Starting at the corners seems counterintuitive….
I found a great way to stretch canvases starting at the corners! According experts in restoration, it’s an archivally sound method that distributes the canvas’ tension evenly so as to avoid tension cracks in the painting’s corners.
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Foxfire, 2019.
Quite by accident, I recently stumbled across a method of pricing artwork that really sits well with me. No soul-crushing sterility of hourly or material rates, and no squishy guesstimations based on the sentimentality of “what feels right”. I’d written an earlier blog post on these other methods…
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I’ve already tweaked my home page a little since I wrote part 1 about setting up an art website.
Have you been considering getting a website for your art and you keep putting it off? The learning curve might be a little steep at first with some of the technical aspects of setting it up but it can be really fun once you get the hang of it. One of the most delightful and unexpected benefits of having a dedicated art website…
Read MoreI’ve had some sort of dedicated art website since 2000. The first one was a basic HTML single-page on my college’s campus server and I experimented with the design for a few years until I set up a templated site on Squarespace and bought my first domain. So very fancy. Until very recently…
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Kest Pottery “Eyeball” mugs. Thank you for a wonderful year!
For the past couple of decades, a late December tradition has been to look back on the past 12 months and give its passing some kind of assessment. I remember all the wonderful people in my year and the “successes” for which I’m grateful, and then there are the things that didn’t go as planned but I’m still happy if I learn something from the experience. This exercise is also accompanied by a list of
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This Steve Buscemi meme is like the Giving Tree.
You know that fun little new avatar creator, the Lensa app, that’s exploding in popularity right now? It’s made your new favorite avatars on your social media, it’s cheap, and best of all, you can tell it to make up to 50 avatars in a variety of art styles. Is it just harmless fun?
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Randy is a colorful little guy who likes to sing show tunes at the top of his lungs (usually while in the car).
The Monsterpots are what you’d call a staple in my Kest Pottery shop. In marketing parlance, it’s called a “signature item” that I make all the time and it’s a unique thing. One might call it a branded work and in doing so, I betray the fact that I’ve been doing waaaaayyyy too much research about marketing.
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I’m excited to share with you that I’ve recently partnered with Ms. Jane Frank of Wow-Art agency , online gallery representative, to offer the original paintings for three of my books:
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Gruber Goofypot and his monsterpot cousins will be changing their address in 2023.
Say “SEO” and my stomach churns a bit and I feel a low grade anxiety, but I can’t place its source. It’s just a phrase that describes the rules that govern how other people search stuff online. According to web wizards like Neil Patel, how your product/ offering/ service is searched by the majority of us humans is the guide by which you should choose your keywords— and not how you would maybe categorize it or describe it yourself.
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Poppies, digital 2019. Available as a print— click on image.
Lately, I’ve been doing a ton of research on marketing, sales, and passive income, in relation to my art career, so if you’ve also been wondering about this kind of thing for yourself too, then read on.
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Just Doing My Job, 18” x 24”, oil on gessoed paper. 2013.
What is your wonderful art nerd superpower and gives you great joy in the doing? Do you have a lot of "shoulds" chattering away in your brain, telling you that you need to make one kind of art over another? Is it motivated by the glittery prospect of surface rewards that have nothing to do with the deeper satisfaction of actually creating the work?
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Morels, 22” x 19”. Oils on Olio paper, 2022.
Are you an artist thinking about how to price your work? Are you a potential buyer looking for art that you like but with "affordable" prices? Here are some questions for you to consider:
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Writing a great artist statement can be frustrating and difficult. Being asked to synthesize a body of work into a 2-3 paragraph “statement” is hard because what we’re being asked to do is not a mission statement (ie what we’re going do to change the world) but a statement of our process and why. The point of an artist statement is…
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Secret Forest. Graphite, 17 x 13”, 2022.
Hmmm. What am I afraid to tell you about myself that might make some of you self-select out and say "nope, that's not for me" right from the jump? I thought about it and after a bit of mild cheek-gnawing, thought-- ok, I’ll tell you: I believe in magic ….yes, I do.
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Klaus’ Greenman, 2020. Red stoneware, 15” x 15”.
Why do we try to measure success by looking at what we don't yet have?
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Have you thought about the way we artists use repetition? If you identify your motifs, you will have acquired more keys to unlock the “why” of the work you do.
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Dragons are just a slightly different idea of dinosaurs …. This piece marks a turning point in my thinking. Oil on paper, 24” x 36”, 2018. The bright colors come from having a long career doing children’s books.
Trying to be something I really wasn’t meant that I hadn’t been paying enough attention to what my work was always saying to me. I lost my way because I got caught up in other artists’ journeys and what was successful for them, lured away by this idea that if I…
Read MoreI’d gotten to a point in my ceramic work where I was becoming curious about the chemistry and wanting to have more control over the surface appearance of my work, but even more, I wanted to cut down on the cost of my glazes. Commercial glazes are hella expensive but worth it for the reliability, and making glazes from scratch was a nightmare— so I was told….
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Apotropaion with Serpents in terra cotta.
You— yes, you, Creative-friend, you literally make something out of nothing. You are the Pie-Maker and can make endless amounts of pie. A long as you’re alive and creating, there’s no shortage of pie. There’s no need to compete with anyone other than yourself.
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