Winter Without White

I decided to get into the spirit of the holiday by painting a snow scene. I must admit first of all, that I've painted something very similar to this several years back, but I'm very fond of the reference and the other piece has always been a favorite of mine. So, this was just for my own satisfaction. I thoroughly enjoyed painting this scene again. It felt like coming home, so perfect for this time of year.

I painted this on Art Spectrum/Colorfix paper. The paper color was Elephant. I stuck with the reference pretty much, but wanted to keep the key of the piece pretty dark, even though it's a snow scene. By doing this, I knew I could accomplish the sparkling light spilling between the trees and keep the sense of mystery and wonder that attracted me to it in the first place. I like how the suggestion of a structure is hidden underneath the red branches. That's cool. The reference photo has more flat lighting, which I don't think is as dramatic, so I wanted to play up the drama a bit.

It was interesting just how dark I had to keep the foreground value in order to achieve this affect. I was surprised myself. Here are swatches of the foreground value and the lightest light, (the pinkish swatch), that I used in the middle ground and a swatch of white which I never used, just for comparison. The sky was a tan and a light yellow, so no white was used at all.

I hope you enjoy the piece and it helps gets you in the holiday spirit!!

Website Restored!!

Yippee!! My website was restored yesterday! I didn't have to populate the images myself as I first thought I might have to do. I do have to spend some time and organize it a bit, but basically everything is there. All of this has made me think about how important a good website is to an artist, so I put a list together of what is important to me in a website and another list detailing how a website is integral to an artists' business.

1. An attractive site that lets the work be the star - I like sights that don't have too much going on like a lot of flash stuff. Sites that don't compete with the work and display each piece large enough. I want to be able to customize my site so it doesn't look too much like every other artists' site out there.

2. Easy to navigate - the site has to be self explanatory and easy to access all the content.

3. Portfolio groupings - I like to be able to put my work into categories and be able to change the categories when I develop new bodies of work. I don't want to pay admin charges to say add a "Still Life" portfolio. This is especially important if you work in a couple media or "styles".

4. Content - I want to be able to put lots of content on my site, so if people want, they can spend a lot of time there and look around. So again, this means that on the admin side, I need to have the ability to add or subtract pages. This is also important if I want to do  a special event or promotion. I also want the site to be able to grow with me. For instance, I'm planning on doing some videos next year and want to be able to post these easily on my site.

5. Capture emails of visitors - having a guest book is really important. If people have visited once, they are more likely to visit again and bookmark your page.

6. Make a statement about who you are as an artist. This sort of encompasses all of the above, but I think different kinds of artists and art need different kinds of websites.


What impact does my website have on my business??

1. First and foremost, my site gives me credibility. Almost every business these days, has a website. You need one, if you are in business. I have so many clients that see me at a show in the evening, go home, look me up on the web then come back the next day and make a purchase. They need the reassurance that I'm "somebody".

2. Galleries,designers and architects can view a breadth of work quickly. This is huge and has led to large projects.

3. Direct sales. I don't sell too much right off my site, but patrons familiar with my work, sometimes see new work posted and will contact me for sales. I try very hard to make sure that each piece has it's gallery location listed, so patrons know how to proceed in making a purchase.

4. Workshops - students can see my workshop listings and download supply lists right off my site. This is a great thing for potential students and students that have registered for a class.

5. My website works in conjunction with other online tools, like this blog, email newsletters, social networking, snail mail marketing, shows and events. It all ties together.

Basically, I can't overstate the importance of a good website. Having mine down for an entire week was a potential loss of art sales and workshop registrations. It was a source of anxiety for me, but fortunately I wasn't in the middle a a show or promotion!

Here are a couple new pieces that I just posted to my "working" website. These pieces were all done on Wallis Sanded Pastel Paper. The two with water both had a watercolor under-painting.

Foliolink Saga

This post is a follow-up to my earlier post. Well, I was able to activate my site, with very little assistance from the Foliolink folks I might say. But now, I have to populate my whole site with all my images. This is such a tedious task. I won't be painting tomorrow after all. I'll be doing the work that they should have done for me, and so will my husband, Mike. He has a large presentation hitting the desk of a corporate client tomorrow. Yikes!! He has no choice but to manually populate his site :-((

Foliolink and the Lack of Customer Service

So my website has been down since last Wednesday. They didn't notify us, we had to find out ourselves and then they were not transparent about just how severe and deep the problem ran. They promised to populate our sites with images which were all completely lost, by Tuesday, (yesterday) and have our sites live again. No go. They have apologized for the "inconvenience" this may have caused. They have not offered any kind of compensation or reduction in our fees for the time the sites have been down, nor do they seem to understand the potential loss of business. They say they are working 24/7 on this. We've made nice calls and sent understanding emails. We've made more pointed calls and sent some not so understanding emails. At this point, I have little confidence that they will actually get my site live again by the end of the week, much less with all my images intact. I'm considering jumping ship to another site manager, but keep hoping they will actually get it up and running. I'd need to invest so much time in moving to another site. Just unsure of how to proceed. I'm super frustrated!!!!!! I know there are many problems in the world much more pressing, but if little prayers can be answered, I'm praying for my website : ) Then maybe I can sleep at night again! Here's what you get when you go to my website now:

This website is undergoing repair. Please try back again later. 

Back to painting tomorrow, website or not. I'm not going to let it get me. I've got several large pieces in the works that are starting to shape up pretty well. Also received some of my shopping spree pastels today from Terry Ludwig. Thanks, Terry!

Cookies & Website Blues

Well, what do ya do on a weekend that your website is down and ya can't do a thing about it? Bake cookies, I guess!!! That's what I did. My foliolink site continues to be on the down low. Bummer!!! Just glad that I didn't have a studio show planed or an online event. I tried to get into the studio, but decided to bake instead. If I wasn't an artist, I'd be a baker. I love baking. Today I baked cookies with my mom, but I also love baking bread and things that rise. I love kneading and watching the dough rise. When you get that right, nothing is better, well almost nothing.  Think good thoughts for the foliolink techs!!!

Website Woes

My website is down. Foliolink  had their server crash. Apparently they lost almost all the images of the artists/photographers that use their sites. Wow, what a nightmare!! Luckily I don't have a show or an article coming out, so it's not too, too bad. Please check back Tuesday or Wednesday. They said they would populate our sites with the images they recover by then. Right now it's just a "check back" message.

Makes you think though. We hosted our sites with a small company for about 15 years and never had this happen, then decided to go with someone bigger, thinking it might be more secure. Go figure. Now I'm thinking of posting images on a site like shutterbug, just to have a backup. Oh, the digital world!!

Cross your fingers for me.....Also, go Ducks!!

Careful, Thoughtful Mileage

All my students know that I'm big on mileage. You have to paint a lot to be good at it as in most things in life. Yes, you can have a knack for it, but there's no real substitute for doing it.  But putting in mileage doesn't have to mean that you dive in willy nilly and just put product down on a surface. And it doesn't mean that you paint just anything. I think that your mileage has to be very thoughtful and even careful at times. Being a really good painter means orchestrating your painting; having a focal point, directing your viewer there. This takes a combination of nuance and then hitting some passages hard and with authority. It means choosing your subject matter carefully, making sure it's something that enchants you. If it enchants you, likely your viewer will be too.

I'm working on a piece today that requires patience and nuance. This piece is all about the gesture of the trees and their relationship to one another, how they are dancing together. So a lot comes down to drawing. What is is front, what is behind, which branches are lost and found? How does the light dance between the trees? What are all the spaces between? I changed the shape of the tree trunks and the branches a bit from the reference to get the gesture that I wanted. There are several relationships going on here within the painting. The main tree shape,(lighter in value) and it's relationship to the background woods and then the darker branches reaching in from right side.

I feel like my work that is really good is the work that has both nuance and some guts. This is what makes painting endlessly interesting to me... This yin and yang. This could be said about just about any endeavor in life, I guess... Still working on this one. Like it, don't love it.