Generally, this winter/spring was my first dip into actual freelance work.

For background knowledge - I worked at a Game Development / IT company for 6 years and at the end of last summer I got laid off. I was eligible for 9 months of unemployment pay, so I decided to use this time to give myself a chance to do freelance illustration work.

In winter I got very very lucky to do a gig for Adam Ellis (@adamtots), who contacted me on Instagram, and he asked if I could do backgrounds for one of his short horror stories. I was very thankful for this opportunity, as I was already panicking a little bit at the time with no work opportunities except a couple commissions.

MARCH

At the end of February I wrapped up the backgrounds for Lights in the Garden by Adam Ellis and started working on a second comic called Something Nice For Dinner (some panels from it below).

At the same time my friends asked if I would like to participate in the artist alley and Comic Con Baltics. I was a little apprehensive, because I don't do fan-art and I was doubting anyone would even buy anything from me. But I participated in conventions before and I really liked it so decided to join for the experience (some more insights on that here).

In March we have the biggest market of the year for traditional handcrafts called Kaziukas. I visited my friend that was tabling there and we decided to split a table next year 💚

APRIL

In April most of my time went towards either drawing or Con prep.

I ordered all my prints, built my stand and started thinking about how to package the prints during the convention.

MAY

This was somehow a very stressful, sociable, but also fun month 😄

Got the prints this month, went to a sketching session organized by @ko.za, visited the botanical garden with my bestie that came back from the US, and did lots of wood-burning.

Comic Con Baltics was at the end of this month, but it deserves a whole separate blog post that you can read here (I go into a lot of details about it).

At the end of May I focused on getting the online shop running so I could sell what I had left over from the convention. This was my first time properly selling physical products so I was really nervous about it.

Ordering more prints, ordering packaging, filling customs - a lot of firsts and fingers crossed everything goes well!

The home was a huge mess, I don't really have proper storage for everything, but I did the best I could.