Pattern

Every night the soul shutter to a million pieces
In the morning we weave back the pattern
over and over again.

Illustration Friday - Strong

This drawing was made yesterday for illustration Friday. The word of the week was "Strong".

In the past week I've been dealing with some medical issues that were somewhat painful but mostly really frightening. I felt like both my body and my mind was feeding of each other making me feel worse and worse about how I'm feeling.

I really hope this will get solved in a couple of days, I do try to remind myself to stay strong through it and not let my mind or my body take over.

Hero

I love A5 magazine, I've been intending to submit artwork for it since it's very first issue, but somehow the whole experience was so daunting and intimidating that I never did, well, never till 2 issues ago when I submitted 3 pen and watercolor paintings and one of them was accepted and published! The topic was sex and so I needed very little adaptations or thought to make just what I wanted.

It was really a wonderful experience, I mean, any publication is awesome, but one in a magazine you are already a big fan of is at least double as wonderful!

Not only that, but the pieces I made for the magazine inspired me to draw more artwork in the same series and eventually, became the body of work to my solo show in Chicago.

So then, the next topic was published, it was "Childhood" and though I had every intention in the world to submit again, I never got around to it, I had a lot of ideas, but eventually, I think mostly out of fear of rejection, I never did. After the deadline was over, I felt like such a pussy - I totally let myself miss on a good opportunity not only to get published, but also, to be inspired and to make something cool.



I decided that whatever happens, I'm going to submit for the next issue, but then, when the topic came up, I was sort of disappointing, the topic was "Hero" which was very hard for me to relate to.

I don't believe in hero, a couple of years ago, I was in someone's birthday, and some guy who was doing inspirational lecture for a living, asked us, to prove some point or another, who are our heroes, I said that my grandparents were, but actually it wasn't true. I don't think there are or were any heroes in my life. I don't believe in salvation or being saved. I think that though I were in life threatening situations in my life, the largest difficulties I've experiences, were just dealing with everyday life.

It's been a couple of difficult weeks around here. Ned's in a bad mood, he's trying to crack some big emotional riddle and spend a lot of time doing nothing, it's hard to see him be so hard on himself and so sad and heavy for so many hours everyday. I'm working on some freelance design projects after not doing it for a while, I'm actually making some money which is nice, but dealing with client, putting boundaries and asking to be paid is really hard, and I think that also the tension between me being so work busy while Ned being in this non-busy state adds a lot of tension.

I decided to do the Hero project about me and how I had to deal with a lot of confrontational situations lately and tried not to hide and wait till it goes away but actually stand up for myself.



A note: With being busy with work and sort of down for different reason I've neglected my Yay Money series of article, I hope to go back to it soon.

And the winner is...

Happy mother's day everyone! I hope you all had fun, it was a bit of a strange day for me, since I don't talk to my mom and I don't have any kids of my own, the whole notion of motherhood doesn't really imply a lot of good things to me and having everyone around me talk about what they are getting for their moms or their visited to home or different brunch plans made me feel sort of left out.

Ned and I did celebrate Non-Mother day by sleeping in late and having morning sex, which I guess, at least for me, is more fun then getting a painting to hang on the fridge!

I hope you all enjoyed it and had fun, if you did anything special or you had a rotten time and hated it, I'd love ot hear about it.

And so, without father a due, the winners for the mother's day print raffle.

The 2 lucky winners are Janil and Aik. I hope you'll enjoy the prints! happy mother's day!

You'd be making more sales if only...

As a part of my "Yay Money" project and researching stores with no sales I thought it might be cool to write about some of the stores I'm getting to see but don't buy from (by the way, I ordered 3 things already and waiting for them to arrive so I can write about them). I feel a little strange criticizing other people's business choices without them even asking for it, and I'm sure different things works for different people and also that people use Etsy in different ways. However, I think this is a good way for me to review some of my own Etsy experiences and share what works and doesn't work for me.

Saying that, I've decided to start with a topic that's especially difficult to write and talk about but that a lot of people think of which is:

You'd be making more sales if only your prices were lower

For this review, I'm proud to present the work of Dick Haakman from HaakmanGallery. Dick is a super talented painter, I love his style and sensitivity, and his work is excellent. I especially love his still lives. The store is in existence since March, have 12 beautiful paintings in it and haven't had any sales.

The reasons for it to me is pretty clear, the cheapest item is a 1,000$. I don't know about other shop owners, but in my experience, any single piece that is priced at over 60$ is hard to sell. It's a bit hard to hear, I know, but really, I have not manage to sell a painting for more then that.



Isn't it strange that we go to art galleries and see paintings that sells for thousands and tens of thousands of dollars and yet, we go online and beautiful pieces doesn't sell for a 1,000$ or so?! this have a few reasons:

1. Artists makes only a fraction of the gallery sale price. I just had the luck of getting a piece ready to be in a gallery show, Ned got a photo in an art book and a show, we had to do the math to price it. printing was about 150$, though we were lucky to claim a favor and get the print for free. Frame was 300$, the gallery takes 50% of final sell price. Basically, we priced the piece at 1,200$ and after gallery fee and frame, made 300$ of it, if we had to pay for printing it would be even less (or we'll have to push the price up) If we had an agent or manager, or signed up with a gallery, we would be getting even less. It really sucks, but that's how it is, after expenses, materials, gallery fee and so on, the artist makes about 10-25% of the sale price in a gallery.

2. Galleries appeal to collector while Etsy, mostly, target people who wants something cool to put in their apartment. Why is this important?! because A collector is a lot more likely to spend a lot of money on a piece they think (and mostly because the gallery endorse the artist) the piece will be worth more in the future, most people don't have a 1,000$ to spend on a painting if it's entire purpose is decorate a room.

When the artist is more famous and successful. It's a strange and pretty unfair vicious cycle, but that's the gallery business - when a gallery show an artist in their space they are basically saying "We think this person is worth taking notice off" the more the artist does this, the more they get attention and the value of their pieces go up.

It's strange to think about it, but the same piece can be worth 10$ or a million dollar depends on the history of the artist's fame and exhibition history.

So - what can be done?
What can Dick Haakman do to make sure he does generate some sales?!

Even though I read his profile, I can't really know how much his art worth as far as investments goes, if a collector do goes on Etsy, it would be helpful to have his exhibition history and, if possible, contacts in those galleries and links to those galleries so they can check if this is a good investment, lets say his last show was super successful and every painting sold for 10,000$ - then suddenly paying a 1,000 for one of his pieces seem like a great idea.

If Dick is targeting collector, he would need to draw them to Etsy on his own, as far as I know, most of those buy things through galleries, because that the gallery endorsement of an artist means that they stand a better chance of making money of the investment and because each piece that sells in a gallery makes the artist more incline to succeed in getting exhibited more and selling for higher prices in the future, which means the collector again, stand a better chance at making money of their investment.
And so - if Dick already sold some pieces and he is in connection with the collector, this is a good time to send them e-mails referring them to his store, also, it might be a good idea to look for galleries that show the same style of art and send them e-mails or letters urging them to check his online gallery.

Lets say both those plans doesn't work, it means Dick will probably have to find a way to lower his prices, if he wants to make any sales.
I know it takes a long time to make a painting and he might not want to, and so there are a few ways to create a product that would not take as much time and so he can price them cheaper:

1. Make smaller pieces - this is what I do, when I started selling paintings on Etsy I priced them at 70-60$ - non of it sold, one day I took a piece of paper I was about to start drawing on and cut it to 4 - it took me about the same amount of time to make 4 small paintings as it took me to make 1 big one - the painted surface was about the same, I priced each at 20$ - overall, I made more money of the sale of 4 small painting, but each buyer paid less for an original painting.

Strangely enough, a lot of people who saw the smaller cheap paintings bought 3-4 of them, they paid the same amount that they would for 1 big one, but I think the feeling of getting a good deal - a few paintings, made it easier for people to spend 80$.
Like those - some of those paintings are slightly larger then a postcard, but are strong enough to change a room.

2. Make Digital prints - either get a great scan or a great photograph of the painting, and do either a limited edition or an open edition of the artwork. The benefit of this is that even if you sell them for cheap, you only have to do the work on one - if you make a closed edition of 100 prints, and sell each for 20$ (if they all sell, which will be awesome) the artist get to make the 2,000$ AND keep the original painting to sell later or for himself. Like Peppermint - those are awesome (and cheap!)

3. Art Prints - this means learning an new method of work and maybe change style, but either doing block printing, etching, silk screens, gocco or monotype, means you can produce a work of art that have multiple copies, which means you both retain the artistic mechanics of work and can sell each copy for relatively cheap. Like Marissa's beautiful shop - she has a very successful Block prints shop, that sells beautiful and very affordable prints.

Whatever Dick Haakman chooses to do, I hope he gets lucky and sell everything in his shop! do check it out, his art is gorgeous!

Illustration Friday - Theater

The word of the week for "Illustration Friday" was Theater. I used to love theater in high school, I don't really like acting but I love studying the plays and history and going to the theater to watch plays.

One of my favorite theater genre is "comedia del-Arte" which is basically the root of all modern comedy.The characters are almost always the same, and the plots are very similar, the show doesn't really follow a script but just put up a story guideline that allow the actors to make fun and joke and improvise all the time.

In this illustration I wanted to not only show the characters of the play, but mostly to give the feeling of a theater - the way that theater is a little perfect world of it's own, and so I created a couple of shadow boxes made of paper showing a few of the characters from Comedia del-Arte.

There were supposed to be 4 pieces in this series, but, building stuff out of paper is a pretty fragile thing and one box didn't make it, so I had to change my plans. looking at the figures in the box made me think of those butterflies in display cases and so I decided to give this a shot as well.

New mugs

Some projects happens because i plan them in my mind for a while until they ripe and I go, get supplies, make the time to work on them and follow my plan step by step.

Some project happens because I found something inspiring or a cool new material or just cause my hands were bored.

I guess this was a combination of both, I had the idea of making a tea or coffee set with a bunch of cups and not just one or two and have them all with similar pattern but different colors. Somehow it looked like a too large project and I never got around to it.
Then a few days ago, I was in the salvation army store getting some cloths and idea for a shoot tomorrow, I found a set of 5 large mugs, each was 79 cents! I just couldn't leave them in the store. They very rarely have matching pieces, so I was happy to take advantage of those.

Then it was just about putting the time into it, so yesterday, in the first work days I had since I got sick I just set all day and made those. I really couldn't be happier with how they came out! secretly I hope that one person would decide to splurge and buy them all, I love how those look together.

Mother day's freebe prints

I don't celebrate mother day myself. about 2and a half years ago, when I moved to NY my mom stopped talking to me. Mother's day was never a big holiday in Israel, but here, I keep hearing about people's plans for it and all the cool brunches they are taking their mom to, and I feel really strange not doing anything about it. I guess it's my version of being single on Valentine's.

So for a while I didn't want to make anything special for my Etsy store to celebrate mother's day, but when I run out of those bunny prints really fast and wanted to do that again, I decided to make something that will represent what I want mother day, and my relationship with my mom to be about, which is all about feeling happy and safe.

So I made not one, but two special mother day prints! one with a mommy and a baby penguin one with a mommy and baby goat. You can all have one (until I run out) either by spending some money or by spending some luck and time.

There will be one free print per order for anyone who buys anything from my shop.

Or - you can win a print for absolutely free if you check out the hand painted dishes section of my shop and suggest the next animal I should put on a tapas plate that haven't been used before.
I'm going to raffle one print of each, so there will be 2 winners, one gets a goat and one a penguin.

Please leave your e-mail when you comment so I can contact you if you won!

Raffle will be held on Mother day, May 10.

Impossibility

So strange to blog 3 times in one evening after not doing it for so long, but I guess I'm trying to clear out my desk from all made but unpublished yet artwork. So, maybe 3 is a charm! which I think it is since while I was scanning those I had an etsy sale from someone who bought a tarot deck and a cup!

This is a 3 drawing series I made a couple of days ago, they are meant for illustration Friday, the word of the week was "impossibility". It's interesting to try and illustrate an impossible thing. I was thinking of what would be the most impossible thing to do, and I thought of my memories and my past and how hard (and actually impossible) it is to see reality as it is and life as they are, rather then through the filters of memory and emotions and old thinking patterns.

Eye Level Gallery BQE

We went to the photodrifting BQE show at the Eye Level Gallery last night. It was really fun. I've never had a photograph in a show before and it felt really nice to see it on the window in the gallery. There's something really cool about being in a gallery opening that doesn't involve my main artistic medium, somehow it was a lot less stressful then if this would have been a painting or a drawing.

Also, I finally got to meet JP - the awesome curator and founder of Photodrifting, it was so nice to finally match a face and a voice to an online persona! thanks JP for making this happen!

I'm trying to remind myself of how much fun this was, and that i'm doing good, I just got news that I was rejected from the About Glamore Fairy tale show - which I really really wanted to be in.

And the winner is....

A couple of weeks ago I announced a blog freebe raffle, the winner would get one of my hand painted rabbit prints.

I got back from LA a couple of days ago and feeling a bit under the weather, but I held the raffle yesterday and I'm proud to announce the winner is Tatertot374.

Congratulation to the winner! and thanks everyone else for your awesome ideas, I already tried a couple of them - the frog cup, which was Blanche idea, sold a couple of days ago, and i already made a second set. And yesterday I also tried a Raccoon, cause i couldn't find a good enough image of a skunk, as Nichola suggested.

Don't be too sad if you didn't win, this was so much fun I'm already working on a new print and will announce a new freebe give away in the next couple of days!

Talisman

A series of drawing for illustration Friday. The word of the week was "Talisman". I had a few ideas, both about repealing evil spirits and something general about jewelery and comfort objects. Eventually I just decided to make some drawing that invoke different things I wan more or i want to preserve in my own life.

Spring Rabbit print

I'm so sick of this winter, and though it feels much nicer today and I actually wore a skirt and not the jeans I wore every single day this winter, it doesn't quite feel like spring yet. So this is my attempt at spreading some spring cheers and hopefully the weather will take the hint and do something about making it all warm, green and nice already.

A limited edition "long awaited spring" print. There are 22 of those and they will be send for free to anyone who would buy something from my etsy store, as long as supply lasts! to get those, you don't have to do anything, just buy something from my shop and get a free hand painted print. Each of them is a little different in colors then the other and all printed on a cool old mechanic book with a lot of charts and texts.

Actually, only 21 of those would be send to buyers. I'm going to raffle one of those!

If you want to participate, all you need to do is visit my shop's hand painted dishes section and tell me in a comment to this entry what is the next animal you think I should draw on a tea set. If any good ideas will come up, I promise to try and incorporate them in the next couple of weeks.

Don't forget to leave an e-mail so I can let you know if you won!

I'm going to hold the raffle after I get back from LA, so probably the 17th or 18th of April.

The Kindness of Strangers

We've been having such a hard time. Ned's father is in the hospital, his immune system is down to zero (starting at 10,000 white cells count and now, less then 1,000) which is to be expected, but still it's sad and hard. We've been going to the hospital every couple of days, still trying to take care of work and business, but actually doing very little and spend a lot of time just doing nothing and being sad.


Ned's father asked him yesterday not to post anymore photos of him online until he get out of the hospital, which we can understand, but still, the picture taking, both for him and of him, were a part of how we dealt with the difficulties of this situation and having to stop parts of it, makes us feel a lot more alone with dealing with all those feelings.

Ned and I were talking about this while having dinner at taco-chulo, I tried to understand what was so hard in not being able to post those picture, I realized that the whole notion of publicity changed a lot between Ned's dad generation to ours, and also, that the notion of being a part of a community or having friends is very different. To me, being able to be week around people is a big part of what community and friendship means, I have no problem in telling a waitress in a restaurant that i had a shitty day or to tell my friends why, I think that letting other knows about my faults and feelings is the greatest gift I can give them - my honesty and openness. I think that to Ned's father, friends and community are about being strong for others and others being strong for you, without anyone ever showing any weakness at all. The idea of exposing his illness seem inappropriate or undignified, while for me, not exposing it means i get to be lonely with my feeling and get no support from my community.

As I was thinking of this, 3 things happened in the course of one evening that made me so happy to be a part of the community and have the connections I have!

The first was those 2 awesome portraits, done by the super cool Molly Peck especially for me and Ned! how amazing are those! and the timing was so so perfect. I'm really impressed with both likeness and how she captured our spirit and character and, strangely enough, the type of light our apartment have in a sunny morning.

The second was a total stranger coming over to our table as we were talking about Ned's dad and introducing herself as Claire, turns out she works on Etsy and recognized us from the video interview we did last year, it was so wonderful to have someone coming over ot say hi in the middle of this strange conversation about generation and support and the internat! Thanks os much Claire! you totally made our evening and reminded me thar i'm not alone in the world!



The last cool thing (though actually it's only last cause I took care of writing back to her last in that strange and long evening) is this super cool e-mail from Tessa, a cool etsy seller who bought this bear art kit a few weeks ago, and send me the result of her work! how amazing is this! I'm so glad to see that this art kit is actually being used and not just sitting in someone's drawer. And I really love Tessa's cool art (check out her shop, it's really awesome!)

The Gym....

Ned goes to the gym almost everyday (unless we woke up too late or we have something better to do or he doesn't feel like it) but over all he's really good about exercising. I on the other hand, keep promising that I'll go back to yoga and never do anything about it...really, I'm so bad, that last time I exercised was before we got married.

I guess my only work out is carrying my backpack around with all the art supply in it. Ned calls it "my studio", and it's just getting heavier and heavier. right now it's got a couple of reference books, an old book which pages I use for paper, 2 packs of water color and about 6 identical pens, and of course the MP3 player so I can listen to audio books while I draw, also, at the bottom, there are a million other things who got lost in the back and just wonder around aimlessly looking for a why out.

So, while Ned is at the gym, I do my own gym time by going to one of my favorite cafes and drawing for a couple of hours till Ned finish his exercise and come to pick me up.

Being an Artist

A whole day of working hard as an artist without making any art.

Well that's not entirely true, I did draw for about an hour while Ned was at the gym, The rest of the day though, from about 4:00PM to 1:30AM was spend in working at being an artist without making any art. I feel like I just run a marathon, and at the end of it, got hit by a truck.

This is what was achieved:

1) Sending an e-mail to an Etsy customer requesting money, then getting the money though paypal, packing the order, writing a note adding a small bonus drawing, going to the post office to send it.

2) Writing a letter to one of the women we meat in Ned's portfolio powerhouse review. We just couldn't get through to her by e-mail, so, as a last resort, I wrote her a letter, and send it to her office, hopefully, it'll find her, though she works in a very big company, and probably have people going over her letters and only bring in what's important.

3) writing a thank you letter to a wonderful woman in the Vespine gallery where I had my show, I feel so bad about not attending to this before, but finally it was done.

4) receiving a newsletter from the Lower East Side PrintShop about applications for their residence program, and deciding that unless I do it right away I'll loose my nerves, so, dumping everything else, I started choosing art work, shooting and scanning what I couldn't find elsewhere, filling forms, modifing my resume and artist statement (it needed to be not more then 1000 letters, it was 1071), changing files names, burning CD and trying to figure out who I can use as 2 references, which is hard since I didn't go to art school in the USA and so teachers are out of the question, so eventually, I wrote and asked the Vespine Gallery woman and another person who I appriciate and worked with. I put their names in the submission before I heard from them, I hope it's going to be OK, I hate having to ask for favores and I feel really bad about this somehow.

5) following a link on their site to some artist and from there to some gallery and from there ot some artist portfolio sites, I decided ot apply for that one as well, so again, resume, statement, images bla bla bla....

6) get the images form the Vespine show from Ned's computer to my computer. Tomorrow I will start color correcting them and prepering them for a Blurb book, I want ot take it with me when we go to LA and possible show it to some galleries.

My brain feels fried and I'm so tired, and all I want is ot make some drawings to remind myself why am I trying to get all this done instead of getting a certificate to do people's nail for a living...

Kelly Krantz on LoucheLink

Kelly is the Tattoo artist who did my new tattoo a last weekend. He also did the one we got when we got married, the raven. He's a really quite guy and sort of shy, but he's a super professional tattoo artist with a lot of respect to other people's designs and a cool style of his own.

Read the interview here.

Relaxing

In the past couple of days, I was really assertive, I've wrote back to some people Ned and I met in the PowerHouse portfolio review, I submitted my art to a Gallery and 3 stores (2 Form answered received back), I communicated with a guy that have a site for New York photographers and got accepted to it (though haven't uploaded anything yet), and send Ned's presentation to an online French magazine.

Somehow, though I'm pretty sick and very tired, I was able ot do all those things, and though it wasn't fun, it was very productive and also, very empowering not to be paralyzed by having to face the notion of communication and knowing that I might get rejected.

However, tonight was spend in not even completing and Etsy order but just making stuff for myself, I designed those cups in my mind last week when I was in State Collage and couldn't fall asleep, and so it was really nice to finally let them take shape in life and not just in my brain.

Francesco Ercolini on Louchelink

What I really like about Francesco's photography is that it feels like his life is an endless cool chaotic party.

I don't know if this is so, but I just love visiting his life though his pictures and seeing how, though people look different in different places, the feelings and the enjoyment they experience is universal.

Plus, I think it's super cool that his portraits of dogs are at least as funny, quirky and respectful as the ones of people.

Read interview here:
www.louchelink.com/

PowerHouse

We are taking Ned's portfolio to be reviewed by "powerhouse" publisher tomorrow.

We've been editing photos and making choices all week, now almost everything is done (we still need to make a couple of CDs)

We've talked a lot this week about what we want, about our accomplishments from the past year, about the future.

At first it felt like we are coming to this meeting very empty handed, being that Ned hasn't done a lot of commercial photography in the past few years, then thinking about the amount of views we had on our websites, the involvement in different web based project and other things, we started to feel better about the whole thing.

It was nice to understand that basically, we were doing everything right, building a reputation, reaching out to the public, and sharpening our skills, now all we need to do is find a way to connect with some art buyers and learn to make money.

Also, this made me realize something really important about my own art. I really couldn't care less of what happened to it after I'm done making them.

I want to sell art so I can go on making art and not have to work in an office or something, I also love selling art cause it makes me feel appreciated and loved. However, I don't care at all if I sell it to a magazine to use as illustrations, or find an art gallery that show and sell it to collectors, or publish it in a book that's sold in a bookstore or whatever.
Really, if I could find some eccentric patron who would buy all my paintings cause he want to use them as toilet paper I couldn't be happier.