mooney2021

Today’s Linocut Artists

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the work of other linoleum artists. The fact is that since I seek out and view so much art on Facebook, my feed these days is almost exclusively art of various types, from Golden Age comic art to Disney animation, character sketching, political cartoons, Renaissance work, cave paintings, you name it. And I like it fine!

What has really grabbed my attention of course is the work of other linoleum artists, which I find utterly humbling. I’m very happy with the work I do, but in essence my pieces are a single image printed in black ink on white paper, and if you’ve read my posts on my “Christmas Carol” experiments, you know I struggle with anything more complex.

My first book signing – Video!

I did my first book signing on Saturday May 3, and Katie Varner the owner at The Same Page bookstore, was nice enough (and tech-y enough!) to live stream it on Facebook. So I have a 33-minute video that, well, I found pretty hard to watch, so it took me awhile to trim it down to about eight minutes. It’s posted after the continuation below.

Now I’ve set my sights on expanding to bigger venues, and top of the list is Barnes & Noble, which has two stores in Tulsa. I visited both stores yesterday and the folks there couldn’t be nicer, but I found some small complications with the process as I imagined it.

Scamming an Artist – Part 2

Some of you have already seen my original post on this story, first published on Nov. 18, 2024, but I’m keeping it alive because it’s important as information, and as an educational tool. Since I published it, I’ve received emails from eight other creatives who almost got scammed, except they paused to do some online research and quickly ended up at my post.

For this post I’m simply publishing all eight emails, last names deleted for simplicity (though some said, sure, use my name) so I don’t have to comb through all their responses.

I know! I’ll advertise on Facebook!

Yes, it seemed like a good idea. It’s been a few years since I’ve advertised on FB, and though the process was a bit multi-layered, I got through it and managed to run an ad. It didn’t help!

But BLEAK HOUSE is a different project, and it was more about getting the word out a little wider than it was about making sales. I decided I could spend $91 on running this ad for a couple of weeks, fine-tuning audiences interests, geographical area, and other parameters.

Inspector Bucket Superstar

You may have ended up here in response to my latest email announcement, all nice and formatted with images and new info. I’ve been wanting to make this improvement for some time and I’m happy with the results. Above all, it contains an “opt-out” option at the bottom which is just polite, but I never had the means to do it in a standard, email-friendly format.

It means a lot to have the support I’ve gotten from many friends and even strangers in this journey. The book is out in the wild, I’ve gotten my first press coverage in our hometown Claremore Progress, and I’ve lined up my first book signing.

Okay, It’s ON!

Well folks, I first want to thank you for stopping by to read my posts here. It’s been a labor of love even when it’s a struggle because this book and this project are something I believe in. I don’t think I would have stuck to all this if it weren’t!

So I would like to announce the following:
BLEAK HOUSE, by Charles Dickens and illustrated with 40 new linoleum prints by Gerry Mooney, is now available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DTG8DLCJ . Paperback, 650 pages, $30. I’m not planning an e-book edition.

PROOF!

I know I’ve been talking about getting a publisher, applying for a grant, finding an agent…well none of this is going to happen. For one thing, after approaching numerous agents and publishers, it finally sunk in that “illustrated novel” is no longer a thing, and hasn’t been for decades.

No one I approached, even those that liked the work, had any idea of how this particular project fits into any current publishing niche. I have no doubt the project has potential, I’ve known it for years, but convincing anyone who has the means to publish it to see it like I do is enough for even Sisyphus to give up and go back to his rock just to take a breather.

How “A Christmas Carol” Ends

Man, I really didn’t want to write this post. I had big plans, as I wrote about in my post of Sept. 10. Create a set of charming scenes from Charles Dickens’s holiday classic as three-color linoleum prints, and do it in time to sell them for this Christmas season in my Etsy shop, which I set up primarily to try selling some of my BLEAK HOUSE prints. Ambitious but doable, I thought.

It actually started out very well. I developed my sketches into imagery that I was very happy with. I enjoyed designing the lettering with a loose but classical sort of letterform, and of course thinking about and drawing the characters was a lot of fun. I was making good progress! The key factor was time, since I was starting maybe a little late for the holidays, due to the complexity and somewhat experimental nature of the project.

How to Scam a Commercial Artist

I’m taking a break from my Dickens projects to talk about a recent attempt to scam me as a commercial artist. While it seemed like a real job at first, there were warning signs along the way that just bemused me until the scam was revealed.

This job was a referral from a former artist acquaintance who I knew too many years ago to count, and we are now Facebook friends. He’s legit, I have no reason to think he was any more than an innocent dupe. But it spiraled pretty quickly!

A Christmas Carol

I recently started an Etsy shop (since closed!) to offer prints of a couple of my BLEAK HOUSE illustrations. I’ve done a soft launch but the fact is my offerings so far are pretty slim. I know a couple of images I’ve done for this project have a broader appeal, but growing a shop like this based on what I’ve done for this one book has some problems. So as I said, a soft launch just to get some feedback, but it is certainly off to a slow start. It would be nice to have something special to offer for Christmas.

I love “A Christmas Carol” as much as anyone, but mostly the movies (Mr. Magoo is my favorite!). I hadn’t read the text for a long time, but recently I read it again as a way to refresh my Dickens knowledge. I pretty quickly felt moved to do some sketching, in a way that movies do not inspire me. Interesting!