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- I Minted an NFT
Welcome back, my printmaking nerds! I am continuing to run an audience survey. It helps me understand what kind of content you want to see. Last week's feedback was great!
In this week’s issue…
👩🎨 Why NFT’s affect traditional artists
🖥 How you can mint your own NFT
✨ We talk to a Master Printmaker
Let's get started…
Cartoon of the Week
Wait, I thought this was a printmaking newsletter?
This is a printmaking newsletter; however, I believe blockchain technologies are ecosystems where traditional artforms can insert themselves. If you make any sort of income through your artwork, then I suggest you stick around!
When digital art entered the art market, artists went up in arms. NFTs are now doing the same thing. On May 9, 2022, Mark Suzkaberg and Adam Mosseri announced that Facebook and Instagram would begin hosting NFTs as well as widening the creator economy to even more people. On May 12, 2022, Instagram CEO, Adam Mosseri, shared Instagram’s first NFT.
Hold on to your ink! Change is HERE and it doesn't matter if we like it or not!
Why YOU should pay attention..
You have probably heard the buzzwords: NFT’s, the Metaverse, cryptocurrency, blockchain technology and bitcoin being thrown around lately. I will not bore you with all the details of what crypto is or how it works. The Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto, by Kevin Roose breaks it down perfectly.
What exactly is an NFT then?
NFT’s stand for Non-Fungible Tokens - digital goods that live on the internet. They can be pictures, videos, 3D scans, digital real estate and Metaverse worlds. I recommend reading What are NFTs?, which can offer some great insight!
As traditional artists, we should not be afraid of change. We should learn more about what is happening, and if possible, adapt to it. How do you know you don’t like fried chicken until you try it?
Wait, but aren't NFT’s just pictures on a website?
Yes, in a way. You can go to any NFT marketplace and right click over an NFT and save a jpeg file on your computer. You will have the image but you will never be the owner. I have a poster of Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’ on my wall but that doesn’t make me the owner of the original painting.
As artists and creatives, we know how hard it is to get proper credit on the internet and how inconvenient it can be to have a middle man. I am talking about you, Etsy!
Are NFTs a scam?
When you buy an NFT, you do not get the digital goods or its copyright. You do get to own the token stating this is the “official copy” of that item. A perfect example is the famous Nya Cat, which its creator Chris Torres originally uploaded to YouTube and sold as an NFT for $580,000 last year. Yes, crazy money for a cat farting rainbows!
I can frame and hang a print but how can I enjoy NFT art?
Currently, NFTs live on digital wallets and most recently thanks to Meta, they will also be viewable on Instagram and eventually Facebook. My mom already told me she wants one of Los Muertos NFTs for her Facebook profile. With the dawn of the Metaverse, digital goods will be able to be enjoyed in even more places and virtual worlds.
Tulip Fever...anyone?
NFTs are highly controversial.I will not lie to you and guarantee that the small-time artist will become an immediate millionaire after their first NFT. Big companies and celebrities are launching their NFTs while utilizing their clout to raise prices and like in the traditional art market, the NFT market has also been ground for money laundering.
There are some serious collectors out there. Take a look at this wallet which is filled with $1.4M worth of NFT art. This wallet is insane with over $40M dollars. These digital goods have real world impact - not just financially and socially but environmentally. The amount of electricity that blockchains consume is astronomical.
My NFT Experiment
So with all that in mind, back in April I decided it was time to step into the NFT world and minted my own. This is a guide on how you, if you are so inclined, can do it too!
Decide which NFT marketplace you want to mint your work in. NFTs are not made, they are minted.
I chose OpenSea because an 18 year Dogecoin billionaire told me to (that was a joke). There's also FTX, Axie Marketplace, etc.
OpenSea is one of the most established and largest marketplace for NFTs. They have it all: art, collectibles, domain names, music, photography, sports paraphernalia, trading cards, utility goods, virtual worlds.
Coinbase just opened their marketplace on 04/20 which already boasts 89 million global users.
Choose a digital wallet. Like marketplaces you have options. OpenSea supports over 15 different wallets. I chose MetaMask.
MetaMask is web3's most popular wallet and oldest in the industry. You can download it as a web browser extension or mobile app.
Set up your wallet.
This is an important step where you will create a unique 12 word phrase that will serve as your master key. If you forget or lose this key no one will be able to help you. Like ever! There is no IT guy who will unlock it for you.
Connect your wallet to your OpenSea Account.
At this point, you could fund your wallet with Etherum, since most NFTs live on the ETH blockchain. Plus, you will have funds in order to pay for “gas” fees associated with the creating, trading and selling of NFTs.
Get Minting!
Once your account is connected to a wallet, you will be able to upload content to mint. Make sure you add a title and description, customize properties, or un-lockable future content.
List for sale.
The marketplace works similarly to eBay. You can either set a fixed price or a timed auction and open up for bids.
It took me less than ten minutes to do this entire process. Honestly, it was a little too easy. As I browsed through the pages of available artwork, I began noticing a trend, digital art is king. There are also a lot of paintings and even printmaking NFTs! My dream to be the first to mint Printmaking NFTs was thwarted.
So far, I have minted 5 NFTs - utilizing unsold paintings from my ‘Great Beyond’ watercolor series. I have not put them up for sale yet but once I do, I will let you know how that goes. You can view my NFTs here.
Beware of the risks...
NFTs and cryptocurrency are not all unicorns and rainbows - no pun intended! It is important to understand the risks associated with both before you drop your hard earned benjamin's to buy Internet money. Last week there was a huge crypto crash, and like in the real world market, it’s suspected Wall Street Bankers caused the meltdown.
Artist Highlight: Alex Carmona
This excerpt has been condensed and edited for understanding.
Interview date: May 6, 2022. Read the full interview here!
Medium: Woodcuts, reduction woodcuts, wood engraving, woodwork, hand lettering, gold leaf, painting, illustration.
Printmaking Since: 2007
Location: Illinois
Daniel: You are one of the artists of high calibers readers of 'The Inkplate' requesting to see here. As a living master printmaker what would you tell a beginner who is looking at the work you are producing and asking themselves: how and when will I ever get there? Where would you recommend, they start?
Alex: Thank you, I really appreciate that compliment. I think it all has to be a progression. I feel that any hobby or endeavor I have ever done you have to learn the basic first, and then build, and build on them.
When I first started printmaking, it was with linoleum cuts because they are so much easier to carve. Easier to get the basic idea of what it is that you are doing. Now the level that I am [in] now, I knew I had to switch to wood to get the level of detail I wanted. The first time that I did a wood engraving I was like holy shit you can get razor thin lines on this thing!
I have always been so detail oriented my whole life. My art goal when I was young was to be able to draw photorealistic. Right about the time when I started accomplishing that, is around the time when I started learning printmaking.
So, I would tell any printmaker to start at the basics, learn how to use your tools very well. Then start to transition to woodcuts if you are doing relief prints, because I feel a lot of people get caught up on linoleum and just stick with it because they don’t want to learn the nuances when it comes to wood. I don’t want to blame them because there is a lot to learn, but I am also a proponent of the thought that you should always be a student and should always try to learn and get better every single day.
Once you start getting into the woodcuts you have to learn how to sharpen your tools a whole lot better. Once you get those things down, the biggest thing that any relief printmaker needs to learn is tonal values. Whether you are doing expressive woodcuts or things that are nonrepresentational. Tonal value in all art, in not the most important thing, if you consider what we do. There are only a few different ways that we can create tonal value, lines, dots, hashmarks. Just like in scratch board you don’t have a lot of options; you can’t shade it with pencil.
Learn how tonal value works and learn how to create several different types in your piece. Honestly, you don’t really need a lot. If you have three different tonal values, you can give them depth and dimension. I often get asked this question, how can I start getting the detail, or different values on my print and just getting a grasp of that. I see a lot of peoples work and it might be detail, it might be cool, but when you look at it from far away is all gray. You can’t tell what is going on, and in any kind of art you don’t want that. You want to be able to tell what is going on from afar and when you are close to it. Tonal value!
Daniel: Can you tell us more about what being a full time artist it like? And what would you tell someone who is on fence about making that leap?
Alex: I told my wife this, a while back, being a full-time artist sound cool but it is not easy at all. It is a constant grind, there are ups and down and you have to learn how to maneuver, how to figure out what works what doesn’t. Ultimately, you have to have the mindset to continue moving forward whether it feels good or not. You have to be a problem solver all the time, it’s like being any sort of entrepreneur you are going to have failures, but you have to use them as learning opportunities and improve your approach. Whether that is marketing, trying to find new clients, if something is not working you have to be able to adjust.
You need to have the type of personality that is thick skin. I also feel that it is a lot better if you are good at speaking to people. You want people to see you, to like you and the end goal is for them to seek you out. At the beginning you have to do whatever you can to get your name out there and go look for all these people.
Daniel: You are a great draftsman; your work is incredibly detail and you spend countless hours carving. What is the process of creating look for you? Do you work from references, or you work only with sketches?
Alex: What I do now, because I am trying to cut down on time and how long it all takes me. I’ll compose my thoughts, write them all down, once I have a better idea of what it looks like in my head, I will put it on the computer and move things around, see if they work, make a bunch of different thumbnails. From there I’ll have my photo references all put together. I’ll put the basic things I need, say a female figure or a car. Then I take that and had draw it to my woodblock and add all the different elements that I really didn’t need to throw in on the computer.
Daniel: Thank you so much for your time and your knowledge Alex, where can people find you?
Alex: Instagram: @therealoldschoolalex & website: oldschoolalex.com
Read the full interview here.
Sketch of the Week
El Capitan from Cathedral Beach Picnic Area
Thanks for reading, see ya next week!
-Daniel
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