Feencon Bonn blog post!

A warm welcome to new Patron, Kat! =D 

Feencon in Bonn was a very, very full weekend, with some lows and a lot of highs. It was my first time there, and I know by now that the first time at a new con can't be compared to the experience at a con I've been to for years, so I expected fewer sales (which was fine, as Tolkien Tage had been so incredibly successful that I could afford it!)

I came back with a good handful of sketches to sell, so look out for the Patreon-only post in a bit. =) Scroll down for a little preview of the ones I did! 

The first, and really only, low was when I arrived. As usual, I came in on Saturday instead of setting up before the con on Friday (our son had his graduation party Friday afternoon and evening, and well, priorities!), and I steered towards the space the floor plan said was mine - and instead of the 3.7 metres of table space I'd booked, there was about one metre left free. 

This was a nightmare I'd had once before, at Tolkien Tage 2017, when I arrived and my table space had been taken over by someone else. Like then, the one who'd just taken up twice their allotted space wasn't there. Back then, nobody really felt they could do anything about it, so in the light of my son just having told me he had a Latin exam coming up on Monday which he'd done nothing for yet, I'd packed my stuff and my kids and drove home. 

But this time, luckily, we got a happy ending.

Michael, the main organiser, met me the second I arrived and explained the situation to me. He then enlisted a half dozen helpers to move the entire row of tables (with all the stuff on them!) so a table could be inserted for me at the far end. 

The other part of the happy ending was the incredibly lucky coincidence that I'd arrived with wire cube shelves, which you can put together in minutes to get a lot of display space, so I could display high instead of wide as I usually do - which was a life-saver for the circumstances, as I still had to make do with half the space I'd booked. Thanks to Becky and Mina for helping me find what these elusive staple of Artist Alleys everywhere is called, so I could finally find them on Amazon. 

With that settled, I could finally put up my booth. The photo above was taken right after that, which is why I look just a little exhausted already.

SO, the con! It was one of the friendliest I've ever been to, with huge chemistry among the artists (except for the one who'd taken up twice her space, for some reason). The con goers were also an incredibly open bunch. Normally, at German cons, people walk by your table in one of two possible ways: They either plan to buy something, and chat with you for a long time, or they don't plan to buy, so they hurry past you with their eyes averted, dragging away their children looking at my displays with an air of, "The T-Rex only reacts to movement, slink away slowly as fast as you can!"

Germans are weird.

This time, I had absolutely wonderful chats with the most wonderful people who didn't buy anything at all, but would just stop to chat about art, Tolkien, Critical Role, and RPGs. It was also hilarious to see that the percentage of people who knew the Silmarillion was actually larger at Feencon than at RingCon, as RPG players are obviously far more likely to heave read it than people who have watched the LOTR movies! 

I didn't draw at my booth quite as much as I did at Tolkien Tage, but I sold a little less, so I have some of these (plus a few others) left, which will go up in my Etsy shop soon! 

I somehow survived Monday and Tuesday at school (sponsored walk and a field trip to Cologne) and I'm now officially on holiday. I can't wait to finish (and start) all the drawing projects that have piled up. The one of Will and Orym hasn't progressed much, I'm still planning to do SquirrelPunk art, and the last CR episode had such a lot of Orym scenes I don't even know where to start! Orym dancing with fairies? Orym using a raven as a hang-glider? Orym praying at night over his sword? Orym giving Ashton a massage? Ooooooh, choices...