The Makings of Black Hole

You may remember this post recently about the book I’m working on called Black Hole. Well, I’ve been working on it for the past month or so, and am beginning to accumulate quite a few pages. I’m so excited about it, that I couldn’t resist giving you a little more of it—and bringing you into the world of what I think is best described as an adult fairytale.

This is a picture of most of the pages I have so far, and here is the beginning of the story. Click on the picture to make it a bit larger so you can read the words:

It feels amazing to be working on this book—it is so much of me—the story, the drawings, the individual words—that every time I work on it, the work fills me up. I suppose I could say this about much of my art, but there are some pieces that really run deep. This is one of them. It is like nothing else to be doing work that lives so deep in you. It is an experience that goes beyond any job or career.

I realize that while it would be nice if someone else wanted to look at it, or if I could sell many copies once it is finished, I would make it even if no one else was ever going to see it. I need to make it that much. This is the kind of work I want to always be doing—this is what I want to drive my life—experiences that feel like this.

Saving the World: the card set

After thinking about it for quite some time, I finally put together a card set of all 11 designs from my Saving the World drawing series:

The set includes 1 card of each of the 11 designs, and here they are:

I’m especially partial to this series of drawings because it really got me started on my current style, and the messages are so important to my own life. I’m really happy with this card set because it allows me to share all of these messages with you in a really affordable way, and they’re great cards for the whole year—you can send these fun messages to your friends anytime.

They’re now available in my shop—you can find them in the cards section.

A Shop at Papernstitch!

Have you heard about Papernstitch, the wonderful online exhibition space?

Well, I have a shop over there for the next few weeks:

I put some of my favorite items in my Papernstitch shop—it’s kind of like a little curated exhibit of my Etsy Shop. Check it out! (click icon below)

Free Art, Get Your Free Art: hope

Yes, you did read the title of this post correctly—I”m giving away FREE ART. I’ve been admiring Jen’s Feed Your Soul Project over at Indie Fixx for some time now—to share art during this financially challenging time, she has organized having a different artist give away a print (via a downloadable pdf file) every month. It is amazing—and she has people lining up (an extended waiting list of artists) who want to be a part.

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about why I do art, and why I want to keep doing art—it’s because I want to share inspiration and ideas, and help people to see things in a new way that makes their lives richer. To me, the best way to do that is to put lots of art out there—get it to people in as many ways as possible, and so I thought, “Why don’t I give away free art every month?”

To start us out on this Blue Bicicletta free art project (I don’t yet have a nifty name for the project like Jen), I’m posting up a notecard version of my new hope drawing. I”ve been mentioning this drawing a lot lately, I think because hope is really important to me right now, and really always is. Also, even though I’d like to be one of those very diplomatic artists who says they couldn’t possibly pick a favorite drawing, I’ll admit it—I love this drawing right now—it really speaks to me, perhaps I am in love with it. I decided notecards would be best because then you can even pass the message along to someone who really needs it.

So, it is with this free art that I wish you all of the hope in the world—an entire ocean of hope. I wish that it would swoop down and sweep you off your feet so that you could live in a land of infinite possibility. Without further ado, you can download my hope notecards here:

hope_notecard

About the cards: As you probably already realize, this artwork is for PERSONAL USE ONLY. You can print out as many as you’d like, send them to friends, share the love, but they are not for resale. These cards work great printed out on an 8.5 x 11 inch piece of card stock or heavy-weight paper. All you need to do is cut the sheet in half on the long side (at 5.5 inches), and then just fold each card. They fit perfectly in any A2 size envelope that you can find at office supply stores. I generally get better blacks when I print in color, but black and white printing will do fine too.

Please let me know if you have any difficulties with the file—since this is my first time putting a pdf on my blog, I’d love to hear about any kinks in its use. Thanks so much for being a part of Blue Bicicletta! Expect to see more free art next month this time—how about December 17 (as 17 is one of my lucky numbers)?

How to Save the World: the originals

As the holidays approach, I’ve been working away in my Etsy shop to get all of my art in there. I just added the remaining eight framed originals from my How to Save the World series. I’ve shown these pieces in a couple of local shops, but this is the first time I’ve made these original drawings available online, so I’m pretty excited.

I spent yesterday afternoon searching my house for good lighting to photograph in. As I’ve mentioned before, I think photographing my art is one of the hardest parts of selling online. I’ve begun to realize that the number one thing that makes photos look good is good lighting. Natural filtered sunlight seems to work best.

I live in a duplex that could also be known as a cave, so I have often resorted to going outside to try and get hold of good lighting. This proves difficult when you are trying to show how a drawing will add to someone’s interior. Also, my yard space is not so beautiful—we rent our home, and don’t plan to make this our permanent residence, so we haven’t spent the time and money to beautify the yard.

Complaints about my house aside, I’m pretty happy with the photos I took yesterday. I ended up working in my bedroom with a little folding table as my “set.” I’m getting to the point where photographing the work is becoming even a little fun—big improvement from how I’ve dreaded it in the past. Now, I have the urge to go back and retry many old photos (perhaps even the very recent ones I took of my new miniature white framed drawings), now that I’ve found a lighting sweet-spot in my house. Ah, if only there were more hours in the day!

Here’s a peek at some of my favorite photos from yesterday. All of these pieces are available in this section of my shop, if you’d like to browse.

Eat Well & Slowly

Grow Your Own Food

Try to Understand Other People

Value Your Time More Than Your Money

Although I couldn’t think of something for all of the pieces, I tried to add some other items to the photos. I’ve found that the photos are more interesting if they put the drawing in some sort of context. I am thankful that my artwork scans well because most of the images I put online are just direct scans that are really able to show the artwork itself, but again and again I see and hear people say how important pictures are for selling online. The more good photos, the better. This makes sense because people can’t touch and see the items in person.
Slowly, as with everything, I’m learning how to do this part of my job. It’s a great learning experience, and I’m glad to be having a little fun with it.

Do you have any great tips about photographing artwork? I’d love to hear them! Post them here!

Talking Art

I’ve been talking about art a lot lately! Yay art!

I recently found out about the website Divine Caroline from Jenny at Rising Sun Coaching. I’m pretty new to the website, but Divine Caroline is a site for women where members can read and write articles on anything from work to hobbies to money. I thought it would be fun to write an article about art and creativity, specifically, how the creative process can be applied to other parts of our lives. I talked about this in a recent conversation with Jenny, and I’ve thought about it before—I’ve learned how to be open and come up with creative solutions in my art, but I often forget to use these skills in other parts of my life and the business side of my art. I think this happens to a lot of people—we learn something in one situation, and miss what that skill would offer to another.

My article is called Anything is Possible: Art and Creative Living . Check it out! It is a musing on a lot of ideas I’ve been having recently as I try to figure out how I want to live my life—you’ll notice I stole the title from this recent post. My only minor complaint about Divine Caroline is that I wasn’t able to upload my artwork to put with the article—I had to pick a stock photo. That was kind of disappointing, but otherwise the website looks great, and I think the stock photos probably help the entire site look more professional, so perhaps it’s better that way.

I have also been talking about art as a recent member of a local Etsy Team called the SactoMetro Etsy Street Team. If you’re unfamiliar with Etsy Teams, they’re a way for Etsy members to get together based on a common interest or location to meet like-minded creative people, share tips, and promote together. Since I live just 20 minutes from Sacramento, CA and often do shows there, I joined a local group. As part of the team, I have started posting weekly interviews with team members about their art/craft on the team blog.

I just posted the second weekly interview with MrsTalbott, a lovely local maker with a penchant for historic crafts (think handmade dolls, aprons, and knit items), and last week, I did the first interview with M and J Designs, the maker of so many fun creative items (think monster plushes and blue squid t-shirts).

So much art to be seen and made! I better hop to it!

Hope, Trust, Cook, Read: new framed originals

I have some new framed original drawings to share today! You got a peek at some of them in a couple of previous posts, but here they are for real.

A while ago I got the idea to do some miniature drawings with action words (kind of like my Saving the World series, but simpler), and to frame them up as nice little holiday gifts, or really just nice little bits of inspiration for any time of the year. I found some great white frames at Ikea, and I was off and running. Here are the first four—there will be more to come over the next couple of weeks:

All are available in this section of my shop. If you’re interested in ordering one of these as a holiday gift, please make sure to put your orders in early, so they arrive in time (the earlier, the better)! With a special tip of the hat to the holidays, I’m offering free gift wrapping—yay for more stamping!

Have you noticed my recent interest in stamping? I got an awesome alphabet stamp kit (including stars), and as a gift from Era, some amazing little fork and knife stamps. What fun! More art (and stamping) to come as I get my shop ready for the coming gift-giving season!

Getting the Word Out

Making art is a pretty solo experience—it involves lots of time holed up in my office. The opposite of that introspective creative process is looking outward, connecting with art enthusiasts, and in general getting the word out about my art. Here are three manifestations of this concept that I have participated in recently:

Exhibit A:

Here’s my booth at Marguerite Montgomery Elementary (in Davis, CA) this past Saturday. It was a fun challenge to figure out how to display the new things I’ve added to my business since a few months ago, and display it all on one table—all of the shows I did this summer were outside in a 10 x 10 foot booth space. The small drawings in white frames will soon be released in my online shop. Here’s another view of my booth, including a mini table of hand-drawn buttons and a holiday-ish display of my Eat Well & Slowly Bags (sorry, it’s not the best picture, but you get the idea):

The craft show went well—I sold lots of cards and hand-drawn buttons. I was surprised at the good turn-out because the school is a little bit out of the way—it was a great way to kick off my holiday craft show season.

Exhibit B:

You may not have noticed this, but I added a mailing list to my blog. You’ll see a mailing list tab above, or you can just click here to sign up. Sign up for my mailing list, and you’ll get regular updates about new projects, shows, and other exciting creative tidbits from Blue Bicicletta.

Exhibit C:

I wrote a guest post over at the blog Indie Fixx. Jen, the creative mind behind the blog, has a regular post called “10 Things” where guest bloggers can create fun top 10 lists. I came up with the theme, “10 Ways to be Everyday Creative.” I had a lot of fun writing and illustrating the list, so go on over and check it out!

Top Secret: a book

I have been mentioning rather frequently that I have been thinking about books as a new direction for my artwork. Actually, if you follow this blog, you have already seen a miniature book in my first art monthly club packet. Even more, I’m interested in making books that play with the concept of a series in art—the structure of a book seems ideal for playing with repetition, and in general creating a whole world through a visual theme.

Well, I’ve started working on a book called Black Hole—if you’re familiar with my work, this title may sound familiar to you because I made a large painting by the name at one point (unfortunately, I don’t have a good picture). This book takes the words from the painting and creates a story around them. I had thought I would wait until the book was finished to mention it here, but I’m having a lot of fun making it, and I couldn’t resist. Here is the first page that includes a part of the words from the original painting:

Many of the pages will have the repeated profile of the “she” in the story, interrupted with other images and variations. I’m working my way through the book slowly, so there’s no telling when it will be done, but I just thought I would share a peek into this very fun project I’ve been working on somewhat secretly (sshhh, don’t tell anyone). Happy weekend!

Oh, The Possibilities

Today, I want to talk about possibilities. Mostly, I’m writing this because I need to hear it, but also, I think there might be someone else out there who needs to hear it.

I want to hear these words hanging in the air, I want them dangling from every tree. I want everyone to fling the doors open wide, and let the possibilities in, I want to fill this place with:

This is just a friendly way of saying that too often, we focus on what is not possible, but truly, anything is possible. I am telling you, it’s true.

I will get specific and tell you that I need to hear this because sometimes I focus on the ticking of the clock in my art career instead of the possibility. It hasn’t been long since I went full-time with my art, but I went into it with a time limit: if I couldn’t start making a full income by the beginning of 2010 (allowing myself just a few short months to amp it up), I would have to re-evaluate and find some other way to make money, and return to pursuing art part-time (until some future unspecified date, when I did find a way to support myself at it).

I put this in here not as my sob story, but because I want to be honest with you—honest with anyone out there who is in a similar situation. You are not alone. Truth be told: I love making art (I love it, I love it), but I am not yet making said full-time income.

So now, more than ever, with the holiday season dangling very near in front of me, the season during which many artists make a large chunk of their income, I am singing out to you and to me this message: ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. Don’t forget it. You wouldn’t want to.

[The above "Hope" drawing is one of my new, as of yet un-released drawings that I will be bringing to a local craft show this weekend. If it doesn't sell, it will be showing up here on the blog next week.]