This weekend, I hosted four painting demos at the Alameda County Fair. During my first year in 2016, I did it in my booth, but it didn’t go as planned mainly due to set-up, clean up, and low attendance.
This time, I decided to doing in Building C, which would attract more visitors. While it did increase a little, it wasn’t enough to meet my standards. There were a lot of other issues as well. I didn’t have enough time to practice what I was going to say, even though I had a script. Also, I didn’t get social media to do a live video.
On a more positive note, the paintings did turn out great and people actually enjoyed them because they have never seen a live painting demo at a county fair.
On Sunday, I gave out free raffle tickets for the “Tropical Seascape” Painting and one of the fair employees, Kelsey W. ended up winning it. The other three paintings were donated to the Alameda County Fair as a way to say thank you for letting me do this.
My goals for next year’s demo is to promote it on the actual fair website as opposed to social media by itself and provide more information. In addition, I want to invite more fair staff members to watch and try to do a live video.
At the end of the demo, Michele Plunge, the person who helped me organize it, wanted to buy the first painting I did, which was the “Mountains & Trees”. After some consideration, I decided to give it her because I knew that was the right decision and I’m glad that she was able to get a painting made on the spot.
Looking forward to doing this again next year and the Kevin’s Cards “Summer Vibes” Sale at Artist Alley!
“This is exactly what art should do – bring you joy”- Michele Plunge