an artist’s blog

Welcome

12/9/2019

9:12 pm ET

We’ve all considered starting a blog. I never knew what I would blog about, or if I would be inspired enough to keep up with it. Since this is my passion, and I feel big things coming, I thought I might finally start a blog of my own.

I am an artist, and I am constantly learning and growing, trying to figure out how to do what I love all the time. I have learned so much in the past few months, and know I’m still going to learn a ton. I’d like to keep track of my growth, and maybe help a few other newbies while I’m at it.

Thanks for coming to my website! I went back and forth on building a website for a while (like I do with most art related things) and decided I wanted one this year. I started with a few different website builders, and after about two days gave up and moved on to Etsy.

Etsy is nice for first time online merchants. I was able to upload everything with ease, and had my shop up within a couple of hours. You have your Etsy link and can share it using your social media, making it easy to share your work with friends and family. I enjoyed using Etsy, but wanted something a little more mine and a little more customizable. One of my friends suggested SquareSpace and so far I love it. It’s easy to use, and offers plenty of options for you to create a unique site.

I spent more time on my website tonight and was able to explore the tools and overall settings. I’m working on adding more products and using links and buttons to make my site feel more connected. Before this I think I had 8 products for sale. I added a page for my custom work (since this is where I make the most money) and tried to figure out how to breakdown pricing for something like that (because I’m still basically guessing). I read a little bit of my artsy-businessy book (The Business Side of Creativity) and read through the chapter about pricing, and still had no idea what would be appropriate. I broke the pricing into the three most basic influences for my craft; canvas, materials, and time. Someone once told me an artist should never charge less than $18.00 an hour, so that’s where we’re at until I improve my skills further. I added Product Blocks, which was a total SquareSpace breakthrough for me. You can use them to feature products on different pages, which lead me to find out you can create hidden pages that use a button to open (I’m going to make one for this blog on my “About Me”).

Looking at everything I’ll need to do before this weekend I’m a bit stressed…but busy art weekends are good weekends, even if you aren’t coming out of the week with more moolaa and recognition. This week I will be adding more products to my website, making prints, matting my 18x30 painting for my first show, working on commissions, and marketing myself as much as possible without looking desperate (I’ve read that I shouldn’t fall into a commission hole, but it’s hard to make art sometimes and I just like a reason, and of course, the cash). Aside from those things, I’ll try to exercise, spend some time with my family, boyfriend, and animals, and of course work my full-time 8-5 (, and maybe even walking dogs if this WAG thing works out?). There was some article somewhere that said if you want to be an artist you might have to work hard for it. Day and night, during all of your freetime. I haven’t been working hard, not on my art, so I’m going to make a change and it will be so fun to come back to these and see how far I’ve come as a professional, artist, and person.