If you can.

I think it will be really fun. :)

My art will be up Friday and Saturday, and husband will be reading a short story (and maybe some poems) on Friday night.

If you’re tired of beach paintings, you don’t have to worry…this is the last one (for a while, at least). Given my short attention span, I’m kind of impressed that I managed to finish four.  Painting in sets is definitely the way to go, though: it forces you to really work on an idea and a technique instead of just skipping along to the next thing. If you have trouble sticking with something, try telling a bunch of your friends that you’re painting a set of four and that you’ll put them online when you’re done — it really helps with the motivation!

I think this one is stylistically a bit different than the others — it’s more layered, in a way. It sounds silly, but I wanted to get a little bit of the inblended paint-by-numbers look. So when I painted the barnacles at the bottom, I kept the different layers and colors distinct. What do you think?

After thinking about my realism post some more, I’ve come to the conclusion that I sometimes set up a false dichotomy between realism and abstract-ism. I mean, it’s not like those are the only two options! A lot of what I envy in other artists’ work is the ability to distort or exaggerate an object in a particular way. A great example of this is Camilla Engman, whose work I love — she’s certainly not entirely realistic, but neither is she abstract. I doubt that I will ever paint an entirely abstract piece, as those generally don’t attract me all the much…what I really want is to have my own particular way of exaggerating what I see into something new and unique. I guess that’s what I usually mean by “style.”

I felt pretty happy with the somewhat stylized effect in this painting until the thought popped into my head that it looked a bit like I had run it through a live trace in Illustrator. Ugh. Upon looking at it again I think you can pretty clearly see the layers of paint, etc., but it’s not nice to feel like you’ve just spent hours doing something a computer can do in 20 seconds. As Uncle T mentioned in the comments to the realism post, there’s not much point in acting as a mere image translator anymore since a computer program (or a camera) can do that so easily and effectively. The challenge to the artist, then, is to make something that requires more interpretation than just a rearrangement of pixels or vectors. Something that has to have human eyes + brains + hands in there somewhere. Something that is truly creative instead of just imitative.

Lauren asked if I have any “mentors,” and I’m going to have to think about that for a while since it’s really hard for me to generate a list off the top of my head. I might have a Mentor Week in the near future…wouldn’t that be fun? A week of sharing the artists/illustrators/crafters who inspire us?

On the (*cough*) sales front, now that all the paintings are done I thought I’d mention that I have just ordered 5×7 prints of each of them for le shoppe. All of the originals except (possibly) Barnacles have sold, but I will be selling high quality giclee prints of Starfish, The Pretty Rock, Seaweed, and Barnacles, plus three my three favorites from the Peaceable Kingdom set (Lion + Lamb, Wolf + Deer, Seal + Penguin). It will probably be at least a week before they go in the shop since I need to take some photos, etc., but I’ll let you know when they’re here. :)

I am (literally) seeing things a little differently this week, as both husband and I picked up new pairs of contacts on Saturday. He has never had them before, and I haven’t worn them since our wedding day and, previous to that, my senior year in college. It’s kind of strange not to have the familiar frames perched upon my nose. We immediately picked up sweet new pairs of sunglasses, which are a luxury that neither of us have had in ages, and I love the freedom of not having something in front of my face all the time. I’m waiting for the you-messed-with-your-eyesight migraine to start anytime now, but contrary to my expectations, Excedrin and I have had been getting along quite nicely so maybe this will work out after all. I really don’t want to wear glasses for the rest of my life. Father-in-law has asked for photo documention of this momentous change in our lives, so I might try to snap some pics this week.

Before I forget, this week’s Monday Moving Sale special is on 8×10 prints. As with the cards (which are still on sale as well!), I am selling off my inventory and don’t plan to print more. So if you’re interested in A Bird for All Seasons, Three Days of Christmas, or Hats, get ‘em now while they’re only $10 each…

And speaking of forgetting, my fam reminded me that I haven’t posted the winning Renaissance Fair poster from a while back. There’s a short bio feature here…um, can you tell I’m a little more long-winded than the other girl? I didn’t know how long it was supposed to be, so I was squirming in my seat at the awards ceremony when my “about me” statement seemed to go on and on. Sigh.

You can find images of all the past posters here, and I think the progression is really interesting to look at. They’re pretty diverse, but I think that some of the older ones are more graphically inventive – 1979, 1986, and 2003 are my favorites. What are yours?

The finished poster:

The painting:

A closer look:

Stepping out of the pages…

If you are the kind of person who has trouble drawing stick figures, you might want to stop reading now. Otherwise, you are probably going to find me very annoying.

My feelings about people who can’t draw are similar to my feeling about people who (like me) can’t run fast. Practice helps, of course, but in the end one must conclude that God doesn’t deal cards even-handedly. I know that I’ve already spent too much of my life wishing that I had someone else’s hand instead of my own, so that’s why I can’t decide whether I ought to be content that I’ve received a Realism trump card or whether I ought to keep shuffling things around and trying to find something a little more exciting at the bottom.

With few exceptions, my fall-back drawing style has always been photorealism. When I was growing up and scribbling little scenes in the margins of my notebook, my mantra was always realistic = good. Did the horse look like a ‘real’ horse? Did the face look like a ‘real’ person? If not, I’d better try and fix that.

I think that some of this comes from the way in which a child is naturally impressed by a display of technical competancy. If you show a room of six-year-olds a painting by a Dutch master and a painting by Picasso, they are going to be much more excited by the bowl of fruit. How did he make it look so real?, they will ask (and, in my case, pick up a box of crayons and try to do the same). I have found from experience that, when drawing for a child, it is best if all the lines connect and nothing is left to the imagination — woe to the babysitter who leaves the whiskers off the kitty drawing!

In my situation, this early tendency to prefer the straightforwardly realistic was also reinforced by the art training I received in school. I am not wanting to make a general critique of my very excellent private school, and I hope that anyone reading this will understand that I liked and respected my art teacher very much. However, my high school did not actually teach students how to draw or paint. It taught them how to copy. Owing in part to a philosophy of extreme reverence for tradition and in part (I’m afraid to say) to the fact that it is much easier to teach copying than creating, the students had very few opportunities to strike out on their own. I took an art elective just about every semester it was offered and only once did I have the opportunity to draw from life. All the other semesters, we were told to choose two “great paintings” and spend the entirety of the class reproducing them to the best of our abilities. This is not a bad exercise for improving technique and it is certainly very good for giving high school kids a proper view of their abilities (yes, Michelangelo was a lot better than you). However, it never teaches you anything about drawing a three-dimensional object and — due to the careful selection of artwork that was considered acceptable copying material — gives one a rather narrow sense of what is and is not good art. Representational = good, non-representational = bad.

It took a careful reading of My Name is Asher Lev when I was in college for me to start to re-think this approach to art. I will add that the book initially filled me with woe at all the ways in which I did not match the author’s description of the true Artiste and perhaps replaced one faulty paradigm with another, but in the end it was quite helpful.  Perhaps my drawing did not need to look exactly like the subject matter for it to be good. Hmm.

Before I wandered too far into apostasy, however, I was yanked back to the world of realism by my courses at the Rhode Island School of Design. After graduating from college and teaching abroad for a year, I spent two years living in Providence and taking night classes to complete two certificates, one in Natural Science Illustration and one in Children’s Book Illustration. My scientific illustration classes were, initially, everything that I had hoped for and craved. I was given an object and a medium and told to make my paper look as much like that object as possible. After two hours, we tacked our results to the wall and had a group discussion about why the right side was too dark, the left side too light, and the pencil not quite soft enough. This was repeated with pen, watercolor, acrylic, apples, oranges, flowers, and stuffed birds, and I learned a tremendous amount.

After a semester or two of this, however, I began to feel pulled in several directions at once.

You need to look at the textbook examples more carefully, said my scientific illustration instructor. Did you see the one where every scale on the fish is counted? I’m not sure all your petals are quite right, and the whole piece looks a bit flat.

You are much too tight, said my children’s book illustration instructor. Why can’t your drawing be more whimsical? Children like looseness, you know. Maybe you could be more spontaneous instead of planning the whole piece out so carefully.

As the semesters progressed, I went from feeling “mildly pulled” to feeling as though I was in the middle of a war zone. I had to be different artists on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights and somehow produce a corresponding gradient of homework. I began to look with envy at the other students who had only one assignment and one style to deal with. Some instructors were sympathetic to my plight, but those with a very specific idea of what they wanted produced many tears as I trudged up the hill to my apartment after class.

My distress increased when it came time to put together a final portfolio, i.e. that which you show to publishers and hope to get hired. Mine was the portfolio of a dabbler, and I knew it: my big challenge was finding an even number of pieces in each style so that I could at least make a consistent two-page spread. It was somewhat demoralizing to find that, after two years of hard work, I still didn’t have a discernible Paula-look that I liked.

Friends and family will know that, after finishing my courses at RISD, I had some very good reasons not to pursue illustration as a career. These included moving to a small town in eastern Washington, finding a dependable job that paid the bills, and marrying a certain wonderful man. I turned to crafts and sewing and occasionally covered the dining room table with pencils and paper and paints, but I couldn’t really describe myself as an artist. This was not bad — there’s a time for everything (including art), and my first year of marriage was not it. As time progressed, however, I began to participate in a few Illustration Friday themes and one of them turned into the Alphabirdybet letters. And then those turned into an Etsy shop. And then that shop turned into…well, I’m still deciding.

….

Wow, I really got off track. How about a little history of my art career? I meant to describe my ongoing love/hate relationship with realism, and I guess it turned into something else. But you get the idea, right? I always thought I wanted to be a really photo-realistic artist, but then when I got my chance it turned out that this wasn’t what I was really looking for. Counting fish scales? Making precise stippling dots with a rapidograph pen? These only encourage my rather destructive natural tendency toward perfectionism and are kinda boring to boot.

As I have cast around in the last six months for a “style” to use in my Etsy shop, I can feel myself again being drawn toward realism and simultaneously wanting to fight against it. I keep trying to start and finish an abstract-ish painting, but every time I find that I can only maintain it for about twenty or thirty minutes. And then I have to add feathers and leaves, shadow and highlight, background and foreground. I am not unhappy with my recent work — I’ve really enjoyed the Day at the Beach series, and I’m glad that you have to. It’s just that it’s not what I originally envisioned for the project. I’m like a pinball that keeps rolling back toward the hole at the bottom of the realism maze, only occasionally managing to get stuck on one of the little ledges half-way down.

Okay, enough soul-searching for today. Any comments/suggestions will, of course, be appreciated as I try to figure out where to go from here. In the meantime, it’s back to the drawing/painting board for me…

Here it is — painting no. 3 in the Day at the Beach series.

This piece was an interesting challenge to paint because of the translucency of the seaweed. All of the other items in the series so far (starfish, rocks, barnacles) have been opaque, and I wasn’t sure that I could get the green-filled-with-sun color I wanted. I think that oils are a far better medium for that sort of thing…I’ll probably have to convert, eventually.

Husband really likes the background in this and the starfish painting, and I was pretty pleased with the way that they turned out as well — a bit of abstract-ness to go along with the realism of the main object.

I did have an inquiry as to whether the pieces will be for sale, so I’ll go ahead and clarify that now. The four in the set have been made specially to hang at Thee Malebox Spring Gala ‘08 at Asher + Matt’s house on April 25-26 (er, if you’re local and don’t know where that is, let me know and I’ll scrounge up the actual address). The paintings will be $90 each, and any that are left will go into ye olde Etsy shoppe afterward. Interested in one now…? Send me an email or leave a comment and I’ll be in touch. I will be making some prints, but I have to say that the original pieces have a texture and luster that can’t be replicated.

A note about art sales: I try to keep this blog from becoming one big advertisement for my Etsy shop and I hope that you don’t feel as though I am trying to sell you things all the time. I’m not. I like to talk about the painting process, and a lot of times I end up trying to sell the finished piece since it’s nice to get paid for my time + effort and it makes me feel like a legitimate artist/craftswoman. However, I really don’t want my friends to feel as though I expect them to buy my work! Please feel free to read and look and never buy a single thing from me, if that’s what you want.

In the spirit of preparing for our May (to Pullman) and July (to Pensacola) moves, I’ve decided to start clearing out some inventory through my Etsy shop. This will involve both items that I’ve decided to discontinue (cards, some prints) and some original pieces from a few years back.

This is both fun for me — hey, everyone loves a sale! — and good for my overstuffed craft room, which cannot possibly fit into a box at the moment.

The first Monday Moving Madness sale is on the Sparrow and Quail Notecards, which are now $5 for a set of four. (Some other card sets are discounted as well). I won’t be re-printing these, so get ‘em now if you like the design!

Because you are my loyal blog readers, I’ll go ahead and give you advance notice that all the 8×10 prints will go on sale at some point, but the Alphabirdybet Letters will not. I need to scrounge around my portfolios for the originals, but I’ll probably be selling off some pencil drawings (leaves, shells, etc.), a scratchboard piece or two, and maybe some watercolors. And they’ll be priced to sell. :)

Also, I am always happy to waive shipping costs for locals if you are willing to pick the item(s) up from my house or at church. I feel very silly shipping across town!

Because I like to plan too far ahead, I have started scoping out the Pensacola Craigslist to see what kind of furniture they have floating around. So far, I have found a pretty unimpressive stream of floral couches, mahogany dining sets, and rattan bedroom furniture. But then earlier this week I hit the jackpot: someone was selling what appeared to be–I am not joking–a real Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman for $150.

I emailed that day, explaining my interest but I couldn’t pick the item up right away. Naturally, someone else called faster and it was already gone. After I had already planned out my entire (imaginary) living room and (imaginary) apartment around that chair, complete with some sketches. I’m going to stop looking at Craigslist until July, because this sort of situation is probably bad for my blood pressure.

Have a good weekend, all, and come back next week for A Day at the Beach No. 3. Thank you so much for all of your kind comments about The Pretty Rock!

This is the second painting in my A Day at the Beach series.

When husband saw that I planned to paint a bunch of rocks, I think that he was skeptical of both the technical challenge and potential time-consuming nature of the project. But it turned out that, now that I’ve got some technique issues settled, it didn’t take all that long. Plus, gouache is a really good medium for the subject matter. (At least, I think so.)

The piece is only 5×7 inches, and I did most of it with just one brush. I did add a few tiny details at the end with a smaller brush but decided not to kill my eyes by going nuts with it…it really does work best from a few feet away, anyhow.

I have (of course) some related thoughts about style, realism, etc., but I’ve decided to try to let my art stand by itself a little more.

At least, as much as I’m capable of letting it…

I finished an entire painting on Saturday, which is a marked speed improvement over the last one! (I also discovered that I can paint while sitting on the couch, which is certainly comfier than the dining room chairs…will definitely try that again sometime.) But since my train of thought is still running down the Etsy + printing + prices track, I’m going to wait a bit for show & tell.

I really appreciate each of you who took the time to leave a comment on my printing post, and I’m adding Rosina’s name into the drawing mix since she spent a pleasant 15 minutes talking with me in person about the post. In continuing the discussion, I’m going to take the liberty of quoting from the comments since I always like it when someone responds specifically to my question/point and assume that others feel the same way. I don’t know how many of you readers have Etsy shops, have made purchases Etsy, run another type of crafting business, etc., but I hope that this discussion will be profitable for you as well and that you won’t mind the big long post.

(Esther said)
My input, as someone who likes to buy art but doesn’t have a big budget to do so, is to raise the cost of shipping and require delivery confirmation. I don’t mind paying more for shipping if I know it will help it arrive safely. But I know I would have to swallow hard before I started considering $45 prints, especially for my kids’ room.

Delivery confirmation (and insurance) seems to be the way to go, so I’m definitely going to change my shipping policy! You’ve confirmed my fear that I am starting to price my friends out of my prospective market for the big prints, which is something I’d like not to do–I really don’t know how to handle that situation. But then again, I’m also hoping that the individual letters provide a low cost alternative.

(Meg said)
You should make whatever art you want to make to sell- it sounds cheesy, but as long as you enjoy making it (and aren’t just making it to suit a particular market) it will show through and people will buy it.

Meg, this is an important issue that deserves its own post sometime. Quite frankly, it can be really hard to tell when I am orienting my work more toward my own vision and taste and when I am orienting it toward the market. I think any artist struggles with “to thine ownself be true” vs. paying the bills, and an illustrator is even more entangled since he/she creates art to fill a need and needs usually come with restrictions. (The items in my Etsy shop are really more fine art than illustration, but the art training that I’ve had has primarily been from the viewpoint of the illustrator and it’s hard for me not to feel as though I am illustrating for an imaginary client, the Average Etsy Buyer.)

Plus, there’s the added temptation to take a look around Etsy and see what other people are doing that sells well–it’s kind of like doing marketing research. I am not referring to copying outright, but if folksy animals or sweet vintage children seem to be the ticket to 1000 sales, it might not be a bad idea to make some notes. Take a look at this post over on A thing of beauty…see any themes?

The downside is that it’s hard to maintain enthusiasm about a style or subject matter that’s not your first choice, and I think that the buyers can tell this (which you alluded to). Plus, certain categories seem so often-repeated (ink drawings over old book pages, anyone?) that it seems as though painting one more would be like writing yet-another high shool essay on Shakespeare. I do not at all mean to knock the creativity of the first five (or ten or fifteen) people who tried this technique or to say that it doesn’t look good. I also don’t mean to imply that you have to create stunningly original works each and every time or that you need to find a market niche to belong to. I just mean to say that the issue is complicated and that I would LOVE to hear some honest discussion about issues of inspiration, originality, and the marketplace.

(Lauren said)
Prints probably sell better on Etsy than originals. Especially when originals are priced as they should be.

Pricing is so hard! In the Etsy forums, I frequently see new sellers encouraged to raise their prices, which is undoubtedly the right thing to do as artists frequently undervalue their time. Uncle Ted made the perceptive comment that “People are hardwired to believe that high price equals high quality in art. Perversely enough, you will sometimes see sales go UP if the price is higher, because they assume that you are an elite artist.” I remember this from my marketing course, and I am sure that it’s true. But it is also intimidating to raise your prices by $100 (which you certainly could!) since it really decreases the pool of potential buyers.

I think prints generally do sell better on Etsy than originals because prints are a low-cost, low-commitment way of experiencing an artist’s work. Which brings me to…

(Monica said)
As a previous buyer of an original painting that I absolutely love, I think you can definitely raise your price on original art and have more of those available. They don’t have to be big, so you can still charge more and still be affordable, but the buyer gets the pleasure of getting an original work of art and I think that counts. I like prints, but when the costs of a print start creeping up too high, I tend to prefer to buy some original art or craft instead.

Monica, it is quite kind of you to say this and I do believe that I will be taking your suggestion…I think I’d like to offer more originals (with prices raised but not out of sight) along with some inexpensive gocco prints. This is where the big Alphabet print is again uncomfortably in the middle–expensive for a print, but not an original. I might end up phasing it out in the end. Sigh.

(Mackenzie said)
And I second the original art thing, too. Have some prints available but original art, even if it’s teeny tiny is a HUGE draw (at least for people like me). Multiple products at multiple price points - have some more affordable prints and more lucrative originals and you can draw a wide range of customers, says I!

“Multiple price points” is a phrase that I’ve seen in a number of places, and it seems to be the key. I won’t forget this!

Uncle T, I don’t take issue with your keen business sense or your well-informed comments. Artists probably ought to talk with businessmen more often…I think it can often be viewed as selling out when it’s really just a source of selling wisdom. Right?

I don’t think I’ll change Paulabirdy at this point since it causes a small blip of recognition and, well, I just happen to like it. But if I was starting all over again, I’d just be Paula Gibbs.

I’ll quote you on Return on Investment, though, since I think it is a very necessary point for the independent artist:

With all the pressure on you, you will simply not keep something up that doesn’t pay back. What you need to do is say, “my time is worth $20 per hour, on average for each sale I am putting in around 10 hours of worth, therefore, I will charge $200. This means that you need to cut out all the bottom prints. Your intuition is absolutely correct.

I think that the problem with this concept is mainly an emotional one. The artist is keenly aware that his/her product is not as necessary for daily life as a hard drive. No matter how well-reasoned the arguments for the place of beauty in one’s home, the art market still feels like a luxury market. And when you feel as though you are selling something non-essential, you don’t want to ask people to pay a lot because you’re afraid they won’t. And then you’ll be stuck with the 10 hours of unpaid work, and at least $5/hour is better than $0/hour.

Of course, my impressions may be shaped by the fact that I leave in a community where people are usually cheerfully scraping by. I don’t know what it’s like to have neighbors with BMWs and expensive leather couches and Chanel handbags. I have seen these places and know that they exist, but my experience with this type of buyer is so limited that I find it easier to cater my work toward what I know than that which is unfamiliar.

…

Hopefully you won’t all think I’m a moron after reading this or that I’m completely money-driven. This blog is my place to think out loud right now, since I find that putting thoughts into words is a really good way to clarify them. If you have any other comments or want to continue the discussion, please please feel free to chip in. I do love feeling as though we are having a discussion instead of just leaving comments.

Oh, and you probably thought I forgot! The winner of the little drawing (thank you, random number generator) is…ROSINA.

And no, I did not rig the results just because you gave me some yarn. :)

I finished the starfish painting last night!

The medium is gouache and the size is about 5 x 7 inches. It is the first in a set of four called “A Day at the Beach.”

I don’t know why, but each time I begin a gouache painting I feel as though I have to learn a few basic lessons all over again. I have to remind myself to start with a base color, move on to the darks, and then add the highlights last. For some reason, I always want to jump to the highlights and end up muddying the whole image and needing to sponge a lot of paint off. (More good reasons to buy thick, expensive paper.) 

I’m trying to finish all four paintings in the set in time for a small local art show at the end of April, so I’m hoping that I can figure out how to streamline my method. This one little painting took me 8 or 9 hours, and I don’t have enough spare time to finish the others at rate I’m going!

The colors that I’m seeing on my monitor are just not the same as those in the painting, so I hope that many of you get to see this in person — I’ll be sure to announce details of the show (Thee Spring Gala at Asher + Matt’s house) when I get them.

I thought about adding some paragraphs here about effort and pricing, but since it’s Friday and I’m still mulling over my last post I think I’m going to wait. It sure is nice to write about things I really care about instead of just fluffy little posts about last night’s sewing. Not that there’s anything wrong with those at all, but I think Jupiterbuttons has been wanting a little more content for a while. So thanks for showing up and putting up with all my thoughts about art and Etsy.

Have a good weekend, and don’t forget that you have until Sunday night to leave a comment on the last post and get into the drawing!