Photo Of Jake
Portrait In Oil Of Jake
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About ten years ago, I made the decision to go "pro" and earn a living as an artist. I had been selling my work for about five years but only enough to feed my habit of purchasing art supples, pay for my studio rental, and attend workshops. I was given some advice from a marketing expert who had painted and marketed his work for many years and made quite a mark on the art world. His name was Jack White and I was very sad to learn that he recently passed away. He suggested that I post a painting a day to eBay. This was back in 2006 and artists were earning a lot of money with their own galleries on eBay. He also advised me to post the same time of day and start my bids under 10 dollars. I took his advice and painted my little heart out. Many days I was just finishing a piece and photographing it right before 9 pm which is when I posted every day. Within a couple of months all my paintings were selling and many were going up quite a bit. As I accumulated feedback and a following many of my one foot squared cow portraits went for over 400 dollars. Aside from how fun it was to earn money almost every day with auctions ending, I was getting a lot better as a painter, and also ALOT faster. Much of what an artist does to create a painting is solve problems. The more
you paint, the quicker you learn to solve common problems and can move on. I remember in my early days as a painter taking months to complete a painting. You really can work a piece to death and sometimes you just can't figure out when it is finished. When I had hundreds of paintings under my belt, I realized that knowing when it was finished came very naturally. Occasionally when I photograph a piece, I will see something that I didn't notice before and can fix it. So the moral of the story, is to PAINT, PAINT, PAINT! I will never forget the night I was in my studio and the news was all doom and gloom about the economy and the housing market. That was the last good week on eBay and it has never been the same. I continued to sell pretty well on the daily painters site but we all had to learn to diversify and find other avenues. If the expense of painting often is daunting because you are not selling your work or not selling much yet, do what I did. I would go to Home Depot and get a large masonite board cut into common sizes and gesso them. Very inexpensive. Thanks so much for stopping by!
