Bike figures at the fair

I don't know if I've mentioned here or not, but I have began a new Cycling specific blog called Cycle Mumbreeze. I already it wrote about this there, but I will be taking part in the Multnomah County Bike Fair's Bike Craft event this Saturday. I have been in mass production mode of the paper mache bike figures the last few days.



So, these in the above picture, along with others will be there on sale.

During the day of the sale, I will be taking the bike figures off from our Etsy shop temporarily. I haven't sold these figures in public before and I don't know how well they will sell, but if you've been eyeing any particular figure, I can't guarantee they will still be available after the sale. Even if they all sell out, I will be making more but no figure are exactly the same as they are all individually hand made.

If you are in Portland, come check out the Multnomah County Bike Fair!

MULTNOMAH COUNTY BIKE FAIR
Col. Summers Park, SE 20th Ave and Belmont St.
2:00pm - 7:00pm

MCBF is the catastrophic culmination of 2+ weeks of Pedalpalooza bike fun.
Local bikey artisan craft bazaar care of bikeportland.org
"Biking around large vehicles" clinic by TriMet's Dan Christensen.
Affordable lights and helmets from Protect Your World.
Local food carts including bike-based Soupcycle!
Root beer garden for the kiddos.
As always, live music and crazy competitions.
Bring your friend. Bring your bike. Bring your sunscreen. Bring your camera. Bring your best game. Bring your bandages. Bring your bike fun.

The real collaboration begins

Thanks to everyone who participated in the paper mache Giveaway last week. We have a happy winner and the figure has been sent to her which she should receive within a few days.



While Kao was here in Portland, we begun doing these collaborative pencil drawings. The way we did it was we would each start a drawing on a piece of paper, then whenever one of us felt like it, we switched these 2 pieces of paper and then continued drawing with what was already there. We repeated this process until we felt like the drawings were finished.



We've never really collaborated on same pieces of art before as we have very different styles to our work. We've done a bunch of shows where we both contributed pieces, but I don't think either of us really had any vision of how we might work together on same pieces of art. We've done some casual doodling, kind of like these drawings, but nothing we took seriously. I think the idea to do these drawings came to me after we visited the APAK guys for a barbecue. We had a great time hanging out and we ended up doing some drawings together. The APAK guys do some pretty amazing collaborative artwork and I think we were a bit envious that they are able to work together like that. I didn't think that we could just instantly start making seamless work like they did, so I thought we should begin with something very basic like paper and pencil.



We did 12 drawings (2 per day) altogether while she was here and I'm quite surprised how well they seemed to turn out. The way I draw is bold and perhaps lacking in depth, but Kao is much more skilled and detailed in her drawing, so put together it seems to produce work that neither of us can make alone.



We don't really have any immediate plans for these drawings yet, but we might do some coloring by Photoshop and make prints or something. I think we will go further and experiment with different methods as soon as we get a chance.

You can see all the 12 drawings in this slide show below.

Giveaway on YellowGoat!

Hi everyone. It has been like 3 weeks since the last update, but it has been a very productive time for Mumbreeze. Kao who mostly lives in Japan was here in Portland, so we had a very good month together. It's kind of a long story to explain why we don't live together all the time as most married couples do and I'm not gonna go into that today, but that's a situation we hope to remedy soon. I hope we will find us a new home to live together before the year is over.

Today I am writing about this giveaway which is happening now at the YellowGoat blog. Petula aka YellowGoat who has a wonderful shop on Etsy has a great blog where she regularly has giveaways of work by artists. She was kind to offer us the opportunity do a giveaway of one of our artworks. It has been great starting an Etsy shop and be welcomed by other artists who have shops there, but this is the first time we are doing a giveaway. How it works is, if you want a chance to win the paper mache piece there, all you need to do is to have a look at our Etsy shop and make a comment stating which piece you like there the most. If you are on Twitter, you can tweet about the Giveaway for extra entries as well.

We are nowhere as organized as Petula is in promoting our work, but I think this Giveaway thing is really ingenious. It is easy to write about an artist and have some links foe the readers to check out, but I think it's rare that people will go to your store and have a good look at everything there. It is definitely worth giving away a piece of artwork for. It's great to read the comments and see what people are saying about our work. I can't help, but to check it out every few hours to see if there's more comments. I don't know how many comments her giveaways get normally, but it seems like it's lagging behind a bit compared to some other ones she's done. Maybe our work just isn't as attractive as the others, but if you read this and have a minute or two of free time, please go check out our shop and comment on the giveaway blog entry. You might just win the paper mache figure!

Well, this blog is just getting re-started, so I don't know how much if any effect this will have, but we are trying to get better about promoting our shop, so here it is. I hope we will be able to return the favor to YellowGoat in the future. Thanks Petula!

The Giveawy will end Sat June 13th, 12PM Hong Kong time.