I opened an account on Opensea to sell NFTs. I barely know what I’m doing, but I’m getting stuff out there and hoping there will be some interest. Unfortunately I will have to reopen my Instagram account to spread the word. I don’t think the followers of my insta care much for NFTs, but I need to start somewhere.
The link to my NFT collection is HERE.
Put on your face paint, grab a flag and march down to the hate parade.
I was thinking of putting this image up as an NFT.
To be honest, I wouldn’t buy an NFT myself, so I don’t know how I feel about selling one. I’m not against selling digital work, I just don’t know if I need to use a new online currency to do it.
There is a cost to minting artwork into NFTs so I’m going to think about how much I’m willing to invest in this new venture.
I’m off to do more research…
Doesn't look like much, but I finally have my own private painting wall! It's not quite ready yet and I have no drive to paint anything at the moment but I plan to have guests come and paint when it's warm out again, perhaps make some videos of it and start a you tube channel, maybe bed bath & beyond! I don't know if we'll have enough time!
All done! Pretty drab colours but it was a drab day, so there you have it! For the next piece I think I'll make the sign larger to get more details in.
This piece I started yesterday is coming along. Not crazy about the background but I'm going with it. In the photo there's an ugly building back there and I decided to paint it out but I need to sharpen my freestyle skills with the trees… anyway, we'll see if this one gets the frame or not.
I've begun a new series of watercolours of hotel/motel signs I photographed on my road trip to Calgary in 2020. I'm framing the pieces using frames I've recycled from the thrift shop. So far I'm enjoying the results. Here's the next one I'm starting today.
I used to spend most days at Ashop overlooking the street corner of Moreau and Ontario. This was a typical scene from 2014. If it wasn’t the girls, it was crackheads climbing the nearby rooftops looking for copper wire or some shit. One night while working late, we had to rush to lock the doors of the building when a bunch of do-gooders threw molotov cocktails at police cars in the intersection turning the street into a fireball for a few minutes all in the name of “anti-gentrification.”
It didn’t work.
I guess this marks the end of the old me, or young me and the beginning of new, old me. The quality of that sentence seems to sum things up in regards to my thought process. As you can see, I’ve decided to make the transition from “artist with cool made-up name” to artist with regular name. I can’t lie, I’ve struggled with this problem for a long time now. In the beginning I used to conceal my real identity by wearing a mask in photos or videos out of concern I’d be pursued for my graffiti. It was fun to play a character of my own design, but I soon realized how corny it was trying to give serious answers to honest questions while wearing a box on my head. I also realized that by choosing to show my face, I couldn’t as easily make work that I wasn’t fully prepared to explain, especially to my harshest critic: myself. By choosing to sign my work and be known publicly by my real name, I am pushing myself to be more honest with my work and what I’m trying to accomplish with it.
Don’t worry, Earth Crusher isn’t dead, but in an effort to become less repetitive, I’ve decided to start a project in a new medium I haven’t yet ventured in but always wanted to try. I’ve been stumbling through the process of writing a comic book or graphic novel which will feature a story or two and lots of satirical advertisements. It will hopefully be a laugh riot. I haven’t written this much since CEGEP and it was never a joy to do in the past to be honest, but now that I have a new goal, I am dead set on writing some good stories for you kids! I don’t have a lot of patience for overly serious/self important absurdity, so whenever my story veers into that ditch I start over. I think I’ve started over about 88 times now, but I think I have something pretty good. Now it’s just a matter of translating a written story into a drawn story, but how much should be drawn in words, and how much should be told in images? I am yet to discover. I hope you’ll follow along as I make my way to my goal, in fact, I could probably use your help along the way. I’ll be sharing my steps here on this site and I always welcome comments and critique.
Here’s to new beginnings.
Marc-André