Tag Archives: images

Surrender to Winning

Freelance life can be great. You’re hired based on your skill and hustle; you get to decide most of the rules of engagement. Yes, for outgoing, social people, it can be a wonderful experience….

…. for the people who hate the concept of other people, not so much.

Now I understand that this is a me problem. I need to be liked. My clientele will want to feel a connection to me. I get that. I shouldn’t be unavailable. It makes perfect sense.

But if I could just draw or paint all day, on a mountain, I would. I have learned though.

Anyway… when I was working on this, I was fresh out of the hospital and trying to find a job. I was a month behind on my mortgage.

And NO ONE was buying my work.

So I started doing portraits. I’m sure that it would take me forever to pay just one month worth of bills this way. But it did make me a lot better at it.

The good news is that I can put my own twist on them. So maybe it’s not so bad. Or maybe I’m becoming better at my people skills…

The Road So Far…

The last time I wrote you guys, I remarked that you only get to see a tiny amount of my output. This is very true and there’s a couple of reasons for it.

Truth be told, I tend not to sell much of what I make. This is from a decision I made long ago about keeping my art pure. When my entire portfolio was stolen years ago, I came to a couple of conclusions; that people didn’t deserve to see my stuff and that it wasn’t that important.

Now I clearly changed my mind about people because I’m essentially a nice person and visual art is meant to be seen. But my love for my art was diminished by a realization that it would be gone one day.

What rewired the concept in my head was having my son leave home and go out into the world. True I miss him, but that’s what children do; they grow up and go out to make their mark in the world. My art isn’t my baby.

It’s my child, grown up and ready to be seen by the world.

So yeah, I’m back to selling pieces. And yeah, I’ll still be posting here once a week, showing you guys the steps I take to creating it. Some will be sophisticated pieces, others will be sketches. But they’re all my children.

Welcome them into your world.

Jump

Happy customers equal happy artist!

Well, I’m finally getting ready to do it. I’m going to start selling prints of my art! It took awhile to build up a decent portfolio of work, but I’m finally there.

Today I’m taking my more traditional work in to be scanned. My scanner is okay but it’s not large enough for anything above 8.5×11. Luckily we have larger ones at work. Plus our photographers are more familiar with reproducing images, something I haven’t done since art school.

Until then, it’ll be a few more images made. I’m trying not to scare myself off. This is my dream and I don’t want to fail at it! I’m not afraid to though.