I have a tumblr blog and an Etsy shop.

Find me on twitter @Sophieamyart

Thursday 29 November 2012

Horse Painting Poll

I've made a poll on facebook asking what my next painting colour should be. I want to try a colour or shade I haven't tried yet.

The options so far are:
-Light or Fresh Green
-Custard Yellow
-Pale Blue
-Plum

Feel free to answer the poll or add your own options.

Tuesday 27 November 2012

Sewn Secrets

I've been working on some textile pieces. Im using the shapes of a few embroydery rings to give nice even shapes and sizes. I want them to appear quite traditional in this way - to look like the colour has faded from the thread. The fabric is quite a pink toned cream and the string is white so they are more different than the pictures show.


I'm using frames at the moment so they dont appear too scruffy but I might try putting poles in the top and bottom and hanging them like you would with a quilt.

As the title suggests they contain secrets with the letters sewn horizontally, vertically then upside down so they are completely unreadable. I'm thinking of picking a few of the words from the secrets as titles, so the one above would be called "The Only Thing" Which seems quite cryptic but I know exactly what the secret is about.

The thread is mortician sutre thread which I've been experimenting with staining with natural dyes like blackberries. And the canvas is from the protective bags woven coffins are stored in. It's quite nice fabric, very soft and it degrades as you sew it as it rips quite easily - which I like.


See more examples of my work on my facebook or my flickr account

Monday 26 November 2012

Example Simple Business Card

My business card is very simple with minimal information on it. It isn't very exciting and would do it much differently now but I got over excited making them.

I would definately include much more colour but leave the text more-or-less the same.

I'm going to pop up a trial business card that I will make when I use up all my current ones.



Incase you are wondering what the weird smudges are its where I crudely took off my phone numbers and email address.


UK Art Competitions 2013

This post is a list of art competitions that I want to keep my eye on over the next few years.

It's subject to being changed and added to as I find more competitions. I think art competitions seem like lots of fun so I'm going to go for a couple this year and even more once I finish university.

I'm going to try and cover a wide variety of mediums (from found object work to photography and everything in between) but obviously I might miss some by accident. Feel free to tell me about any I should include.

The competitions are ordered in relation to their submission deadlines.

1) 31 December 2012 Environmental Photographer of the Year - Photography only.

2) 11 & 12 January 2013 Lynn Painter-Stainer Prize - Painting and Drawing only.


3) 31 January 2013 Parliament Art House (Primary School Students only) - any 2D medium.

4) 28 February 2013 Discover Wildlife - any medium except photography.

5) 2nd April 2013 The Lumen Prize - any medium.

6) 11:59pm on 1 July 2013. The Derwent Art Prize - Pencil Only (graphite and colour).

7) 2013 Date not posted yet. Salon Art Prize - any medium, including sound - new competition details coming early 2013.

8) 2013 dates not posted yet - but calls for entrys begin mid december. BP Portrait Award - Paint only

9) 2013 Date not posted yet. Photography and Artwork.com - Any Medium.

10) 2013 dates not posted yet. ING Discerning Eye Exhibition - not sure about mediums as threy haven't released the info for the 2013 competition.

11) 2013 Date not posted yet. Brick Lane Gallery - Any Medium.

12) 2013 deadline already closed so apply for 2014 exhibition - details not posted yet.Cork Street Open Exhibition - any medium that doesnt need electricity to run.





A good website to visit for exhibition dates is isendyouthis.

A good Blog for competition dates called Making a Mark.

Thursday 22 November 2012

Practical Advertising for your Art

I am desperately lacking in ways to advertise my art work. At the moment it relies almost completely on word-of-mouth, which is nice because I know the people who promote me are truly passionate about my artwork.

However, I want to reach a wider, larger audience for both my pet portrait work and the type of art I am creating as a university project - which is much more personal and experimental.

So I got researching.

Currently I have tried a small bit of self promotion with limited success. There are many websites, blogs and books with tips on advertising and I am actually going to a lecture in January with my mum on the topic but I am going to write this blog today about things I have either tried or am going to try over the next year.

Business Cards

I have got a little box of a few hundred business cards - heres a photo of them, They're pretty basic. So I'll give the first bit of advice here make batches of cards rather than bulk amounts. If you have a large assortment of work it can be tricky to summarise this with just one piece. I suggest thinking about what you are going to use your business cards for - who is going to receive them.

So either make very simple and elegant cards with quality card, or even fabric. Maybe emboss the cards with just your name, website and phone number. I consider this to be for more established artists who are getting regular shows and selling quite a large amount of work. Or an artist who has more industrial or minimalist work.

Alternatively use numerous examples of your work for a number of cards - say as an example you make equal amounts of paintings and sculptures and you want one hundred cards - get half printed with a sculpture image and the other half with a painting. You could even choose a few paintings and a few sculptures so if the cards are spread out on a table at an exhibition visitors will be able choose the card with the art they like on it.

Don't get too carried away with making business cards though - don't get too many printed out at once as if your working style changes you haven't got a surplus amount of out-of-date artwork. I can say this for sure because I have around 300 cards advertising my graphite drawings when I much prefer making oil paintings now.

Make a book

This isn't to give out to potential customers like business cards but it is helpful to put in waiting rooms and on coffee tables with places you have a good relationship with. These don't need to be specifically "arty" places either. I'm considering making one to see whether my dentist would put it in their waiting room - they are animal mad and are close family friends. But it could be a cafe, restaurant, hairdressers - I could potentially have one in my parents waiting room of their business, since I have also made most of the artwork currently on their walls and could include this in my book.

rightbrainrockstar.com has a blog on the topic but I think he links to an American book making website, here's a link for UK version.

These books are also something you could sell, I haven't ordered one so I can't say what kind of quality they have but I'm sure it isn't bad. I'm particularly interested in this because in my second year at university I bound and hand printed my own book.

Start a Blog/Website and keep it up to date

This is important not because it raises your google rating (which it does) but because when someone takes your business card, or reads your book in a waiting room and they visit your website to learn more they want to see a nice easy to understand website.

My website is admittedly not that up to date, and I would be more willing to direct people to this blog but that is because I am not entirely happy with the website maker I made my site on, it's quite glitchy and complicated on some issues and too limited on others - although it is free for a year and does the job until I want to splash out for an expensive site. I am going to buy the web-address and make the site from scratch I think.

Visual Art Trader gives you your own artist website when you join so this is also a really good option for any artist unless you want a personalised URL like mine.

The only other issue with your website is that the general public won't stumble onto your website through google - and if they do you can't guarantee they want to buy your work. So you need another form of promotion to direct traffic to your website.

Another really good method to gain fans and perhaps even customers is through social media like facebook or twitter. Facebook is basically an online version of word-of-mouth promotion. If one friend likes your work all their friends can see it so you have a huge potential audience. It allows you to engage with your audience rather than having a one way conversation like on this blog. Questions and answers can go both ways on social media.
See my previous post on ways to make your facebook page stand out from the crowd. Or this one by rightbrainrockstar (again I know, but that site is just so useful) on artist websites.

Enter Art Competitions

Late October I started researching art competitions to enter and was disappointed to find most 2012 deadlines were in early November so I am going to start entering and making note of ones to enter early next year.

The best one (in my opinion) is the RA Summer Exhibition. My friend from my foundation course got a sculpture piece accepted and it just seems like good fun as well as good exposure.

I have an ever growing list of competitions to enter here. I will then post photos of my entries and how I do in them.

Connect with Artists

This is related to all the other tips in this post. Like artists pages on facebook, link their websites on twitter and comment on artwork you like. These relations are nice but can also be useful, if the artists work is similar to you in anyway you can use them as examples to learn from.

Speaking of which heres mine.

You can emulate successful artists and also connect with artists in a similar position to you to help you price your art, join communities or find galleries that like the kind of work you produce.

Other Reading

I will update this as I find other useful websites on promotion.

16 ways to get your art noticed



Monday 19 November 2012

Creative Career Blogs to Read

So I've been catching up on a few other people's blogs for tips on improving my online visibility and also getting the confidence to actually consider the scary prospect of being an artist as a career. I've got a few of the best and most inspiring sites on here for anyone to have a look at.

Also I figured out how to make links properly. Finally.

So just click on the orange titles to visit the related sites.


1) 38 Amazing People who will help you quit your job and follow your Dreams.


I chose this blog post not because I have a job that I need to quit - I'm a jobless student, but the testimonials are inspirational and make me excited over the prospect of being self employed one day. It also gives a boost to my artistic dreams, which is always nice.


2) 8 Awesome Free Guides

This is a list of guides, making this a bit of an inception post - a blog list within a blog list. Also the whole site is a gold mine of really useful info - hence why it features twice on this small blog post. It has information about everything blog-related, creative career-related and many inspiring lists of things making this the main site I look into when I need to give myself a little online pep talk.

I will be using some of the practical posts it suggests and uploading the results as I go.


3) So you quit your job, now what?

Another job related blog. It's a blog about trying to figure out what makes you unhappy about your job. What makes you unhappy can be really tricky to put your finger on and knowing how to change the things that effect us negatively is something artists do quite often when creating our work to our own personal standards.


4) 8 Ways to Customise your Facebook-Business page

And lastly a very practical blog about how to make your facebook page stand out from the crowd with tips on how to customise the notoriously rigid structure of Facebook.

5) Making it

This is a wonderful post from literally the coolest website EVER. It's a very positive post from people who have been-there-done-that. They took a degree (fine art) that made them feel helpless in choosing their perfect careers. It gives good advice on how to set up a portfolio that contains art you want to be known for rather than work you feel you should make, or you have made as a project for uni or college.

Thursday 15 November 2012

New Artist Logo


Based on one of my oil paintings.

See more examples of my work on my facebook or my flickr account

I want a studio, not a garage.

My studio space - where I create/store work is my garage. I technically make all my work in the front room but I consider my garage to be my studio.

It's a mess at the moment - half finished projects and drying icing sculptures dotted about the place. It was also become a bit of a dumping ground for Christmas presents.

In the talk by the Visual Arts Trader man he made the point that this space is technically a permanent exhibition of my work and I should use it.

So I'm going to tidy it up, it really seems like a space I am not using at its full potential.

The occasions where people who like art - such as my fabulous grandmother Nanni Carole - pop over I want there to be a proper space for them to look around rather than a garage filled with some junk and a few art pieces in between.

The visual trader man also said they want to do an advertisement project where they give information on open studios - and I want to be ready for when this happens.

I think I'll make some racks to tidy up the clutter and maybe a few floor level drawer boxes. I'll post pictures up of the before and after and some tutorials of what studio furniture I make.

See examples of my work on my facebook or my flickr account

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Online galleries?

At university on Tuesday we had a really interesting talk by the fabulously named founder of Visual Art Trader Chris Grant Peterkin (I'll pop the link at the bottom of this post for those interested).

He was talking about how everything is moving into more internet friendly ways - including the gallery and the buying/selling of artwork. He gave examples of these exchanges and interactions between real-life galleries/art fairs and online ones. As well as proof that people view art online before buying it or going to see it in its gallery setting because their busy lifestyles stop them going to physically visit galleries and browsing for art.

Basically it really inspired me to take better photographs of my artwork to let people - myself included - avoid the intimidating and sometimes plain complicated world of galleries for a while longer.

Not forever.

Just until I know for certain that someone other than myself likes my work.

So I'm going to sign up for it - it's only £24 a year for a student account or £48 for a standard one. They also don't take commission which is obviously really good.

The site offers a kind of categorisation of art style there are only four of them - abstract, representational, semi-abstract and semi-representational. This is good for the practical reason that general, casual art buyers generally want something for their home/office and they want it to be something they like - be it a big and bright horse painting (see links to my website if interested) or a big smudge of paint that matches their curtains but also starts to look like a landscape if looked at for long enough.

Taste sure isn't simple - but knowing that galleries are scary to buy from compared to Internet shopping sure is.

Anyway waffle over - Internet shopping is the future, so I'm going to brush up on photography skills and show off a little.

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Visual Art Trader Website

Medusa

As promised, I uploaded my Medusa piece onto youtube.



Enjoy and let me know what you think.

See more examples of my work on my facebook or my flickr account

Monday 12 November 2012

Fine art project - third year

I have started my third year and final year of my degree. I started about a month ago. It's quite exciting. Esspecially since I am loving my project.

I have decided to look at Morbid Curiosity - about people's fear and fascination with death and all that goes with it.

So far I have looked closely at the surgical tools of the trade - forceps of different kinds, mortition needles and cotton thread used for procedures.

I have used the forceps in sculptures made of royal icing - reflecting a long tradition of feasting that carries along all cultures.

I have dyed the thread with a variety of natural and native plant dyes. Being affiliated with green cemeteries. Making this a tradition for myself. I have then used the thread to make textile portraits.

I have looked at waste products of the trade - using the canvas bags woven willow coffins come packed in, as a material to use. I have also got some pacemakers and some mud from graves to work with.

I have looked frankly at gravestones and how they are deconstructed selves. We get simplified and perfected after our deaths. I wrote a long list of words I strongly associate with myself. But I was unsure how to use them.

I started making patterns for writing or sewing the words until they are unrecognisable and blend into a mess. I then started thinking about secrets, how they define me more. I want to layer the words of my secrets - the ones I would tell no-one. So far I am liking how it looks.

I'll pop a few photos up when I have them. And I am going to make a short video of a slideshow of my medusa piece.

See examples of my work on my facebook or my flickr account