An Explanation

For those coming in late, I'm going to try to explain what's going on as efficiently as possible. It may be there are too many sites and too much cross over to really grasp the idea.

This is a volunteer project. People send in art. I in turn auction or sell it and turn over the proceeds to different charities that support artists or the arts. Depending on what project you contribute to, that's where the money will go. For instance, if you participate in the 100AP Youth, when the project is done, the money raised will go to the International Child Art Foundation. (The list of projects and organizations can be seen here.)

The project started off with people sending in artwork and when we got 100 pieces, I scanned them, put them together in a book with some interviews of the artists and sold them online. Then the originals went up for auction. The money from this went to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and The Hero Initiative.

Once those people sent in work, that got them on a list to have a sketchbook sent to them. That book is currently going around to those artists and we're about 30 people in so far. If you are reading this and you have either sent me something or drawn something in a sketchbook, you're good. If you haven't drawn in a sketchbook, it's coming to you, I promise. It may take a while though.

Back in August of 2008, I opened up the idea again for more projects supporting more funds. (See that link above again.) One of them is also a sketchbook that will be mailed around. BUT it may be that between the old and new lists, I have just enough people to fill it up so I may combine those. However, the mail in portion still has almost all 100 openings to fill before we can publish or auction again; that's a long way to go.

I'll admit to having a lot of sites available for information about what the project does, where to read about it, how to participate, etc. In all honesty it's the only way I know how to get enough eyes on the project. I've Twittered about it, set up Facebook and MySpace sites. There's a Flickr pool and at one point I made a Ning page. While confusing, these sites allow me to direct people back to the main page and at the same time, hopefully they'll tell other people as well.

Maybe one day we'll be big enough that we won't need a social networking site just to get visits.

Luckily a few people from the first run have come back to help. I've also had a friend jump aboard to drum up support locally and help keep things updated. There was a gap when nothing was being done, but frankly there wasn't any art being sent in either.

So, if you have ideas on how to improve, let us know. If you have suggestions on how to promote the project, let us know. I've emailed and called every fund, a lot of publishers and most every online art organization I can find. It's not that we need more people seeing the project, it's that we need more ARTISTS seeing the project and actually sending in work. Also, if you have any QUESTIONS or something is confusing, please tell us.

That way I can write blog posts about interesting things like interviews and art showings instead of talking about how little is going on.

Again, any help is appreciated. Thank you.