Easter is on its way and that means it is time for Eastercon!

It’s back… and this time it’s virtual!

So, because of the international emergency situation vis a vis COVID19, there wasn’t a British Science Fiction convention over Easter last year. The event was planned to have been in Birmingham but was cancelled. Then it was planned to be in Birmingham again this year but has since had to revert to a completely virtual event.

I’ll do a longer post at some point soon about the difficulties of achieving a fully virtual convention… but this post is all about the Artshow.

So, at Easter 2020 I had managed to book a place on the Eastercon artshow. This runs every year at the con and artists display their work and it is offered for auction or sale. You get to see what well known fantasy and SF artists have been working on and maybe even get the chance to own some of your very own. I had a plan to bring along 15 photographs – 5 large (10 X 8″) and 10 small (6 X 4″) and had bought a set of mounting boards and packing bags for them ready to go. I was in the process of selecting the final 15 when the event was canceled.

Which meant I was actually fairly ready for this year’s artshow with very little extra work.

Well, apart from the fact I had spent most of lockdown learning more about how Photoshop works, getting better at editing, and making new images to sell… so my final collection is different to the one I might have taken to Eastercon 2020 and I spent a bit of time re-editing some of them to be even better.

And there will be other differences.

For example, because this is a virtual auction, I don’t need to print off a set of images ready for display. In a normal artshow, you’d bid for or buy a physical item that is hanging on the wall and, at the end of the weekend, you take it home with you. This time, however, the images will be displayed in a virtual environment created in Kunstmatrix like the one shown here. Which means, in my case at least, I will be able to effectively do prints on demand. At the event, everything will be displayed with a price for the 10 X 8″ version. However, you are welcome to contact me and ask for a quote for any reasonable size and I should be able to supply it.

The caveat on this is that I only have five 8 X 10″ mounting boards and ten 6 X 4″. Once I run out of those, or if you order a different size, there may be a slight delay in delivery times while I order some more in. I’ll let you know when you order if this is going to be the case.

So, if you are at Eastercon this weekend, I hope you take the time to wander around the artshow and, while pondering whether to get the Fangorn original cover art for your favourite book, you also consider some of my images…