I’m sure there are negative associations with trees out there (ok, the mean apple tree in the Wizard of Oz just popped in my head), but throughout various cultures and generations the image of a tree usually symbolizes positive attributes of stability, growth, fertility, knowledge, future, hope, caring for the environment, family bonds and life.
Last week I received an email from someone who wanted to buy a vector file of my Tree of Life illustration. Unfortunately, that is one of my earliest explorations in art as an adult, and I only had a low-resolution file available. Remaking some of these better selling images has been on my to-do list for a good while, and this was the motivation I needed.
So here are some photos and video of the latest work in progress and the final result:
If you truly enjoy the process of creating art, I believe you will pursue it regardless of the tools or space you have. That’s true of artists who work in any medium. I am reminded that Ray Bradbury once wrote from a typewriter that he rented by the minute.
When pursuing any path, I think there’s a tendency to think “if only I had _______” X would happen. We see that every year with New Year Resolutions. People buy memberships and workout gear. But in the end, you’re still the one who has to do the work and push past the challenges.
My Studio
It’s easier if you enjoy the work. Currently, I’m “making do” with less than ideal space and equipment. My studio doubles as my dining room table in a 1-BR apartment. I try to keep some order to the art supplies by keeping them in bins from the Container Store. A visit to a local fabric store resulted in a nice vinyl, felt-backed “drop cloth” to protect the table from paint.
There are currently so many things I want for my art — a digital SLR, a computer that won’t choke when I try to create digital art, and so on. But I’m trying to remember that lack of equipment can be a very valid-sounding excuse for not creating new work.
I really only began creating art as an adult in 2010. I’m especially proud of some of my art that I know was produced with less than ideal tools. All of my macro flower photographs were created with a point-and-shoot camera and substandard tools — buying a couple of yards of cloth (black and white) from the same fabric store, draping them over whatever object would serve as a backdrop, switching the overhead lighting to the whitest bulbs available, pulling a desk lamp over to serve as additional lighting, etc.
My current tools are hardly ideal, but I have to think there is some virtue in the discipline of not having immediate access to adequate tools. Starting small forces you to make the most of what you have and really focus on important aspects of your artwork, like composition.
We artists had a great discussion on Fine Art America this week about how we’ve made do with what we have. One of the artists who joined in is one of my favorite artists on FAA: JC Findley. The following example, taken with a point-and-shoot camera, really proves that most of what makes good art is the artist, not the equipment:
Ultimately, I am an optimist: I believe that if you keep doing what you love and you have at least a modicum of talent and are a student of good work, people will gravitate to your work, which will then reward your efforts with the resources to improve your tools. It’s a wonderful cycle to experience.
I’ve been revisiting some of my unfinished art from earlier this year. This one is a geometric abstract with a Star of David in the center. Light radiates from the star, and the combination of the geometric shapes and shading give it a feeling of movement.
Mixed media for me can be a combination of a couple different things (such as ink and colored pencil) or a whole slew of media. In this case, I created the original image in vector software (Xara) and then took that and recreated it in pen and ink. Then I used colored pencils. I think I might have even used some watercolor on this one, too. Then I set it aside for a long time and focused on other things. However, I just picked it up again, scanned it, and then edited it digitally (in Gimp and ArtRage) to intensify the color and contrast and make some detailed improvements.
When I looked up the definition of “pinwheel,” I found that it’s not only those shiny plastic things that spin in the wind, but also the name of a firework that is spinning fire. I like the implications of both of those in this abstract piece — both the firework and the spinning pinwheel requiring energy that can’t be seen to propel them and produce a mesmerizing effect — so I named it “Pinwheel of Light.”
Here it is on a canvas print in my Zazzle illustration shop. It’s also available on many other items, from stickers to greeting cards.
Last week I did a live broadcast of creating my illustration, “OCD.” You can view my Art by Liora channel at http://www.justin.tv/artbyliora.
There are other free and paid options for broadcasting, but Justin.tv is very simple and user-friendly in addition to being free. You’ll also find other artists there creating a variety of artwork.
Some of the benefits of a Live Video Feed of you creating your art:
One more venue of exposure for your art.
Source code to your “virtual” studio can be embedded in a web site.
Clips/highlights can be sent to customers and/or video sites like YouTube.
It gives a taste of the time and effort that goes into creating a work of art
Social media sites like Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter can be immediately and automatically notified when you go “live.”
Prospective customers may have a deeper appreciation and added interest in a piece if they see highlights of how you created it.
Here’s a highlight from the creation of my newest illustration, “OCD,” which is available in my main fine art shop and on a wide variety of items on Zazzle:
Having that pattern to the week really helped when yesterday (Thursday) rolled around. I think that knowing that an “intense creative workday” is coming up causes you to subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) chew on what you’ll be creating.
In the past I had doodled in a sketchbook answers to the question of “how would you draw OCD?” (as in obsessive-compulsive disorder). This week I found myself revisiting the topic as I was falling asleep, as I was driving, as I was eating dinner. So Thursday rolled around, and I made the mixed-media (ink, gouache, watercolor, colored pencil) illustration, “OCD:”
OCD (pen and ink stage)
OCD
This art is already available in my main shop and will also be in my Zazzle store within the next few days.
Welcome to my new art blog! This is where I’ll share with you thoughts on the creative process, what I’m working on, how I manage an art business on top of a full-time job, what I’m learning, the wonderful artists who inspire me, and more. Whether you’re a collector or a fellow artist, I hope you’ll visit often and add your knowledge and thoughts to the mix.
Here’s a sample of my most popular items for sale in my illustration shop on Zazzle:
In the ProSeller forum on the print-on-demand site Zazzle, another seller asked how much time successful shopkeepers should allocate to creative time versus marketing. This is a balance I want to improve on in the next year. I’m impressed when artists are so organized that they can respond with the percentage of time for each category.
Right now I would be guessing if I gave a percentage. I’m also no marketing expert and don’t have the resources for one. However, in the journey since starting to market my art on several sites and becoming a ProSeller on Zazzle, I’ve finally settled into some patterns and have discovered some things that are working.
Balance is the most important element that ties your efforts together.
If you’re spending all of your time creating and not doing enough marketing, no one will know your work exists. If you don’t take advantage of time savers that are available, you’ll soon find that you’re spending almost all of your time managing your business. Not having time to create really robs artists of time enjoying making art as well as quickly makes their stores stale.
Here’s a quick brainstorm of some things I’ve learned for maintaining a balance between creative time and marketing time since I started selling my art:
1. Have a pattern to your week. Designate certain days for certain tasks. If lingo helps, use it. For example, Monday Marketing just seems to help me remember what I should be doing on Mondays. On the days I work my bread-and-butter job, I do my noncreative work. The other two days are intensive creative days. Don’t underestimate the need for a day off; I take my Sabbath from Friday night to Saturday night.
2. Submit your work in a steady manner to the sites on which you sell. I’ve read that Google and other search engines would rather you have regular contributions than huge, sporadic contributions. So nearly every day, I create new products on POD sites. The art may not be brand new, but I’m offering it on an item on which I’ve never offered it before.
3. Submit your tweets and Facebook Fan Page posts in a steady manner. I’m sure we’ve all experienced following a business that’s been quiet and then suddenly exploded into multiple posts over a day (or worse — a couple of hours). My first instinct is to either hide their posts or unfollow them altogether — neither of which you want your prospective customers to do. To help keep things at a steady pace, I’ve finally fallen into a habit of scheduling my posts at least a week in advance. You can do this through most any site like Hootsuite. If you have some news you want to spontaneously share, you can always bump one of your scheduled posts to a later date.
4. Submit your blog posts in a steady manner. This isn’t my first blog, and I’ve found that both readers and search engines like regular contributions to blogs as well. Try to settle into a pattern that’s realistic. If you can’t find the time to post more than three times a week, then don’t shoot for six days only to find you have stretches with no posts. Like social media, blog posts can be written and scheduled in advance.
5. Reduce the number of sites on which you sell. There’s a camp that believes the more you spread your work on every site available, the better your chances of making a sale. I learned the hard way that this is not necessarily true. After months of having my work on both Etsy and Artfire, I learned that my copied-and-pasted descriptions of each piece meant Google was ignoring some of my products because they viewed them as duplicates. Oh the wasted time and money! But what a great thing to finally learn. If you do plan to sell on multiple sites, Artfire has some great tutorials on their forum about how unique each description needs to be to be recognized in search engine requests.
6. Limit or entirely omit non-POD sites. This was a necessary step for me when I found I was spending too much time maintaining listings and trying to calculate all of the associated costs and hassles of shipping my own items. Obviously, if you’re selling only original work, like jewelry or pottery, you don’t have this option.
7. Learn to make your own templates on POD sites. When I first tried to make my own templates on Zazzle, I was overwhelmed by the written instructions I read. It was only recently that I discovered that Zazzle seller Shopaholic Chick had added YouTube videos of the process. For some reason, that made everything click. I’m now seeing that I’m able to create more products on more items and in much less time than all of the manual adjusting required by the default “Quick Create” option on Zazzle. Learning to make your own templates and then making them is a small investment of time with a huge payoff that is worth every minute.
8. Keep records of what products you have for sale on what site. I do this through a spreadsheet in a process I’ll share in the future. Initially this felt like an unnecessary waste of time that could be better used just creating more art. However, it’s been an invaluable tool that has helped me reduce duplicates and ensure that each piece of art is available on every item that it fits well.
9. Use one central site as your hub. This would most naturally be a domain name in your name or your business name. Make this the jumping-off site for your various stores. Having a hub will save you time in trying to communicate the relationship of all of your sites. It will also simplify things like your email signature, your business cards, and other correspondence. Since your individual stores may come and go, plan on this hub being your long-term primary contact. So if you sell your art on several web sites, still put any standard contact information on the product as your main domain (like www.liorahess.com) rather than your shop URL of RedBubble, Zazzle or whatever it may be. This helps to reinforce your brand and keep it memorable in your customers’ minds. It also helps that page to be visited frequently and thus rank higher in search engine results.
So what about you? What have you learned about balancing creative time with marketing time? Please share in the comments! And if you found this post helpful, I’d be grateful if you’d help spread the word about this blog.
Welcome! Please enjoy browsing my gallery. By choosing from the drop-down list above, you can browse by subject. All prints and some originals are available in my Shop at a higher resolution or at the Zazzle stores listed below.
