I love drawing and sketching even when I was young child but I had never thought about earning any money for my making art. I had always envisioned myself as being in computers either as an engineer or a software developer. Fast-forward to the present, I’m now a programmer by day but I still love drawing in my free time.

I actually love drawing so much that it makes me think about the possibility of earning a living solely from doing freelance art. In the short term, I seriously doubt that any money I can possibly earn from doing art can match the salary I get paid monthly from programming. So, if I do decide to concentrate on my art, I would certainly be taking a pay grade dive. It’s something that I can’t consider specially since I want to have a kid soon.

But maybe I can start by getting into the art business as a part-time thing. Maybe I can take on simple commissions at first. Maybe I should make a series of art pieces I can make prints out of and sell them at the local Sunday markets here in Melbourne or sell them at online sites like Etsy and eBay. Maybe I can compile a series of sketches and publish it via Lulu and call that an art book. Maybe I can go back to making comics and publish that via Lulu too.

I’ve already started doing some research into this commission work thing. I wanted to know what doing digital art commission work entails. I wanted to know how much other DA artists were asking for for their work. How much are people willing to pay for a certain level of art quality? I use these artists as a sort of a price guide. I wonder if anybody out there is interesting in commissioning me for some art.

Last weekend, I went to the Arts Centre Sunday Market at the city to check out what the artists there are offering and how much they are selling their stuff for. Again, I’m hoping that this would give me an idea of how to price my own pieces when the time comes (if it ever does) to sell my own. I even learned about Giclee prints while there. I need to look into that a bit further but it seems like a more expensive way to make prints.

At this stage though, I don’t really have a lot of finished work to sell as prints that people will want to buy. That means, I need to first make more high-resolution detailed and coloured pieces that might attract buyers before I can even think of earning money from prints.

With my limited free time, it seems like that doing art commissions might be the more feasible option. My only fear is that I have absolutely no clue how to do one. I mean, drawing the actual piece might be the easiest bit because that’s something I know how to do already. But I don’t know what to put into a contract that would be fair both to me and to my potential customer. How exactly should I deal with the customer? Do I draw drafts first for his/her approval? Do I allow him/her to change his mind after he/she approved the draft?

So many questions. Maybe I should just take the plunge and wing it all the way.

They say that traveling opens up a person to new things and experiences and consequently helps in giving that person a different world view. This in turn makes the person grow, in more ways than one. Following are some thoughts on things that I’ve experienced and learned from on our trip to Tasmania. If nothing else, this entry is something like a note to myself to remember our trip by.

• It is cheaper to fly to Tasmania then hire a car there in the short term than to ride the ferry from Melbourne and bring our car. A co-worker who has been to Tasmania several times has said that it only makes sense to bring the car on the ferry if we’re going to stay in Tasmania for a fortnight or more.
• There is no easy way of going around in Tasmania other than by driving. Also, be prepared to drive on winding roads. Even major highways are curvy so the driver has to pay attention most of the time.
• There is a lot of road kill, I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that there’s something that used to be a living thing splat in the middle of the road every few hundred metres.
• Most of the wildlife around Tasmania are nocturnal. Consequently, we avoided driving around after dusk to avoid contributing to more road kills and possibly car-related accidents.
• Tasmania is quite scenic and tranquil, perfect for relaxing. However, since we were after the magnificent natural views, we had to bush walk. The shortest walk we did was the 20 minute Enchanted Walk at Cradle Mountain and three walks of two hours each elsewhere. Now, that may be nothing for some people who regularly hike but for two couch potatoes who spend their whole day seating, it was quite tiring for us.
• We only spent four whole days in Tasmania, visiting several towns and driving a minimum of two hours each way to our destination. It’s a wonder we actually got to visit most of the items in our itinerary.
• We had our first encounter with an alpaca in the town of Sheffield - a town we only reached because we missed a turn at the highway. No complaints though as we love this little town of murals.
• It was also in the town of Sheffield that we first saw the word spider on the menu of the local restaurant. We had no idea what it was and were intrigued. Unfortunately, the service was slow and we decided to eat elsewhere so we didn’t have the opportunity to order the mysterious menu item. We later found out through a free Coles brochure that a spider is actually what we’d call an ice cream float, that is, a scoop of ice cream on top of a glass of fizzy drinks, typically soft drinks.
• The highlight of our trip for me is our visit to Cradle Mountain while hubby loved the Cataract Gorge at first sight. Also, we both enjoyed browsing and shopping at Salamanca Market in Hobart.
• It was our first time to stay at a bed and breakfast (when we were in Swansea) and I have to admit that I was quite apprehensive when I booked the room. Hubby loves his creature comforts even while traveling and we learned the hard way that a nice, clean bed is worth a lot after a long tiring day. I’m glad to report that our first B&B stay was great - gracious host, clean bed, tidy room and a hot, filling breakfast almost made us feel right at home. The only thing that we were concerned about was our noise level while watching tv before bedtime. We ended up turning in early for fear that we might be disturbing the peace for the other guests. It was just as well since we needed our beauty sleep just then. Dunno how we’d fare though if we had to stay for more than one night.
• Since we only stayed for a few days, we didn’t get to see the other amazing places in Tasmania. Some future destinations on the island that would be on our list are Strahan, Port Arthur, Russell Falls, Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park and perhaps even do the Tasman Island cruise featured in GetAway.

Overall, we had a fantastic time and would probably visit again given the opportunity.

Due to personal reasons, we have both decided to make Palabok private for the time being. Right now, it is only open for viewing by family members and close friends. So, if you are reading this and find that you can’t access this in the future, I do apologise.

We might open it up again in the future but for now, we wish to keep it private.