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Tips for your First Commission
After being approached a number of times on whether I would do commissions, on this last time, I decided to take the dive and it turned out to be a great experience. There were a few elements that I realized and would recommend going forward to other artists: All in all, I would consider doing…
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Commissioned art and the saleability of art
In the past, I’ve turned down commissioned work requests. It struck me as that I wanted to make art with my own messaging, and commissions would get in the way of that. But lately, I’ve started working on a commissioned piece. Given that this subject matter was interesting and it was a friend of mine,…
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Negative Space Painting
I love making art with negative space. It strikes me as really cool to create with the parts around what you make. It has an inherent and fundamental feel that what is important is what is the stuff that’s not there. The added bonus is it helps turn off the left-side brain thinking where you…
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Mired in making mistakes
Whoever said that we can make mistakes like how pencils have erasers didn’t use artist pencils. None of mine have erasers on them. I’ve been at the same sketch for at least 1 hour trying to take a photo reference and making elements from a painting that look like it. I did my usual gestural…
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Using Music to Make Art
When I’m painting, I like listening to classical music typically to make my paintings. Other times I’m keying in on the mood in my painting and listening to music that fits that mood. There’s a lot more to showing visual arts and conveying a message. The choice of colours, those that are saturated are more…
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How to use social media effectively as an artist
I once attended a seminar regarding how to use social media effectively from a broader non-art perspective. Fundamentally, the basic is: 1) attend events, 2) take pictures, and 3) post. It sounds dumb but it’s true. The issue is how to make effective posts that are engaging. When I originally ventured into doing this, I…
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How to grasp inspiration when it comes
Sometimes I will come up with a fantastic idea and need to work on it immediately to get started. Otherwise, I’ll lose motivation to capture some essence of my idea. Generally this is best in the morning after I sleep. I have something to look forward to in the day when I get up. It’s…
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How to survive a rainy outdoor art show
I had a fantastic time at the Oakville Art in the Park on August 5, 2024. While the morning was cloudy and rain threatened, the day became hot and humid by the time patrons came by at 10 AM. It was only until about 4 PM right when the day was closing out when finally…
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Making value from your art
A motivating factor for me to create is to see something that didn’t exist before. I take pride in being able to provide something of value to someone else. I’ve gotten some questions on how to make matboards and so I decided to film my process this time before my next art show. Was fun…
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Getting back into it
I put some of my larger paintings into frames, getting ready for the Oakville Art in the Park festival. It’s a nice payoff to put items with mats already cut into frames, since you get to see how the work finally looks with relatively little effort. Still have to cut a few smaller mats for…
