New Blog and Stuff

I've no paintings to show but wanted to give an update on ebay selling and some new directions. June is coming to a close and ending a 30 day long selling spree on ebay. A spree is defined by a whopping three sales! I can finally retire and move to the South of France!

I really did have a very fruitful month in as far as I learned a great deal about ebay, and computer things that are going to be very beneficial. I was glad to sell some paintings and cover all my ebay and paypal fees and still make a little. Baby steps -I always tell myself. The free ebay store that was set up for June I'll be closing tonight and from now on I'll just list independent auctions. I find no advantage at this point to pay the $15/month for the official "store".

What I've done instead is create a new blog site to operate as an on-line studio or gallery. I'll post the same work as on my regular blog but without all the commentary. Persons can purchase from that site directly using PayPal or a painting may be directly linked to an ebay auction. The new site is much more "customer" friendly and provides a place to view all the paintings in gallery fashion. I need to learn how to list them by categories instead of date, but changes come with my slow learning curve. I still haven't discovered how to connect my site to my PayPal account to allow sales through them. That is a must and I've failed so far. Help ! anyone.

I like the idea of having one blog for fellow artists, family and friends and another site for selling. I can direct potential customers who visit an auction on ebay to visit my on-line gallery to see more work for sale. I didn't feel that my existing blog was a site that would appeal to shoppers- thus the new site. Maybe I should have an official Web page, but that is over my head for now and I think there is cost involved. I think this will work! Just got to connect to PayPal!

I only produced 5 paintings in June due to all this business related work. I'm finding that I'm not able to work with my right brain and left brain at the same time. Business things really stifle the muse so I sure hope that July will be more artistically productive. I've got some paintings planned and am looking forward to getting back in the groove.

So check out my new "studio" by clicking on the link in the left column and please give any suggestions or comments. All is welcome.

Blue Tea Pot and Lemons- SOLD

Click on image to enlarge.

6"x 8" Oil on canvas mounted on board.

I love shopping in thrift stores for interesting objects to paint. Recently I found this cute little tea pot in a robin egg blue. I love the shape and was excited about pairing it with lemons. This still life was set up in a shadow box that I just set up in an old wooden box, but I really need to expand my set up to be a bit more versatile. I might attempt to make a "box" similar to the one Carol Marine uses as seen in her blog - posts on February 4, 7 and again on May 26. Can you believe it is made out of PVC pipe! I ought to be able to handle that!

"A Spot of Shade" nfs

Click on image to enlarge.

6"x 6" oil on canvas mounted on panel.

Another in the garden series is fresh off the easel. I enjoyed painting the bright colors in this piece. I've been working on getting color "accurate" lately and in this painting, I just wanted bright and happy color. The natural colors from my source were already intense, but I pushed them a little. My canvas was given an extra coat of gesso which produced a little smoother texture that worked well for me.

Thanks for dropping by.

Lake Como No.3

After a week of finishing projects, making improvements to "Comfortable Hide-Out", and failing at a painting of a single rose, I was in the mood to relive memories from Lake Como, Italy. The day that I was there it was very cloudy and gray and all my photos look like the one here. I decided that I would make the best of the reference and use it very loosely, as an inspiration. The ideal would be en plein air or paint from memory, but I wanted to paint a brighter and sunnier day than I remember. I used only the bottom left portion of this photo to inspire my composition.

I gave the canvas a light tone of raw sienna, adding some darker smudges to indicate composition and wiped out the lightest areas. I established a composition with a large dark mass on the right, and a subordinate dark mass on the far left. The focal point would be the group of white boats which will also be the lightest light on the canvas.

Next I began filling in the local colors, continuing to work out the composition and comparing values as I go. At this stage I can already visualize the sun hitting the boats and buildings in the cove.

This photo of the finish painting fails to show the distant buildings in their full intensity of color. In the original, the roofs are redder and the boats are very white and "pop" out as the focal point. This photo shows the red and white flag on the right, competing with the focal point, but it doesn't at all in the painting. I've shot this in many lights, inside and out, night and day, and have finally settled for this heavily photo-shopped image.

Click on image to enlarge.

6"x 8" oil on canvas mounted on hardboard

Ebay Stuff!

Click on image to enlarge.

Illustration 11.5"x 7" Prisma colored pencil on illustration board. Cover art for "Intouch Magazine" ( for Dr.Charles Stanley's Atlanta church ministry and worldwide magazine and devotional guide) I created this artwork in the late 1990's.

Some of you may remember that I opened an Ebay store last Saturday and for those that are curious about how that is going I'll catch you up on the latest.

My first 4 items were listed for seven days and the auction closed yesterday with no sales. I had been keeping track with the activity all week and was hopeful about one of these paintings (Garden Reprieve) that was marked "watched" by three persons. Being watched doesn't translate into "interested in buying" but it still felt nice that someone hit some kind of button when they saw the piece. I've relisted the 4 works for auction for an additional week. If there are no sales for this next week, I don't know if these first items will stay in the store, but if so, they will probably be listed with a "buy now" price.

The next six paintings I listed for 10 instead of 7 days, after reading that this would be a good strategy with the listing fee costing 40 cents more per item for the extra 3 days. To date I've accumulated about $35 dollars to list the 10 items and relist 4. This doesn't inclued the Ebay store fee that is free the first month ($14.95/ month). If an item sells, a percent of the sale price will be assessed and PayPal receives a small percentage for their part. When the current auctions end and I relist items or place new items in the store, of course the fees will increase as I go. I'll need to decide how many items are the ideal number for any given time, but for now, I'm just experimenting. If I could sell just one or two paintings a month to cover these costs, it'd be worth the investment to receive the exposure in the market. I'm sure it takes quite a while to get noticed out there and I'm not producing enough to approach galleries yet. Comments are welcome! It's a real blessing that I have other means to pay bills for now! Seriously, I'm glad I don't have that kind of pressure. I love painting without anxiety! The brush is much happier.

I spent quite a bit of time this week on "managing " the store with some very worthwhile tools provided. Tracking daily activity in the store was fun and educational as I was able to see what items were getting the most interest. Stats are also available for number of visits to the store and how many times each item was viewed. The tools also allowed me to see from where each visit came – whether from ebay searches or from my blog or google. I'll list below some of the types of information provided to manage a "basic level" store.

Stats for the time period of Saturday, May 31 to Sunday, June 8:

275 page visits (or item visits)
99 "visits" as described by ebay: " a sequence of consecutive page views without a 30 minute break" per person. (this is hard to believe!)
82 store front visits

Most visited "pages" or items in order of frequence:
Lake Como (both of two paintings) Note to Jennifer!
Garden Reprieve (garden w/ orange bench)
No One's Home ( garden w/bird house and wheel barrow)
Yellow Onion
Pink Ladies ( camillas in yellow vase)
Santorini Patio
all others

I had 5 "watched " items, some items watched by more than one person.

Referring Domains (or through what engine did they arrive at the store or page):

79% ebay
20% my blog
3% google
4% other

Research led me to different articles with tips and rules for using the most successful keywords and titles for listing items. The listing "title" is most important for search engine key words. There is a limited number of characters, so you should leave out any unnecessary words as "and" & "the". Your name is not as important as words that describe the item unless you are a "known" artist that customers will google or place into ebay's search engine. The title of the painting is useless, such as "No One's Home". My listing title for this piece is as follows:
King: original oil painting 8x7 garden scene/bird house. Another example of how to get more "hits" with search engines, is keep it simple. For example, when I first listed a painting of a villa on Lake Como, I titled it as "Lake Como villa". A better way to list the same information would be to list as " LakeComo/ villa". When the words are separated with " / " the search engine can find all paintings of Lake Como and not just the ones with a villa. My reasearch was ongoing during the week and I got much practice in revising my listings. They were all revised in numerous ways before it was done and at 10 listings quite a few hours were spent.

This just in! I recieved an email (via ebay) about payment options from an ebay shopper. I'm not sure why she wouldn't know from my store info what those would be, but I'm glad to get an inquiring email!!!! Updates to come.

"Comforting Hide-Out"

This is the original post of this painting before I made some final changes. The color is more representative in this shot, the warm tones are accurate here.

Although the color is off, I wanted to show the improvements made in this piece. The two trees on the right are now forming one large mass and the dark shape above the lower tree is removed. I've added more texture in the tree masses and some in the grassy areas. The rest is untouched, what a difference in color! Not even photoshop would help me out. (June 15)

Click on image to enlarge.

"6x8" Oil on canvas mounted on board

This addition to my garden series was painted yesterday in one session (about three hours). The scene is once again from my neighbor Kelly's yard and appears just as I have painted it. Her daughter's play house is a cute little "hide-out" that I'd love to have for myself.

After the last two pieces were painted on gessoed Strathmore board, I was wanting to feel the texture of canvas under my brush. I had enjoyed the easy flow of the brush on the smoother board but something about the canvas was calling me back to it. Painting on the two surfaces are such different experiences and the final product is noticeably different. In my critique, I find that the board surface produces many hard edges for me. Maybe it's just a matter of me learning how to soften the strokes. Carol Marine can work on hardboard and use flats and still get wonderful soft edges as well as sharp. Of course the canvas produces much softer edges naturally, but I don't seem to get the more loose and fluid strokes. I'm still trying to decide which I like best, but for now maybe I'll keep switching back and forth. If anyone would like to give an opinion of my work on these two surfaces, I'd welcome your input!

"One Big Knot"

Click on image to enlarge.

Illustration for book cover published in 1993. Oil on gessoed illustration board.

After spending the greater part of Saturday creating and opening an ebay store, I was one big knot!!! I keep working on increasing my computer skills but it's not easy! Ebay wasn't as user-friendly to set up as blogspot. I found myself just staring at the screen trying to find something as basic as "list item". By then it was late in the process and I think my brain was going to mush. On the first two paintings that were listed, I found two important and embarrassingly misspelled words in the description that I could never correct. I could add information, but not go back into the copy to edit. The most frustrating thing, due to my own ignorance, was losing all the info entered on an item three different times until I discovered how to maneuver away from the page to research something and return. My husband had to leave the room for a while for me to cool off after going through that speed bump!

So my store is open with four paintings yet to be linked to my blog. There is much more to do to improve the design and work out some details but it feels good to make this next step toward my goals. I wish all I had to do was paint! I'm sure I'm not alone in that desire.