Emptyeasel

In matters of technique, Brian Cody is a fairly traditional watercolor artist: his use of line and color is exact, and his work tends toward photo-realism. His subject matter and quirky compositions, however, are a little farther off the beaten path.

Brian started his professional art career in illustration and art direction. Today, he “constructs” reality-based watercolor paintings inspired by local natural elements. These include beaches, salt marshes, forested trails and farmlands. What makes his images even more unique is the dose of humor he injects into each one.

Brian “constructs” his compositions carefully. He starts with an image in his head, then looks for resources to work from, including photos from natural sites, florist shops, or anywhere else. These images are transferred to tissue paper and vellum, where he manipulates them into the final layout. The final composition is transferred to watercolor paper, where the real magic begins.

Originally, I was drawn to Brian’s detailed botanical images, like the one below. These leaves were found during a walk through the woods, and then delicately recreated on paper in this simple grid pattern.

As I dug deeper into Biran’s paintings, I began to enjoy his sense of humor as well. . . both in his subject matter (where he often personifies various inanimate objects) and in his descriptions of these paintings.

In regard to the painting above, he writes, “As I foggedly entered the kitchen early one morning last week, I startled the house corkscrew juggling a dining room daisy. . . “

Brian also compares watercolor painting to “herding cats” because “you never know what you’re going to end up with.” Yet despite that humble statement, it’s easy to see that Brian always maintains total control over his paint—even in his completely nonsensical pieces, like this one:

Simply entitled Toast, this piece is a unique combination of visual humor and art deco styling. Where else in the world can you find an asparagus toaster with the clean lines and flawless reflection of a classically restored automobile?

My bet is “nowhere.”

So if you have a few moments today, I highly encourage you to check out Brian’s full portfolio website of watercolor paintings.

And when you do, don’t forget to read the descriptions!

Many artists who have their own blogs also choose to micro-blog via Twitter. Twitter, as you may already know, is an online social networking service that allows bloggers to share information in under 140 characters.

Bloggers use Twitter to bring traffic “back to their blogs” by providing automatic post updates, as well as sharing quick and easy messages (or tweets) for any subject that they don’t necessarily want to create an entire blog post about.

Twitter is also a viral marketing tool. If you write a great blog post and link to it on Twitter, your Twitter followers can easily share it themselves with a simple click of the “Retweet” button—and their followers can do the same!

In today’s article I’ll explain how to set up your Twitter account, how to automate your blog posts to show up in your Twitter stream, and how to place your Twitter stream on the sidebar of your art blog.

Step 1: Start at Twitter.com

Go to http://twitter.com and click on the green “sign up now” button.

After clicking the “sign up now” button, you’ll be taken to the setup page below.

Fill out the required information: full name, user name, password, and email address. Next, read through the “Terms and Conditions” and click on “create my account.”

A pop-up screen will appear asking you to verify that you’re indeed a human. Just retype the words that appear in your screen and click “finish.”

Step 2: Find people that interest you

Now that you have a twitter account, you can begin to “follow” people on Twitter. This page is the next page you’ll see:

Feel free to browse the category list on the left side of the screen to find new Twitter friends to follow, or just skip to the next page by clicking on the blue “Next step: friends” button.

Once you click “next” you’ll be taken to the “Find Your Friends” page:

If you’d like, you can add your email contacts, but we’re just going to click on the blue “Next step: others” button. Of course, you can always go back and add your email contacts later.

Once you click “next” you’ll be taken to the “Search For Anyone” page:

Again, to save time, we’ll just click the blue “Next step: You’re done” button. However, if you have someone in particular that you know is on Twitter, and you’d like to follow them, you can enter their name in the field provided, and add them to your list of people to follow.

Step 3: Confirm your Twitter account

At this point you’ll be taken to a page asking you to check your email account for a message from Twitter, and click on the confirmation link that it contains.

Just log into your email account, find the email with the subject “Twitter” and click on the link in the email.

At this point, a new screen will pop up with a message that reads, “your account has been confirmed.” And as quickly as the message appears, it will disappear, leaving you to explore your Twitter account.

Step 4: Add Twitter to your blog

While in your Twitter account, click on the “Settings” tab on the upper right corner of the screen to be taken to the “Settings” dashboard.

Click on the “Profile” tab to be taken to the following page:

Scroll down until you see the words “You can also add Twitter to your site here” and click on the link. You’ll be taken to the “Widgets” page, shown here:

Under “Widgets for…” click on “My Website” since you’ll be putting this widget on your own blog. On this page, click on the Profile Widget.

At this point, you can customize your widget.

You’ll need to play around with the settings (appearance, dimensions, preferences) so that the widget matches your blog’s color scheme. Once you’ve customized the settings, click the grey “Finish & Grab Code” button on the bottom of the screen.

Once you click on the Finish & Grab Code” button you’ll be taken to the following page, where Twitter has made it very easy to place the widget on your Blogger blog. You can simply click on the blue “Add To Blogger” button as shown below.

When you click on the “Add To Blogger” button, you’ll be taken to a log in page for Blogger. Log in with your Blogger ID and password to be redirected to the “Add Page Element” page on your blogger account.

Just click the blue “Add Widget” button to automatically add your Twitter feed to the sidebar of your Blogger art blog.

Now, there’s just one more thing you MIGHT want to do. . .

Step 5: Log into your Feedburner account

If you already use Feedburner to deliver RSS feeds for your blog, then you’ve got a great tool just waiting to be combined with Twitter, too!

Go to http://feedburner.google.com and log into your Feedburner account. Once logged in, click the name of your blog to be taken to your dashboard.

Click on the “Publicize” tab (the middle tab on the top of your dashboard) to be taken to the “Publicize Your Feed” area.

Click on the “socialize” tab on the left column:

It’s here that you’ll link Twitter to your Feedburner account so that Feedburner can automatically “Tweet” your new blog posts for you. This means that every time you publish a new post, you’ll be sending out a tweet to all your followers, too!

Just click on that “Add A Twitter Account” button and a new screen (from Twitter) will pop up asking you if it’s OK if Google accesses your Twitter account.

When you click on the green “accept” button, you’ll be redirected back to your Feedburner account. At this point, you’ll see your twitter account integrated into your Feedburner account.

To complete the integration and begin automatic tweets of your new blog posts, click the “activate” button at the bottom of the screen.

And that’s all there is to it. . . you’re now done with Feedburner.

At this point you’ve just set up your very own Twitter account, added Twitter to your blog, and created an auto update for your Twitter stream!

Now you can just continue blogging like normal, and allow Feedburner to tweet for you, or you can add your own tweets by logging into your Twitter account and updating your Twitter stream yourself. It’s up to you.

Either way, you’ll have a little extra edge when it comes to marketing your art blog (and your artwork) online.

To personalize your Twitter page and learn about all your other options, check out the very helpful and informative tutorials at http://twitter.com/help/start.

Most paintings (especially portraits and figurative paintings) benefit from a good preliminary drawing before you ever pick up a brush. The traditional way of doing this is to draw on your canvas using charcoal or graphite, and then paint over it—but today we’d like to show you an alternative method.

In the video below, Pat Weaver starts her preliminary drawing by putting down a medium-value wash over her entire painting surface. She then uses paper towels to “rub-out” or “lift” the paint, which creates areas of nearly pure white against the medium-value background.

As you’ll see, Pat carefully studies her subject matter (a small puppy) in order to replicate the highlighted sections on the puppy’s head, nose, and body with her “lifted” areas. Once she’s finished lifting the paint, she goes back in with watercolor pencils for additional detail. Take a look:

To learn more, check out Pat Weaver’s full watercolor tutorial at Creative Catalyst.

Monday in Video Tutorials - Tomorrow, Pat Weaver will be demonstrating how to create a preliminary watercolor sketch by rubbing paint off of the painting surface rather than drawing or painting it onto the surface. Not only is this a fun variation on traditional sketching, it’s also a great exercise in learning to see shapes of light and dark within your subject matter.

Tuesday in Art Marketing Tips - Alyice Edrich continues her excellent series of art blogging tutorials with instructions on how to set up (and use) Twitter right alongside your art blog for maximum marketing results.

Wednesday in Featured Artists - Drop by on Wednesday to check out the quirky, colorful, nature art by Brian Cody. And while you’re here, feel free to submit your art to be featured as well.

Thursday in SEO for Artists - Longtime reader and frequent EmptyEasel contributor, Moshe Mikanovsky, will be sharing his own SEO success story. If you’re still on the fence about the importance of SEO and blogging, don’t miss Thursday’s article!

Friday in Drawing Tips - Rounding out the week, Miriam Slater will be listing nine common mistakes that people often make when drawing the figure, and giving us a solution for each one.

Plus, for any former BoundlessGallery artists. . .

When BoundlessGallery closed last week, I know that many of you were left high and dry without any place to sell (or even show) your art online.

I wanted to do something to help, so after talking it over with Zac, my foliotwist business partner, we decided to give 3 free months of foliotwist service to every BoundlessGallery artist who wants to try us out.

There’s absolutely no catch—just make sure to use this special sign-up page so we know you’re from Boundless. It takes only a few minutes to join, and we’ll even pay for your domain if you don’t have one already.

After your three months are up, you can continue on at the regular price ($30/mo), or switch to another website service—either way, this gives you more time to decide.

FYI, we’ve already had several Boundless artists join us, and we’d love to see you too!

Now, here are last week’s articles on EmptyEasel:

Why Boundless Gallery Closed Down

VIDEO: How to Paint Eyes

Samantha Liddell: Escape into Photography

Creative Art Journals: An Interview With Lucrecer Braxton

One Simple Painting Tip for More Intense Watercolors

Is there something you’d like to share on EE? Send it in!

EmptyEasel is proud to publish reader-submitted articles nearly every week. Please submit your own article here or learn why you might want to.

Occasionally a painting needs something MORE to take it to the next level. The composition is ideal, the values may be correct, and yet the finished artwork just doesn’t sing. Often, this has to do with color intensity.

You see, when mixing paints, many watercolorists start with a modest puddle of water on the palette. After dipping our brush into the paint well, we swirl the pigment into the puddle of water. This may be done several times to create the desired intensity.

But there is another approach to color mixing. Have you ever watched any of the well-known watercolor artist/instructors mix their paints? They rarely start with a little puddle of water on the palette. Instead, they load the brush with clean water, go directly into the paint, then swirl the wet pigment on the palette to mix.

To create a larger amount of mixed paint, they do this several times. This process (which uses much less water) results in rich, intensely-colorful paintings.

How do these two methods compare, side-by-side?

Some time ago I painted a watercolor and ink sketch during one of my plein air workshops. It was not intended to be a masterpiece but a simple study for a future painting of my favorite river.

Since it was just a quick watercolor sketch, I used the traditional method of pre-mixing pigment into puddles of clear water on the palette. I had little time to paint, but I was please with my sketch and filed it away for reference for a future, full-sized painting.

When I sat down to write this article on intense watercolors, I realized that this plein air sketch would be an ideal way to compare a traditional “puddle-mixed” painting with the more intense mixing method I described earlier.

And so, I decided to paint the exact same scene again—I would use the same palette colors, but I would mix and apply the pigments more intensely on the new painting.

I made another drawing on the same size, weight and brand of paper. I prepped my paints by misting them with water as usual.

As I painted, I went directly to the well with my very wet brush, swiping it firmly across the damp pigment before swirling it into a mixture on my palette. I painted quickly, with little attention to detail, as I had done with the original plein air painting. I knew there would be a marked difference in intensity, but I had never actually reproduced a painting to demonstrate it!

Can you see the difference that changing the mixing technique made? Making the (relatively) minor adjustment of using more intensely-mixed paint definitely adds significant visual interest, just because of the richly pigmented mixture alone.

Of course, mixing paints this strongly may not be appropriate for all paintings.

As the artist, you must judge when to use rich colors and when to dilute with water for softer watercolor hues—just don’t be afraid to add intensity when you need it!

Lucrecer Braxton has kept a written journal since she was ten years old. Six years ago she fell in love with the idea of combining her love of art with her love of writing—and thus began a wonderful journey into the world of creative art journals.

Today, we’re fortunate to catch up with Lucrecer to discuss how she helps her students transform their personal visions, beliefs, and experiences into artistic journals worthy of framing.

Go ahead—pull out your notebook, your colored pencils, and let’s get started!

Alyice: What makes an art journal different from a traditional journal?

Lucrecer: Art journals are more visual than written, or traditional, journals. Unlike traditional journals, where words are simply captured on paper, art journals tell a story with pictures.

Written journals are great for mind dumping, but art journals are visual. They are created to be explored. While the words may not always go with the sketches or ephemera on the page, you can tell what that person was thinking about or doing at that particular moment just by looking at the imagery.

Art journals are a place to explore and experiment with different painting techniques or lettering styles. They are like a playground for artists.

Alyice: Some may argue that an art journal isn’t very different from the elaborateness of today’s scrapbooks. Is there much of a difference between the two?

Lucrecer: Oh, yes, they are very different. I’ve scrapbooked for many years and I can tell you that it is nothing like creating an art journal.

Scrapbooking has gotten to the point where it is all about the product used, and the design of the page, and less about the memories to be preserved.

Art journaling, on the other hand, is all about preserving the memory. It is a way of mixing words with art and nothing is off limits. Nobody cares about what paint or pens you used, who manufactured the ephemera, or how perfect the design is.

Art journals are intentionally not perfect. They are intentionally personal, and they are used to grow as a creative being.

When I first started creating art journals, I used to date the pages and write just as I would in a traditional written journal. Now, my pages have become more artistic and personal. I tend to hide the journaling, with my art, because I do not want the page to be about what I have written. My journal pages may have a theme, like peace or love, but the words aren’t the main focus.

Alyice: In one of your posts, on your Art Slam site, you state, “You cannot under any circumstance remove, rip out, or accidentally lose a page in your journal.” Why is this rule so important?

Lucrecer: Nothing is an accident. No art is an accident. Just because a page did not come out exactly as you wanted does not mean you can’t recycle it for future use. Plus, it is responsible to be as eco-friendly an artist as you can these days.

Alyice: You like your art journal students to collect everyday stuff to implement into their journal pages. How does the process of collecting “stuff” help your students when it comes time to create an actual journal page?

Lucrecer: Every-day ephemera makes the art journals more real. Plus, the “stuff” adds to documenting your history. There is a lot of great art supplies out there to use on your journal pages, but using too much makes them look too much like the journals of others.

There is nothing wrong with experimenting to find your style, but when you get stuck using other people’s artwork as your own, the journal stops being about you and starts being about the stuff. Adding things from everyday life makes the journal all about you.

Alyice: Another thing you insist on including in art journals, though not on every page, is personal sketches. What do sketches bring to an art journal—and the artist?

Lucrecer: Realness and uniqueness. Similar to using your own handwriting, it personalizes the art journal.

No two people draw or see the same object the same way. The realness of your life instantly shows through. For example, I draw my feet in sandals a lot in the summer. Mainly because I really like cute sandals and feet are not easy to draw. This challenges me to improve my observation skills and I get to document what I was wearing on a particular day. This makes my pages real and about me.

Alyice: Before you go, can you tell our readers what your number one tip is for including personal photos in an art journal?

Lucrecer: Take pictures of your everyday life. Include the people, things and places you interact with most on a daily basis. Discard nothing because you just don’t know when an image may spark the beginnings of a great journal page.

To learn more about Lucrecer’s work—whether to join an art journaling workshop or hire her to create an art journal for you—please visit www.art-slam.com.

Samantha Liddell’s gorgeous photography has one purpose: to be an escape from the moments of despair that we all face at one time or another.

At the age of 14 Samantha’s family made a life-changing move from South Africa to the United States. Living in a foreign country was difficult, but she found solace in the natural environment, where her love of photography began. Today, Samantha calls Cape Town, South Africa her home and it is here that she is continually inspired by the natural beauty around her.

As you’ll see, Samantha’s gift is her ability to capture intense washes of color and texture within her photos.

In the image below, appropriately titled Fire Walk, Samantha picked the perfect time of day to photograph a woodland bathed in red light.

Golden-red hues permeate the sky and illuminate ground, bringing an intense warmth to the image. With such high contrast, the texture in the foreground is brought into incredible relief, beckoning the viewer to enter the scene and follow the light.

A mysterious light source is present in the next photograph as well—each beautiful scallop of radience leaves us guessing its origins, while enhancing the rusty orange texture on the wall.

The composition, of course, is quite formal and very lovely. Two doves, centered in the middle of the photograph, act as the focal point, while the light and lines reinforce a very traditional arrangement.

Now, this last photograph is one of my favorites. It does for me what Samantha hopes all her work does: “To transport the viewer into another place or time allowing the mind of the viewer to wander.”

I encourage you all to visit Samantha’s website and escape into her world of amazing photography.

In my experience, eyes are rather tricky things to paint—and as small as they are in comparison to the rest of the face, they carry a huge amount of importance in a portrait. Not only do eyes need to look realistic, engaging, and alive, but they also need to resemble the eyes of the person that you’re painting.

In the following video, Craig Nelson demonstrates his own step-by-step methods for painting eyes, starting with the whites of the eyes in shadow, then moving on to the lash line, eyebrows, and folds of the upper eyelids before ever putting any color in the iris. More importantly, he’s getting the results below by continually studying his subject while painting. Take a look:

You can purchase this entire portrait tutorial by Craig Nelson at Creative Catalyst.

Today is a sad day for the online art community, as a well-known internet art gallery is shutting its doors for good.

BoundlessGallery.com, a website which has been connecting buyers and sellers of fine art since 2003, now displays a simple home page with this message:

“The Store is Closed

On March 1, 2010 BoundlessGallery.com and partner sites TheArtistFinder.com, bgabstractart.com, bganimalart.com, bgfantasyart.com, bgimpressionistart.com, bglandscapeart.com, bgnudeart.com, bgreligiousart.com, and bgsurrealart.com ceased operation.

Orders placed on BoundlessGallery.com prior to this date will either be filled by the artists or will be refunded to the customer as soon as possible.

We would like to thank you for your support and hope you will continue to purchase original art.

BoundlessGallery.com users, if you have outstanding orders or need to access your account for any reason please click here or use the Sign In link…”

Perhaps more shocking than this sudden announcement is the fact that BoundlessGallery’s artists were only notified about the upcoming closure last week—doubly unfortunate for artists who were depending solely on Boundless Gallery for their online representation.

So why did Boundless Gallery close? And where do their artists go from here? This is what I’ve found out so far. . .

Why BoundlessGallery.com closed down:

According to the email sent from Peter Gregory (who is the Boundless Gallery co-founder and owner) to all Boundless artists last week, the primary issues were limited finances and a bad economy for art.

Here’s a copy of that message:

“We have decided to close BoundlessGallery.com (and all associated and subordinate websites) because the business model doesn’t make sense on today’s internet. We are no longer accepting new members or renewal payments. Any orders placed between now and February 29th, 2010, will be honored and will be paid as normal. Depending on demand, we will be shutting our doors for good in the middle of March. If you own a website name (URL) through us, we will be happy to transfer control of that name to you.

Since the “Great Recession” started, BoundlessGallery.com has been losing money. The art market as a whole is off 50 to 80%. The lack of sales have squeezed our high-end service, because there are less high-end sales. As a culture, we have decide that people are mostly unwilling to pay a subscription fee for a premium service on the internet. The combination of these factors mean that there is great stress on businesses like BoundlessGallery.com. We have decide that we don’t want to lose money for the next several years while the art market recovers.

For many years we have tried very hard to win your trust and provide a website that was worthy of your time and efforts. Thank you to all of our artist partners and the people who have trusted us enough to buy art from us. The company is not insolvent and you can still count on us to help you complete all sales transactions and we will pay all our our bills on time.

Life is short and sticking with a failed business model is for fools. We all have other things to do and more exciting horizons to search for. Thanks again for your time, trust and support over the years.”

Obviously, times have been tough for everyone, and no less so for companies in the fine art sector—but tough enough to close down completely and put over 900 artists out in the cold?

If you look back over the past few years, it’s easy to see that BoundlessGallery has been making some fairly radical changes in an attempt to stay ahead of the recession—perhaps the most notable was their shift from strictly commission-based fees, to a yearly fee PLUS a small commission.

Artists could choose between three different yearly fees: $60, $120, and $240.

At the $60 level, the artist would pay 10% commission on any sales. At $120, they paid 5%. At $240, the artist paid no commission percentage at all. This was a big dip downward from the flat 25% commission that Boundless used before.

For some artists, this change in pricing meant that they paid less fees overall. For many others, however, I must assume that it meant paying more, or the same.

I also assume that BoundlessGallery went over the numbers beforehand and made sure that this pricing structure brought in more income than the previous one—it would have been foolish not to. Even so, it seems that these changes weren’t enough to make BG profitable over the long run.

So where do BoundlessGallery artists go from here?

There are countless art websites similar to Boundless Gallery—the difficulty for each artist is in deciding which ones will be the best for them. EmptyEasel has written about numerous options in the past, so please, check out our archives if you’re looking for options.

I also have a solution of my own that may interest some of you.

Let me start by saying that I was very surprised and saddened when I first heard the news that BoundlessGallery would be shutting down.

BG was around long before EmptyEasel came on the scene three years ago, and for some time they even supported EE through a mutually beneficial advertising partnership which I was proud to be a part of.

In light of that long-standing relationship, my business partner and I would like to offer all BoundlessGallery artists 3 free months at foliotwist.

We realize that foliotwist is a fundamentally different solution for artists (each foliotwist artist has their own personal website, instead of being a part of a group website) but we wanted to do something for those of you who need a place to go and had so little time to prepare.

There’s no catch—if you’re a BoundlessGallery artist and you want to sign-up, we’ll give you a website for free, for 3 months. We’ll even buy your domain name for you if you don’t already have one, and do everything we can to make the switch as painless as possible.

I would also encourage any other website/gallery providers out there to consider doing something similar. It’s tough enough to get your art online in the first place. . . let’s make it easy for them to get back online, and soon.

With that said, here’s the sign-up page for 3 free months at foliotwist. When you use that link to join, we’ll verify your previous membership in BoundlessGallery and then get your site up within 24 hours.

If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Monday in Selling Art Online - Big news, folks. . . In a truly sad turn of events, BoundlessGallery.com, a well-known online art gallery, will be closing its doors this week. Tomorrow I’ll explain the details of the situation as I know it; plus, if you’re a BoundlessGallery artist, please come by—we may have a way to help.

Tuesday in Video Tutorials - I’ll be posting an excellent video segment from Craig Nelson, where he demonstrates his own step-by-step methods for realistically depicting eyes in oil paint. Don’t miss it!

Wednesday in Featured Artists - Photographer Samantha Liddell takes gorgeous photos emphasizing natural combinations of light and subject matter. Get the full scoop from Lisa Orgler this Wednesday.

Thursday in Artist Interviews - Unlike scrapbooking, the practice of art journaling is mainly about “in-the-moment” artistic reflection. Lucrecer Braxton and Alyice Edrich discuss that, and more, in this week’s artist interview.

Friday in Painting Tutorials - Ever feel like your watercolor paintings aren’t as colorful as oil paintings or acrylics? If so, drop in at the end of the week to catch Doris Glovier’s simple, effective tip for creating more intense watercolors.

Last week’s articles on EmptyEasel:

VIDEO: How to Create Fine Details in Watercolor, Using a Magic Eraser

10 Steps for Creating a Successful Business from Your Art

Michelle Hinz: Charming Tactile Paintings

How To Set Up StatCounter on Your Art Blog

4 Ways to Jump Start Your Art Career

Is there something you’d like to share on EE? Send it in!

EmptyEasel is proud to publish reader-submitted articles nearly every week. Please submit your own article here or learn why you might want to.

Are you an artistic person who loved to draw as a kid, or took art classes in college, but was discouraged from pursuing art at as a serious profession?

Maybe you’re a struggling artist frustrated with working a “real” job, or a busy parent with no time to create.

Obviously, we all have bills to pay and other obligations in life. So how does someone begin to follow their dream of being an artist? Walt Disney said it well: “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”

So here’s a short list of ideas to get you doing, with my own story at the end.

Get the creative juices flowing.

1. Take a painting or craft workshop

2. Carry a sketchbook or journal and make a few small drawings a day.

3. Watch an art demonstration on YouTube or on a DVD & paint along with it (hit the pause button when you need to!)

4. Create a “studio” space. Find a small corner of the living room, kitchen or bedroom to work. I worked at my kitchen table for year. I know a professional artist who paints in her bathroom! Just stay organized.

5. Get up an hour earlier or stay up an hour later—find time!

6. Make creative time a habit. Just like you make time to exercise, make time to create in your studio!

7. Think big, start small. . . start working just twice a week, then add more studio time as you progress.

Develop your own style and artistic voice.

1. Do you prefer oils, acrylics, pen & ink, egg tempera, graphite, digital painting, ceramics, etc, etc? Find the one (or two or three) that you love and stick with it.

2. Look for ways to be consistent, in both style and technique.

3. Work towards producing finished, frame-worthy pieces of art.

Test the waters.

1. Enter a competition. Don’t get discouraged if you fail—we all do at times!

2. Join a local co-op gallery or artists’ group.

3. Enter an arts and crafts fair.

4. Find a venue for your own art show at a coffee shop, bank, restaurant, interior design store, etc. Anywhere can be a gallery—sometimes all you have to do is ask!

5. Set achieveable goals for the week, month, and year.

6. Stay focused—an art career takes a lot of personal motivation!

7. Make visual documentation of all of your artwork as you go. You’ll need it.

Launch yourself into it. It’s go time!

Create a body of strong, consistent work.

Put togeter a great portfolio from all of your documented artwork.

Write an interesting artist’s statement.

Find the right professional gallery for your artwork.

Enter juried shows.

Create a website and/or blog.

Study your market.

Use social media to promote your art.

Never stop learning!!!

My own “jump-start” art story:

Although I took art classes in college, I consider myself self-taught. To my disappointment, I really didn’t learn very much about fine art in college other than rendering.

Later, my art career sprung up between loads of laundry, during the babies’ nap-time and late at night. To keep myself motivated, I would enter various painting contests and I joined a local artists’ cooperative gallery. I read every art book I could find, attended some workshops with master painters, and watched instructional DVD’s.

Kevin McPherson’s book, Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light & Color was particularly motivating for me. In his book, Kevin suggests painting 100 little 6×8 plein air paintings. So I did just that!

I took my pochade box with me in the car each day and when my kids were playing soccer, riding horses or at ice skating lessons. I would whip out a quick 30 minute outdoor sketch. This was a great exercise and really improved my paintings.

Painting and drawing consistently also helped me get into a gallery.

A friend saw my little works and offered to show them in her store. I had my own little “gallery opening” and while my artwork was still hanging, I invited the Kneeland Gallery director over to see my paintings. She loved them and asked me to show with Kneeland—and the rest is history!

Oh, and by the way, it is never too late to begin this process!

I know many successful artists who didn’t start painting until they were retired. As long as we have our faculties, we can improve in art for the remainder of our lives. . . and that’s why I love it!

For more articles from Lori McNee, please visit her blog, Fine Art Tips.

It may not seem like it at first, but knowing who visits your art blog and what they do once they’re on your blog can be extremely beneficial.

A good hit counter will not only tell you how many visitors you have, but where they go once they get to your art blog—for example, do they browse around? Do they read the landing page and leave? Do they visit your e-store?

Your stats counter should also tell you which posts are the most popular, which days have the most traffic, what words or phrases were used in the search engines to find you, and if any other websites or blogs directed visitors to you.

A quick online search will reveal several free and paid hit counters. I, however, have chosen StatCounter for its ease of use and its ability to upgrade from a free to a paid service when your blog outgrows the “free” features.

Below are the steps necessary for adding StatCounter on your Blogger art blog.

Step 1: Create a StatCounter account

Go to www.statcounter.com and click on the big blue “Register Now” arrow.

Once you click on the “Register Now” button, you’ll be taken to the setup page below.

Fill out the required information: user name, email address, password, first and last name, company name, and country you reside in. Then select the correct time and date. Next, read through the “Terms and Conditions” and check the “I accept” box.

Next, click on the “Register My Account” button to create your account.

That wasn’t hard, was it? But wait, there’s more.

Step 2: Select your time zone

Before you can start tracking your visitors, you need to tell StatCounter what time it is where you live. Scroll through the list of time zones available, select your time zone, and click the “proceed and add a project” arrow button.

Now it’s time to let StatCounter know which website it should be tracking.

Step 3: Create a project

Once you click on the “proceed and add a project” button, you’ll be taken to the following page:

Insert the title of your website, the url address, select a category from the dropdown menu (I’ve selected arts), change the maximum visiting length to 24 hours for a more accurate reading of your daily visitors, and select the “next” button.

Notice that I did not have you change the log size. . . that’s because the free stat counter only comes with a log size of 500. Also, you don’t want to advertise how many visitors you have coming to your blog, especially with a new blog, so do not click the “allow anyone to view your stats” box.

Here’s the next page that you’ll see—just a few more steps to go.

Step 4: Configure counter code

Once you click on the “configure and install code” arrow button, you’ll be taken to the code setup page.

All you have to do is select the “invisible counter” button and click the “next” button. You’ll see the following installations options page:

This is where you’ll tell StatCounter that you have a blogger art blog. Scroll through the dropdown menu and select the “blogger/blogspot” option and click “next” again.

At this point the code is right in front of you, so go ahead and copy it. Highlight the entire section of code by clicking on it—make sure it’s ALL highlighted—then press “CTRL+C” to copy it.

Now you need to hop over to your Blogger account to place that code.

Step 5: Insert code into Blogger

Open a new browser tab (or browser window) so you can come back to your StatCounter account later, and go to http://blogger.com.

Enter your user name and password to log in, then click on the “Layout” tab. Next, click on the “add a gadget” link on the bottom of the screen.

Clicking on the “add a gadget” box will take you a page with a lot of gadgets listed, as seen below:

The one you want is “HTML/JavaScript” so click on that link to be taken to the following page.

Place your cursor in the large box and then press “CTRL+V” key to paste the code that you JUST copied from your StatCounter account. Do not add a title to this box. Your counter will be invisible; therefore, a title will be useless.

Click “save,” and voila! You’ve just added an invisible hit counter to your blog!

Step 6: Test your counter

Once your counter is inserted into your blog, click on the “view blog” link at the top of the screen. This should add 1 page view to your blog.

Now hop back over to your StatCounter account and click on the “My Projects” link in the upper left hand corner of the screen. You’ll be redirected to the following page:

I know it’s a little difficult to read due to resizing, and I apologize for that, but this is where you can go to make sure your counter is working. If it is working, you should see a “1″ (or more) under the far right heading, “Today.”

Later, you can explore your counter a bit more and see who is visiting your art blog just by clicking on the name of your blog. Enjoy!

To learn more about using the features inside StatCounter, read the free, online “Getting Started” manual at www.statcounter.com/help/getting_started.

All too often, paintings are only visual. . . Michelle Hinz takes a different route by making hers as tactile as possible. Her textured acrylic paintings pop with so much depth and texture that they’ve even been confused with pottery!

Michelle looks for “textures created by ordinary objects” and uses them extensively. Her goal is to connect to the viewer by encouraging them to touch the canvas.

Each of Michelle’s paintings is comprised of five to seven layers of acrylic paint which often exceed 1/4“ in depth. Her paint is hand-mixed and applied with palette knives, brushes, and found objects to create a variety of mechanical and organic textures.

Additionally, the final coat of each painting is a high-gloss “finger-friendly” protective finish, making her paintings touchable and fun to experience.

This next painting you’ll see is actually a triptych, and is appropriately entitled Charming Moments. Each of the different sections has a delightful warm glow, simple shapes, and a strong texture of leaves, water, or other organic forms.

While most of Michelle’s paintings are composed in a grid pattern (influenced by her background as a graphic designer) she also experiments with landscapes.

The image below is one of my favorites. . . its overall composition is rather simple, and split in half between ground and sky. The horizon line anchors a group of tactile, rectangular “buildings” which successfully draw in your eyes as well as your fingers.

Please take a moment to visit Michelle’s website to experience more of her amazing, tactile paintings. And while you’re there, I’d also encourage you to learn about her unique texture painting workshops.

My personal philosophy for building a long term, successful career as an artist combines three things—a little business planning, a whole lot of marketing, and most importantly, the ability to create work that resonates with people.

And so, in the time honoured tradition of business and marketing consultants, I would like to share 10 simple steps (why is it always 10?) that I try to live by, and would highly recommend:

1. Create great work

This is where it all starts. Without good work you can’t expect to create a successful career or business. You need to be very clear about what it is you are making, and who you are making it for.

2. Get to know your target market

Once you understand your own work and what you have to offer, it’s time to start finding the right market for it.

As with every other business you need to find out as much as you can about who might want to buy your art—locally, nationally, internationally. You need to stay in touch with new developments in the art industry, how the economy in various places is affecting art buyers, etc.

Here are some questions you should be asking yourself:

How big is your potential market?

Who is buying art?

Who is selling art?

Who is your competition (i.e., producing similar work) and what sort of prices are they getting for their work?

Who do you want your audience to be?

Where does your work fit in the broader art marketplace?

What type of spaces do you want your work to be seen in?

3. Get to know your marketplace

I define the “art marketplace” as anywhere your work can be placed on public view. These can be broken into 3 distinct groups:

Public exhibition spaces - Public art galleries, museums, libraries, open submission competitions, etc.

Commercial gallery spaces - These can range from local framing galleries up to international galleries.

Direct access spaces - Anywhere people can come to you directly to see your work, such as your studio, art fairs, your website, etc.

The more you know about your market and your marketplace, the better off you’ll be when making decisions about creating and showing your work.

4. Develop a simple business plan

“A what? I’m an artist, I’ve never done a business plan!”

Well now is the time to start. . . and it can be as simple as answering a few questions. After all, where do you want to be in 1 , 3 and 5 years? Having a clear vision for your future will help you create goals and stay focused in the long run.

Write down your answers to the following questions:

What do you expect to earn from your work over the next 12 months?

In what months will the money come in?

How will you manage during months when nothing is coming in?

How much work will you need to sell in order to meet your income goals?

How much work will you need to make in order to sell that amount? (If you can sell 50% of what you make you are doing really well. . . but that means you need to make twice as much as you hope to sell!)

I apologise. . . some of these questions aren’t so easy after all. But for any artist hoping to make a living from their work, these questions need to be answered, and answered honestly.

5. Regularly review your business plan

Think of your business plan as a map, and refer to it every now and then to make sure you are still on course.

For example, if you had planned for a certain income coming in the first 3 months of the year and it doesn’t come in then you have to find a way of making that up in the remaining 9 months.

The fact that you had a plan in the first place means that you can react quickly when things don’t look like they are going all well as you had hoped. At the end of every year I do a complete review of my business plan—i.e., my annual cashflow projections—and use this to help create the next year’s plan.

6. Create fans by creating opportunities

At some point, you’ll need customers, but first you’ll need fans. . . and you create fans by generating as many opportunities as possible for people to view your work. Of course, fans come in many shapes and sizes:

Admirers - These are people who simply like your work and may never be in a position to invest in it. But they will champion it!

Art community fans - Here are people in a position to help progress your career, e.g., media, curators, major collectors, or other artists

Future customers - These start off as fans, but at some point will invest in your work. It could be in 6 months time, it could be 2 years, but they have already committed in their own minds to buying your work at some point in the future.

Actual customers - Obviously, customers are just people who make such a connection with your work that they are willing to invest in it. In the art world, they’re known as collectors.

No matter what type of fan a person is, they all have to start at the same place—seeing your work via the opportunities you have created.

If you ever stop creating those opportunities, your business, your career will simply die away. Creating new, ongoing opportunities may be the single most important thing you can do, other than create the work itself.

Here are some opportunities I have created in the past 3 months:

Gave a business card to my Insurance Broker (today!)

Took out exhibition space at an art fair which 8000 people attended over 3 days

Was featured in 6 Christmas group exhibitions in December

Held an open studio day in December

Posted new images to my Facebook account

Ran a marketing seminar for other artists

Updated my website with new images and new content

Set up an account with Linkedin and joined a number of groups

Gave a business card to a journalist friend of a friend that I met in January

Booked solo exhibition for April

Commissioned an online video documentary for my website

Created some slideshows of my work and posted them on YouTube

Gave a business card to the manager of a new arts centre in Dublin

Sold 25 paintings (the best opportunities you can create are through your paying customers)

How many opportunities can you create this month?

7. Make it easy for your fans to “connect” with you.

If someone sees your work for the first time—due to one of the many opportunities you have created—and decides that they really like what they see, then there is a good chance that they will be interested in seeing more.

In 2010, that means having an engaging, professional website that people can visit at their leisure. Ideally, this is your own website or blog—one that offers a rich and rewarding experience to the viewer. Social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace can be useful places to show your work but they do not offer they same professional experience to the viewer.

All of the opportunities you create up to this point have one simple objective - to drive people to your website. I didn’t always think this way. . . until about 12 months ago I judged the success (or failure) of a year by the number of pieces I sold and the amount of new contacts I was able to add to my mailing list.

These two “facts” were easy to quantify and measure. I could also get a good feel for the general reaction to my work by talking to my galleries or meeting potential customers myself at the art fairs. But what I wasn’t measuring was the number of people that visited my website.

That all changed when I set up Google Analytics. All at once I started seeing that I had a steady stream of daily visits coming from Ireland and worldwide, and I was averaging 10 visits a day, with about 2500 visits in the past year.

I was amazed. Here were people going online and either searching for me or else typing my website in directly. It made me realise just how important my website was. It’s my “shop window,” my connection point to 2500 people every year!

This changed my entire way of thinking about my website—and from then on I began to explore ways of making it more personal, more engaging, and more rewarding for the viewer.

8. Wait for “connections” to turn into customers

In my experience if you can get people to really connect with your work—get them “hooked”—then it can be just a question of having patience. At some point they are very likely to invest in you. It could be a €100 print, it could be a €1000 painting, it could be a place in one of your workshops. The challenge is to create something that someone just can’t walk away from!

I sold 2 paintings this week to a collector that saw my work for the first time about 2 years ago at an art fair. She was very taken by some of my work and let me know before she left. She had connected with it, she had seen something in it that made her stop and want to find out more. All I did was take her contact details and give her one of my cards.

Throughout the intervening two years she came to some more of my exhibitions and would regularly visit my website to see what I was working on. Last week she emailed me to say that she wanted to come to the studio to buy something. And so I sold 2 paintings. The sale took two years to happen but the connection was made the very first time I met her at the art fair.

9. Nurture your customers

Your customers, your clients, your collectors—the people who invest in your work and in your career—are the most important people you will deal with in the course of your career.

Put your customers first, not the galleries, not the media, not the art community—and let them know they are your top priority. As with all businesses your existing customers are where most of your new business will come from, whether through new sales, recommendations, the championing of your work, or just introducing your work to new people.

Whenever possible, offer special discounts, private previews of upcoming shows, studio visits, etc. Keep your customers updated on your plans and successes.

10. Go back to step 1 and repeat all 10 steps again.

Being a professional artist is a never ending cycle.

Always create good work, continually review your market and marketplace to see where you want to be in the coming months, write down a business plan that will allow you meet your goals for the year, and never stop making opportunities that will bring people to see your work.

Eventually the opportunities you create will turn into connections, and then into sales, and then into repeat customers. It’s not always simple or easy, but it works!

For more articles by Padraig McCaul, please visit his art business blog.

If you’re like me, you probably like a lot of control over your paintings. . . with watercolors, however, that control can be hard to come by.

In the following video, John Salminen, shares a great little trick for using regular masking tape and a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to effectively “lift” paint off the surface of your painting to create sharp, crisp details.

As you’ll see, by combining organic brushstrokes with a few well-defined, almost mechanical lines, John is able to create an engaging city scene that appears both fundamentally man-made and vibrantly alive.

To purchase the full instructional video by John Salminen, please click here.

Monday in Video Tutorials - John Salminen demonstrates how to use a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to lift watercolor paint off the surface of your paper in a very controlled manner. This is one of the best methods I’ve seen for adding detail and sharpening up edges just before you finish up your painting.

Tuesday in General Art Advice - Professional landscape painter Padraig McCaul shares 10 steps to building a viable business as an artist. It’s a good overview with some great insight that I’d recommend to anyone.

Wednesday in Featured Artists - Creating artwork that is both visually appealing and texturally interesting is something many of us strive for—and Michelle Hinz is one artist that succeeds. Get the full story from Lisa Orgler this Wednesday.

Thursday in Art Marketing - Alyice Edrich continues her excellent series on blogging by explaining how to set up a stat-counter on your art blog.

Friday in Motivation - End the week on a high note with Lori McNee’s latest article: 4 ways that artists can “jump-start” their art careers.

And deal-hunters take note—Foliotwist’s February discount is almost over:

This February at foliotwist we’ve been giving new artists 50% off their first month (that’s in addition to the regular 10-day free trial, of course).

There’s only one week left to get in on that discount, so if you’re looking for your own simple-to-use art website, check us out and sign up for your free trial!

Plus, for those of you interested in art licensing:

AllArtLicensing.com is offering a completely free, online, hour-and-a-half art licensing course to EmptyEasel readers this Wednesday (February 24th). Topics include types of licensing, protecting your rights, royalty rates, agent services, and much more.

The class starts at 4PM Eastern Time/1PM Pacific, and you’ve only got a few days left to register. Don’t wait too long to decide: register here.

Last week’s articles on EmptyEasel:

4 Highly-Portable Portfolio Ideas: Is Your Art Ready to Show?

How to Handle Rejection of Your Art

Timur Tsaku: The Art of Visual Mystery

Interview With Manuela Valenti, Professional Oil Painter

The Reflective Statement: Your Path to Artistic Enlightenment!

Is there something you’d like to share on EE? Send it in!

EmptyEasel is proud to publish reader-submitted articles nearly every week. Please submit your own article here or learn why you might want to.

It’s extremely important to be self-aware as an artist.

We should always be thinking about our processes, our decisions, our strengths and weaknesses, and our prejudices. Knowing these things will help you learn from your mistakes and use your strengths to their fullest advantage.

When you become aware of the things you’re doing intuitively, you will be able to create strategies for yourself to overcome challenges in your art practice. You will also able to overcome the things you do that might be holding you back artistically.

One great way to become more self-aware is by writing a reflective statement.

What is a reflective statement?

A reflective statement is a written record of your artistic process for any individual artwork you’ve created.

A good reflective statement describes step-by-step what you did, and more importantly, why you did it. It can touch on some of the challenges you faced and how you overcame them. It can even mention ideas you have for your next piece.

Why write a reflective statement?

Writing down your thoughts about your own creative process forces you to be aware of your decision making process while you are creating.

This includes the conscious decisions you make, as well as the things you do intuitively. It can become a record of your thoughts while you’re working and is something to refer to later to remind yourself about issues you want to explore further.

A reflective statement is also a good conclusion to an artwork. Rather than setting it aside as done, you get the chance to reflect on what you have learned.

How I’ve used reflective statements:

I was first introduced to reflective statements in a painting class where I was required to submit one along with every painting that I completed. I paid a lot more attention to my process knowing that I would be required to write about it.

Sometimes I found myself writing my statement in my head while I worked, which made me even more aware of the decisions I was making. I found it so helpful that I continue to write reflective statements for myself to this day.

To give you an idea of what a reflective statement might look like, here is an excerpt from one that I wrote for a recent painting:

“Because the last orange painting I did ended up being a very red-y painting, I was very conscious of adding enough yellow to make a proper orange. I wasn’t happy with the colour of that painting because when I added white for highlights, the whole piece took on a bit of a peachy salmon tinge.

In this piece, I made sure I added extra yellow to the highlights. However, I must have gone too far in that direction because I’m no longer sure that I would classify the painting as orange. It is now more of a sandstone yellow, which I don’t mind.”

How to write a reflective statement

Think of your reflective statement as a journaling exercise about your creative process. Write for yourself, and don’t worry about spelling or punctuation or grammar. Just start writing to get the ideas flowing. If you’re stuck, here are 10 questions you could ask yourself:

1. What did you start with?

2. What did you do next?

3. Why did you choose that (brush/colour/pencil)?

4. Why didn’t you choose a different (brush/colour/pencil)?

5. What problems did you encounter?

6. How did you solve them?

7. Were their issues you couldn’t solve?

8. What is working well and why?

9. What isn’t working well and why?

10. What did you learn in this piece that you can apply in the next?

I encourage you to try this excercise with at least one of your next pieces. You’ll find yourself becoming more aware of your decision-making process and you’ll have a written record of your thoughts to look back on and use in the future.

For more articles by Miranda, please visit her art blog.

Abstract and still life oil painter, Manuela Valenti, has been selling her art since the age of seven. Having come by her artistic talents naturally, Valenti’s mother saw an opportunity to nurture her daughter’s talent and took full advantage of it.

Valenti was encouraged to paint on any surface available—whether that surface was on a seashell found at the beach, a piece of broken mirror, or a flattened cardboard box. Then, at the age of 12, Valenti’s mother insisted that she try landscape oil paintings.

Over the next several years, Valenti would try her hand at several different activities, but it was painting that always called her back. After college, unable to let go of the hold painting had on her, Valenti set out to become a full-time artist.

In 1999, she found an opportunity to show, promote, and sell her work online—and she hasn’t looked back since.

It’s been over twenty years since Valenti set out to become a full-time artist, and in that time she has exhibted in Europe as well as the United States. If there’s one thing she’s learned, it’s that there are many ways to sell art. . . through in-person contact, via galleries, through online portals, and yes, even licensing.

Today, we’re going to discuss how licensing Valenti’s art plays a role in her success as an artist. So sit back, grab a cup of java, and enjoy. . .

Alyice: Besides selling your art through galleries, shows, and your website, you also license your art through various mediums. How did you get into licensing your art?

Manuela: I got into licensing very late in my career, but I got there through a good friend and collector of my work.

While I was still in Spain, my friend suggested that I create prints out of some of my work and gave me some pointers. After a little bit of research I gave it a try.

The prints were such a huge success that I started receiving calls and emails from companies interested in my work—to the point that I rejected quite a few of those manufacturers.

Today my work is in the faces of the famous Flip Mino Camcorders, in posters, on marble and granite backsplashes, on bookmarks, on shirts, etc.

Alyice: It’s been said that licensing one’s art means an artist is “working
smarter, not harder.” Has this been your experience?

Manuela: Oh! Definitely! It provides a certain freedom as an artist and a business person.

Licensing releases the pressure we, as artists, feel of coming up with something “new” or having to become mass-producers who paint the same painting over and over again.

Having a steady income coming in provides you the necessary tranquility needed to create art in a better way and allows you to show your true potential as artist.

Alyice: Getting a manufacturer to take notice of your work isn’t easy. How did you go about finding manufacturers to work with?

Manuela: The only way to know if a company has interest in your work is to ask. What is the worse they can say? No?

Aside from asking, it is extremely important to have a good body of images before approaching any manufacturer, otherwise you will be rejected endlessly.

Don’t approach manufacturers if you don’t have at least 10 consistent high resolution images of your work. It is very important that your images are of really high quality, so if you are not a professional photographer hire one or find a lab that would scan your work.

Once your images are ready, contact manufacturers to find out what specific protocols are in place and follow them.

After taking a look at what the manufacturer does to make sure it meets my expectations of a certain product, I send out an email asking if the manufacturer is interested in working with my images, pointing them to my portfolio.

Many times I get the “no, thanks” response so I add them to my black book—the book where all the galleries, dealers, manufacturers, etc. go after they have rejected me for whatever reason. Then I move on to the next manufacturer.

Alyice: Licensing one’s art can be tricky, how can artists educate themselves so that they don’t get taken advantage of?

Manuela: Well, if it looks too good to be true, probably it is.

There are certain key features that a manufacturer needs to meet before you engage in any business with them. If you don’t understand the legalities of the contract, have a lawyer check it out and explain it to you, otherwise you could be signing off your entire life without knowing it.

Make sure the contract is clear about who owns the copyright of your work. As an artist you should always own all the rights of your work—regardless of whether you license it or sell an original piece of work.

And make sure the royalties are clearly specified in the contract.

(Interviewer’s note: In other words, you’ll want to know whether or not you’ll receive royalties on the gross profit or net profits; or the retail or the wholesale price; or if the royalties will go up or down based on sales, etc, etc.)

Also, there are many manufacturers who make more than one type of product, and some of them might not be a good fit for your images. So make sure you have a say as to which products you want your images to go on and which products you don’t want your images on.

This is important as your work becomes your image as an artist and your reputation, and the last thing you want is to have your work used on products that could damage your reputation or cause you harm.

Alyice: If you could share one tip with artists interested in licensing their own art, what would it be?

Manuela: Don’t be afraid of rejection. Part of being an artist is overcoming the fear of rejection. Artists get rejected more times than any other professional. 8 times out of 10, to be exact.

Don’t be afraid to ask if a manufacturer is interested in using your work as many times this is all it takes to engage in business. And if a manufacturer says “no” just realize that the right one is out there waiting for you.

To learn more about Manuela’s work—whether to purchase an original oil painting or Giclee print, or to license a piece of art—visit www.ManuelaValenti.com.

We all enjoy a good mystery, don’t we? Well, if today’s featured artist, Timur Tsaku, were a writer he would probably write mysteries. . . instead, as a painter, he puts a feeling of mystery into his artwork.

When I first saw Timur’s work, I was intrigued. I couldn’t quite figure out if they were photographs or collages. Interestingly, they are neither—his images are actually acrylic paintings.

Timur Tsaku was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and graduated from both the Tashkent Art School and the prestigious P. P. Benkov Art Institute. It’s easy to see how his background in theatrical scenic design (as well as his singular attention to detail) combine to influence his gorgeous paintings.

Timur typically starts an image with a “moody, abstracted landscape” on which he eventually paints striking, super-realistic figures. He uses a triple zero paintbrush and a magnifying glass “to achieve a hyper-realistic, almost photographic representation of people and animals.”

Timur’s work is ultra modern, often using a strong black and white composition, then finished off with touches of gold paint.

According to Timur, his subjects are based on figures found in the Old Testament. Many are animals that represent “spiritual creatures that have manifested themselves in the shapes of dogs, cats and other approachable beasts.” These figures are the life of Timur’s paintings—and whether human or beast, they are always wrapped with exquisite texture and extreme contrast.

Interestingly, in the image below, both the dog and woman are treated as equals in stature and in the extreme detail of their clothing.

Timur’s ornate textile patterns and head wear are absolutely stunning, and his simple, contrasty backgrounds give them and his subjects an unobtrusively powerful backdrop.

His high contrast approach also accentuates beautiful compositions—from very formal (as seen in the image above) to a captivatingly casual like the one below.

Perhaps what I love most about Timur’s work is that no matter how detailed the clothing, how sharp the sky, or how intriguing the composition, it’s the figures’ faces that remain the focal point. . . they always draw you in.

I highly encourage you to visit his website at www.tsaku.com to see more of his beautiful, mysterious paintings.

Let’s say you’ve decided to start a card business and you’ve been working on designs for six weeks. Your friends love them. Your mom loves them. Your coworkers love them. You think they’ll be hot sellers.

In your car, on the way to the printer, you decide to stop by the local card store to show them to Sally, the owner.

With a smile, you pull out your cards and wait for Sally’s reaction. . . but slowly, like a candle melting in Death Valley, you can see it in her face. . . she doesn’t like them.

Your heart hits the ground as she tells you what all the problems are, but you don’t hear anything because your stomach hurts, even though she continues to give you great advice for the next 10 minutes.

Rejection hurts.

You slowly wrap up the cards, put them back in your bag, and decide on the spot you want to go back to school and become a radiology technician.

WAIT….STOP!

REWIND this story. What happened here? This isn’t a story about rejection. This is a story about an artist who doesn’t know what to do when their designs are rejected.

Remember, rejection is not a bad thing. It’s a great opportunity to learn from an expert!

Most professionals in the card industry are happy to help artists who are willing to adjust and try new things. Ask “Sally” what your next step should be. Just like envelopes and paper are part of the card business, so is rejection.

Your goal in card design, is to get emotionally close to your customer. Rejection by a store can help you steer your art towards knowing your customer. Just make sure you never leave a meeting without a notebook full of advice. Find out WHY you were rejected. Otherwise, rejection will only be experienced as something negative.

And, in the story above, imagine what would’ve happened if the artist drove to the printer first, and not the card store. Not only would she experience rejection, but she also would have lost money by printing a poor design!

This artist was really smart to seek out professional advice, and not just limit it to family and friends.

I experienced many similar situations when I started my own business. My first two card lines were rejected, but I went on to try a third, a forth and a fifth, and a sixth, most of which were successful. Store buyers were even willing to meet with me after hours and help me.

The more I tried, the better things got—that’s the main key for dealing with rejection.

Read more at Kate Harper’s blog, including part 2 on dealing with rejection.