I have been so busy lately  working on art for an upcoming amazing art show i am a part of. The Six Artists One cup of Joe Art Show at Rock’n'Joes cafe in Union, NJ – art on view from December 1 – January 31. If your local come to our launch party on December 1 from 3-6.  all the industry people and art glitterati will be there and it will be a rollicking party too! Everyone knows artists know how to party! Here is one of pieces I will be showing:

Its an amish girl in a meadow with the shadow of an eagle symbolically passing over her unbuttoned dress. Im going in a more focused direction in my art I am taking a more militant approach to my medium choice (ink and pencil) and trying to not overwhelm with too much color variety. its hard!! well peace and love all..I HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!! The fb has 600 ppl confirmed to come and counting!!

So as you all know (mom) I work in-house at a home fashion company – Enchante Accessories. I was asked to design some frames with a east coast feeling for Walgreens. They saw my work and snapped it up (after making some changes) They made them more specifically located also. The biggest test of a commercial artist is keeping open to collaboration and never being married to any idea, oh- and realizing that whats marketable is going to be chosen because of mass appeal not just what your personal preference is. I actually like all those aspects of working in our industry its fun to me to see your work differently and its fun to see your stuff in stores, getting used by people. What do you graphic design professionals think? Would you rather be all fine art? Or is fine art for sale in fact commercial mass appeal art too?

so here is my original design (looking so different as a jpeg) :

And here are the actual frames made on screen-printed glass, for sale in Walgreens!

My BFFFFF Anna and I had to check out the Audrey Kawasaki exhibit at the Jonathan Levine gallery. We were so aweed by her work. She went in a new direction with brighter colors and for the first time added black acrylic to her work for an extra graphic element and a black void empty feeling. To see her work up close is incredible I have been on her email list for so long and always want to buy a print, but its is way out of my league for now (also don’t have the perfect wall space just yet) Anyway I was so smitten I sketched all the way home on NJT and it was so Audrey. How do you know when a sketch is finished? How do you transfer a perfect drawing to a finish quality paper and then begin painting? That’s so difficult for me I’m always trying to capture that freedom of the initial line. I have a show coming up in December and need five new pieces! If your in NY check out the exhibit its amazing!

Buon giorno! I am back from Venice, Florence and Rome and back from being married!! These things can take over your life, so now I am focused once again on growing my empire. Having seen the greatest art in the world does make me feel small. I can’t even beive it but we did everything on my itinerary and basically covered every art museum there was to see and did Context tours too! The best art highlights were the David in the Academia in Florence, the Botticelli in the Uffizi, The Bernini in the Borghese, Obviously the Sistine Chapel and also the Tintoretto in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Seeing the Raphael(s) and Titian(s) up close was also incredible along with the Duomo, San Marco’s Basilica and St. Peter’s Basilica. I saw soo much! I will be reviewing every place I stayed and every sight I saw in the next few weeks because looking at the reviews myself before i left was invaluable to our experience. Oh, and my husband really loved all the things i planned too, we had at least 6 gelato a day and took plenty of breaks. My wedding is definitely second to the honeymoon hahah but that was a given from the day I got engaged. Italy is so magical and amazing I cannot wait to go back, but i also have a wild travel bug in me now that makes me want to travel so much more, its what vacation time should truly be used for! Anyway here are some wedding pictures, we had a small & intimate wedding in order to make way for a fancy honeymoon. I might even post my crazy itinerary up here soon- its good to go in with a guideline, nothing is worse than missing out on the opportunity to see amazing things because you didn’t plan! As for being married? It actually does change everything in your life but in an exciting, wonderful way.

So on a Sunday I had to myself  I wandered over to the Zimmerli in New Brunswick. I knew it would be free cuz it was the first Sunday of the month (I went the first Sunday of May). So I went with the intention to go to the illustrator section where they have all kinds of new and old  children’s book on display with all the original artwork and captions etc. But after I saw that I couldn’t help but walk downstairs and see what the buzz was about. I instantly felt like I recognized the look of this art and i realized she had shown in Vogue  at some point recently- she did this fashion spread in winter. I liked it. this exhibit is really good. At first I felt a little overwhelmed with the start of getting into seeing into myself. this is a very modern social piece there are constantly updating twitter feeds status updates live on 10 iphones, its actually hard to pull yourself from reading all the flickers and you realize you just fell in to the art of this whole thing. Voice-mails are heard echoing off the walls and she shows her chops by acting out the lost vms left for strangers, its very emotive. Oh – and there is a lot of garbage(actual garbage like fruit labels) reused to make the art. Sometimes its linear qualities like in “what do you really want?” and “lost in my life” are very bubbly and moving and the shifting twisting colors are made of twit ties and its repetitive but not youthful more classical. I personally didn’t like the clothing she used at first but then I began to just get it. And I started to feel sorta silly for flipping through that Vogue fashion piece and feeling it was too stuffy and jam packed -  I saw it at the end of the exhibit and realized that fashion could be part of this machine too. Anyway if your near New Brunswick NJ before July 8th check it out – just be sure to silence that iphone.

sold!

How do you continue to motivate yourself as an artist? I recently got my second sale on Etsy and I’m over the moon! I even got a blog posting on it! miss louie. I have two days a week where i work from home for a home fashion company and take on other freelance work. But in between those paying gigs I made tons of art, but it takes me so long to post or write about it! I have a million excuses for this the biggest one being wedding stuff we recently went for a cake tasting and it was so fun! But I need to focus here and not let wedding planning stuff get in the way of art marketing! How do you keep motivated and marketing? Do you feel like all your fellow artists are doing a better job?

I recently joined with bloglovin

So Etsy sellers do make the best buyers. Especially in my case lol i have bought more since joining etsy than i have sold (yes still the one sale mom thanks for reminding me!!) Anyway I have faith my sales will pick up once i get to 100 items in my shop. But anyway this is a wedding post. I want to exclusively use etsy for all my purchases from now on for the wedding and hopefully i will for life too. When I shop (registered shopaholic) i might as well support a fellow artist AND a have something unique, handmade, original, and ethical! SO far I have bought:

by Jalall I thought it was so cool to get something all the way from Australia! I guess that’s not so Eco friendly, but I’m making up for it in my personal life.

and I got this awesome hair piece from mignonne handmade

Now my next step is make-up. I am afraid to pay a professional $200 so I have watching you-tube videos and trying to see if my artistic ability on paper will translate to my face. Not so much. Make-up artists really have something special going on. Any just like the dress (nope still have not decided! I’m getting married in September!!I need a dress!) I will put off deciding on that but I want a BRigitte bardot look not easy of course I made a obsessive pin board featuring her. And I made this fairy tale sultry piece for sale in my shop:

And yes, I would like my skin to be yellow flower sparkly also.

Here is some valuable advice from one of my blogs i look over obsessively to try to get some Etsy advice. Do you just troll the web hoping for a straw to grasp on? Thats what I find myself doing more than actually doing the advice sometimes. You know what I mean. I read and reserch so much crying out to the universe to try and get that break. Well I hit alot of blogs (and nerves!) on this reserch circut and hers is very good. I try not to compare because I know the best art is what you make yourself naturally, and copying or imitating doesn’t help anyone especially you. Im trying to refine my voice. I am also planning to have 100 items for sale by June. Oh, and my expected profits for the end of 2012 is 50K. Dream big right?! It will happen ask. believe. receive!!

So, What Do You Do?.

Hello all! Dropping in to share an artrepenuer find. Really great article on Pinning.

If your pinning your winning!

Take a look at this infographic from web optimization company Maxymiser,

How Pinterest Can Turn Your Brand Red-Hot [INFOGRAPHIC].

Here is my pinterest…what do you think?

So I was working hard on my lovely macbook pro laptop last week…. had a lot of windows open but you know just chugging along…when suddenly *BLACK* nothing.  So I hit the button to turn back on..nothing, i held the button down at different intervals of time…NOTHING. Oh yea the Mac was cracked the juice was loose alll over. every art work i had made everything was gone. I am  primarily a digital artist I draw and scan and paint and color all digitally, not to mention alll my freelance graphic design work is 100% on the computer. Insane. Awful. Sooo I brought it in to the Apple store. and they took it and said they would send it in. and i got it back..$310 and it turned on. of course alll my work was gone so whatevvvs. But ..Did i mention I time Machine? I was hoping that since my last backup some relevant work got backed up. I was looking and looking and just kept finding really old student gems (like this “it girl” piece above, and yes thats a MYSPACE page whyy?!!?hahah) but FINALLY in this folder called backupbac something like that I found all my old work…after searching in user and then myself and then in the applications. wow. SO anyway I guess the point is time machine does work. You should use it when your mac prompts you to (you know, when you plus in a flash and it pops up USE AS TIME MACHINE?!?!PLEEEASE!!?!?!) don’t ignore do it. becasue obviously you are going to have a Mac crack at some point. Oh, and save your creative suite cds. I am so grateful I did. I have CS3 hahaha. maybe once I am married I can upgrade, does that make me an Adobe gold-digger?  yes.