Magnolia artist Steven Reddy took a big risk last year when he quit his job to create and publish his sketchbook memoir. Now, he’s wishing he’d made the leap 20 years ago.
Reddy knew it was a big risk, leaving a job he loved as a teacher at Lawton Elementary School (4000 27th Ave. W.) to pursue a new career as a publicly funded artist. So was the risk worth it? “Absolutely,” he said.
He ran a successful Kickstarter campaign last August, raising $4,000 more than his goal. The money funded his first published sketchbook, “Now Where Was I?” A few weeks ago, Reddy finally got the printed books in his hands and started sending them out.
The success of the first book has inspired a new goal to create a book a year. The book-a-year goal is a little arbitrary, Reddy admits: “It’s about as much as I think I can do.” With a 250-page book, that’s less than a drawing a day, a challenge Reddy says he’s up for.
So while he’s planning his next book, Reddy is selling his first. Right now, he’s selling on Etsy. He’s also hoping to get the book into some local bookshops around Seattle.
A unique sketch artist
There are a lot of sketch artists out there, but what sets Reddy apart is his technique, he said. When he creates a sketch, he paints the entire drawing in black-and-white before adding color on top. It’s an old oil-painting technique.
Reddy’s now teaching the style at art workshops at the Gage Academy in Capitol Hill (1501 10th Ave. E.). He also still substitute-teaches a few times a week for his former colleagues.
Reddy has started a working on a new, more comic-book style of drawing. They aren’t the typical comedic art strips, though; rather, Reddy describes them more as a “biographical narrative.” They’re inspired by his life, past, dreams and musings. He gets a lot of material from his time teaching.
“The kids are very honest, and they say things that are amusing or interesting,” he said. “They’re good fodder for material.”
He’s taken to the style so much that he plans for his next book to be done entirely as a comic book, with no text beyond what he draws in the comic.
His original style isn’t losing any momentum, though. Magnolia resident Suzanne Tyler has known Reddy for years, and two of her children were in Reddy’s fifth-grade class at Lawton. She backed Reddy’s Kickstarter campaign and commissioned him to do a sketch of her sister’s house as a Christmas gift. Her sister loved the art because it was something special that “you couldn’t walk into Macy’s and buy.
“I love the way he captured her house,” Tyler said. “It’s a big, old bed-and-breakfast in Snohomish, [Wash.]. She has four children and this big, giant house. He captured the family’s personality, too.”
To her surprise, the sketch made it into the book. “I didn’t know he’d planned to [include] it,” she said.
His art is a mix of “whimsy and actual architectural rendering,” Tyler said, with a special eye for everyday things.
“Queen Anne and Magnolia have pretty unique places, and his drawings fit right in with that,” she said.
Going local
When Reddy proposed his book, he wanted the book to be entirely local, but it was a challenge to get printers to take him seriously without a publishing company. He even toyed with the idea of printing overseas. In the end, he went with local printer, Alphagraphics. Going local had its drawbacks, though: The books cost as much to print as Reddy’s selling them for.
“I’m really happy that I was able to go local and that I’m fulfilling my promise,” he said.
Reddy doesn’t seem to mind that he’s not making money off of the books. “I’ve always sort of had a bohemian bend where my material needs are very small,” he said. He doesn’t have a mortgage, dependents or a car payment. Instead, what he does have is time, his most valuable asset.
“I’ve never been happier than I am now in terms of my time is more valuable to me than things and money,” he said. “I get up in the morning and I do what I want. And if I only make enough money to pay my bills and produce the next project, I’m good.”
Reddy plans to send some of the books to publishers. He loves the artistic control and freedom that comes with independent publishing, but he’d like to see the books distributed nationally and have a publisher’s support and experience.
Even if he doesn’t get picked up by a publisher, Reddy still plans to do a book a year, turning back to Kickstarter for the funds this summer.
“Of course, my dream is a publisher will see my work and go, ‘You know what? We’ll do the next one for you,’” he said. “If the advance is big enough, then I’ll do it.”
Now that he has a successful track record, he’s hoping backers will return from his first crowdsourced-funding campaign. Reddy thinks people will jump at the chance to pre-buy the next book at a lower price through the Kickstarter rewards.
“They’re getting a quality product for less than I think it’s worth,” he said. “I’m so happy and I’m so excited and I’m so ready for the next one. [This one] went just like I wanted.”
Reddy’s first book “Now Where Was I? A Sketchbook Memoir” is available on Etsy; to purchase it, click here
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