Wednesday, July 1, 2015:

Today was my first time ever showing my art at a vendor booth. Canada Day by the Bay was a great experience and I learned lots about what to do and what not to do. First off location is key, the organizers of the event positioned my booth just west of the pier which is where the majority of the pedestrian traffic is concentrated. However, this section of grass has a fairly high ledge which takes a solid effort for people to actually step up and come into the booth. This definitely was a negative, as the demographic of White Rock is mostly seniors, and of course families with strollers and small children.

Art by Mal: Canada Day by the Bay 2015, July 1, 2015, West Beach, White Rock, BC — *Art by Mal: Canada Day by the Bay 2015*, July 1, 2015, West Beach, White Rock, BC

Another challenge was that the grass where my booth was located was on a slant. Therefore, I had to be make sure that my canopy and easels were set up so that they would not blow over when there was a large gust of wind. I was able to secure the canopy, but we had a couple moments of panic when paintings and easels went toppling over. Note to self: bring bean bags to weigh down the easels. The easels and paintings weren't the only things we had to worry about. Everything that I had laid out on the back table such as drawings, prints, and frames, would blow away when it was really windy. We ended up taping the drawings and prints to the table but this didn't work for long either. A better solution would have been to use some sort of paper weights.

My favourite part of the day was painting live in my booth. I started out a little shaky because I was a bit nervous painting where everyone could see me, but I'm almost positive that the wind had something to do with it too. Afterwards, I was able to focus on the painting and I really got into it. I would hear people walking by saying "Oh, look she's painting!". It was a pretty cool experience. Sometimes I could feel that someone was watching and I didn't want to be one of those anti-social artists so I would say hello. However, a lot of the time once someone knew that I knew that they were watching me paint they would scurry away as if they weren't supposed to watch.

It was a challenge working with paints in the heat and humidity since I had to work fast so that my paints wouldn't dry out. I brought a small travel container for some water, as well as a small syringe, which I used to add water to my paints when they needed to be rejuvenated. I finished the painting earlier than I had expected and I wish that I had brought other canvases with me to paint because I finished the painting before the biggest rush of the day. Once I finished the big painting I painted a couple small paintings on 6x6" cardboard. After that I drew a pen drawing on a postcard and painted it with watercolours.