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!

A Tease of Buttons

Here’s a little teaser for something I’m up to and hope to be unveiling next week. For now, it can be a nice little still life from my desk.

Don’t you just love buttons and fancy papers?? I do. I pretty much drool when I go into the art store and see the racks of handmade papers, and I have a little bowl of buttons on my window sill. How will these two elements combine in my art world? In a very sneaky way—a little pocket of inspiration perhaps? Stay tuned!

Life as an Artist: update 2

Why, you may be asking, is there a photo of my ugly, dirty, sneakers at the top of this second post about being a full-time artist? Well, this morning when I was jogging with my dog, I got to thinking, as I often have, how jogging is a metaphor for my new career (and any career for that matter, or life in general).

You see, I don’t really like jogging, so I often find myself thinking while I jog about the nature of my relationship with jogging, and why I find it so hard to get motivated to jog. Don’t get me wrong, I like making art a whole lot more than jogging, I love it in fact, but the elements are the same: some days you wake up and feel great, you go out on a run, and you feel like a well-oiled machine. Other days, you can barely summon the motivation to put your sneakers on. This is life—it will always be like this, there will always be up days and down days, and how do you get through it? You put one foot in front of the other.

It is the importance of “putting one foot in front of the other” that I have been realizing so much about my art career this week. As I mentioned in my last post on this subject, this week was my first full week of being a full-time artist. How did it go? Some great moments, some scary moments, and a lot of in between—just the doing part of the art (the putting one foot in front of the other).

The great moments can be summed up by: “I can’t believe I get to do this all day every day (and not set foot in a boring office job for one second of the week) and “Wow, I’m really doing this!”

The scary moments can be summed up by: “Oh gosh, what will I work on next? I don’t want to do that. But I must, because I’m doing this all day, every day.”

The in between moments can be summed up by lots and lots of little steps and uneventful, but wonderful consistent work that helped me bridge the gap between the great moments and the scary moments and come out feeling successful. I am struck again though, by the jogging metaphor. I think we all focus a lot on big accomplishments, but I realize, especially during this week, that it’s the little accomplishments that are amazing—being able to say, “I finished this small step, now what’s next?” and then actually succeeding at going onto the next part.

It really hit me earlier this week that I am now the master of my own time, for better or worse. I have to face myself head on, every day. It’s completely up to me now, whether or not I get the work done—there are no more excuses like another job getting in the way. This is no surprise to me, but the reality of it is different than just thinking about it before it happens. Your neurosis don’t vanish, they exist, and you have to learn to work with them, or around them, or despite them. This is where “putting one foot in front of the other” really helps: when things get overwhelming, I just remind myself, “all I need to do is take one little step, do one little thing.”

And now I will salute all of you self-employed people—I have so much respect for you, especially now that I’m living this reality.

In summary, this was a wonderful week of learning about myself and creating. Unfortunately, many of the creations I am working on are not bloggable at this point because they’re part of larger projects that I will unveil all together when the time is right, but here are some ideas of what I’ve been up to:

-greeting card designs for a greeting card company that approached me in the summer
-a small book (chapbook/zine size) I’ve been scheming for some time and now actually have the time to work on
-some tiny artworks for the upcoming holidays
-one other new idea percolating about a way to expand Blue Bicicletta in a little bit of a new way

That brings me to one of the things I love about being an artist, and now being a full-time artist: you can build your work around lots of different, wonderful, creative things that you love.

Eat Well & Slowly: the tote bag

Lots of new things over here at Blue Bicicletta, like this:

Yes, that’s right—I made a tote bag! I’ve been thinking about it for a while after I’ve heard from multiple people that they like my drawings, but they just don’t buy much art, or don’t have room for it, but that they would love to see a tote bag or a t-shirt. I thought that my “Eat Well & Slowly” drawing would make the perfect farmer’s market or grocery shopping bag, so I found a local printer and got some made.

There is one little glitch in the story—I wanted a medium-sized market bag, and I thought that’s what I picked at the printer. Unfortunately there was some mis-communication because I ended up with 25 jumbo totes. The nicest thing about these larger totes is that you can fit anything in them—really—an entire picnic and blanket, two pool towels, or a yoga mat and a change of clothes, or everything you need for an overnight visit. They’re really usable and durable, and most of all, it’s just fun to see this drawing, that’s really important to my lifestyle, on a portable, everyday usable bag.

The bags are now available in my shop. Here are some close-ups:

Raspberry Fun

I seem to be in a self-critical mood these last couple of days, and I realize that I most often post about the glory of art, but rarely (somewhat deliberately) leave out the pesky challenges.

I have to say, three times was a charm with this drawing—I just couldn’t get it right, and wasn’t really even sure I did when I finished this version, although it’s growing on me. I just wanted to share this because maybe there’s someone out there who looks at all of my nice little posts about art, and doesn’t realize that sometimes I’m cursing at my pen after I flub up a line, or I smear something on the page, or I just have to face the realization that I did not do what I wanted to do, and I have to do it again.

Two great lessons of art are: learn how to forgive yourself, and realize that you are not your art. It’s easy to get critical of yourself when your art isn’t turning out, but the truth is: art is a process, and you learn by doing. Also a failed piece of art doesn’t mean you’re a failure, and you most definitely learned something in the process (which means the experience was a success, as are you for continuing on).

Sometimes I have to teach and re-teach myself these ideas and just know when to walk away. Last night was one of those times—I drew this raspberry drawing twice and couldn’t get it right—it bothered me a lot, but it was bed time. I came back to it this afternoon, and I’m much happier with my results today. So, all I’m saying is, hang in there, chin up, and try it again tomorrow.

5 x 5 inches, pen and ink, prints available in my shop

Photo Fun!

In an effort to get my shop in tip-top shape, I’ve been working on some more photos of my work, especially framed, and I’ve been adding some new items. I just added a “print set” section, and in it you will find a new set of four prints of my miniature landscapes. Here are some of the photos I took to show how these look framed:

Slowly, I am learning what works and what doesn’t for getting good lighting and tones on the paper. I took a whole slew of photos of different pieces in frames like the last two here. I mainly tackled 5 x 7 inch pieces yesterday because all of my 8 x 10 inch size frames are hanging at Nestware, a shop downtown, and some of my new items are a different size (like the 5 x 5 alphabet drawings), so I’ll have to cut a mat for them.

I’m noticing that over time, and copious photos, I’m beginning to see differences—the key seems to be comparing a bunch of photos to each other because often you don’t see a weird tint or bad exposure until you compare one photo to the next. These five photos are case in point—looking at them all together I think the wall hanging ones may be a little too light/bright compared to the lower two.

Well, I’m still learning (and surely always will be), but am happy with these efforts so far. Getting photos of all of my work framed is a goal of mine—it will probably happen over time. Check out my shop for new photos. I also may be offering some framed original drawings in my shop soon.

Pomegranate

So, it’s official, an alphabet series is developing. Right now, I’m going to call it a “Natural Patterns Alphabet.” That could change, but I want to tag it so people can find all the pieces together on this blog. This third piece took a decidedly fruity turn, but the inside of a pomegranate is just too lovely to pass up. I have a feeling that there will be several sub-series within the alphabet (I already see potential for natural homes and fruit), but the common thread will be something loosely defined as a “natural pattern.”

“Pomegranate,” 5 x 5 inches, pen and ink, prints available in my shop

I don’t think I will be putting the originals up for sale right now, until I decide if I will use some of them for a show, but please do let me know if you’re interested in a piece.

I learned many new things about the word “pomegranate” while doing this drawing, so now, I will bore you with some etymological information—I am such a word nerd, but honestly words provide me with endless entertainment! The English word pomegranate comes from the Old French words meaning “seeded apple,” in fact, the Italian and German words also translate to the same thing: “melograno” and “granatapfel” respectively. The most interesting version of the word to me was the French “grenade” because I found out that the weapon called “grenade” was essentially named after the fruit. Enjoy!

Hum a Hymn

Yesterday, I was looking through my sketchbook for some words I wrote down last week, and instead of what I was actually looking for, I found these words:

“Hum a Hymn,” 5 x 5 inches, pen and ink, available in my shop

I do love stumbling upon some old idea I had forgotten about, and then looking at it with a fresh perspective. This was a fun little drawing to do—I seem to be in love with the 5 x 5 inch size these days, and this “ribbon type” as I’m calling it is really forgiving and fun to draw.

Happy weekend to you!

Nesting

No painting yet—I’m letting that plaque simmer down after finally getting a coat of paint on it that I can be happy with, but I did build a little nest, just for you!

“Nido,” 5 x 5 inches, pen and ink, prints available in my shop, ask if you’re interested in the original

Nido (nee-dough) is the Italian (and Spanish) word for nest. I think it is one of those words that just sounds so much like the thing—intimate and cozy.

Could this be the beginning of an alphabet series? Perhaps, although that wasn’t my first intention, and there are a whole lot of letters in the alphabet—so I’m being non-committal for now. It is a little odd to start with the letter “n,” but that disorganization might be just the right amount of chaos to intrigue me to continue. Starting with “a” would feel so heavy and orderly. Doing a random series of letters (hoping to eventually cover them all) could be fun.

Honestly, I was looking for an excuse to do another drawing with a natural-looking border, then a nest popped into my head, and it sounded like fun to build a nest with lines. Then the Italian word followed, then the feeling that the nest should be on the bottom left. I wasn’t sure if I would include the actual word in the drawing until I put it on paper, but it just needed something to balance the nest out.

What fun I’m having today! First, I took a mental trip to Australia and South Africa along with some prints I’m sending out, then I built a nest, and now I’m off for a bike ride to run errands. Woohoo! How could my Thursday art day ever get old?

In My Mind’s Eye

I’ve been seeing several artists doing painting on wooden plaques lately, so when a couple of plaques found me in the thrift store yesterday, who was I to say no? I started to envision a brightly colored geometric painting on one of my dark wooden thrift store finds. I wanted to do a step by step set of photos, but today when I got home from work, I was so excited to get started that I forgot to take the before picture with the old plaque artwork—a cheesy poem and a painting of a little boy and a sunflower.

I got right to scrubbing the paper off the plaques and felt very inspired when I saw the lovely wood underneath:

Here are my two plaques drying after their bath. I liked how they looked at this stage so much that I considered leaving them this way and starting a wall hanging collection of blank plaques, but the vision in my head and my paints called.

Sadly, this post does not have a happy or colorful ending. As so often happens with a completely new project, things did not work out exactly as my mind’s eye imagined them. I now have one plaque partially painted, but just can’t seem to get the background color right.

Part of the reason I love working in pen so much is that it doesn’t involve drying time—I am not a very patient person. So perhaps, this post is about failure—”If you never fail, you never try anything new,” right? I hope to be back tomorrow with a finished painting. For now, I am trying to accept my defeat with grace—unfortunately, I don’t have quite enough grace yet to share a picture of my defeat! But stay tuned!