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Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain. -- Elie Wiesel
A little more... still rough sketch work. I think I'll do a lot later with my small brush to blend in the petals.
Someone found my web site the other day and saw the first day of my "Faith" painting. Heather commented that she didn't get my painting and thought it looked freaky. It didn't look like faith to her. She's right - at that stage, it certainly didn't. Everything looks kindergarten at first. I probably need to find some way of saying that it's step 1 of 9 steps, or something. I like telling the story, but I need to let people know that it is a story. With an ending, you know.
I went to the Saturday Des Moines Farmer's Market this morning with my friend, Tamara. Saw a few people we know from work and ate some cool foreign dishes. I bought banana bread, pumpkin bread, flowers to paint, and strawberry jam. All good stuff.
Saw the cutest little girl there...
Ain't she a picture?
And some other nice flowers... I love the look of the guy on the right.
I spoke with with a woman named Courtney. She's one of the folks who run the Farmer's Market. I asked how to go about getting a seasonal slot in the market next year. If I can get in, every Saturday morning, that's where I'll be during summer 2007. It should be good exposure for getting my stuff out there.
Based on my trip driving across the US and the notion of showing up at the Farmer's Market, what if I traveled the country later in an RV and went from show to show, city to city, promoting my art and cards? Gee, I can think of worse ways to spend my time.
Later, I stopped at the Art Store and got some replacement brushes. I typically use three brushes with acrylics, and I felt as though mine were getting about to the place where I might consider new ones.
The ones on the right are the old ones, and the ones on the left are the new ones that I just purchased.
While at the Art Store, I also got a Golden color chart, which is actual swatches of their paints. I love Golden Heavy Body Acrylics. Best paint out there, by far. (I know this because I tested them.)
I've decided that once in a while I'll introduce something for which I'm excited and link it to Amazon. Today, it's Fabio Biondi's Vivaldi, and here's a clip to follow below. Great stuff, and it will be my painting music as I continue work on the sunflower.
First steps in my remake of the sunflower... I wasn't ready for the colors in this. I knew the color of the sky, but I hadn't planned on using purple. Fun, when it's spontaneous.
I placed the order today for the smaller cards. Here are a couple. The first is roughly actual size, and is pixelated, but you get the idea.
I'll take the six designs that I have and take two of each and bundle them as a dozen and sell them $11.88.
I'm about to embark on version 2.0 of my sunflower painting. I screwed up the first one. Flowers seem to do that to me. That's okay though... getting it right is worth it.
As I've been discovering words, I've started reworking some of my cards that didn't sell much, where it made sense to do so. For "Front Porch," I've added the words, "Home is where you're loved." And for "April," I've added "Life's simplest pleasures are worth the time to enjoy." Inside that card, it says, "Remember to take time for yourself!" In both cases, I think it takes some nice pictures and gives them a context that makes it more obvious why you would send the card to someone.
Johnnie emailed me last night and suggested that I go with $3.49 per card. It's not that the cards aren't worth $3.99, but there is a psychological barrier at certain price points. I agree. After tax, that's still a card for less than $4.00, and so $3.49 will be the new price.
Others have been telling me for some time that I need to have mini cards. I went searching and found an envelope size suitable for such a thing, and got the quote back from the printer to have these printed up. The size will be 2¾" x 3½", which is quite a bit smaller than my cards now at 5½" x 8½". It's exactly half the cost of printing the large cards to print these smaller cards. So here's a matrix of the price points:
Large Card, single
$3.49
Large Card, dozen
(ea) $2.34
Large Card, 50-pack
(ea) $1.79
Small Card, single
$1.49
Small Card, dozen
(ea) $0.99
I'm tweaking the direction. I've set the first six mini cards, to be sold in dozen packs mostly, and I think I'll have the printer get 1,200 ready by some time next week.
I also need to reprint my other cards with the $3.49 price on them, and with words, where they've been added.
Lots of money goes into this little venture. But I'm believing, so I'll keep walking toward it.
Sometimes, we do things that make no sense to others because it is the very thing that we need to do. It might appear selfish to others. It might appear stupid. But it's what we need to do. To do it is to be true to who we are.
It might be a business venture. We spend money in pursuit of a dream that we have. "Foolish," others might charge to our actions. "Harebrained scheme. A waste of time and money." Nonetheless, it's what we need to do. It's in our soul. And so we pursue it, and in the pursuit we learn that thing that we had to learn.
"I knew it wouldn't work out," we hear. "What the hell was he thinking?"
But the pursuit satisfied a need deep within, cynics be damned.
Some folks might abandon the chase and give up. Others might decide it was the wrong direction and turn to something else and try again.
But the smart ones, I think, study quietly what went wrong, and then retool their effort, and dive in again, if passion is their motive.
Sometimes, we do the thing that makes no sense. It's risky. But it feels right, and we ignore everyone else and go for it.
Security starts with knowing who we are and knowing what we need. The insecure need someone else to tell them these things and validate and affirm who they are. The secure drive ahead, regardless of what others say. It doesn't matter. They know what they need to do. And they do it. No amount of ridicule or cynicism can stop them because they don't hear anyone else.
If you guessed a sunflower, you would be right. I know it doesn't look like a sunflower, but it's currently buried under the white. I have to unearth it with my brush. But in the meantime, I just love the color blue.
Between Tamara and my mom and the art gallery guy, I'm nearly convinced to change the price of my cards to $3.99 per card from the $2.99 that they are right now. If I do that, then I would restructure the tiered pricing to a quantity break at a dozen ($2.29 per card, which would be like getting 5 cards for free) and $1.79 per card at 50 or more, which of course is less than half the price. That should motivate people to buy in quantity!
So I'm thinking about it...
My goals in this are:
Make my art affordable to anyone.
Make my cards competitive in the market.
Allow me to make a living by my art.
Hiking the price to $3.99 doesn't conflict with any of this. I'm small enough today that I can make this decision without upsetting too many folks. And the cards are huge (5½" x 8½"). Similarly sized cards are $4 and $5. The extra margin will make it more attractive to retailers because I can give them a larger cut and this can give me more room for any surprise costs in the future that I don't know today.
I have one slight logistics issue if I choose to do this. My cards have the $2.99 price printed on the back, but I could fix that by using the $2.99 cards for quantity purchases only and I could reprint all of the cards with the $3.99 price and use those in retail locations. Plus, it might give me an opportunity to get words on some of my previous cards.
The tweak is stronger than a new direction. So I'll tweak; decision made.
Yesterday, Kelly was gracious enough to give the link in comments to a picture of a church that he'd taken. I like his work, so here's the link to his photo gallery.
