Painting at Fred Aldous

I teamed up once again with Bobbi to do some Live Painting in the Fred Aldous Leeds store. 

I did an interview for their website which you can read here, I was a bit scared about that as I feel self-concious and felt I sounded like a bit of a tit, but apparently I came off as real professional so that's good. 

It was tons of fun to create this canvas but we had a bit of difficulty and confusion about payment, we knew we weren't getting paid in cash but were promised a goodie bag to say thank you, the night before we went to paint we got an email from the shop manager saying she didn't have the authority to give away free stuff, and I assumed she'd been a bit over-zealous with trying to get people to come paint in store, a bit peeved I wanted to do it anyway as part of a studio brief for 603 and also just to test myself making larger scale work.

It turned out we were getting goodie bags, a few weeks later, which consisted of Fred Aldous branded stuff and free samples, so overall it cost them pretty much nothing for our 5 hours of work for them.

I realise that we knew what we were getting into, and free stuff is still free stuff, but I assumed as an art supplies shop they would give us a bit more as a goodwill gesture rather than things they get for free. 

In the end it was good exposure, I did my first interview as an illustrator and I've been getting people messaging me or sending me photos of my canvas that they've seen as they pop in store, so exposure is good, right? It'll look great in my portfolio :)