Selling out?

You may remember this photo from my May 24th post

 - so this:

is the back.

Before blogging on, here is an apropo question. 

Why do you make art? - if you do. If you don't, why do you like art?

Here are my reasons:  

1. Creative Outlet (I really don't believe I am intrinsically creative, but I do have a passion to create - my landscapes are impressionist (I hope) and not realistic (I hope). I very much admire realist painters, but that is not my goal.

2. Art materials addict (Hello Mr. Blick and Mr. Artarama, etc.) 

3. Art History lover 

4. To make some money to buy art (& art supplies!) I love buying art from my artist friends when I can. 

5. To make some money to create more art!

Chapter 9 of "Show Your Work" by Austin Kleon is 

Sell Out - not the one word "sellout",

which sounds crass and finger-pointing.

Because I want to do #4 and #5 in my list, 

does that make me a sellout?

This chapter is a must read for artists. 

Yes, many people don't want to sell or even show their creations - they are personal. But most of us want to display and have people enjoy it, or discuss it or even revile it. (Remember the title of this book.)

The last line of this chapter ends Kleon's discussion about "paying it forward": "You just have to be as generous as you can, but selfish enough to get your work done."

... and the bottom line for me is to 

make my paintings/drawings/ceramics/sculptures/whatevers

and allow people to get a bit of enjoyment from them because I get so much out of creating them.

(I do not have a website, apart from this blog, so I am not "getting out there" but every so often locally. This "advertising" is a slow process for me!)

Speaking of showing work, 

here is set up and plein air painting from yesterday:

A Bolder Boulder     oil on prepared canvas panel     9 x 12

 the glacier left it

boulder is BBQ size

the moss will take it

This is a much more abstracted painting 

than I thought I was going to make!

Oh, and here is the promised peek at a detail of the triptych:

Thank you for viewing and reading my art blog!

Summertime

Crazy how fast 10 days fly by!

I've been taking down paintings from my June/July show at Coppa Ice Cream and Coffee shop -

30Paintings30Days (Stuff in my Refrigerator)        prints available!    $50/each unframed

- delivering the sold paintings (10 sold!) to the new owners, 

painting on my own, 

painting with Plein Rein 

and working on the triptych. 

I guess that is why time is flying.

The other day my friend, her two little boys and I went on a walk 

and afterward I grabbed my backpack and went out onto the tidal flats and did a painting 

that I scraped all the way off before I came home.  

I worked on it in the studio the next day and it came out like this:

Tidelands      oils on birch panel     6 x 8 inches

Which was mostly what I was striving for out there. I am fairly happy with it.

I will give you more peeks at the triptych in the next day or so!

Happy painting and/or viewing!

And thank you for checking in to this blog!

Punched in the gut

Chapter 8 - Learn to take a punch

(from Show Your Work! - by Austin Kleon)

Way back 

when I was beginning to follow blogs -

 trying to be social and make a comment or two,

I commented to a really fantastic artist who had posted a painting of a cow in a field that the cow looked more like a horse. 

(!) 

Normally, this artist posted amazingly fantastic still life or street scenes (that was why I followed them), with this one they were out of their comfort level, I think.

Of course they did not respond to my comment, I didn't really expect them to, except maybe curse me or something.

I did think about how it would feel to have someone make a comment like that ... prob'ly not so good.

So I have NEVER said anything that wasn't a compliment from then on. But maybe that artist went back and learned how to paint cow heads?

This chapter about learning to form a thick skin

 was short and the takeaways were:

1. Relax and breathe
2. Put out a lot of work and let them say what they will
3. Realize that criticism cannot hurt you
4. If some of your work is too personal, keep it to yourself
5. Your work is not who you are, it is just what you do

Oh, and yes - most of the time you are your harshest critic ... 

and speaking of this - 

this is one of the landscapes from my recent workshop.

If you remember, it began like this:

Eagle River to the Beach    Oil on Birch Panel    12 x 9 inches (plein-air/studio)

I have been having a heck of a time with the mountain values, so I think I will turn it to the wall for awhile and wait a couple weeks to go look at it again. I did sign it, so it must be close!

Just remember, from A.K. - "delete those nasty comments because

comments outnumber ideas"!

Next post, progress on the triptych -

thanks so much for checking in!