Life as an Artist: update 4

Hello, I’m here to give you another update on “life as a full-time artist,” a series of posts I’ve been doing about my first months as a full-time artist. You can see the previous posts here.

If I could give this post a sub-subtitle, it would be “ups and downs.” Everybody has ups and downs—it’s just life. Even when you’re doing your dream job, there are still good days and bad days. A couple of weeks ago, I had a pretty low week—worries about whether or not finances were going to work out for the creative shenanigan that is my life right now, were consuming me. I felt a bit like I was dragging around a couple of heavy weights in my heart, as I worried my way into a case of the blues. Talking to my husband, he said these sage words, “Everybody has down days.”

While this phrase did not immediately pull me up into the sunshine, it worked on me, it stayed in the back of my mind. As I continued to work on myself—realize that my worries were not helping me in any way (actually they were hurting me)—I was able to make a little peace with my blues. I ended that week with a little champagne to celebrate all that I have, and many prayers for guidance in figuring out how to navigate things. A few days later, I was on fire with possibility, and last week became a week of great possibilities—some new ventures, a lot of new ideas, and much renewed hope.

Writing this, I begin to wonder what the lesson is, or why I’m sharing this information. I suppose the moral could be what my husband said, “Everybody has down days,” even when they’re doing what they love. Actually, I think it can catch you even more by surprise when you’re doing what you really want to do. You wonder, “why am I not happy? I was supposed to be on cloud nine here!” As I’m learning, there will always be ups and downs, no matter what you do, but the real test is how you deal with them. I’m finding that if you just keep doing your work, the downs will pass, and if you keep asking for guidance from your inner self, the universe, god, whatever larger power you see in life, you will find your way, even if it’s slow. And sometimes it may be slow. But maybe it’s not supposed to be fast? This is something I struggle with often—patience is a virtue that I wish I had more of. From my art desk: I’m wishing you patience, the courage to carry on, and of course, as always, buckets of hope!

Black Friday Celebration: FREE SHIPPING on FRAMED Originals

Hello! As some of you may know, today is Black Friday—the biggest holiday shopping day of the year in the U.S. As even fewer of you may know, this coming Monday is known as “Cyber Monday,” because everyone goes back to work after a weekend of shopping just to continue their shopping online. Artists and crafters on Etsy are having lots of fun sales all weekend, me included.

I am offering FREE SHIPPING on all of my FRAMED original drawings. This is quite a deal, if I may say so myself, since these items are the bulkiest items to ship (compared to just a single, unframed drawing or print), so if you’ve had your eye on one of my framed originals, now’s the time to grab it up! My free shipping sale is going on through this Monday (from 11/27/09-11/30/09). Check out this section in my shop. Also, you can see this post and this post to see all of the framed originals I have recently mentioned. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Eat Well & Slowly

Value Your Time More Than Your Money

It Runs in the Family

It’s a good thing when you share your spouse’s particular brand of weirdness. The other night at dinner when my husband described to me a giant tumbleweed he saw on his bike ride home and suggested he might like to go pick it up and photograph it, I didn’t think this was weird at all. My main comments were various suggestions on how we could get it home. “We could drive,” I said. “I don’t think it would fit in the car,” he said. “Could we put it on the top?” I questioned. “That might work,” he replied. In the end, we decided to walk.

It was dark by that time, so the actual size of this tumbleweed remained elusive to me until we were upon it. As we walked alongside the large field this tumbleweed was said to inhabit, I began to make out a giant orb. The plan was for Mike to somehow hoist this mass of viney limbs on his back and carry it the 10 minutes back to our house, while I managed the dog. I wish I had had a camera. The sight reminded me of a Diego Rivera painting, with one of those enormous bundles of flowers on someone’s back. I couldn’t help myself from giggling all the way home. Towards the end, the tumbleweed began to catch on too many trees, so Mike began to drag it. What a sight he must have been to innocent bystanders, walking along the side of the main road with an enormous ball of limbs.

We decided, as we discussed how he would photograph it (he wanted to take it out of its context and create kind of a “studio portrait), that even if the photos didn’t work out, it was a really interesting natural sculpture on its own.

It reminded us of Andy Goldsworthy—such a perfect sphere that it almost looks man-made, or perhaps it is what man would try to create in order to imitate the perfection of nature. We plopped it in our front yard, and it nearly took up the whole space. Mike quickly dragged it to the back yard to try and capture it with the black backdrop of night.

Now, when I look out my office window, I see it sitting there, like a giant guffaw from nature. Even more, it reminds me of Mike, and how I love our brand of weirdness, and I hope we just continue to get more joyful in our weirdness as the years go on.

Check out Mike’s Post on the tumbleweed. Also, Happy Thanksgiving to all of my fellow countrymen.

[in case you didn't know, this is me being silly with the tumbleweed in our back yard]

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!