Yoo-Hoo I See You

 

Since I started selling my art on Zazzle and Spoonflower, I have realized that being social is a necessity to get my work seen and perhaps make one sale. And since then I’ve been on steep learning curve as to what marketing means to an artist.

Many think that selling your photography or artwork on a POD site (print on demand website) is a simple and quick way to make money from your creative efforts.  But it’s anything but quick, simple and by no means easy.

Starting out I expected to spend majority of my time creating the art, followed by creating designs for POD sites from said art and finally promoting. But the reality has been in fact the reverse. I have at times spend majority of my time networking or socializing, followed by designing for the POD sites, and then some artwork. Which may not sound like a big deal, except for me it matters as my time in the to create is already short.  But I still do it anyway. I do it because because without networking and socializing nobody would see my art, or my blog.  Let alone my art of the POD sites.  Often I do it religiously, sometimes I take a break for a couple of days, or more.  I follow advice I have been given.  And I try all the social media networking/marketing advice I find.  Post regularly and I try to not go a huge amount of time between blog posts (which is hard because I don’t like posting till I’ve completed a project which may be more than one piece in my mind when I start out.  But through all of that I sometimes…….Actually quite often find myself looking at the screen like this.

Peek a Hoo, I see you!

Peek a Hoo, I see you!

And wondering Do you see me?

You see for the most part, the only time I can see someone has read my blog, or liked my work, and designs is if they tell me.  Be it through a simple like or comment, even an email, or a simple mention, share on their profiles and pages, or re-tweet. Without those I can’t tell what you think or if you have even read what I have written. Yes I have statistics for this website…but they are very vague. It doesn’t say if you liked something….sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the visits from genuine folks and the bots or spammers with their dubious shoe sales.  So often when I publish new posts and network on all the different social sites, I sometimes wonder if anyone sees me? Sometimes it feels like I am talking into the massive abyss that is the world wide web. The proverbial tree in an internet forest.  If I post something and no-one is there to read it, does it make an impact of any kind?

I create to be creative as it is what I love.  And I also wish to show S that you can still try to do something that makes you happy even if its not a nine to five that’s guaranteed to make a living.  So I wont stop doing so, because I cannot see who’s listening to me.  And I wont stop sharing in case someone is.

So I shall just have to continue to be inspired and create.  And I shall continue to share.

And I shall probably also still often find myself staring at the computer screen,

Peek-a-hoo

Peek-a-hoo

still like this looking for that  spec of encouragement.

Still wondering are you out there? Can you see me?

Multi-color Barn Owls Print Bath Set
Multi-color Barn Owls Print Bath Set by InspiredMeStudio
Look at more Barn owl Toothbrush Holder and Soap Dispenser Set at zazzle

There’s a Hummingbird in my Garden

Since I moved to California (from England) to be with my husband, I’ve become more appreciative of birds. Not that I didn’t like them before. I loved them. I have had for many years a pet Cockatiel which sadly had to stay in the UK with my parents. But when I came to live here, it was the first time I had ever seen a hummingbird. They are tiny, cute and beautiful and I was in awe. And when I found out you could get a hummingbird feeder! So we strung one upon our balcony and that was my solution to not having a pet for the first time in my life. Over the past 5 years I have watched the hummingbirds come and go from our feeder, bought a house with a garden, bought an extra feeder, watched even more hummingbirds come and go, even stay and fight off others.

I’m truly hooked and inspired.

Some of them are iridescent, with bright emerald greens and ruby reds. Others different hues of browns.

I was inspired enough to ask V to get me some photos….

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Ruby Throated Hummingbird perched on a wire.

Then I was inspired to sketch….
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Hummingbird sketches in pen

That inspiration moved on to create.

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Hummingbird in black pen and pencil.

And create some more

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Doodles of concept ideas

I did studies of the different aspects of hummingbirds that intrigue me….

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Studies of cypress vines. Hummingbirds feed from what seem to be the most beautiful flowers.

And finally create something more detailed.

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Unfinished perched hummingbird framed with cypress vine. Pencil and black pen.

I haven’t finished with my hummingbird inspiration….and I haven’t finished all that I have created so far. In fact I still am uncertain what exactly I will do with the different studies featured in this post. I know I will certainly revisit them as well as the inspiration of this post..

Not least because there is always a hummingbird in my garden. They really do enjoy the red sugary drink we put out for them.

Peaceful is a toddler napping!

We’ve been quite busy this week. Especially with S. So I haven’t been very creatively productive since before christmas. But this evening, a rare long nap, gave just enough time to progress on a few works in progress. And even start and complete (only just), a quick sketch of what exactly was enabling my rare opportunity to work.

Peaceful is a toddler napping <3

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sketch of S sleeping. Pen on paper

And the end of that peace is said toddler waking up in a cranky mood!

What’s your peaceful moment of the day?

My Daughter, My Inspiration.

And here we are my first two pieces and first inspiration.

This inspiration has been a learning curve for me and brought with it a huge realization on many fronts. Firstly I have learnt that it’s much harder than I thought to find the odd five minutes here and there for hobbies when you have a 1-year-old. And the odd five minutes here and there don’t lend to very much creatively and doing it this way means a not so great drawing that took maybe an hour in total max took forever to finish. But what really hit me was holly cow are my drawing skills rusty!!!!!!
And it is that realization that hit me the most. I’m not sure which had more of an effect, the former or the later. But one thing I’m sure about, is that I’m not very impressed with the results.
I thought I was capable of better. But hopefully as this project progresses my skills will improve….I hope.

Anyway enough digressing and back to the real purpose of this blog. This posts inspiration and what resulted from it.

This weeks post is brought to you by the letter S. Specifically my beautiful daughter S. My never-ending source of inspiration and muse who has motivated me to do many things. Such as cook. My husband and anyone who knows me will tell you I don’t cook very often. There are very good reasons behind that. Mostly it’s not something I even average on except for one or two things. But yet at the 6 month mark I was hell-bent on making my own baby food. And then just recently S was part motivation for this entire drawing project. And I don’t mean just this weeks post. I mean the whole thing. I want to be able to show her the many facets of mummy and foster a creative environment for her to grow up in. And to do that I need to actually do the things I love and enjoy and not just say I can do them.
Every day S does something inspiring and new. Yesterday she showed us that just because we think she’s a little too short to reach something doesn’t mean she won’t courtesy of her new “stand on tippy toes skills”. She’s getting closer and closer to walking properly every day and just yesterday I caught her dancing somewhat…well butt shuffling in a bad rhythm to Choo Choo Soul while in her high chair. There’s always something new to wrap my head around and I’m still trying to process that it’s already been over a year since we brought her home. My baby is growing up! And fast!
We’ve been snap happy taking millions of pictures for the memory banks and got as many videos as she would let us catching her doing the latest “cute new thing”. So why now immortalized some our memories in pen and pencil? Is it not appropriate that my motivation be my first inspiration?
Well lets look at the results.

This is my first piece. It’s coloring pencil on paper.

20121023-215901.jpg Drawing number one.

I took inspiration from pointillism for style. Purely for fun. I do like how it looks like a mosaic almost.
And here’s a close up.

20121024-145426.jpg Close up of drawing number one.

You can see in the close up how I did the dots.

20121024-160119.jpg Memories of impending motherhood.

You may be wondering “what’s with the big star?”. Well it’s to signify S’s name. It is “star” although not in English. It seemed appropriate as she is our little twinkle and I’d wish for her upon a star any day. That and we were searching for a beautiful girls name to represent my heritage as she has V’s surname which makes his (or at least part of) very obvious. It was beautiful and not too difficult for an American tongue to pronounce although many still miss-hear it. And bonus was it is very rarely heard of over here. Which is something we wanted as well. Something unique but meaningful to who she is.

20121024-160322.jpg Tiny feet.

Like any mother I have the obligatory thousands of photos. In fact I think I hit well over a thousand by the time S was six months old. When I sat down to start drawing for this post, I looked at the many I have on my phone (don’t you love the technology of today? You can’t fit that many photos in your wallet!), and thought about in what way I wanted to represent my little muse on paper. I knew I wanted to represent my love for her and our bond most of all. Before and after she was born. Had I found more opportunity to concentrate on my drawings, I think I would have ventured more into conveying who S is. Her personality, her loves, and likes. Just generally what its like to live with S. I truly do feel so lucky to be able to call myself her mum and claim her as mine, well ours.

But that’s enough gushing. As I said earlier I did do two drawings. The second one (shown bellow) was done in pencil and black pen. This drawing I was aiming for was a picture to convey what impending motherhood felt like for me and how I feel about it now. Waiting for S to finish cooking and greet us in the big wide world. Again I’m not that impressed with how it turned out. It was pretty rushed and more worthy of the title doodle than drawing.

20121029-141350.jpg Drawing number two.

And a close up of drawing number two. I did swirls for the sky instead of dots like before. The swirls were strangely relaxing to do. Must have been the monotony. Although not as neat as I’d have liked due to me rushing it.

20121029-141534.jpg Close up of drawing number two.

And I guess that concludes my first inspiration post. I’ll leave you to mull on what you have seen and read. While I go off to draw some more (hopefully with improvement) for a new post.