Category: marketing

More than painting this week, I’ve been marketing and trying to force myself to make scary phone calls.

I’m still getting trapped in my head a lot. Once you become your own boss, you have to learn how to keep yourself on track without the threat of being fired. As a reminder to stay positive, though, I’m focused on art for more hours of the week than ever before. I have faith that I will meet my time goals, pretty soon.

So here’s some of what I’ve been up to.

I’ll start with the newest thing, actually, because I’m most excited about it. The flowers are starting to come along and the background just feels really happy to me. I’m going to work on my face a bit more too, some finishing details. This should only take a few more hours. Working bigger is worth the results and the patience!

Just started a new palette. These are the colors for some of the flowers, which is mainly what I worked on today. I’ll fill up the rest of this in a couple days.

I want to show you the process for a cartoon-y, illustration-y piece I’m working on too, so here:

I started with a sketch that I then transferred onto a canvas I painted black. I then started by shading using white, so that I can pile other colors on top. It acts as a guide. The face turned out different. I actually like the face in the original sketch better, so I’m going to to save that sketch in case I want to turn it into digital art later on.

Then comes the messy stage. There’s always a stage where the piece looks sub par, but it’s a work in progress! This is where I mix the colors with enough water to make them transparent and start packing them on there.

Packing in more color…

Now the piece is coming along. I added lines with a sharpie, I’m not sure how I feel about it. I do think the piece looks better with lines, although I need to go back over some of them with paint to smooth them out. I’ll adjust the colors and the value of those colors… Basically, there’s still several things to do but this is where it starts to look good. This is also as far as I’ve gotten with it.

Now onto marketing stuff…

A couple days ago, I went to a bar called “The Avenue” where everyone I know seems to go. They have live music, art, and drinks so strong you’ll black out after just three of them… Anyway, they let me leave business cards there as well as free samples… I set up some of my art while I sat at a table to draw. I’ve read that doing this in cafes and such is a good strategy and I got their permission to do it. I hope to find other places to do this.

Finally, I got some professional business cards made, as well as coupons that I will hand out. I have both a family reunion and a class reunion tomorrow, so it should be a good opportunity for that. All I need to do is get over my shyness and talk to people.

I will be posting that coupon online as well!

So I guess that’s it. I plan to update more often, maybe with shorter updates. I need to build a larger audience, but I suppose that will come with time. Anyway, thanks for reading!