Embroidered Collage

I'm taking a break from this blog for a bit, for the first time in over two years.

My paradigm shift, which occurred a few days before I posted about it, removed a lot of the fuel going to my engine and now I just feel tired, although part of that is probably the pregnancy.  I have a great many ideas swirling through my head, but I need some time to sort them out and don't think I'll be creating much worth posting about in the meantime.

My baby is due in 6 weeks, but could arrive in only 4!  Putting it that way freaks me out a lot more than saying that she's due on December 24th, although I'm not entirely sure why.  We have the nursery almost together but there's still a lot of art supplies and other clutter I'd like to clear up before delivery instead of after, when she's getting closer and closer to mobility with every month that passes.

I don't want to push myself to create and to write during this time period, so instead of trying to post sporadically I'm just going to stop for a bit. 

I hate to do this during NaBloPoMo and even thought about just dropping that personal commitment, but I think I need to go further.  This has been a hard decision for me.  I don't quite know what I'm going to do without blogging, but I'll still be monitoring comments, answering emails, participating in online discussions and so forth.  You can't tear me away from the internet!  I'll even be listing in my Etsy store actively for the rest of November, since I have ACEOs waiting for just that purpose, but once December comes that will be put on a maintenance only status as well.

Come back February 1 and check in!  Or subscribe to my blog using a feedreader or by email so you'll know if I come back earlier.  There are links in the page header above.  I'm certainly hoping to return sooner and, whether I do or not, I will definitely have some great stuff to talk about whenever it may be.  See you soon!

A profitable art business is no longer one of my goals.

You probably wouldn't have noticed anything different if I didn't tell you.  I will be creating and blogging and selling on Etsy with a professional attitude and doing a certain amount of promotion, just as you've seen in the past.

All of the differences are behind the scenes.  I have invested a great deal of time into figuring out how I should build up my art, fitting what I want to create into what will be good for the customer, from selecting price points to keywords to subject matter.  I've researched and considered, abandoned and retried, and made long-term plans.  All this with the goal of making a profit, even just $1 after expenses and deductions, within the next five years.  I just haven't blogged about much of it.

I won't be doing that part anymore.

I never actually dreamed of being an artist.  I never seriously considered making a living this way.  I was intrigued by this microcosm of a business for the same reasons that I chose to pursue my MBA.  I wanted to achieve a profit for reasons that had little to do with the art itself and that, well, that gets into the problem of "making something that no one needs and few want," as I read somewhere a few months ago, and the general difficulty of the path.

I did and do dream about creating beautiful and amazing complex artwork with embroidery and collage.  I would love to be written up in FiberArts magazine someday.  This is going to take a great deal of education, practice, and growth.  I need an outlet for what I create in the meantime and want people to enjoy my art and occasionally vote with their pocketbooks as to its value.  But I don't need to be making a profit overall in order to do those things.

I will still be creating art, but I will also be doing something else.

I have dreamt of being a writer at many times during my life, not of novels, but of non-fiction.  I considered taking technical writing for my next career path before I chose to pursue the MBA.  I still want the concept of communication to be a backbone for my future studies and career, whether in a corporate organization as one aspect of my duties or as the core of my being self-employed.  Building up my abilities and reputation is just as slow a process as becoming a profitable self-representing artist.  There are just as many fears and doubts associated with it.  But there is the benefit of more income potential and the advantage of being a business I actually want to run someday.

Writing and arting will hopefully remain sidelines and essentially hobbies for many years to come as I pursue my primary career objectives, but they will both be present.  I'm not giving anything up.  I'm realizing where my priorities lie.

An additional plus for the art side is that this decision has freed me to think a little differently about what and how I'm creating.  I'm expecting more embroidery in the future and also an emphasis on samplers, although I'm not 100% sure about that last yet.

"Paint Red Hot Landscapes That Sell!" is the title that kept me from reading this book by Mike Svob for at least a year, despite my eye lighting on it in the art section of the library.  I was expecting something trite with a title like that, but checked it out anyway since I've been thinking about landscapes lately.  I received a very pleasant surprise - some interesting composition and technique comments that I hadn't seen before and a very rational view of selling.

Mike advises that potential customers buy art because it fulfills some emotional need for them and "ambivalence in your approach to painting will lead to an ambivalent response from the viewer."  Then he takes the reader through some of his paintings trying to help them look for what matters to them.  I didn't find that part nearly as useful as the similar mental exercises in Dakota Mitchell's book, though.  He continues to emphasize the connection of the artist, either in terms of graphic elements or subject matter, to what they are going to paint throughout the book.

Composition principles are looked at not just as what is good artistically, but as what gets the attention of a buyer.  It doesn't change the resulting advice from what you'll find in a good book on design, but it puts a different twist on the way you might think about it.  He emphasizes tonal values and pushing colors to the extreme, even in realistic landscapes.  And it works.  His skies look right even when they are yellow!

An exercise Mike introduces that I want to try involves working from three values in oils or acrylics.  Start by painting in the darks, then glaze on a transparent middle value, then re-establish the lights with opaque paints.  Then you can enhance the image further with additional colors and variations.

Kristan Hodge gave me a brief description of her technique and I decided to give it a try, deliberately going for something coarser instead of the fine detail.  I used Golden's liquid acrylics straight from the bottle, squirted onto wax paper, then laid the watercolor paper down and squished.   I turned the sandwich over and manipulated the paints a little bit, then removed it and let dry.  Essentially, I made a monoprint, which I then cut up to make the ATCs.  The surface of my cards is very different from Kristan's, as mine have that plastic acrylic paint feel that you get from a thick application.  I will be sending these in for an abstract art trade in December.  It was a fun effort.  I won't be doing exactly this again, but it did remind me that layering monoprints on my canvases before the embroidery might be worth trying.

Another 6"x6" imaginary landscape inspired by the collage papers.  I love the ridged paper.  It's in a number of the collage packs that I have and it just makes me want to stitch in the ditches and then across the ridges and maybe weave on top of that...  I restrained myself here and just went for a little bit of a vegetation look.  I wonder if I would have developed this piece differently if I hadn't just been working on The Dry Mountains?  The simple straight upreaches definitely remind me of the last landscape I did.