Wednesday, August 31, 2011

pin oak leaf in heart

Leaf in a Heart
© 2011
greeting cards or prints
original artwork is 11" x 15.5"

Okay, back to greeting card designs! I've been designing many of them for Halloween and Autumn and will be listing the others soon.

This was the first design after coming off of pure painting fun in August (whatever painting I could fit in around the busy schedule of keeping shops stocked, a seconds sale, going to Celtic music sessions, home improvements and making a tote bag design, etc.).

I have this one available in my Artfire shop. I will also have it for sale in Autumn in my Etsy shop. And of course, I'll have it available at my usual brick and mortar shops in my area in the next couple of weeks.


MY ART IN ON-LINE STORES:

MY MUSIC LINKS (hear clips):

MY MUSIC IN ON-LINE STORES:

Friday, August 26, 2011

Hurricane of Doves and Hearts

Hurricane of Doves and Hearts
© 2011
inks on Arches watercolor paper
(copyright watermark does not appear in actual painting)

I was originally going to name this piece Windswept Doves and Hearts V (to be part of the series), but it seemed to have a lot more energy than all of the other previous paintings. Since Hurricane Irene is on its way, I thought this title was also more appropriate.

Painting with inks almost makes this psychedelic. The others had watercolor or acrylic.

I look at these paintings as diversions. I seem to be drawn to the subject matter when I can't have full concentration powers. They are my version of meditation paintings, I suppose.

 I don't have this one for sale anywhere yet because I've been having trouble uploading images (computer problems and file corruption). I will edit this page as it becomes available to buy.

Here is the simple line drawing before adding color:



MY ART IN ON-LINE STORES:

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Thursday, August 11, 2011

the busy-work aspects of selling art

This is the new banner I had to make for my Artfire shop because they made the avatar huge
and moved it from the left to the right. I didn't feel like I had a lot of time, and don't know how many banners I'll have to make in the future, so I rushed through it.
I wonder if they'll move the avatar to another place again.

This is the banner I originally had. I like it more, especially because I could fit in my artwork, but it didn't work with Artfire's new studio design. I put a lot more time and effort into it and it shows. You can see that I still had to push part of the design to the right
(where the avatar used to be -- a smaller avatar than the one in use now):
 

This next design was my first try before settling on the design at the top of the page. It still kept some of the ideas of my old design. Unfortunately, I had to scrap this because the avatar covered up half
of my unicorn relief sculpture and all of the shamrock (sniff, sniff): 

At the same time all of this needed attention, Etsy (my other on-line shop), enacted some changes to the listing process. Hitherto, listing items was mostly about timing because the default search was always recency. The reason why timing is critical in a recency situation is that you had to guess when people might be on Etsy shopping and get your listings on then (as recently listed items were always on the first pages of search). It meant people in England were listing at midnight or later to be seen. In Australia they were often listing at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning. This was crazy-making (as a lot of things on Etsy have been -- they seem to be trying to clean up their act lately) and a lot of sellers just renewed unsold items throughout the day, every day, to give them a boost in the rankings rather than risk the chance that their items wouldn't be first in the category search pages. I'm glad Etsy changed the listing procedure from recency to relevancy, but it meant that yesterday and today was about changing my tags (tagging is much more critical in a relevancy structure than a recency structure -- it is how buyers find items using keywords for a specific type of search).

The weeks before all of this, I had to deal with designing, making and buying display units for some of my brick and mortar shops, designing a tote bag, printing my images on teeshirts, packaging cards and writing a letter to a perspective buyer, shopping for art supplies and latex paint, creating signs and flyers and cleaning my studio.

All of this is work I don't get paid for (except the teeshirts) and it took up the good part of three weeks. It is part of what running an art business is all about, though.

I do miss creating my own art. I'm lucky if I even get in a half hour day these days. I see the light at the end of the tunnel however (doing a preliminary dance!).

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Windswept Doves and Hearts IV

Windswept Doves and Hearts IV
© 2011
acrylic painting on panel, 8" x 10"
(click on picture to see a less blurry version)

Finally, back to my own art!

This is fourth in the series of winswept doves and hearts. You can see version one HERE, version two HERE and version three HERE.

I don't have it for sale anywhere yet because I have to find a frame for it. If you are interested, e-mail me (or check back here for the edit on this page to see if I do have it for sale anywhere) or look in my online shops (Etsy shop or Artfire shop) to see if it is listed.

links:

MY ART IN ON-LINE STORES:

MY MUSIC LINKS (hear clips):

MY MUSIC IN ON-LINE STORES:

Monday, August 8, 2011

tote bag design for gallery phase two

If you want to see phase one of this tote bag design, you can click here to be taken there.

So, here is version two (the version that the Valley Artisans Market Business committee chose) with "Cambridge, NY" underneath the Valley Artisans Market logo.

I did four versions of colors for you to choose. Please keep in mind that various monitors will display colors differently.

Here is the first:

 Valley Artisans Market tote bag design
in dark maroon
(click on image to see a less blurry version)

Here is the second:

Valley Artisans Market tote bag design
in medium maroon
(click on image to see a less blurry version)

Here is the third:

Valley Artisans Market tote bag design
in red maroon
(click on image to see a less blurry version)

Here is the fourth:


Valley Artisans Market tote bag design
in red
(click on image to see a less blurry version)

Keep in mind that the fourth version probably most resembles Valley Artisans Market's business card (art work by unknown):

Valley Artisans Market business card

My preference is for either the second or third version. I just don't think that the red (4th version) works as well in this case.

COMMENTS WELCOME!