I attended my first art fair and it was quite a learning experience.  I purposely chose a small event as I didn't want to be overwhelmed.  In hindsight, I'm not sure that was a great idea.  There were 2 painters and 4 photographers present.  As a result of the small size and the limited advertising, there wasn't many customers looking to spend money on art.  I did see some of the photographers selling prints; however their cost is a lot less than for a painting.

I was amazed at how much effort and costs it takes to do an art fair.  The cost of that is quite high, never mind the weeks of work that goes into preparing.

On the positive side, I did pick up some additional names for my newsletter and I got a lot of positive feedback on my artwork.

Next summer I will try 1 or 2 larger venues that are dedicated to art.

I set up an account with ImageKind, I want to offer prints of some of my sold or not for sale work.  Seems pretty easy.  I ordered a sample print that should arrive next week.  Hopefully the quality will be there; more to come on this topic.

If I like the quality, I'll build some links from my website to ImageKind. 

Today was supposed to be focused on painting; instead, I got wrapped up with Symantec, resolving a space issue with my computer backups.  After that it was lunchtime; which was interrupted by a volley of text messages stating that people thing my Facebook account has been hacked.

What someone was doing was impersonating me and asking all my contacts to be friends.  I reported them to Facebook who shut them down.  It's strange how we spend our days that are targeted for painting.

Today was just supposed to be focused on painting.  I started the day with a plan.

Well I spent the bulk of the day getting my newsletter ready to roll.  I'll send it out Monday morning.  I manually added a number of people to the mailing list and I'll give them the weekend to confirm acceptance.  I've been sitting here doing desk work all day long, so now I need to stretch.  With some luck I'll have the next hour or so to paint.

So much for my big plans! 

I did start a new painting yesterday.  In another day or so I'll start to show some progress shots.

I've been re-photographing many of my paintings as I seem to have finally figured out the proper lighting with the camera.  I't's been keeping me busy updating the website with new photos.

I am slowly but surely picking up additional people for my e-mail newsletter, it would appear to be time to get busy and publish. 

I was getting ready to start a new project; however, I was sidetracked.

Yesterday I decided I needed to photograph my artwork outside, so I set up in the yard in the shade and photographed approximately 30 paintings.  I then started cropping and checking for color matching.  Some (only a few), came out better after shooting them outside.  This morning I rearranged the lights in the studio and re-photographed everything again.  This time they all looked better.  Now I need to crop and upload to the web page.

Taking a break from my photo endeavors; I went to see a former art instructor to order some frames.  Wow is she good!  She gave me a number of corrections to make.  I hope with time my eyes will be as good as hers.  So now I'm making some adjustments to works I had completed; hey then I can photograph them again!

Since it's a holiday weekend, I think I'll stop now before I get anything productive done.

What a life. 

When we produce a really good work of art, it can be such a bummer after it's complete.

I was sitting here wondering what can I do next that will be as good as what I just did.  I've looked at my photographs a number of times.  Finally I decided it was time to go hiking with the dog (I took the camera along), and low and behold, I found something new I want to paint.  Now life is great again!  When did I ever get so fickle?