Creative Cauldron - Joy Hester Tweet

It occurred to me that it might be a good/enjoyable/worthwhile/useful idea to do a regular post on my influences and showcase other artists or ideas that have made me stop and go 'wow'. Useful for me to have a reference. Fun to do. Enlightening for you. These have become the Creative Cauldron posts, where I explore the biggest influences on my art. Most of these are visual styles and techniques. Some of these are more about mind-set, attitudes and mental inspiration. I guess you could call them all muses of one form or another.

Ink and emotion.

Having recently been attracted to experimenting with ink on paper, which is just slightly different to my preferred medium of oil on canvas, of course I thought it appropriate to also explore the inky influences.

This first image is one that I have kept in a scrapbook full of images that exert a pull of one kind or another on me. It's been carried around since high school, when I first discovered it's artist, Joy Hester.

OMG!! A female artist. And an Australian artist. Double whammy. So if you've never heard of her, those two facts are probably why.

In her time, her art was dismissed. She worked on paper. In ink. And worked quickly. And drew emotion. It's funny, because these are the exact qualities that I admire about her work. Paper, ink, speed, emotional intensity. What incredible intensity. It's often too much! What a talent, to be able to convey big looming feelings with just a few lines, unedited.

I guess she was no stranger to the feelings she drew. Joy Hester lived a short and tumultuous life, overshadowed by cancer. In fact, at one point, she was so convinced she was going to die that she gave her baby son up for adoption. Turned out she was to live for another 13 years.

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Dare To Dream? Tweet

Imagine life is a sweet shop. You can have anything you want, but you can't have everything that you want. Why? Because you've only got so much to spend. You can afford lots and lots of little things or a much smaller number of big things. Your choice. What do you want? How will you spend your time in the sweet store of life?

Not many people get brought up with the belief that they can really truly go after anything they really truly want. If you are someone who has figured this out, then maybe like me, it came as a revelation.

This painting is that feeling of the world opening up and being full of possibilities. That sense of wondering, do I dare? Could I really? How would it take off? I could have that life??? Oh yes!!! And the dreaming/thinking/feeling/imagining through all the sweet and delicious scenarios. Do you know this feeling? Do you know someone who is taking stock of their life, or inspired to try a new direction? Would this help keep them motivated?

The writing in the clouds reads, 'Did anyone tell you? You can be anything you want.'

Another great find from the mysterious old box that I discovered when re-setting up my studio. Available now to inspire somebody else to follow their dreams. In the Official Art Store, of course.

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More (and the last of the) Modern Cavepaintings Tweet

'Imagination Animals'. Creatures that don't exist in the real world, but maybe somewhere could or could have existed. Humorous, fanciful, cheeky, mysterious.

Like chalk-ghosts of drawings left behind on a rockface.

Hey, have I mentioned these have lots of texture? Really. You can see the patina of the rock surface and run your fingers over where the creatures have been scratched into the rock...

The last two paintings in this series of 12 have finally been completed - and they're selling already!

These are little canvases, just 6"x6" (15cm x 15cm), ready to hang. No framing required. And the series is designed - both in size and price - so that multiple pictures can be mixed and matched on a wall. They are ideal to add a touch of colour, as no matter how small your wall is, they will fit!


Available right now in the Official Art Store.

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Diary of Becoming - Round Three - October Roundup Tweet

I love doing these round-up posts. Although they tend to take quite a while, it's fantastic to take the time out each month to catch my breath, review (and celebrate) what I've gotten done, adjust and focus my course for the next month and figure out fixes for what's going wrong. I highly recommend the process. So, here goes...


Good Stuff

• It only took a day to sort myself out a creative space. Yes!

• I figured out that ending rather than starting the day with email & computer stuff is the way to breaking my marathon computer-all-day habit. Hello time to paint.

• The 'Modern Cavepaintings' series that is oh-so-close to completion is finished.

• All the strategy notes that have been in spreadsheets, in books, pdf's, mp3's, in notebooks and on scraps of paper have been collated!! Yes (give cookie). What a huge and worthwhile job that has been to complete.

• Stats collection is set up. I now have a spreadsheet for this to track the monthly growth of my site, sales and where traffic comes from. Also, to make it super easier, I have a folder in my browser (Flock) favorites with all the pages that I need to visit to collect the stats. And I can just go 'open in tabs' and have the whole lot all open automagically. It's a breeze. FYI I am using Google Analytics, Feedburner, Google Webmaster Tools, Aweber, Technorati and this page ranking site for my tracking. And these are the items I am tracking - for the moment anyway. It is an extensive and probably too-detailed list. My rationale is that I'll track all this and further down the track decide what's worth keeping and what's not worth bothering about. I'll try and remember to keep you updated........Blog: unique visitors, daily average, top commented pages, top 5 keywords, top 5 visited pages, top 5 traffic sources, bounce rate, time on page, Page Views, Page Views / Visitor, Inbound Links, Technorati Ranking, rss subscriptions, rss clickthroughs, FB fans, FB clickthroughs, email subscribers, email clickthroughs, ff subscribers, ff clickthroughs, twitter followers, twitter clickthroughs, stumble subscribers, stumble clickthroughs, page rank, closed/open keyword search rankings......Etsy: unique visitors, bounce rate, time on page, Page Views, Page Views / Visitor, top etsy items, top 5 etsy keywords, number of sales, total $ of sales, top sales by item type, purchaser demographic
  

• To further my knowledge of 'the art world' I signed up with the CAE (Council of Adult Education) for a lecture series entitled 'How To Start and Manage An Art Collection'. I'm quite sure the perspectives offered in this class will be enlightening.

• While I was at it, I also signed up for a one day intensive Chinese ink painting class. Gotta keep learning and growing and ink is a medium that I'm fascinated by.

• To increase my professional image I created myself an email signature. Very happy with it indeed.

• And finally I discovered a wonderful blog, Recyclart.org, and have submitted my Found Creatures. I think they're a great match and I'm a huge fan of the site, whether they end up showing my stuff or not.

• A sale!!! Yes (give another cookie!).

Not So Good Stuff

• The art collector lectures have been canceled for this term. Boo hoo. At least they will be running again next year.

• The drawing exercises are boring me senseless. That's not to say I'm not learning anything worthwhile. I certainly am. It's just that the exercises are rather dry. But I am slowly plodding my way through them.

• Cd cover. Coming. Today in fact. Actually, it's been a little hotbed of ideas, which is great.

• Paint charts. Tomorrow. I promise. All day.

And We Have Some Results...

I've been quietly making use of StumbleUpon for the last few months. That is, thumbing up pages I like, submitting and reviewing pages I like and reviewing, subscribing to and friending people I like. It takes a while but boy is it powerful. It really does drive a lot of traffic to my site. In fact, it is easily my biggest source of traffic. If you're interested, I recommend signing up to Caroline Middlebrook's Traffic Rush course to learn about how to use StumbleUpon effectively. Just do the free email part, and beware the patronising tone and the constant bombardment to 'buy the full course'. Bleh.

Technical posts. In case you haven't noticed, I've been blogging regularly on 'technical' art related subjects. I see these as part of my professional training, and simply choose a topic that's most interesting to me at the time. So far I've covered Archival Printing - A Guide For Photos, Giclee & Canvas, and, All About The Artist's Certificate of Authenticity. These posts also bring a lot of traffic to the blog. A surprising amount.

Another resource I've found useful is Chris Guillebeau's Art & Money pdf. I bought it a few weeks ago as part of my strategy compilation. Unfortunately it hasn't been as useful as I'd hoped. Clearly I've done more research on this making a living as an artist thing than I'd realised. If I were just starting down this road with little online background, it would be a boon. But that's not me. I'd recommend it for interweb newbies. The comparisons of options and the basic plan it lays out are simple and clear. The variety of artists interviewed for the mp3's gives a great breadth to the possibilities out there.

And a strategy that seems to be working well is listing items regularly in my Official Art Store on Etsy. Certainly the item views have jumped substantially since I started doing this, as opposed to listing everything in one lump. This was a tip from the Etsy Success newsletter, which is free and worth signing up for.


And The Surprise Of The Month Goes To..
Facebook.
Yes, the book of faces has been an unexpected winner. Big yay for experimentation. The story goes like this. I detest FB. It irks me no end. I find the layout unintuitive and circular and the attitude of the owners to their customers dismissive and draconian. But I am also aware that an awful lot of people are regularly on FB and there are artists out there who find it their best promotional tool. And I am set up on it already. But I don't tend to visit it. So how can I solve the problem of updating my FB fanpage without having to visit the irksome FB every time I blog etc? Um, RSS perhaps? Well I looked into the solutions and there's this nifty little application called RSS Graffiti. You give it permissions to access your data, tell it which RSS feeds you want it to monitor and poof! Your wall is automagically updated with (for example) your blog posts and Etsy store listings. Fabbo.

And it works like a (beta) charm. Amusingly, I accidently added RSS Graffiti to my personal page at first. Before I realised and also added it to the WhereFishSing fanpage, I'd made a sale to a friend. Howzat for a great mistake?!


Get Done List For November

• Markets - Some time ago I was pondering on a way to experiment with lots of different styles and get feedback from people. I was (separately) pondering on arty ways to increase cashflow. Then it occurred to me that it's Spring here, and Summer will be upon us shortly. Which means market season. Having a market stall could be a great way to meet people, talk to them, get their feedback and make some cash, not to mention, making loads of pictures to be seen. So I have my list of art markets to check out and have already slowly started. But I need to get my skates on and finish checking these out, decide on appropriate ones and apply to them. So I can (hopefully) start doing stalls in December.

• Pictures and prints - lots of experimenting, lots of pictures, and prints galore. For the market stalls in December. Go go go.

• Art collectives - Finding like minds. It could be delicious. And fun. And result in creative explosions. So that's the task for this month, to find groups of these people and join them.

• Email friends - Now that I have my Facebook fanpage all sorted, and my blog and store being regularly updated, it's time to tell people.

• Creative commons - The rationale for this is a blog post in itself and something I want to investigate more thoroughly.

• Modify blog header - It's come to my attention that a lot of my blog visitors don't realise they're on a blog. So I would like to make this more obvious to save people the frustration of clicking to go to the page they don't realise they're already on.

• Strategy session - Now that the collation is done, let's get the plan together.

That's going to be a flat out November!

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