stay at the opening for a half hour, travel another hour on the subway to Brooklyn, and hopefully catch the last hour of the Badger show. EXHAUSTING just thinking about it! In reality if I did this, I’d be super stressed and not in the present moment.

I decided that LESS is MORE and chose to attend Honey Badger’s opening because:

• I have 6 artworks there, vs the 1 for Enoch’s

• It’s AER HEAD themed, which is my main art focus!

• Badger will also sell comic copies at their opening

While I can always network at both, Enoch’s is also a cafe that’s open every day, and I can view the art any time during the show’s run, whereas galleries usually have limited hours. There should be closings for both, and an artist talk for Badger, and you’ll be the first to know when these are. Hopefully they won’t be the same night again!

I’m also exhibiting THIS SATURDAY at Everyone Comics in Queens for FREE COMIC BOOK DAY! This year, I made a portrait template using the FCBD graphics to resemble a comic cover starring the person I’m drawing. I gotta make sure to leave the Badger opening at a reasonable time to get enough sleep to wake up early and haul over to Queens Saturday morning! 41-26 27th Street, Queens, NY 11101.

I’m very blessed leading an exciting artist’s life! Last week my parents visit to NYC coincided with the Arts Gowanus Tower Show opening! As a kid, I entered every art contest I could and they always supported me. Now that I’m all “grown up,” they are seeing my art displayed in New York City galleries. Dreams do come true! The Tower Show is on view Saturdays and Sundays from 12-6 PM through May 17th at Union Channel 240 3rd Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217.

So my art will be in 3 art shows running at the same time during May! And on Saturday, you can see my work in 4 places spanning 3 boroughs: Queens (FCBD at Everyone Comics), Manhattan (Enoch’s), and Brooklyn (Badger & Tower Show)! I’m a busy woman! Hope to see you at Honey Badger and/or FCBD this weekend!

Even though I didn’t exhibit in BICS this year, Blake and I checked it out for fun. We had a wonderful time reconnecting with friends, meeting new ones, and getting cool comics! Now in it’s 4th year, I’m so happy that the show has improved from years past. As a convention organizer myself, I know there are challenges to running a successful event. BICS has come a long way from battling cold & rain outdoors the first 2 years, to the elevator conking out when the show was indoors (but on the 6th floor), plus bad lighting and few customers. I was cautious in January when the call for artists listed 2 different room options: the main Red room, and ones without temperature control for a lower price (at least they warned people!). Luckily, even with our crazy weather fluctuations of almost 80 degrees last Friday and a low of 34 degrees last night, BICS happened to fall upon beautiful spring weather in the 60s, and thankfully the artists in the side rooms of Blue & Yellow were comfortable and neither freezing nor boiling. Most exhibitors were in good spirits! It’s truly inspiring to see the positivity in the comics community at BICS. Artists have different measures of success:

• Sales

• Growing your following (mailing list, social media followers)

• Networking

• I hate the term “exposure”. but yes, exposure

When I exhibit at comic cons, all of these are important, but the main one for me is sales - can I make my table fee back with some profit? Even if you don’t do well in sales, you can ALWAYS focus on the other 3, and that can keep your spirits up.

The next comic con that I’ll be in is Free Comic Book Day! This is a nation-wide event where comic stores offer a selection of comics for free, and often have creators like myself in the store selling our indie comics. This year I’ll be at Everyone Comics in Queens - stop by, get some free and not free comics, and meet artists!

The next fancy art gallery show I’m in is THE TOWER SHOW by Arts Gowanus, which opens THIS THURSDAY at Union Channel! Important note: it’s the same venue as last year (240 3rd Ave.) but has a different entrance on the Union Street side. This is a specially themed show focusing on the beloved water tower, which is an icon of Brooklyn and the logo of Arts Gowanus. Each artist gets a template of an outline of a tower, and creates their own version of it! And now, the reveal:

This is Space Tower 2: Mars Landing! This art reuses assets from AER HEAD 3 when Aer & friends go to Mars. I don’t usually make custom art for a themed show, but if I recombine elements of art I already made, it saves time, is still in my style, and is no big loss if the art doesn’t sell. Since the art sells for more $$$ at a gallery, fewer pieces sell. I’ve been in a growing number of group shows in galleries and my own solo show last year, but I’ve only sold one piece of art at the shows directly, with a few sales afterwards. My main focus for being in gallery shows is exposure, with those other 3 bullet points as a bonus.

I’m so happy with how the print of the Mars Tower came out! This is a high-quality print on watercolor paper from Solas Studio. The colors are so rich! The paper texture really highlights the watercolor feel to my Martian background. For most of my backgrounds for AER HEAD, I paint real watercolors and scan them in, but the comic prints on smooth comic paper. It’s nice to treat my art more lavishly, which is suiting to the price point for a gallery. This premium print cost $40, and all the towers sell for a $200 flat fee (all of which goes to the artists - rare for an art show!).

Talk about lavish - the print even came with gloves! Since having an art studio at TI Studios, I’ve learned how to think of my art more highly and present it better for fancier circumstances. This did not come naturally to me, but seeing how fine artists like painters present their work has really rubbed off on me.

Even something like framing my work was alien to me pre-residency. Why spend money on a frame? Why not just use thumbtacks? For my solo show, Storyboard to Stars, Nicholas the studio manager encouraged me to “elevate the art” (figuratively, but it also turned out to be literal), so I magnets as a hanging mechanism - a technique I’ve seen a few other studio artists like Dean Haspiel use in previous group shows:

When your original art has scribbled notes to yourself on it, it screams thumbtack, right? But I felt like the suspended magnets (they’re connected to screws) was a happy medium between thumbtack and frame. How you hang the art shouldn’t call too much attention to itself, as the art is the real focus. And really, the thumbtacks would’ve looked, well, tacky (is that where the term came from?)

Happy to say that I’ll have 6 framed pieces of AER HEAD art at the Honey Badger Motel Art Gallery! Spanning art from all 3 issues, there’s a mix of original art and high-quality prints. This is a group show that my studio mate Bill Roundy is in as well, and we’ll also have some comics there to sell.

So that’s 3 events in 10 days!!

The Tower Show

• Opens Thursday April 23, 7-9p

• Union Channel 240 3rd Ave. in Brooklyn (Union St. entrance)

• Large group fine art show with over 300 contributing artists

Ink at the Honey Badger Motel Art Gallery

• It is not an actual Motel, but used to be

• Opens Friday May 1st, 7pm (til… a few hours later?)

• 145 Sterling Place in Brooklyn

• About 10 participating artists

Free Comic Book Day at Everyone Comics

• Saturday May 2nd, “all day,” according to a recent IG post lol

• 41-26 27th St, Long Island City, Queens

• All of the comics in the store are not free, but a select few are!

I’ll be at all of these for the opening days and it would be wonderful to see you at any of them! Hope you’ve found this post insightful, and feel free to share by forwarding to a friend or restacking!

Trying new things is a bit scary, but I’m usually glad to take a leap.

This is my first post here on Substack. I switched from Mailchimp for various reasons, but the main ones being:

1. Mailchimp lowered the minimum number of free subscribers so I couldn’t send my next email without paying

2. Substack makes it easier for new readers to find creators

3. There are a growing number of cartoonists who are on Substack

For right now, I’m just getting my feet wet, and will start by using this new platform just like how I used my old mailing list, before I discover all the bells and whistles. So far, I think that Substack has a cleaner look, and I can add video and audio, which I couldn’t do before (at least on the free mailchimp).

FANCY ART SHOWS

Testing video here. This is a quick clip of the opening of my solo art show last summer: “Storyboard to Stars!” It was a process show all about how I make my comic art for AER HEAD. There are 2 new fancy group art shows I’m in coming up soon:

I’m excited to participate in Arts Gowanus’s 5th annual Tower Show! Join me (and 300 other local artists) on April 23rd from 7-9 PM at Union Channel (240 3rd Ave) to see my tower interpretation in person! If you can’t make it to the opening, the exhibition will be on view Saturdays and Sundays from 12-6 PM through May 17th.

Here was my tower from last year:

(Testing the .heic extension here - if you can’t see the image above, lmk!)

My Rocket Tower sold at Gowanus Open Studios last year! This year I have a variation on the Rocket Tower traveling somewhere else - stay tuned!

I’m also one of about 10 cartoonists in “INK” at the Honey Badger Motel Art Gallery in Park Slope! It’s great to get your art out there in any way you can - whether at a comic convention or fancy art show!

TAXES

I usually have some long post on tax advice for freelancers this time of year. What started as an honorable mention has once again turned into a juicy tax post. Because how can taxes be brief?

I used to hire a CPA to do my taxes, but after freelancing for over 15 years, I’ve learned so much that I can do them myself on FreeTaxUSA. Here’s a secret, you still need to do a lot of work gathering all your info on income and deductions together to present to the CPA, so you may as well do it yourself and save $. Nowadays, sites like FreeTaxUSA walk you step by step through the process and have helpful pop-ups with more info if you don’t understand something.

I’m switching from yearly to quarterly tax payments moving forward. Yearly is how my old CPA did it, but here’s why I’m making the switch:

1. I got a $25 fee for NOT paying quarterly (surprise!)

2. Paying smaller amounts is better than a big wallop

3. Better for budgeting

4. I’ll break up the days of time spent all at once into monthly admin days so I’m on top of things and not scrambling

I just made this quarterly admin checklist that goes with my monthly checklist. If you’re a freelancer that’s been paying yearly, this is something to look into:

DO TAXES EASIER

QUARTERLY TAXES

Quarterly IRS payments are due: April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15 of the following year. If these dates fall on a weekend or holiday, the deadline moves to the next business day.

April is the big one where we get any W2s or 1099s, officially file, and could get a possible refund.

All other months, just pay a quarterly amount 25% of earnings (it’s a lot! But that’s NY for you. Worth it to live in such an awesome place)

March 1st: (I’m still doing my big filing around this date, making quarterly estimated payments the other 3 times)

INCOME

“Official” – a company sends you a form by email or snail mail

1. Get all W2s and 1099s in one folder (physical or digital). I recommend all digital.

2. Check to see if all amounts are correct. (You’d be surprised how many mistakes I catch! I find at least one mistake each year on official documents)

   1. If you find a mistake, contact that company and they can fix it.

3. Scan any physical 1099s

4. Check that I don’t count 1099 work twice (shouldn’t be on “other freelancing” sheet)

   1. If I did get a 1099 cuz amount was higher than expected, add to 1099 sheet and delete from “other freelancing” sheet.

   2. If I didn’t get a 1099, include in “other freelancing” sheet.

March 1st, June 1st, Sept 1st, Jan 2nd

1. Official 1099 work

   1. Total up amounts from the last 3 months.

2. Unofficial income

   1. Total up amounts from the last 3 months.

3. Deductions

   1. Total up amounts from the last 3 months.

4. Subtract deductions from income.

5. Pay the IRS 25% of the remainder here

   1. https://www.irs.gov/payments/direct-pay-with-bank-account

Let me know if you want to know more about my monthly admin tasks. I geek out about stuff like this! I’m an artist that’s organized - using both sides of my brain.

Hope that was helpful and didn’t make your brain melt! Please send to your friends/colleagues! And/or Restack!

STACKABLE

So I just restacked something that one of the exhibitors at Comics & Caffeine Fest wanted to share with everyone. Lancelot Schaubert has a free copy of his coffee noir zine, Cold Brewed, on his substack!

See you next time!

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