INKTOBER - Draw it out!

'Ring - yup yup yup - phone'...ah Sesame Street, what would I be without you.

Mindless - Day 2 prompt

It is always a good idea to keep your drawing skills up.  September the life drawing classes start again. October is Inktober 2019  where you follow a prompt (if you like) and draw every day in October.  The first 2 days have been easy - might get more challenging as it goes along!

Art Refreshments

Sometimes it is necessary to take a break from painting and go out and enjoy some fabulous art.  I was lucky enough to tag along on my hubby's work trip to London last week.  We spent our first 2 days in relaxing Bath, UK.  Then it was full on art galleries for 3 days in London.  I managed to get to the Mall Galleries, the Royal Academy of Art, the National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery and the Tate Modern. I think my step count on the ol' fit bit was over 22000 steps most days.  Ah... but it was artsy heaven.  Below are some pics and captions of the trip.

Bath, UK - beautiful city, relaxing spa day!

Looking through the bone sculpture toward Kensington Palace  in Hyde Park

The Mall Galleries had the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition with some cool paintings

A Claude Monet painting at I think the National Gallery

This was a painting by Van Gogh I had never seen before, but loved the colours and movement

Laurits Anderson Ring - Danish Painter - This one reminded me of home

An interesting immersive exhibit by Olafur Eliasson at the Tate Modern

The tower of Babel - tons of radios playing random things

Monet's waterlilies - Tate Modern

A relaxing spot to sketch and rest my feet in Hyde Park

Strathearn Art Walk - Fun in the Sun

Finding some shade!

On Saturday, I  set up my booth at the annual Strathearn Art Walk.  It was a beautiful day, with lots of great artists / vendors and the weather helped draw a record crowd. This was my fourth art fair experience and probably the most successful one.  I had lots of wonderful people stop by and received some very positive feedback.  I managed to sell 3 original paintings, a few prints / cards, 3 potential commissions and made some great connections with other art minded people.  

Thankfully, my wonderful spouse helped me haul and set up / take down everything and gave me a break part way through.  I managed to race around the site to check out other booths - there were approximately 300 of them, so it took me awhile.  I especially enjoyed meeting some of the other artists and seeing their work.  I held a free giveaway draw for one of my prints, which was a good idea, as I now have a potential commission from that.

So my take-aways from this art fair:

1)  WEATHER is probably one of the biggest factors to a successful amount of traffic through your booth.  Not much you can do but come prepared and hope it is nice out!

2) LOCATION - the park was a really nice spot and most booths had great flow through of people.  Mine was right on a walking path, lots of people wandering by, you did not get to choose though.

3)BOOTH SET UP - not too crowded with stuff, lets more people wander through and looks clean.  

I did not bring a lot of extra art, so when I sold my pieces I didn't have much to replace them with - lesson for next time

4) SIGNATURE PIECE - wow, so many people stopped in because of my large central painting of the mountain town - trying to guess where it was.  Excellent way to start a conversation.

5)BE PREPARED - I finally had my Square credit card reader, a proper cash box, wrapping material for sold paintings - lots of business cards.  I seemed professional this time!!  I did run out of drinking water for myself and so did many food vendors, so I was pretty parched by the end.  More water and snacks next time.

I brought my Plein air easel and paints but as it was sooo busy I didn't have time for that.  I still think it is a good idea if it were a bad weather day though.

Check out this link for some good tips I reviewed (afterwards for some reason) Bob's ideas for art shows

Completed Series

Well this is the second painting of the old blue truck, entitled 'Out to Pasture'.  I enjoyed trying to get the rust and I really liked the bright purple peeking through here and there.  I am attempting a quick dry in the sun, so that the painting will not be tacky on Saturday for the Strathearn Art Walk.  It is the second largest art fair in Edmonton, with tons of vendors, music, food trucks, etc.  Hoping the weather holds!

Recent process paintings

I am working on a few paintings inspired by my wandering this summer.  I loved this old truck, sitting out in a field that I have been driving past almost daily.  I finally stopped and took a pile of photos.  I did several sketches from my photos and decided on 2 ‘poses’ that I liked.  Then I gridded it up onto a 12 x 12 canvas and began the painting.  I have a second pose on the go as well, and will try to post it soon. The photos are out of order and not complete as I am posting with my iPad, which seems to be glitchy.  Check out my Instagram post @tessastanleyart to see the proper process.

Step1 get some ideas

After a small sketch - grid up and draw on canvas

Add caption

Art Accounting 101

So now that the art show is over and with the end of the month it is time for an accounting - both of expenses and for my own decisions.  This little blurb is meant to help other artists when they are deciding what to spend money on for a show, or on their art in general BUT IS ONLY MY OPINION SO TAKE IT WITH A GRAIN OF SALT.

Money well spent

Business Cards - in prepping for the show, I used Vista print and ordered business cards and some 'postcards'.  I still have lots left for the upcoming fall art walks I will be at - so I think this was money well spent.  In the past I would spend time and money making my own at home.  Ink costs are outrageous for my printer.  Vista print was under $150 for everything I had printed (500 cards, 500 postcards).  worth it I think as I had much frustration at times getting all my business cards to print out properly.

Framing - I had every painting properly framed and ready for hanging by Vestate Molding in Edmonton.  They are AWESOME and I was very pleased with the quality and how quickly they got my framing done when I had a time crunch.  Their prices are competitive and even a bit better than other framers I used. Highly recommend framing as things look nice and professional.

Money NOT well spent - this is where I rant a bit.  I learned a lesson the hard way (money lost).  An artist I met recommended a company in Edmonton, which I won't name here, that I subsequently went to for some prints.  I WAS at fault for not clearly stating I wanted a FULL ACCOUNTING of all the costs to have prints done.  The guy who I met with had a way of chatting that was very circular, not intentionally, where he described the whole process but rarely came to a direct point of saying what the entire costs would be, I got it in little chunks, but not in writing.  It was recommended that I should get them to photograph all my artworks for printing, that I should not really do that myself as it is challenging to get the proper high quality digital images needed.  This would cost $50 for the first painting and $38 for the rest.  In hindsight I would have done this myself, as I am a decent photographer, have a nice Nikon D90 and some experience due to submitting images to art juries. TRUST YOURSELF!

This was done in week one, he recommended I return in a week after photographing so we could decide what I wanted  - giclees, lithos, prints and cards.  I had been told earlier I would get an email with all the images and samples of what they would look like in different size formats, etc.  I did not but he spent quite a bit of time with me when I returned, showing me examples on the computer.  

Long story short - I spent almost $700 getting photographs of 7 paintings; 2 giclees on canvas; 2 on paper; 35 prints and about 60 cards.  One of the Giclees on canvas was for myself so - $200 off that.  The remaining $500 I don't think I will ever recoup,  as you would have to print a large volume and subsequently sell them all and be a very in demand painter.  I refuse to return to the print shop, as they botched several aspects of the job - hanging one giclee upside down, printing another with major colour issue, 2 cards were not useable as they were dirty, one set of cards was not colour corrected, etc. They corrected the giclee's.  I don't think I thought the whole thing through well, as I would have realized how much I needed to get printed in order to make back money I spent.  From the opening I made $242 on what was printed and sold,  less the galleries percentage which was small.  All in all I am behind by about $300.

I would recommend CAREFULLY sitting down looking at all the companies available to get something good printed. Get references - although the place I went to was recommended.  LEARN how to take high quality digital images.  PAINT some good paintings for printing.  

CHOOSE the right type of printing for the setting.  I don't think I would get prints made for a gallery setting, maybe just some art cards.  I would get PRINTS in the $25 - $40 range for outdoor art fairs.  I would give customers who like your art, but say they can't afford an original, the option of you getting a giclee printed if they truly are interested, but not printing it beforehand - take a deposit then get a giclee on canvas.  Giclees seem pretty popular in some stores with high tourist traffic flow, so that is something useful to consider.  My rant ends here.

Gallery at the Arts Station

First Artist Demo

Yesterday was my first ever artist demo at The Fernie Arts Station. Being a beautiful Saturday afternoon I was not surprised that the audience was small, but that was probably a good thing as I wasn’t nervous and they were nice with no heckling!  I was surprised how quickly the 2 hours went by, initially thinking I would wrap it up early, but did not.

What worked well:
I did the demo in a similar fashion to the baking shows.  I had 3 canvases of the same size. One was just a gessoed and toned ‘blank’, the second had a completed under painting and the third was the fully finished version.

I started with my blank toned canvas and described how I prepped the canvas. Then I showed my sketchbook and talked about my drawings and studies for prepping and planning
I began the drawing on the canvas with diluted oils and got half way done, then asked if they had enough and wanted me to move on to painting.  UNANIMOUS yes.

  Hmmm... it was a good time to throw in a joke - why did Van Gogh become a painter? Because He didn’t have an ear for music. GROANS. Moving on.

Started the darks and shadows first with thinned oil paint.  Then mixed up sky colour, then lightest grass colour and covered the largest areas first. Then tackled the house and soon enough time was up.There were of course questions throughout which I hope I answered without babbling too much.  I think I would sometimes go off on tangents but hope they got their questions answered.  I showed the completed version earlier on in response to a question.

I think I would be good to go if I ever had to do another demo someday.  The pre-planned and finished painting steps worked well for me, as there were no surprises.  I do like to plan ahead!

All in all a positive experience for me, hope it was okay for the audience.  It would be worthwhile having someone video the talk so I could cringe and watch it all later to see what was working best. Many thanks to Jackie at the Arts Station and the women that attended!

Fernie Arts Station
 
Photo courtesy of Jackie from the Arts Station

Biking and blogging

Summer usually means a slow down in my art creation. I am off work and more time is spent ‘Momming’, visiting, gardening and holidaying.  This summer I have been able to do a lot more mountain biking, now that I am in actual mountains every day.  It’s been great for the cardio and the soul.  So of course that has led me to my recent bike painting theme.  Occasionally I will get on a tangent and paint several paintings on one idea ( see cheeky prime ministers https://tessastanley.blogspot.com/2017/04/oil-and-acrylic-dont-mix-you-hoser.html ) I know that many artist spend months or years on a theme, painting just trains or flowers or abstract fruits.  I find I need to switch fairly regularly to maintain my interest.  

 So this is a view from one of the bike trails last week. Fabulous! Below  are some of my bike paintings and progress paintings.

SOLO SHOW OPENING

Last night was the opening for my solo show at the Fernie Arts Station .  Being my first solo show, I was pretty excited and somewhat scared.  I think it went pretty well, I was thrilled to sell my painting ‘Spring Thaw’ to a really nice couple who I will deliver the painting to once the show ends, July 23.  I really enjoyed chatting with everyone and as it was

a nice intimate setting I didn’t feel nervous when talking about the art or my ‘process’.  I think it was the perfect size space and crowd to get an introduction to doing a solo show.  Thanks again to Jackie from the Arts Station who did such an awesome job running everything.  Also, the Hanging Committee did an excellent job of hanging my art, I got lots of compliments about the art and how it was displayed.

All in all I felt great about the show, now to just keep painting and try it again sometime.

Solo Show - Fernie Arts Station

Well... it is one week away from my first solo art show at The Fernie Arts Station in beautiful Fernie, BC.  Thursday, June 27, 2019 from 7 until 9 pm is the opening.  The show runs until July 23rd, 2019.

I am fluctuating between excited and worried - primarily I wonder about everything I painted and how it will look - will people like it or not !! I have been in group shows, but those are always much less intimidating when you are with a crowd.

If you are driving through the Crowsnest Pass this summer stop in Fernie, BC and check it out.

The Wonderful Encounters When Plein Air Painting

Today being another beautiful day I decided I would race out before noon and find something to paint.  I casually meandered onto the U of A farm and set up to paint this cool red & white barn.  On my way out I stopped to check out another barn, hidden behind the Saville Sports Centre.  I stopped to ask a man who was at the barn if he minded if I took some photos for later painting inspiration.  He was SUPER nice (Mr. Norby?) and proceeded to tell me all kinds of wonderful history of the U of A farm and these two barns.

This horse barn was originally built around 1915 and was located a few kilometres away right in the same spot the Stollery Children's Hospital is now.  It was chopped into 3 parts and moved south onto what now is the location of the Saville Sports Centre.  It was moved again (by the same company that originally moved it) to its current spot in the field near the pig barns.

Inside the white, former dairy barn is the A.L.E.S. museum, the U of A's Agriculture, etc historical museum.  It is FULL OF COOL old farm equipment, sleighs, etc.  ALES museum can be accessed by calling or emailing and making an appointment or if you happen to be nearby and someone is inside they will gladly let you have a look around.  I only saw a small portion of it but will be heading back with some family to check it out ASAP.

Art Fair - To Do or Not to Do...

Last night was my first 'Art Walk / Fair' of the year.  This one was Art Walk St Albert and it is held on the first Thursday of the month from May until September.  I was actually supposed to have also been in the May Art Walk, however it was snowing and cold that day before and morning of, so I pulled out of that one, fearing for my art and my toes. Here is some info for VENDOR artists considering a booth at any art fair.

- The  Cost. St. Albert Art Walk is free for outdoor vendors to set up, who have applied.  This is great if you are just starting out and want to test the water's. ( It's great for anyone really).  check out prices of applying when you want to do an art fair.

- The location. This one was great, as it is in front of St. Albert Place which holds a library, studios, City Hall, the Arden Theatre.  Quite busy with people coming and going for the first while.
You get plenty of exposure, even if you aren't making sales.

- The Duration of the Art Walk.  Lots of work to prepare for a short duration Art Walk - from 6 until 8:30 pm.  I spent most of the day before-hand setting up my tent to make sure I had all the bits, laying out my paintings, making portfolio, labels, price lists, etc.  With time I will get faster at doing this.

- Weather - it is uncontrollable - I came prepared with gloves, toque, layers - but we were all a little chilly.

-Your set up.
Costly Version.  We lucked out, the rain held off and the wind was moderate.  Saw 2 easels go down and I was eyeballing my neighbours tent as it was not pegged or sandbagged.
Your options are - going big and getting the tent and its accoutrements - which DEFINITELY REQUIRES 2 PEOPLE for set up and takes MUCHO time.  I purchased my tent on-line from Impact Displays for about $380 and search their website well, as I found a package that includes all 4 walls and a small awning for just about the same price as just the tent.  It comes in a handy wheeled bag that almost fits everything back in again, but not really.  My display racks were 8' lengths of wire shelves from Canadian Tire or Walmart, that are zip tied together.
- Staying small and portable, which my neighbour on the other side had, with a nice professional display rack and table that looked like if it started raining she would be warm and dry in her car before I could hardly get started!  She had an additional box of prints and other items to show people who were interested in her art stored neatly under her table.

- The People.  This was a very friendly location.  Most people had positive comments and didn't mind chatting.  I gleaned information on which paintings they reacted most positively too and kept track in my guest book.  (COWS!) Most were just browsing but I enjoyed chatting.

- The other artists - all super friendly and very willing to share their tips and tricks.  THANK YOU for sharing info on who your printer is, where to get the best prints, etc.  It was recommended that I get some prints made of my work to sell at a lower price point for those who could not afford the original oil paintings.  Guess what I am doing today!