This weeks #Colour_Collective was Rose Madder. And, well, it would have been rude not too at this time of year, right?
The website overhauls taking forever. Ruddy, arsin, bloomin, flipping, WordPress 5.0 with its pointy faced Gutenberg of blog destruction. It’s getting there though. Sadly I don’t think it’ll be finished before Christmas.
With special thanks
Weekly shout out to my $10 patron, Warren from IWrite. Without people like Warren, I wouldn’t be able to wake you all with my little fears and you’d probably cry a lot less in the morning than you already do. So please do check out Warrens blog.
You’ve seen anglers right? Proper scary arse monsters from the deep. Aliens have landed and they’re in our seas dammit! Anywhos, this weeks #Colour_Collective is YInMn Blue. I know right. YInMn Blue. I thought they were just making up colours too.
I really liked the way she turned out. A proper fear-inducing little fear. So I’ve put her hi-res png up for download to all $1 or more Patreons and past and present Ko-Fi supporters. Thanks for all the support gang. You’re all awesome.
If you love what I do and want to offer some support too, you can hit me up and drop a dollar in my tip jar or sponsor me at the links below.
Weekly shout out to my $10 patron, Warren from IWrite. Without people like Warren, I wouldn’t be able to wake you all with my little fears and you’d probably cry a lot less in the morning than you already do. So please do check out Warrens blog.
You’ll be happy to hear, this update doesn’t require three cups of tea to get through.
Reala
Lucy on Tee
Lucy’s Competition
Ink/Witch/Gore*Tober
Hit me up on Patreon
Reala
Our resident bartender for this weeks colour collective on Twatter. Originally named after an old Second Life avatar, I still use. Her namesake in Second Life is also a bartender, often adorned in red, white and black. She has a backstory, but that’s a tale that won’t be told until Christmas. The disadvantages in writing so far ahead heh.
Lucy on Tee
The first of Lucy’s tees, there’s going to be three of her (eventually). She’s available at Threadless on t-shirts from $12.95 and art prints from $12.
I’ve only had about 20 entries so far, so the odds of winning her are in your favour if you enter. If you want a chance to win, please do leave a comment under the post linking to your entry. I can see the post has been shared far more than 20 times, suggesting people aren’t commenting to enter.
For the bloggers out there, I shall be explaining process, stats, complications and results of running a blog competition in Monday’s blog post.
Ink/Witch/Gore*Tober
Inktober, Goretober and Witchtober are all now in full swing. I’m posting four times daily to my Twatter, Instagram and Tumblr with all the new images. If you want to keep up, click the links below and say hello!
If you read to the bottom of my last post, you may know for any new $10 and $25 Patreons I get, I’ll give you a shout out and link back each week in the Friday update posts. $25 Patreons will be also written into the daily tales. Interested? Head on over to my Patreon page for details.
Stone me, this is a big update! You’re gonna need a cuppa tea for this one.
Fawn
Spider Dance
Patreon Update
Competition
Inktober, Witchtober & Goretober
Buttons
Fenix for Esme
Darn I’m bad at Pinterest
Patreon Shoutouts
Fawn
The character at the top there is Fawn. Created as a horror character, the tale Magpies Eyes featured killer deer as a bit of a hangover. I needed her to look different from Deer from Deer Puns in the humorous stories. She walks on all fours and looks pretty ruddy menacing to me. Coloured this week to fit into the Colour Collectives, Old Lace theme.
Spider Dance
Spider Dance is back! Never been my best seller, indeed a long way behind Bird Walk, but it’s one of my fave art prints. There’s just something very cheerful about Spectre teaching the baby spiders to dance.
I have meant to add some incentives to Patreon for yonks. I’m hoping to add unique art prints monthly to high pledgers. It may have to wait until I have moved to Scotland and I am settled, I need my printer, proper inks and paper to do it justice. Blah! Until then though, I have a different idea. If any of you fine people pledge $10 a month or more, I shall give you a shout out, adding your name and a link to your website to the bottom of the weekly update posts. Not sure how that works? I’ve added the $1 & $2 supporters to the bottom of this post as a demonstration.
Yup, Lucy again. As you know, I do a fair lick of PR work freelance. In 17 years, I have had a hand in running three competitions. One I ran on Facebook when Like/Share comps were legal. One pairing up with a DVD launch which my colleague signed off without asking me first. Hoo, boy did that backfire. One was with a magazine. I ‘m not big on competitions, but I learned something from each.
Next week I will be running a contest to win an A4 art print of my favourite nefarious lady, Lucy. The intention is to discover how much interest a competition will generate for the Little Fears website. After I have a winner I shall furnish them with a copy of Lucy, then do a Monday blog post detailing the method, website stats and increase in traffic and earnings I may or may not receive. Keep an eye out next week for how to enter.
Inktober, Witchtober & Goretober
I have a problem with my doodles. They’re rarely consistent. I have trouble drawing the same character the same twice in a row. I believe I am good at conveying an idea or image in ink, but my technical abilities are quite clearly piss poor. So this October, I am entering all three of the most known draw-a-thons with the idea of building a more consistent style across a couple of characters and scene style. I’ll only be posting them on Twitter and Instagram. With a few in the weekly updates on the blog. So if you want to follow along on my themes, say hello to me on social media.
Interested in joining? By all means, please do share links below to your Twitter, Instagram or other Inktober posting outlets in the comments section below. We can come over and harass, like, and retweet your Inktober submissions.
New to Inktober? Some advice, post in full on Twitter and Instagram if you’re on the platforms. Don’t auto-share because you won’t get anywhere near the attention you should. Nobody retweets Inktobers that are just links to your Instagram account.
For Inktober I am going to practise scenes. Such as Spider Dance above.
For Witchtober I shall be drawing 31 Yuffie’s. Our resident necromancer is the right character for this, and I struggle to get her hat right each time I doodle her.
As an aside, if I notice anyone bitching about young girls drawing witches for Inktober, I will unfollow you. Last year there was a tiny minority of men spitting venom at young girls on Twitter. It came across as poncy old men, bitter that 12-year-old girls could draw better than they ever could. Man, they were noisy and man they were nasty.
Goretober has no official list that I have seen, so I shall be drawing the nefarious Lucy in Indian Red doing evil deeds each day. She’s usually pretty curvy and it would help me practice getting longer lines smoother.
I did nobble myself some new art supplies for the month of course.
Click the image to blow it up. The assembled stationary consists of:
Have you seen my new buttons? They look the bee’s knees, don’t they!
I keep getting told, and my stats show me, a lot of WordPress readers never visit my site. Folk read the flash fiction without even opening my blog post because it’s short enough to read in the preview. I then get asked where folk can buy my books and art prints. The cute buttons are in the hope someone might see and click them from my post snippets.
Some of you asked about the tip jar PayPal button. There is a way of creating a donations button in the PayPal account settings. I believe you’re limited to raising $10,000 or less through that method if you’re not a charity (haha, like any of us will get that much!). The button looks hideous though. I created my button myself by setting up a zero priced ‘buy now’ page link and adding my image. You must be registered as a business on PayPal to do this. It’s one of those things everyone with a tip jar seems to do it differently.
Fenix for Esme
My avatars body. I’ve been telling Esme I would post him for a while heh. Never used him in any stories. He’s a short bodied, long-eared Spectre. I named him Fenix after the foxes.
Darn I’m bad at Pinterest
I’m kind of hot with social media, but holy snot bags I am not good at Pinterest. I usually try to have conversations on social media to build followings. I tried this week getting into Pinterest. After 30 comments, I hit a block to prevent spam. 30 ruddy comments and I hit a block! OK, maybe it’s because I use my Pinterest as a share and forget network. Time to edumacate me though aye.
A browse of Skillshare and I have found two premium courses by Peg Fitzpatrick and one free class by Raymond Baxter. The free course is completely free, just sign up, skip anything that asks you to pay, and navigate to Raymond’s course.
The first premium course from Peg. I figure I’ll do this one first as I know my pins themselves need work. The shape of my images is all wrong, and most have no description. She has 92% in reviews http://skl.sh/2xL1BlA
The second premium course from Peg, a chuffing lot of reviews leaving her with 99%. About 2,100 students, certainly think that’s worth my time. I’ll let you know what I think when I finish. http://skl.sh/2xFrGTg
The free course from Raymond, three reviews at 100%. I’ll be taking Pegs courses myself, but I understand everyone cannot afford the Skillshare Premium subscription. This course is 100% free, no dodgy premium payment to unlock. Just sign up, skip anything that asks for money and take his course. http://skl.sh/2yciJly
Whoosh, another busy week has whizzed by! But check it out, we have new things!
Pewter Fear for Colour Collective
Fuen & Lucy on Threadless
Events, TellyTube & Socialization
Social Media for Creatives (free course)
Pewter Fear
Pewter was originally doodled for a post-apocalyptic story (3 books away in the future, ack!). All the characters are named after different metals. Alas, Pewter didn’t make the cut. But this week’s Colour Collectives is Pewter Blue. Can’t think of a more appropriate character to use. I do think she looks like H.R. Giger’s Alien. Oops!
Lucy & Fuen on Threadless
Lucy has joined the ranks on Threadless on a new art print. She’s the devilish creature who appeared in Terminal and Balcony, two stories in the Little Fears horror anthology, Capricorn.
Fuen makes another return. This is my all-time best-selling tee. Had to get the model mocks done and didn’t get everything perfect enough in time for the Threadless store relaunch last week.
Lucy’s art print prices start at $12 and Fuen is available in tee form from $12.95.
In the coming months, I shall be joining in NaNoWriMo, Inktober and reprising my daily moustached funnies for Movember. If I continue to post everything on my WordPress blog, I am going to swamp it with up to five posts a day. That’s too much, obviously. But it’s not too much for social media. My Twitter, Instagram, Ello, Tumblr and Medium will take most of it.
I am also approaching a starting point in the current Fears tales where a plotline develops. It will make no sense later on if some of the characters meet. So I have stopped posting the old tales on the blog. The blog will start running as one continuous story five days a week for the Hydra storyline with odd unrelated Capricorn horror tales twice a week. I will still put up odd January and Spiders videos on YouTube and slot them into playlists.
You can follow me on social media and YouTube by clicking a link below or the wee icons at the top and bottom of my website.
While talking about social media, a Skillshare find I thought I’d share. Social media for creatives by Chelsea Matthews. It’s about an hour and a half long and gives a pretty good overview of how to use the main platforms for marketing as a creative. It’s 100% free. If you want a few tips on social media, just sign up to Skillshare, skip anything that asks you to pay, and give this course a watch through. Linky: http://skl.sh/2fa2eyo
Stone the crows, been a busy week! Here are some things that appear in this update that should be three or four posts.
Moss Fear for Colour Collective
Threadless art prints & tees
Fears for hire
Moss Fear for Colour Collective
Dem green eyes though! This week’s Colour Collective shade was Vert Pre. Bright green to most of us aye? I knew I wanted to use Moss for the image. I was debating green streaks or splodges. Accidentally filled the eyes vert pre and yup, I reckon that nailed it by mistake. I need to get Moss into some of the fears stories. In my postcards from the in-between series I had him towering over Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh. He was blue back then because, Scotland.
Threadless art prints & tees
The long awaited and advertised overhaul has happened! Have a gander at the Little Fears new shop front.
New product photography, a smattering of new designs, and yes the tee with Fuen bang in the middle will be returning. I need to get the imagery done for it first. Art prints are available from $12, so that works out better for our American friends who had a starting price of £12 ordering from my Etsy store. A quick preview? Sure, why not!
Fears for hire
My lease extension just came through. Ten months of cock-up, three years too late. Thanks, Land Registry and E&M! Twits… So I can get my house sold (finally), and I now have oceans of free time until a buyer is forthcoming. Do you have any work for a freelance illustrator, writer, PR gremlin, computer repair guy who’s a legend at sourcing weird and wonderful things? Drop me an email to fears@gmx.co.uk, and we can talk!
There’s been a lot of blog posts on this usual non-bloggy website recently right? I certainly hope there’s not too many of them. If you feel your getting spammed by me, let me know in comments. Useful feedback is always appreciated.
This post goes back to the stuff I said I would post here four months ago and never did. As I have said in previous posts, I write six stories, draw six tiles and doodle one asset every working day. How many do you see? Barely a fraction makes it online. Mostly because I produce a lot of chaff (don’t we all), so I discard the worst. Some I save for a rainy day. Some I intend to give away to Patreons, both digital and physical copies. Some are for saleable artworks (see below).
I’ll confess, that’s just an excuse to show off some banging new product photography that’ll be arriving on my Threadless store soon.
Some of the pictures I doodle are intended to be drawn just for the sake of drawing them. Because I enjoy doodling them and would like to share them. Vulture is one such creature. I originally drew him in black and red. Then I saw Colour Collective were having a Timberwolf grey theme this week and DMStrachan’s Flickr group, Scribblers Cove, had a Second Life exhibition featuring whimsical art. A quick modification, decorate it a lil digitally and it would be rude not to join in right?
And hey, don’t be hating on him cause he looks a bit mean. Vultures provide a necessary environmental function. It’s not their fault there were at the back of the line when Creation was handing out good looks…
Some links for if you want to join in or nobble some of my wares.
Little Fears 