Painting project

Okay, so here's what I'm thinking.

I need $$... somewhere in the neighborhood of about $3-5K. Yeah, it's a lot. But it's a capital investment in the future, and one that will repay itself many times over, I'm thinking. I need to buy a large stage keyboard & flight case, a small synthesizer & flight case, an amplifier, a dual stand, and all the necessary cables. I am serious about music and serious about being a musician. Because I haven't had a playable keyboard in several years, I have been unable even to take on piano students (of which there are always any number of, and which I could easily accommodate IF I actually had something to teach them on).

And then there's the matter of SoulFire and Romansroad gigs, which for now require me to borrow the church's equipment. That's just not good policy; if I damage them, I'm out the money AND I don't get to keep the equipment AND I'm more likely to cause the church to institute a policy of no-borrowing. It's really not even ethical, to be frank. That equipment is no more mine than it is anyone else's in the church, but I don't know that anyone else could just come up and load it into their car and take it to some gig THEY were doing on the outside.

At any rate, we just don't have that kind of $$ lying around; in fact, we're pretty strapped right now with my master's degree costs and high energy bills and holiday bills sucking the oxygen out of our lives. So I have to get creative. But my creativity tends to exhibit itself in small ways, on watercolor paper or on a blog post; I am not good at orchestrating grand plans.

My blogger pal Brett is launching a business designing and selling his artwork in the form of greeting cards. He is much more serious (and well-schooled, and for that matter, interested) about the business angle as well as the artistic angle. I'm just not bent in that direction, and the thought of cost analysis ratios and such just make my head swim -- and not in a good way. So that direction just isn't for me, I guess. I could do something on a small scale, but probably not something that would pay off to the tune of several thousand dollars.

So, apart from a bake sale or a moonlighting job pole-dancing at Big Earl's, I'm out of ideas... except for this one. My flag paintings and my hidden-picture paintings seem to garner the most interest from people. So I'm going to paint a series of them... as many as I can produce... and auction them off here on my blog. Dunno if it's worth it or not, but I'll at least try one or two at first and see if there's even a smidgen of interest.

And that's the project I'm working on right now.