Stress Artist

http://paintboxcafe.blogspot.gr/p/my-first-aceos.html

Well here I am again. What a few weeks. It was going so well. And then the Law of Sod took hold. My hard drive failed taking with it weeks and weeks of work that hadn't yet been backed up. The circuit board is currently en route to the other side of the world where some clever chaps reckon they can put the right chip onto the right new board and send it back to me so I can talk to my life again. All this going on with temperatures in the high 30s/90s which doesn't turn anyone in my house into a saint believe me.

I've also been researching like crazy to try to make the right decisions about how to sell my work, I'm extremely serious about it at this point in my life and on a mission. Things are pretty bad in Greece. About the only hope is to look to overseas customers and artwork is a perfect product from a country whose greatest gift is beauty.

But what a nightmare jungle it all is. Ebay? Etsy? Half a dozen other sites? Or just rely on my site, good SEO and social networking to build the traffic? I am sorely tempted by the latter I really am. I am trying to keep in mind that I am starting out and it might all get to be easier and faster but honestly I feel like I will never be liberated from filling in forms and reading dense rules and regulations not to mention having to serve rookie time virtually giving work away on these sites in order to get established. Trouble is for an artist like me is that I don't do things by halves. I take time and really want to make a product that is a joy to hold in your hands let alone look at. I also don't do cutesy which seems to be the style with the Wow Factor that attracts the collectors but I wonder if I am right about this. Will collectors like my work too?

All the same, meanwhile I have been painting furiously making these great little miniature ACEOs...I've taken to it like a duck to water. I like painting big and loose but there is almost a whole separate stream of my art consciousness that really gets off on tiny brushes and intricacy.  I've been loving it and finding the tiny format oddly liberating. I'm very happy with the results too, I'm dying to do more.

But what to do to sell them? These painted pieces are worth I think at least £40 each. I've never done an Ebay auction and the whole idea fills me with terror to be honest.

I've put a page of them up My First ACEOs. I wonder what other people think.

My Very First Handpainted ACEO Prints

Agios Antonios HandpaintedACEO Print Copyright Luigina Ware 2012

Fishing Boat at Syros Handpainted ACEO PrintCopyright Luigina Ware 2012

Lalakia Garden Handpainted ACEO PrintCopyright Luigina Ware 2012

Wave: Handpainted ACEO PrintCopyright Luigina Ware 2012

I spent last weekend on an experiment, albeit one that I thought would succeed. Here are the results. These are my very first efforts at ACEOs* (see below for an explanation of what an ACEO is). ACEOs can be made in any media but they must be right size - these are quite tiny - only 2.5 by 3.5 inches. I had a particular aim with these ones which was to see what I could do with an image by painting onto a canvas print. I chose these four as they each offered a particular challenge - some like Agios Antonios and Lalakia Garden were originally paintings and Fishing Boat and Wave were both digital art. I originally got into making these digital pictures when exploring photographs I had taken in Photoshop with a view to painting them. They then became digital artworks in their own right. Now I am painting over those prints so I suppose you could say these images have come full circle. 


I have tried to photograph them so that the very nice zingy sharpness and vivid colour come out well and also so that you can see the scale - there's a 1 euro coin in some of the pictures. They are still sitting on my chair in the kitchen in the afternoon sun and I just went to have a look to see how accurate the colour reproduction is. Hard to tell what you are seeing - always be aware when viewing art online that different monitors and computer equipment display colour somewhat differently. But I really don't think anyone buying these would be disappointed in the contrast between these photos and the actual objects. I am really pleased with them and they were great to work on. I'll photograph some of the print ones later, they also look pretty far out.

The little canvases are mounted on good quality mat board, the edges are all blacked and they are gloss varnished.

I've made up my mind to put them to auction on Ebay and see if I can catch the eye of some collectors. Might work, might not...let's see what happens!!!
Click on the images to visit the relevant pages on my websites where you can buy the full size prints and read something about the original artworks.

 *ACEO is an abbreviation for Art Cards & Editions, sometimes also known as ATCs - Artist Trading Cards - other people might just call them Miniatures. The rule with them is that they are made on card and must measure 2.5 x 3.5 inches - no more no less. They are loved by artists for the scope they give to experiment without the commitment of a major piece and because there is a certain amount of craft in them. It also means you can offer customers a genuinely affordable artwork.

Long day's journey....

How much there is to do to create an online presence for one's art and hopefully sell some. I am not a full time artist - I want to be of course but life doesn't permit it so I work at other things for a living. That isn't even a sob story, it's just that the artist in me is almost a separate function from the worker, I like my job and am lucky to be able to do it from wherever I am.
So, we thought, I'll set up a website, sell some prints. Maybe I can win back a day a week to have for myself and start creating some more work, get at the paints.  Keep going, keep going!
Exploring the web I find myself in awe time and time again of the work to be found. Then you look and the date of the last post on the blog is months, even years ago. I want to make a flow. I guess it is the early posts that are the worst to deal with, one coughs and feels self-conscious. Everything seems pretentious.
So here's the plan. I won't have one. I'll keep sticking something on here, sharing the picture that's on my mind today or whatever and let the thing invent itself. I can see how it will be because I know what I do and what I want to share and I also know my objective, it's just starting it that is weird.
Here on this island it is the most perfect time of year, beautiful, warm and sunny but not too hot. This little painting I did of a garden in a back street is the one most on my mind right now, were I to be able to paint today this is the sort of thing I would be doing:

Lalakia Garden: Painting of a Garden in the backstreets of Ermoupoli, Syros by Luigina Ware. Visit website to buy print

At last...I'm launching my websites!

Well it has taken me just a bit of a while but finally, at last, after much wailing and gnashing of html, hollow-eyed nights wrangling with prices and sizes, angst over logos and layout and a really horrible state of consternation and misery over the copy I have finally launched two websites where prints of my work can be bought. If I had had any idea how long it would take I'd probably have printed a few off and made for a beach somewhere but truth to tell I am really proud of them now. Please come and visit:

The first one shows all my Greek art work:

www.aegeanlight.co.uk

 the second is for everything else - right now the digital work and some reproductions of paintings:
www.anotherlight.co.uk

A big part of the work involved was getting the test prints made. I had fantastic help from my printers in Syros, PrintIt Today who couldn't do enough to help. The samples look really wonderful - better than I hoped. The colours are vivid, the paper and canvas choices are lush and the images are sharp - all in these are products I am very happy with and will be proud to show.

So now there is just the small matter of getting my social network fired up and operational.

For this blog in particular, I have made no rules. I am just hoping that good labelling and tagging will make sense of it all.....