Here's a short recap from the Red Dot Auction held by the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity in Costa Mesa, California.
Below is my submission, a painting of Michigan J. Frog. I tried to get him into a more lively pose but he just sat there, so that's what I had to paint.
I have mixed feelings about the way the Red Dot auction works. First of all, all paintings are anonymous until after the auction. The donors are listed but you don't know who did what, unless you are particularly familiar with someone's style. I guess this would encourage people to bid purely on which paintings they like rather than trying to guess which big name artists painted what, and hoping to score a valuable piece at a low price. Because it's a silent auction, you add your bid to the item you like and hope that when the auction ends, yours is the winning bid. If you don't want to leave it to chance, you can use a red dot sticker that you've been issued, to instantly buy anything, for the pre-established price that the Center has set. It might be significantly higher than if you had waited till auctions end, but then again it might not. I was happily surprised when shortly after I arrived, they called me up onto a central podium to congratulate me that my piece had been purchased with someone's Red Dot. I was told that they weren't present but I'm glad someone liked my little frog.
Before they shipped him off, I wanted one last photo.
