Original art, art classes, plein air, Lake Saint Louis, MO

I have been lax on the blog posting of late. I do appologize to those who are looking forward to a post from me now and then. I had not realized I had not posted since we were unpacking, and now it is time for New Years Resolutions! Ofcourse, as usual, my resolution is to be more dedicated to my art and paint every day. This year was rough, with the move, and some major family issues, ie illness, death, drama etc, that I won't go into on this blog. Just lets say that life definately got in the way this year, and until after the first of the year, will continue to do so. At least I have given myself permission to focus on the holidays and family "stuff" for now.  I do however hope to get back to the daily painting, after the new year, at least for a while.

Daily painting, is a good thing. There are artists that say, "I don't need to do"daily painting" because I am dedicated to do my painting every single day. I say, "well, that is great for you!" For me, it is not that simple. I am a wife, a mom, and Oma. Life gets in the way, and making a commitment to paint at least a small something every day, keeps me focused during some of those, tough to focus times. As with many of you, I fall off the wagon, and lose inspiration, get painters block or what ever, and just let time go by with out even going into the studio.  I feel guilt, and even sometimes lose confidence. You know, that "white canvas syndrome" sets in. Every now and then, I have to kick myself in the butt, and remind myself, that even if I don't have "inspiration" at that moment, it will come from going out there and pushing paint around, not by waiting for inspiration to hit. 

Don't get me wrong, I have been painting since the move out here to the high desert in August. I have done at least a dozen plein air paintings, joined a life drawing open studio group, and painted some small pieces, if only to keep my sanity, so it is not like I am rotting out here, which is what I thought would happen....LOL. I have been lax mostly at the promotion end of things. I have given myself permission to just do what I can, and not worry about the rest for now. If you are interested in seeing some of my work, you can go to my facebook, the personal one...The art one, well, remember I said I gave myself permission right? New stuff is not on there either.  I will be posting some of my plein air pieces to my Daily Paintworks site, soon.

Here are a couple pieces I have done while I have been "hanging out" here in the So Cal High Desert:

This one is 6x8 oil on Panel Painted plein air in Valyermo CA click here for DWP Auction on this painting

This one is 8x 10 oil on panel painted in Leona Valley, CA Plein air

So, today the studio time was spent on my website. I have been taking a sebatical from teaching at the moment to get some other business issues taken care of.  Often times people admire my work, but can't afford the original work. In the past, I have made an effort to put some work into print, but then have the issue of not picking the right image, the right mat or the right frame. In the end I have boxes and boxes of framing materials and prints, that, well, frankly, I would rather paint than deal with all of that.

Now, I am working on a site that connects to my website, that will offer art work, print on demand on canvas, paper, or notecards for clients who would like a more customised experience. On this site, you can not only pick the image, but the size, the paper, or canvas, even metal, or acrylic. It is all so very cool. They even offer framing.

If you have an Ipad, there is an app that allows you to see the image to scale on your wall. Don't ask me how they do it, but it is amazing. Takes all the guess work out of it. 

I hope you will enjoy exploring the options available to you. Right at the moment I have only four images uploaded. Two aviation works done in the studio, a T-6 Trainer flying low on the deck..(the new one the airforce uses to train their cadets) and a Ka6crSailplane sitting in a field of wild flowers.

The other two are sheep paintings in a rural setting. Both of those were plein air pieces. The originals were smaller pieces, but I think they would make nice small prints.

IF I have done everything right in the tech world, there should be a slide show of the works uploaded at this time..I am keeping my fingers crossed..enjoy.

Let me know what you think...

You know, all of us artists, would rather paint than do all the things we need to do for our business..We would rather be painting than any of that, still, we can easily become distracted from not only painting, but the background work as well with all the things that life throws our way on a daily basis. (wpmen especially have this problem since we wear so many hats!)

By background work, I mean the business end of things..The presence on the internet, the facetime, and I mean actual facetime with your body, not just the Facetime on the computer.  Making sure that all avenues have been explored to keep our face, work and name out there, so that whenthis economy does turn around, the world knows who you are, and how to find you. Life can easily get in the way, and have us waylayed very quickly, not producing art work, as well as not marketing. I am guilty of that myself lately. But I am doing something about that at the moment. Here are some of the things I have done recently to hopefully give myself a kick in the butt...

First, the work:

I have several pieces, (a continuation of the watercolor portrait studies/series) drawn and ready to start painting. I find that if I do this, I can flow from one to the other or have several works going at the same time. This helps me then to not become too attached to any one piece, and be able to get away from hovering over one. I am determined to focus on the WHY of the painting and the EMOTION of the painting rather than making it look like the person, or the photograph. You can seem my latest portraits and see if you can see if I have achieved that so far. (Here are some on Facebook I posted last night.)

Secondly, the business end of things:

I have opened up a new Facebook page. The previous one I used for both personal and business posts, but have found that unless I have a professional page presence on facebook, many of the features available as such do not work on the personal pages. So yesterday, I opened up a new one and put over 100 works in separated according to medium and or subject matter, so that viewers can easiely see and find the very thing they are interested in. I am pleased with the result.

Nextly, I have joined and been posting to Linkedin. I very quickly found that posting on Linked in and other "groups" creates flow to my website, and have been watching my numbers of followers go up. I have joined several groups and look for opportunities to post something, or start a new thread.

Also, I am working on online stores, for prints production, so that I can send clients to them to have prints of my work done. When I have my store ready, I will post again with the information.

The more I post my art, the more the search engines find me, and thus making it easier to find my website.

So my friends, that is what I have been up to. Now for me now, I am off to the studio, to start a new work. I am working on a self portrait to post on my Facebook and webpage. Let's hope I like it better than what I see in most photos, or in the mirror. Wish me luck.

Blessings,

Gabriele Baber

www.gabrielebaberart.com

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