What artists do when they're snowed in

If there is enough snow in our front yard to attempt a snowman, you can assume I've been indoors long enough to get desperate for something to do. Like...organizing supplies.

I catalogued all my oversized decorative and handmade papers. The Husband used to tell me just to snip little pieces off the paper, then tack them to the tubes so I'd know which papers were inside. But... I could've USED that snippet. [agonized wail]

Somewhere, I read about an excellent compromise: print photos of the paper, collect them on rings, then put each ring of photos on the corresponding tube.

A much more involved task than I thought -- I have like 14 tubes and carrying bags of paper. But it's done! Unfortunately, I was also snowed in long enough to have to do housework. Thank God for snow melt.

Lil' bit of "Greener"

I'm trying out an idea: mini-collages made from elements of my last piece, "Greener."

This one I did about a week and a half ago, and on Tuesday morning I did all but the final wash on another. I'm forcing myself not to spend a lot of time on these -- about three hours. I'm also trying to use only what I have on hand: a piece of wood cut down to 4"x4" as the substrate, black rice paper, the focal image, mica, and paper fragments edged with an acrylic wash. Not a full assemblage, but not completely two-dimensional either.

Still deciding what to do with the collages when I'm done... I know there are some galleries that have miniatures shows. Etsy is a possibility, now that I have a better understanding of how my vendor friends use it. What do you think? Tell me in the comments or on Facebook.

Artfest shopping!

[cackling madly] I just remembered: I'm going to be an Artfest student, so I get to use a student discount when I go shopping for class supplies!

Artist & Craftsman Supply knocks 10% off if you show them your Artfest class description at checkout! Besides the Seattle location near the University of Washington campus, the company has 17 other locations scattered across the country. The staff vibe is kind of like that at an old hardware store: friendly but not perky, knowledgeable, and efficient.

And oh, the venerable supply wonderland that is Dick Blick. Did you know they're having a winter back-to-school sale right now? Yes, right-now right now. You have until February 26th to get your butt in gear. (It's in-store only. But they do have some winter discounts for online purchase too.)

Neither store is paying me to tell you this. I just wanted to remind you to bring your class descriptions with you -- it's like a coupon if you use it in certain stores. Off you go now.

Vintage 2012 whine

The other evening, I was rubbing water-soluble crayon into this art journal page so hard, I gave myself a blister.

Now that's hard-core. [rolls eyes at self]

TwoBoo just about kilt me with his bathtime/bedtime tantrum. I didn't yell back (too much) at him. But that boy commits when he decides he wants something. We try to let him "win" as often as possible, but at what point have we moved from Small Victorytown to Pushover City?

All right. Enough whinging about how haaaaard parenting is. I promise not to give TwoBoo away to the circus. But if they're hiring...

How do you Etsy?

Up until yesterday, I told myself I wasn't going to use Facebook's "Ask Question" polling feature. No way. Most questions I've seen people post are as unimportant to me as Farmville. (Yeah, I said it.)

But I wondered if it's really practical to try selling assemblage works on Etsy. And then I realized I might actually know some people who could help me figure that out.

Sixteen people responded to my oh-so-scientific poll. Some also messaged me about how and why they use these sites. Twelve use Etsy (sometimes with caveats); the rest sell their work on Etsy and their own sites, through galleries or some combination of the above. In a nutshell, this is what I learned about their Etsy experiences:

• My research sample skews heavily toward jewelry designers and 2D artists.
• Etsy's fees vs. eBay's fees: no contest. Etsy wins hands-down.
• People tend to go with Etsy (vs. Artfire, for example) because it's well-known, especially among mixed-media aficionados.
• Networking with other vendors: useful, but word-of-mouth (via FB or a blog) is even more so. That's how some people are able to sell their work before even listing it on Etsy. No listing, no fee! MaryBeth Shaw and her stencils are a perfect example.
• About word-of-mouth: people will hide your feed if you mainly post to sell your stuff. Unfortunately, no one knows the perfect balance between fun posts and sales posts, of course.

About their actual items for sale, I learned:

• Most of their items can be shipped easily (prints of 2D or 3D work, jewelry, jewelry supplies). Pamela Huntington and Laurel Steven's works are the lightest of all -- file transfers of jewelry tutorials and digital collages.
• Many items cost less than $50, and can be made in quantity relatively quickly (maybe a week). (Not really a surprise; Featured Sellers who earn most of their living on Etsy tend to make jewelry or stationery of some sort.)

I also did some general browsing of assemblage pieces, and the vendors with the most sales keep things lightweight and under $250, roughly speaking. Yeah, there are some pieces listed for thousands of dollars. But the only vendor I recognized who actually makes sales like that is Dolan Geiman. And from what I can tell, he's an industry unto himself with his own website as well.

• Speaking of selling work on your own site allows you to avoid Etsy listing fees, but it requires more marketing on your own, and a solid fan base.

Thanks so much to everyone who responded: Pamela, Laurel, MaryBeth, Nona Parry, Sunny Carvalho, Bekah Ash, Regina Lord, Kelly Snelling, Lulu, Phyllis Peterson, Clarissa Callesen, Canace, Stephanie Green, Randi Antonsen, Stefanie Lin, and Delores Taylor.

What's your experience with online sales of your art? Tell me in the comments or email me.

Three shows, two works, one book

I was reading art coach Alyson Stanfield's blog the other day. It said something to the effect of "look back at the previous year and you'll be amazed at what you accomplished." She was right. I'm blogging on the road, so I'm a little limited. But here are the biggies of 2011:

-- three shows, one of them in a Seattle gallery (ICON), another at a brand-new venue (the Schack Art Center), the first at our beloved Artfest

-- two new works inspired by stories about my mother's family ("Our Lady of Georgetown" and "Greener")

-- featured in Rice Freeman-Zachery's new book, "Destination: Creativity -- The Life-Altering Journey of the Art Retreat"

Not to mention meeting so many new people through Twitter and my Facebook friends page... Take a stroll through le blog and read about the Year in Lisa. Happy New Year!

"Greener": third in a series

I'm tentatively calling this work "Greener", as in "the grass is always..."

The focal image is a composite paint-over of my mother as a kid.

My mother was forever looking at what other people had and assuming it had to be better. Even though by the standards of mid-century Lexington's black community, she was practically born with a silver spoon in her mouth. (She's in the front row of her class picture, third from the right.)

At dinner, she used to spear bites off my dad's plate (my brother and I joked for years that her picking at his food was a major reason why my parents split up.) Same food: it just looked better on my dad's plate. I wanted to express that in the colors I used for this piece.

Her favorite color was yellow -- she painted my room that color, and I spent many teenaged hours hating it -- so I gave her a yellow dress with green shadows to comment on her envy.

Envy is a poisonous emotion, but it's also melodramatic. Envy makes you the star of the story. So I used green's direct complement -- red -- to edge the paper and caulk "crags" of her cave. One of my stamp ink colors calls it "Lava Red" and I like the barely-contained churning image that evokes.

I also designed the crags to hang like curtains in a theater, and placed the focal image in its broken-down balcony.  (My mom was still a child when African-American movie-goers were required to sit in balcony seats, furthest from the screen and the white movie-goers.) In her left hand she holds a bucket of grudges.

Her classmates stand below, just barely visible behind the mica "movie screen" showing the house in which she grew up.

In the last class I took with Michael deMeng, he suggested mixing the grungy wash right on the substrate, instead of on a palette, to make it more uneven and random. I tried that, and dry-brushed a little lava black here and there on the yellow-painted caulk.

For this piece, I decided to add metal feet. But as cute as they were in the package, I didn't want them to steal the show. I piled on caulk, then brought back some of the detail with paint washes.

So now it's baroque, but a craggy kind of baroque. And it's done before the new year!

I haven't yet looked into exhibitions to show this piece, but I'm sure something is just waiting around the corner. And that's about as far as I've planned the next year in art. Do you already have plans? Share in the comments or on Facebook.