The first stage of an oil painting is called blocking in, using thinner (turpentine for me) to paint basic shapes and colors in thin washes (“Thin to thick!” my painting professor frequently reminded up). It’s quick, loose, and slightly unsettling when you stop to look at it. It’s the phase that makes me rethink every decision I’ve ever made.
There’s this thing called Independent Bookstore Day which I only know about because my day job is at an independent bookstore. Every year, there’s an official t-shirt design (spoilers: this isn’t it), and every year, our store owner offers to buy one for whomever would like. I haven’t liked any of the designs in the few years that I’ve been there, so this year, I designed myself a shirt to wear instead.
The joke is that the shirt presents independent bookstores as a D&D quest location, where players might send their characters to trade or ask the NPCs for information, because working as a bookseller is surprisingly like role-playing as an NPC. What I didn’t expect was that when I took my shirt to show my co-workers, they were impressed. And then people wanted to buy one, and then the store owner bought one for all my co-workers, and then I made $50 from a tongue-in-cheek project about working at a bookstore.
I feel like I might have accidentally scammed everyone.
