
Hello, friends! Welcome to my first blog post!
I'm Shauna Color, owner and creator for My Cartoon Addiction. My only goal in life has always been to create cute artwork, using bright colors and bold design!
In fact, you might say I'm just a girl who can't stop drawing cartoons! If you're here, thank you. It means a lot that you support my addiction.....*AHEM*
Art shop!

MY CHILDHOOD
I grew up in the 90's in a traditional home setting, with my father, mother, and younger brother. My very first art mission was to cover my mom's boring brick steps with a rainbow of good, old fashioned crayon! It was undeniably better when I was done, contrary to mom's opinion.
My parents were fortunate enough to be able to send me to extra curricular art classes. I attended Mrs. Pricilla's School of Art and Dance for several years, experimenting with all forms of art. Ultimately, I dropped everything but the visual arts classes. My teacher, Mrs. Chastain had us experiment with dry media, from pencils to pastels, and wet media, from watercolors to acrylics. We painted murals much too small for the walls we worked on, and landscapes much too large for the notebooks we squeezed them into. I credit this teacher, and this foundation my parents laid for me, for where I am today.
If you want to provide this kind of foundation for your creative child, let me know, and I will discuss this in more length in another blog post.

MY EARLY INSPIRATION
As a child of the 90's, I lived during the height of Nickelodeon cartoons. Disney was cool, but Nickelodeon just had colors that POPPED and characters made of shapes that were ridiculously fun to trace with your eyes!
I learned exaggeration, simplification, motion, expression, the importance of line thickness, why some characters only have four fingers, and even color theory! I whole heartedly believe I learned to draw from those cartoons, without even putting a pencil to paper.
I was interested in why the artist made their drawing choices. Obviously, hair doesn't stand straight up like it seemed to in cartoons, and we all know ears don't sag low enough to almost touch your shoulders. I was learning about character design and creating interesting silhouettes! You wouldn't believe the skills I learned just by watching cartoons.
Parents and teachers have told me over and over that some artists are just "naturally" talented, but I will always argue that they learn their skills somewhere, with a lot of practice, just like you learned to read and write. Cartoons can be a great way to let your child explore a variety of creative concepts.

MY HIGH SCHOOL and COLLEGE YEARS
Growing up, I drew every chance I had...on anything I could...with anything I found. Off I went, to tackle the world....AS AN ARTIST! There was just one problem....insignificant at first....that loomed bigger the older I grew.
ART . ISN'T . A . JOB .
I heard it over and over again. The closer I came to graduating high school, the more I heard it. "You can't make money as an artist. 'Artist' isn't a job title. Art is just a hobby. Art doesn't pay the bills." I was suddenly being asked to pick a career OTHER than the one I had been training for my whole life.
Dumbstruck, panicked, and impressionable, I looked at my amazing high school art teacher, the kind and motherly Mrs. Glenn. I thought, "SHE has a job involving art! It's a steady paycheck, and it looks fun enough. At least I wouldn't let anybody down if I was an art teacher."
"Art Teacher" went down on my career plan. "Art Teacher" went down on my college applications. "Art Teacher" was printed at the top of my college degree plan. An "Art Teacher", I would become.
Fortunately, part of the curriculum for becoming an art teacher, is to take studio art classes. I enjoyed my studio art classes much more than my classes on education. Studio art is where I made friends, honed my art skills, learned about new media, and listened to teachers passionate about improving awareness for art careers OTHER than teaching. Several times, my teachers and classmates asked about my major, then sighed with disappointment at the answer. I understood their frustration.
Art Education is an honorable career, but I was in it for the wrong reasons, which felt disrespectful to the profession. For many art majors, education was also seen as giving up on being a career artist, and that is exactly what it felt like I was doing.

MY UNLIKELY INSPIRATION
Later, during my Sophomore slump, which was more of a Junior Year panic attack, I attended classes only part time, to finally slow down and explore another option: Sales. I had been working part time selling body jewelry for a very serious business woman, at a kiosk in the mall. I watched her practices intently. She recorded everything. She double checked it. She cleaned the display cases to make her products shine. She talked to potential customers, and helped them find something they liked. After watching her for so long, and doing it myself, I wondered if I might enjoy running a small shop.
Long story short, I opened myself a kiosk, sold some pet supplies, and when it was no longer feasible to stay open, I closed down and finished college. That first shop was a complete failure and a total let down, because I now had a small loan to pay off, while still attending college. Thankfully, this would become an experience so valuable, I would use it to start my second career.....AS AN ARTIST.

MY TEACHING INTERNSHIP
Just before graduation, I was finally assigned to my internship, an attempt to prepare us for our first year in charge of 30 children with paint brushes. Thankfully, one of my internship teachers was, and I cannot stress this enough, THE HOLY GRAIL of classroom management skills.
I had the privilege to be placed with Mrs. Ransone, an Art Teacher for grades K-3. From the first time I saw her teach, I knew something was very different from what I'd come to expect an art class to be like.
It was structured!
I watched her teach classrooms full of small, wiggling students how to enter the classroom quietly, keep their hands to themselves, listen for instructions, and follow directions quickly. She taught behavioral and social skills right alongside her lessons! Using carefully planned foundational procedures, she created a structured, educational experience for her students. Her classroom was productive, peaceful, and most of all, a place where students felt SAFE.
It was this experience that led me to study the difference between Authoritarian, Authoritative, Permissive, and Negligent management and parenting strategies. Anyone who claims that a structured environment is stifling to creativity, has not experienced a structured environment! They have experienced an Authoritarian environment. A structured, Authoritative, environment creates opportunities. An Authoritarian, Permissive, or Negligent environment, creates stress on one or both sides, missing out on important trust building and decision making opportunities.
I went on to build my entire curriculum on behavior management strategies, impressing teachers who assumed their students would take over and create chaos and stress in the art room. Today. I use these same strategies to create a welcoming experience for customers and clients!

MY FIRST ANIME CONVENTION
My husband and I are complete anime nerds, Otakus or Weebs, as the kids call us. We even used to host our group of friends every week for regular anime nights. Even so, we had never attended any kind of fan convention, so we declared 2015 "The Year of Conventions!", vowing to attend as many as possible, starting with Texas A-Kon.
The venue at A-Kon was HUGE, and yet walking anywhere had shoulder to shoulder crowds. People to all sides were posing as, or taking photographs of, cosplayers. There were cosplaying groups, cosplaying dogs, cosplaying kids, and cosplaying elderly couples. Fans of all ages and backgrounds gather at these events, and this one was INSANE.
The vendor room and artist alley room had sky high ceilings, so vendors and artists could display huge works of art. There were countless artists in that artist alley, and I thought their work in various art styles was mesmerizing!
Suddenly, I realized THIS is what I had been training to do my entire life! I had a wonderful job teaching my darling students how to be creative, and yet this convention felt so overwhelmingly right. It was the missing puzzle piece in my life.

MY ROUGH START
I just HAD to sell art in artist alleys! The gathering of fans to one place, creating hype and excitement as they bonded over their shared love of a particular fandom, was something I had never experienced before, and I just had to be a part of it!
Unfortunately,
I also had undiagnosed ADHD.
I may have had some skill for drawing.....but finishing ANYTHING had never been something I was good at. Executive function in general was not my strong suit. One idea would get scribbled on just long enough to leave a record of it, before getting bored or frustrated and giving up. How the HECK was I going to finish an artwork, let alone make a product AND run a business??

MY FIRST STEP FOWARD
Miraculously, I had a random stroke of inspiration one day, and sketched out a cute little chibi (or small anime) character. Half finished, as usual, I took a photo of it with my Windows Surface Pro. I opened my previously unused drawing software, inserted the photo onto the canvas, and experimented with the software tools to make my first, ever, line art!
I was so proud! Not only did I finish a drawing, with all of it's little details, but I completely "inked" or "lined" it. Now, I had my first digital file to create products from! I once again experimented with the software tools, adding color, and little blocks of shadows called "cell shading". Finally, I added some cute, bubbly, white highlights, and hit save....
It would be several more years before I would begin making products with it.
If you'd like to hear more about digital drawing equipment and software, let me know so I can make a separate blog post about it.

MY PLAN FOR CHANGE
For a few years before I could validate leaping into the unknown, I also worked my day job as an art teacher. I worked 7:30-3:30, and some days I worked a bit later. Then, I would come home and work on art for 2 more hours until my husband was done with work. After our evening and nightly routines, I might have 1-2 more hours to draw on and off while we waited in queues to play our comfort video game, Overwatch. :)
During this time, I focused on learning to use the digital drawing equipment and software. I created artwork extremely slowly, because I had never used digital equipment to draw before. I became obsessive compulsive about my line work. Even today, I personally feel that an artwork is only as good as the drawing skills of the artist, so I worked for weeks just zooming in and out on my screen, struggling to fix out of place lines that I would have no trouble fixing with traditional pen and paper.
Later, I learned that I was struggling to conform to the software. My skills were not the problem. My software was so powerful, my ADHD brain couldn't comprehend the complexity of it's pen settings, creating a fight with every line that needed adjusting. Today, I use a program with a different approach to settings, and my process feels smooth and seamless, compared to the jagged work flow of a software that didn't work for me.

MY NEW STUDIO
While still teaching, we moved into a new house, and I set up an art studio. At first, I ordered my products from online companies, but that quickly became too expensive. I also had to relearn a valuable lesson about supply and demand....one I had learned about during my previous experimental days as a shop owner. This time, though, I had the opposite problem.
While I couldn't seem to order enough products in time to sell them at one shop, now I was ordering too many! Those bulk prices were SO tempting, that I purchased the large quantities trying to save money in the long run. Major mistake. My first convention netted $0, and the convention attendance was so poor, they canceled it the next year.
My second convention was better. It was bigger, and some good friends showed up to support me. With one person's last minute commission order, I made my booth fee back just before closing. I spent another year expanding my variety, hitting two more conventions. I got a good printer and a Circuit machine for Christmas that year.....
Then, COVID hit.

MY PROGRESS HALTED
I already wasn't selling my very limited range of art products when COVID started showing up in the news. By then, I had sold at the same event for a second year, with more art, more product, and more success, but it still wasn't great. I made a $30 profit. I had also JUST signed up to sell at my first anime convention, one I attended twice and really enjoyed.
It was set for April....
COVID hit headlines in January.
Everything shut down. Especially large events. Those large events were my entire business plan! Without them, I had no chance at selling the huge stocks of what little art I had finished.
I put everything on Etsy. I learned about shipping weight and distances. I learned about selling online with different websites, writing informative descriptions, search engine optimization, and anything else I could absorb to help me make sales online, but it was no use. Etsy barely brought in a sale or two per month, despite doing everything in my power to learn what I could about online marketing. Marketing is still something I struggle with, and I am now of the opinion that my business simply hinges on in person sales.
When it came time for what should have been my first vending experience at an anime convention, the organizers were just deciding to cancel the event like everyone else. They were struggling financially, so I donated my prepaid table fee to do what I could to help a convention I hoped to see back on it's feet at some point.
Many of these smaller, struggling conventions did not survive COVID. Sadly, this was one of them.
Fortunately, I was still teaching at the time, so we were doing fine financially. We had planned on me making the transition to full time artist if we saw continued improvement at conventions, but the whole world came to a halt, and that wasn't happening.

MY YEAR TEACHING THROUGH COVID
Cue the remote learning fiasco.
The Spring semester of 2020 was chaos for all professions, but none more so than the medical and teaching fields. In our profession, half of our coworkers griped about wanting to continue on sight classes, while the other half threatened to quit if they were forced to come in.
An entire profession had to relearn how to do their jobs, using a multitude of remote techniques and software they had never touched. Some of the older generations cursed the new technology, while some of the younger generations thrived on it.
Many parents worked full time jobs, and were faced with impossible choices at home. Those who still worked on sight jobs struggled to find sitters. Those who worked from home struggled to separate work from supervising children.
It was a wonder children learned anything with school now invading their home environments, but that was OUR job, and we felt heat come from ALL sides.
By the next school year, tensions were still high. Our principals and Super Intendants were now screaming at us, instead of encouraging us. Whole classes would be quarantining at home, even when on site classes were in session. Mask mandates were made into a political issue, creating further confusion and tension between principals, teachers, parents, and students.
And I was teaching "Art on a Cart".
I rolled my cart into the homerooms of my classes and taught with limited supplies so as not to spread COVID. I borrowed display screens, which worked differently in every classroom. Students were used to different rules and procedures than we had in my art room. It was a stretch to expect them to behave in that situation, but some classes were worse than others.
I had one class with a completely negligent homeroom teacher. Every time I walked in, students were running around her classroom, throwing things, yelling, and literally punching each other, all while her back was turned, ignoring the chaos that borderlined on dangerous. She would act surprised when I convinced them to sit down and listen to a lesson, as if she didn't know they were capable of it, except that it happened the same way every...dang...week.
I taught while constantly switching between on sight and remote learning days. I taught through contradicting rules on student masks and through the snot and saliva that filled them. I taught through legitimate threats to my health and safety, and the ire of the people who didn't believe in those threats.
Enough was enough. After teaching the year 20-21, and with vaccines and lifting restrictions, conventions would return, so we finally made the decision to transition to selling art full time.

MY LIFE TODAY
Almost 8 years after attending my first anime convention, I am just now beginning to gain meaningful traction as an artist. It wasn't easy, and it didn't go well for quite a long time. I made every mistake, and made almost no money during my first several years of work, but I did it all while working a day job as a teacher during the COVID pandemic.
I can now afford to expand to out of state events. I usually only make a small profit due to the added travel costs, and for a long time, most of my profit went right back into my shop to make improvements for the future. My goal today is to create a memorable voice and visuals for my brand, for the enjoyment of those who follow my journey.
To that end, I've opened this website! The goal is to gather all of my creative content here, to become less reliant on social media platforms. Those will still be updated, of course, but the multitude of platforms means that my content types are spread out over many different websites. Now, you know exactly where to find everything!
I have also opened a Patreon account. If you would like to be a part of my product making process AND help cover the cost of studio or travel expenses, I'd love to have you as a patron! I offer my patrons free products, custom doodles, and ways to be involved in my shop!
If that's not for you, just enjoy the free content! Check in here to see what I've been up to as I explore new creative outlets like this blog!
What should I write about next? Leave a comment!
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