1998-2004
The Napkin Dad Daily began as a series of drawings and quotes on napkins that I put in my daughters’ lunches during their middle and high school years, most every day from 1998 -2004.
I started doing the napkins while I was unemployed and making their lunches for school. I did 3 a day, one for each daughter. After many months I felt sort of depressed because, as funny as it sounds, it was the my main creative outlet, the only artwork I was doing at the time, and they were all being thrown away every day. ‘Oh well’ I said, and went about doing them until the end of the year.
Here is the final napkin of that year.
My wife at the time was not happy in the marriage (we later divorced) and took the girls to California to visit her family in the summer, and I was not invited. I was home alone on Father’s day when the girls called to tell me they had hid their presents for me around the house. I walked around the house following their hints and found my oldest’s and my youngest’s presents.
My middle daughter directed me to a bottom drawer somewhere and there I found a napkin she had drawn for me …
and below it…
…were all the napkins from the entire year! She had saved every one and given them back to me for Father’s Day. It truly was the best present I ever got, I cried when I found them. She really didn’t, and couldn’t, understand how much it meant to me to have her do that, and to have them still in existence. I continued to draw the napkins for 4 more years, almost every day, until my youngest graduated from High School in 2004.
Here are the final 2 napkins.
2005-2009
In 2005 I started scanning them little by little and posting them to my flickr.com site, which I had set up for my photographic work but had been posting drawings to as well. The napkins got a great response and I started to consider ways I could get them out to a larger audience but didn’t do anything about it.
In November of 2008 I was enthusiastic over the exciting presidential campaign and glad that Obama had won. I went looking through my napkin collection to see if I could find one that would be reflective of my feelings the morning after the election. I could not and so decided to draw a new napkin, the first in almost 4 years at that point. I posted the napkin on flickr and had an incredible response. Hundreds of hits and comments came in, as they did on many other images people posted that day.
A few weeks later Time Magazine contacted me. They had found my ‘Obama’ drawing and wanted to include it in their ‘Person of the Year’ issue which obviously was President Elect Obama. I thought about it a bit (they weren’t going to pay me) but said yes because, of course I’d say yes.
After Time Magazine published my ‘Obama’ napkin I learned an interesting thing. Once you get national attention for something, local interest will follow. Very shortly after the magazine came out I got a call from KOTV, a local TV channel. They wanted to do a segment on me, coming to my studio to do a video interview and show me drawing on a napkin. Sounds good EXCEPT, I wasn’t really drawing on napkins at all at the time. I am just drawn the one ‘Obama’ napkin. Otherwise I was posting napkins that were 4-8 years old.
The solution? To quickly create a studio set up that would show me working on napkins. That wasn’t hard since I had all the materials and I actually did have a studio, it just wasn’t being used in that way at all. So I set it up, put out some napkins, started a drawing on one of them and was interviewed.
Other Tulsa and Oklahoma media outlets followed, including Fox23
Channel 8
The Tulsa World newspaper
Tulsa People Magazine
Mia Magazine
Here is the kicker. Because I had to set up the ‘fake’ napkin studio set up I figured why not start drawing some new napkins. And if I was going to draw some new napkins I probably should build a website and blog and give it a name, right?
Thus The Napkin Dad was born. I copyrighted the name and launched the site in February of 2009. Here is a screenshot of that very first website.
That year I drew over 260 napkins and off I went into the blogosphere.
Exhibition
Later in 2009 I had an opportunity to exhibit the napkins at a local Coffee House called Double Shot. My daughter Chelsea knew the owner and he was always looking for interesting stuff to put on his walls.
At this point I was drawing a napkin every day and posting it to my blog. They were traveling around the world according to my website metrics with America being #1 but Europe and Asia bringing in a large number of viewers as well.
All this led to led to speaking engagements, workshops and sales and many years of online interaction with the group I called ‘The Napkin Kin’
And, of course, the continued drawing of napkins!
Marty Coleman
i already anticipating a lovely weekly napkin recap