He's Here!

Just wanted to announce that our little boy finally decided to make his grand appearance! His name is Owen Matthew and he was born on October 26th at 5:09 pm, and weighed in at 7 lb 13 oz. I'd been staying at my parents house that weekend, since I was so close to my due date and we live so far from the hospital. Nate managed to get down the mountain just in time to get me to the hospital with a couple of hours to spare. We're all happy and healthy - I'm just resting and recovering and adjusting to a new routine with two kiddos.

I'm sure I'll be taking it easy on the art (and blogging) front for a few months, but I'm already itching to hit the studio. We'll see if I can squeeze in a few hours of painting sometime in the next few weeks!

Balance, or the Lack Thereof

"Gothic Road Aspens"
Oil on Panel
18x24"
2009

Being an artist and a mom takes a lot of focus on keeping things organized and balanced - on a good day I struggle to get things done, but I seem to have completely lost my balance lately.

I'm due to have this little guy any day now, and the waiting game is about to drive me insane. I'm ready to have a cute little baby to snuggle and take care of, and to have my body back and start moving forward with my family and my career. Not knowing what day he's going to make his grand appearance is making me crazy, and I'm just trying to keep myself busy so I won't get too impatient.

This has been a tough year. I've struggled to keep up with the art side of things -between 20 weeks of morning (ALL DAY) sickness and a handful of minor complications that kept me heading down to Denver for doctor's appointments, I've just been trying to keep my head above the water and keep the few commitments I had made earlier in the year. I missed deadlines for a bunch of juried shows, declined participating in some other invitational type events, and haven't been providing all of my galleries with new work like I should. I managed to prepare for my two person show in August and keep up with demands for work from galleries that were selling well, and that's about it.

It's easy to beat myself up about what I missed this year, and worry about whether it sets me back, but I keep reminding myself that it's just a season, and that I have to stick to my priorities. Fact is, this is probably the last kid I'll have, and I want to spend some time enjoying him as a baby just as much as I want to make sure I don't miss a thing about Aspen as she grows up. My priority this year has been my kids, and as tough as it is to swallow, I know my art will be waiting for me when I get back to a point where I feel well enough and have enough time to really focus on painting again. In the meantime, I'm doing the best that I can, and trying to enjoy the process along the way. It's not easy, but at least it's always rewarding!

Weekend with the Masters

When I heard about Weekend with the Masters a few months ago, I was pretty excited that so many fantastic artists were going to be teaching in Colorado this year. I was all excited about signing up for the whole thing until I realized I might not be totally up to it while eight months pregnant - kind of a bummer. Anyhow, I ended up registering for a few of the individual weekend events that didn't involve hauling painting equipment out into the wild. We headed down to Colorado Springs on Saturday and hung out at a hotel with Aspen (fun - elevator and pool! what more could a 3 year old ask for?!?!), and then I attended a couple of sessions on Sunday.

I have to say, after looking at everyone's pictures on Facebook and attending a couple of classes myself, I'm pretty envious of those who got to attend the whole event! It was really well organized, and the group of instructors was top notch.

On Sunday morning I attended Scott Burdick's lecture on using photographic references for painting. For those not familiar with Burdick's work (www.scottburdick.com), he paints fantastic figuratives of people he encounters on travels throughout the world. His work are lush and full of life, so I was curious to hear more about his process and his view on using photos to work from.

The lecture didn't disappoint. Scott showed hundreds of slides of his work, as well as some of the photos he worked from for particular paintings. He stressed the importance of working from life on a regular basis to gain the experience needed to allow you to provide info that a photograph can't, but also stressed the importance of using photos to paint certain types of subject matter or locations. Here's a snapshot of a plein air painting he used to illustrate the color subtleties that a camera can't capture:


The thing that struck me viewing the slideshow was how luminous and energetic Scott's paintings were compared to the actual photos he painted from. He takes very good reference photos, but when he paints he takes the reference further and injects life and emotion that the photos lack. I work from a combination of photos and studies, so seeing his slides gave me something to strive for - if I can't be improving on the photo in my painting, I shouldn't be painting it!

In the afternoon, I attended a critique session with Kevin MacPherson. There were about 25 artists at the critique, and we had all provided one or two digital images of our work for Kevin to review prior to the session. Kevin had spent a lot of time preparing comments for each person's work, and interspersing images of our work with examples of masterworks that showed what he was trying to say. It was really valuable to hear the critiques of everyone's paintings as well as my own, and Kevin has a great sense of humor that kept us all entertained through it all.

The first painting I submitted was one of my personal favorites. I had entered this painting in a couple of juried shows and been rejected, and wanted to know what was up.


Kevin's critique of the painting was mainly that it had too many hard edges all over. There are also some issues with repetitiveness in the pine trees on top of the cliff, and competition between the two front cliff faces for attention (he suggested possibly darkening the cliffs in the middle ground to make the front cliffs more important). Overall though, it was all EDGES EDGES EDGES.

Looking at the painting, I totally agree. I think it's taken me a while to get to a point where I could absorb this critique. A year ago, I might have fought similar comments, thinking that the hard edges are a part of my "style". Over the past few months, I've changed my thinking and have been starting to incorporate more variety into my edges and brushwork, so I was in a good place to hear this critique.

The other I submitted was a larger painting of aspens that I did earlier this year for the Colorado Governor's Invitational show. I was proud of this painting and it has received a lot of compliments, but there were some things about the foliage that had been bugging me, and I could never put a finger on exactly what my issue was.


Kevin liked the painting but got down the main issue right away - the foliage of the aspens on the right was mimicking the hillside angle, and the cloud on the left was mimicking the shape of the aspen foliage. It was like an aha moment to me - I'd been so stressed about getting the colors and foreground of this painting right that I didn't even notice the issues with repetitive shapes up top! He also pointed out that he liked the lost and found edges in the aspen on the far left, and suggested that I incorporate some of that into the rest of the painting (again - EDGES EDGES EDGES).

Overall, I came out of the critique with an understanding of some of the bigger things I need to be working on, and it gave me a little bit of a kick in the pants to continue to work on improving my work.

Now that I've been all inspired, I just need to find some quality time to paint before this little one makes his grand entrance in about a month!

Studios Magazine

Just wanted to share with you all that American Artist Magazine's special issue on Studios is out now! You can pick it up at a bookstore or order it online here.

There's a little blurb inside about my studio (well, my studio in our last house), but more importantly there are articles about a ton of other artists' studios and the many ways different artists have adapted to their spaces. It's a must read if you're looking for ideas for your space.

Overwhelmed

"Gore Range Sunrise"
Oil on Panel
16x20"
2009

Wow, I'm surprised I even remembered my blogger login - it's been awhile!

We've been moving into our new house and I've been preparing for a show, and on top of that I've been busy chasing a toddler and trying to survive my third trimester of pregnancy. It's been a bit chaotic and I'm a bit tired, to say the least. Now I have a cold - ugh...

We had to move out of our other house before we had the official certificate of occupancy on this house, so we moved all of our stuff to the new house, but have been sleeping at my in-laws house for a week. It's all been a bit transitional and I've been looking forward to having a home again. I'm slowly making progress on the unpacking, and tonight we're finally sleeping in the new house, so maybe there's a light at the end of the tunnel?

I took a couple of pictures to document the chaos. This is what it looks like when your husband takes away half of the living room furniture while you're in the middle of framing for a show. I figured I might as well take over with my paintings since the couch wasn't taking up the space anymore:



This following picture is my defense for why I drive a gas-guzzling SUV (well, other than the fact that I actually live somewhere where it's necessary to have four wheel drive a good 6 months of the year). This is my car all packed up with 17 paintings for my show. When it comes time to deliver paintings, I'm always thankful I can fit a 30x40 framed painting in the back of the car with ease. Heck, I could have fit twice as many in there!


Anyhow, that's all I've got for now. Electrical went in up in my studio last week, so stay tuned for some in-progress shots as construction finishes up in there. Right now my easel is taking up half of the soon-to-be-nursery, so I've given my husband a deadline for finishing the studio.

Okay, time to go get some sleep now (yay!).

Pricing for Geeks

"Wildflowers"
Oil on Panel
12x16"
2009

Tony Moffit had an interesting post last week about an artist who had priced their work per square inch, and had a gallery lower the price of their larger works. Tony correctly stated that the gallery had no right to force the artist to change the price of their work, but I disagreed with his statement that pricing by the square inch is correct. Since then, Clint Watson posted his own opinion on the Fine Art Views blog, and sparked a great discussion in the comments about pricing practices. If you haven't read either post, read both - they're great!

Pricing can be difficult for an artist, especially when starting out. It's easy to see the appeal of pricing work on a simply per square inch basis, but it results in very cheap small paintings and very expensive large paintings.

When I got accepted into my first gallery, they set my prices at something like $3/sq. in. I made next to nothing on my smaller pieces, but my larger work was at a good price point for an emerging artist at the time. My paintings started to sell faster than I could keep up (those were the days!), and the gallery and I quickly figured out that it was time for an adjustment. At the time, we increased my larger pieces by 10% and the smaller ones by up to 50% - in the end, my small paintings were priced much higher on a per square inch basis than my larger paintings, and they've stayed that way since. I keep track of this graphically because it helps me make sure that none of my prices are out of line. Here's what my pricing looks like for a wide range of sizes:



You can see that I range from about $9/sq. in. for a 6x8" painting, down to about $4/sq. in. for a 36x48" painting - not a small difference!

Nowadays, I set my own pricing, and adjust my prices when I feel a need based on demand. In the past, I've raised my prices 10-15% at the start of each year when I felt that I was having a hard time keeping up with my galleries, with an occasional bump in prices when I won awards or got magazine coverage. This year, I didn't raise my prices because I didn't feel that the current market warranted it, and I stand by that decision for now.

One thing I do to make sure my prices aren't unreasonable is to compare with a selection of other artists with similar resumes. I pick a handful of artists in this region who paint similar subject matter, show in the same tier of galleries, and have been in some of the same shows as I have, and I record their prices for a range of sizes. I put them all on a graph together just to make sure my prices are following the same trend, and aren't too far off in magnitude. Here's my graph for the last time I did this:


You can see that my prices tend to be on the low side compared with this group (I'm the bottom line), and I'm comfortable with that. A lot of my peers raised prices this year, so I'm left looking a bit cheaper than I used to be. My paintings are still selling well, so chances are I'll raise my prices a bit at the start of next year. In a market like we have now, I'm okay with being patient and just trying to do good work.

My Favorite Things - Web Edition

"October on the Colorado"
Oil on Panel
30x40"
2009

A while back I posted about the materials I prefer to use in the studio, but didn't touch on any of the other things out there that are indispensable to me as an artist. I was just thinking the other day about how thankful I am for some of the online tools and stores that I use to make my job easier, and thought I would share some of my favorites. Oh, and for the record, I'm not getting paid to share any of this - I just love these companies so much I wanted to pass them on!

1) FineArtStudioOnline.com (or FASO) - www.fineartstudioonline.com

I don't even know where to start - FASO is the company I use for my website, and I can't even begin to describe how simple it has made the web component of my business. I signed up for my FASO website in 2006 and haven't looked back. The FASO software makes it easy for even non-computer geeks to put together a professional looking website that's easy to update.

As an artist, I think keeping one's website updated with new work and events is of the utmost importance, and FASO allows me to update my website in minutes. I can't even fathom what a pain it would be to deal with a web designer to make all the updates I make on a regular basis.

On top of that, the service includes email, blog capability, an email newsletter system, and statistics. I couldn't ask for more, and Clint and his customer support staff have always responded to every question of mine promptly. If you're frustrated with keeping your website updated, or just getting started, I can't recommend FASO enough.

2) Constant Contact - www.constantcontact.com

I just signed up for this newsletter service recently, and I honestly wish I had done it months ago. Constant Contact makes it easy to send out a very professional email newsletters and announcements, and keep track of your mailing list. I finally got around to sending out my first email newsletter yesterday, and I'm astounded at the response I've gotten. People have been impressed at how professional the newsletter looked, and I've had people click through to my website that had probably forgotten my work existed.

The most useful feature for me is the reports - after 24 hours, I can look and see what % of my recipients have opened the newsletter, I can see how many have clicked through to the web links I included in the text of the letter, and I can see how many bounced back to me (one) or opted to be removed from my mailing list (none). That sort of input is valuable in figuring out what should be included in the newsletter month to month, and how people are responding.

I can also easily decide which people get which types of content - for instance, I may send acquaintances event announcements, but not notifications of new work - Constant Contact makes it easy to make sure the right people get the right info.

I procrastinated about paying for a service like this for a long time, but at this point I think it's definitely worth the small monthly fee.

3) Dick Blick Art Supplies - www.dickblick.com

I live in the sticks, so I can't just run out and buy art supplies at the store on the corner. I order pretty much everything I use online, and at this point I buy everything but my paint from Blick. Their website is easy to use and organized, their customer service is fantastic, and they pack things so well that I've never had an item show up damaged (this can be a big deal when you paint on hardboard panels like I do - a lot of places don't pack them well and they show up with cracked corners!). And the icing on the cake is that their prices consistently beat out most other online retailers for the items I buy.

4) Utrecht Art Supplies - www.utrecht.com

I have to give shout out to Utrecht simply because their oil paint rocks. It's high quality artist grade paint that comes in big tubes at prices that beat most of the other paint manufacturers. It's the perfect consistency for me (I find other brands either too oily or too stiff), and the pigment load is great. I haven't been disappointed yet by the quality of this stuff.

5) Bloglines - www.bloglines.com

I read a LOT of blogs. There's no way I can keep track of them all, so a feed reader is a must if I'm going save my sanity and a lot of my time. I know a lot of people use Google Reader - same thing, essentially. I assume most people who read this blog probably use a reader of some type - if you don't, you need to because it will make your life much easier!!

Anyhow, that's all I can thing of right now. Anyone out there have any can't live without sites?

Shameless Self Promotion

I just wanted to pass on a link to a new article about my art that's just out in the current issue of a local magazine. One of my paintings is on the cover - you can read the article text here (or pick up a copy if you're in the Winter Park/Grand Lake area).

It's kind of weird to walk into the grocery store and restaurants everywhere in town and see my own painting staring back at me from the magazine stands!

Weaknesses

"Study, Afternoon Sparkle"
Oil on Panel
9x12"
2009

One of my big painting goals last year was quantity - I wanted to paint 100 paintings in 2008 to make sure I was putting in sufficient brush mileage to improve. This year I decided to go for quality, and I've been working on larger pieces and taking my time trying to get things right.

One thing I've noticed over the past few months is that I really don't like to work small. Pretty much anything smaller than 16x20" gives me fits, and paintings in the 24x30" to 30x40" range have been feeling the most comfortable for me. I think the reason is that the bigger panels allow me more room to play with brushwork and color within the main shapes of the painting. I've found myself really struggling to abbreviate things well enough in the smaller sizes.

At first I just figured I'd go with my gut and work on larger stuff. Then I found myself getting requests from galleries for smaller work, and ended up struggling through a bunch of smaller pieces anyhow, fighting the process all the way and telling myself I'd give up the small stuff when the economy improved. But this past week I realized I was giving up a bit, and decided to change my attitude.

I already limit my subject matter by painting landscapes, so why limit myself further by saying I prefer to work in a certain size range? I decided maybe I shouldn't be imposing more limitations on myself, and that maybe I should rise to the challenge and figure out what it is about working small that bugs me. I think it's a lack of control - in an 8x10" painting, each brushstroke and color has to be in the correct spot or things get sloppy, and I have a hard time controlling things well enough. Turns out my distaste for the small stuff is highlighting a big weakness.

So, I'm going to approach the small stuff with a better attitude, and see how I can improve my brush control and drawing by working on smaller studies. Hopefully I can get it right, and learn something along the way.

Do you impose limitations on your work to ultimately hide or ignore your weaknesses? I think it do it more often than I know!

A Couple of Favorite Quotes

"Fall Grove"
Oil on Panel
30x40"
2009

Well, for a while there I was bad about posting because I was sick and not painting and had nothing to say. Now I'm feeling better, but I haven't been posting because I've been swamped meeting deadlines after two months of getting nothing done! If it's not one thing, it's another I suppose.

Anyhow, I just wanted to pass along a couple of quotes by William Wendt that I wrote down when I was reading through the catalog for last year's show at the Laguna Museum. Wendt is one of my favorite landscape painters, and I would have loved to see the show. Alas, I have to be happy with the catalog, which, luckily, is fantastic.

"Nature had more to say than can be caught in a minute, she has lessons for us that may take a lifetime in the learning and I believe she intended that we landscape painters should mix brains with our paint."

I love how he speaks of landscape painting as a lifetime endeavor, and dismisses the idea that it isn't intellectual. I also love this one, which explains so well why I love wilderness and landscape painting:

"Here, the heart of man becomes impressionable. Here, away from conflicting creeds and sects, away from the soul-destroying hurly-burly of life, it feels that the world is beautiful, that man is his brother, that God is good."