Yesterday was another day of website building. There are some things with WordPress that drives me crazy, such as when I post the link to my website on Facebook, it doesn't have a thumbnail image on it, and I've tried all the tutorials to fix the problem, but it persists.
Inspite of that, my website is coming along, I am making progress with it. I've imported past blog posts there, and for a while I'll be posting on both, but soon I'll be moving. I hope that those who have followed me on blogger will come over to my wordpress site and follow me there as well. It can be found at http://ArdentReflections.com.
In addition to the website work, I've been adding up the cost of doing business as an artist over the past year, comparing that to what I've made in sales, just to find out how much money I've made lost as an artist, I won't share details, but I will say that I can see where the term starving artist comes from. I didn't expect profit over this year, but I did expect a smaller deficit than I saw. Oh well, there were a lot of expenses that I won't have to repeat any time soon, like buying a canopy for art shows, tables for the canopy, a cart to move supplies with at art shows, etc.
Last but not least, I actually got a little painting done, I'm still not happy with the clouds in my sky, but I'm getting closer to what I want. One thing I am figuring out with this sunset though, is that I have to stop in between colors and let things dry, otherwise my oranges, and purples mix into brown, and my yellows and blues mix into green. Here are two photos, neither one seems to really be right in color, the first one comes closer but is brighter than the painting really is I think...oh well, what can you expect from a cell phone?
During my next session I will bring the purple and then blue up further in up in the sky, and cover those strange finger like projections I called clouds, then I will try puttin in some less finger like clouds, I can see it in my mind now, when before I couldn't, so hopefully I'll be able to translate that onto the canvas. Then I'll bring more color into the darker blue water, the lighter blue area is actually going to be covered with land, as is the horizon line, so that the bay comes between where the viewer "stands" and the other side of the bay. I'm not really concerned about how much experimentation this is taking, I mean after all, this is how I've learned EVERYTHING I know about painting so far, by trying, messing up, and trying again, until I get I get it right.
Thank you for reading! If you liked what you see, please consider following this blog with Google Friend connect, or follow me on Google+, or if you prefer, you can follow by email and get notified each time the blog is updated. See the right hand column to follow in any of these ways! I welcome your suggestions on how to make this blog more interesting to you!
Fine Art America is the place to go for Prints of all my Paintings.
My etsy shop is the place to go to buy my originals and request commissioned work. A few select prints are available here as well!
Have you ever tried to teach anyone something? It can be difficult! Its even more difficult if the student you are teaching is just NOT getting it, now imagine you are doing all that, WHILE you are trying to teach something you don't know!
That is the struggle of the self taught artist, trial, and error, and more error.
Lots of error. I am trying to get the sky in a painting just right, that is how I am seeing it in my mind, it is taking a lot of error.
Here are some of my practice sheets where I practiced different techniques to try to get the results I wanted:
Real quality art there, right?
But its all part of learning without a teacher.
Eventually I moved back onto my canvas, and its not perfect yet, but I feel like I know what needs happen now, its just that the paint I already put down needs to dry before I can do more, otherwise my colors will mix and I will end up with a green sky. I also keep reminding myself that it won't just be a sky, there will be land and a bridge, and water, the sky will end up being only a backdrop for everything else. I keep telling myself that, but I want to get the sky perfect anyway. It is getting close to what I see in my head, and I think I'll be able to bring it around to that point in t the next painting session.
Thank you for reading! If you liked what you see, please consider following this blog with Google Friend connect, or follow me on Google+, or if you prefer, you can follow by email and get notified each time the blog is updated. See the right hand column to follow in any of these ways! I welcome your suggestions on how to make this blog more interesting to you!
Fine Art America is the place to go for Prints of all my Paintings.
My etsy shop is the place to go to buy my originals and request commissioned work. A few select prints are available here as well!
Yesterday, my desires were fairly simple, I wanted to go to work, and after work I wanted to come home and color my hair, and then practice painting clouds on paper until I was either happy with them, or until I became too frustrated to continue.
Well I went to work.
After work I felt really tired, and so none of the other stuff happened. That was okay, I accomplished something else, you see, I've really been thinking about how to get my art "out there" more. I mean, I am still learning, still improving, and I'm sure in time my art will be better and attract even more buyers, but much of my the work I've already created is perfectly saleable. The only reason sales have dropped is that the people who are interested in buying are not seeing it. So I've been thinking a lot about what to do about that. Somehow I have to get my work "out there" in the right places so people who buy art will see it.
I felt that perhaps advertising would provide the answer, so on Wednesday January 7th I started promoting listings on etsy. Then yesterday, since the promotions had been running seven days, I decided to see what the results were, here is what I saw. Thanks to the ads, my work had 3000 impressions on etsy, but only 14 of the 3000 impressions resulted in clicks, which ended up costing me $4.70, and none of those clicks translated into sales.
Okay, it was only a week, but still, 3000 people saw my work, and only 14 of those 3000 were interested enough to even take a closer look, none of them were interested enough to buy. To me that means if I am going to advertise, I need more targeted advertising, something that would be seen by the people interested in buying art. I mean, a lot of etsy shoppers are looking for purses, hats, and things like that. I need some way to target those who are wanting to buy art. But what kind of advertising would do this? I asked myself this question, and replied to myself that I really didn't have any idea.
(Yes I talk to myself, and answer myself, sometimes, I even argue with myself!)
This was all in the back of my mind as I looked at other blogs, and as if in answer to this question I ran across this video on Her Online World:
Well, in case you didn't have time to watch, the main points of the video were that the best sources of traffic had to be paid for. (That one I had kind of already figured out, organic reach is nice, but it is limited). The next thing was that Facebook ads, TARGETED facebook ads and promoted posts are some of the best kinds of promotion.
So I decided to try an experiment. My etsy ads ran for 7 days, I went ahead and stopped them. I wrote a post on my Facebook Art Page announcing that one of paintings was now available in my etsy shop, and I linked to that listing in my shop, I targeted this promotion to people who were interested in collecting art and who had an interest in home decor, as well as the specific style of the painting shown in the listing. I decided to run this ad for 7 days, and keep track of the results. By results, I mean that I am going to be examining my etsy stats for shop views and listing views. After the 7 days are up, I'll run more etsy based ads, then after 7 days of that I'll switch back to another facebook ad or promoted listing. I'll record the results.
I printed up the following calendar to keep track of such things, as you can see, the first 6 days of the month are with no ads of any kind, I am also keeping track of what etsy calls "events" which is new listings or renewals, to see if they have any significant impact. I'll be sure to update after completing this cycle a few times, so probably around the end of March, I'll update and blog my findings.
See the key up on the top of the calendar.
Thank you for reading! If you liked what you see, please consider following this blog with Google Friend connect, or follow me on Google+, or if you prefer, you can follow by email and get notified each time the blog is updated. See the right hand column to follow in any of these ways! I welcome your suggestions on how to make this blog more interesting to you!
Fine Art America is the place to go for Prints of all my Paintings.
My etsy shop is the place to go to buy my originals and request commissioned work. A few select prints are available here as well!
