I am now almost a 'proper artist'!! woop!

I have my first exhibition coming up in a few weeks - part of a local art show at this gallery:
http://www.corner-gallery.com/upcoming_shows.htm

!!!!!

I'm submitting (initially - it's one of those 'once you sell it, replace it' things)

This

Englands Green + Pleasant Land by ~Tashlentine on deviantART

and this


Simplicity by ~Tashlentine on deviantART

They've both made it though submission, which I am IMMENSELY relieved about - which is what makes me an 'almost proper' artist. Once they sell, THEN I'll be a real one. Will also be very nice seeing money coming IN for a change! haha!

Becoming an artist has been SUCH a tough decision to make. It has meant for me, being utterly selfish, having to dig my heels in and be absolutely stubborn and really really actually fight my corner and defend this choice passionately.

There seems to be a census that if you don't make money instantly, if you're don't get massive bucks for your paintings instantly, if you're not a household name instantly, and have galleries beating down your door and falling over themselves to get your work... then what's the point? get a real job.

The point is art doesn't work like that. It is, I'm finding, incredibly hard work, especially for someone like me, who hasn't gone to art school, who doesn't have the tools and contacts that art students have, and I'm really working about 5 jobs at once, if you think about it:

1. Trying to catch up on 3 years worth of work that art students have behind them and build up a portfolio (I'm not too fussed about the 'training' aspect paint-wise, because I want to paint like me, not like anyone else.

2. Promoting my work so that it gets out there and seen by people. - Learning from scratch how to do that, and having to make contacts off my own bat, not having them handed to me on a plate

3. Promoting my art on the web - ie. having a website which i'm having to make

4. Learning just how in gods name dreamweaver is supposed to work - learning my way around that programme, css code, html code, web design.... complicated stuff.

5. Making my own canvasses - I knew how to do that anyway because i learned how to do it in school, but it is pretty time consuming and at the moment, with my RSI and tennis elbow (hah yeah - i'm a cripple too, forgot to mention that lol) it takes a lot out of me physically to be able to do that and i pay for it for the next few days and have to be best friends with volterol, cuprofen and hot water bottles and ice packs.

Art for me also means making sacrifices at my own expense as well as at the expense of others. I actually can't remember the last time I bought something for myself. I am a total shoe addict - I love shoes and handbags (yes, I am a total girl sometimes) but since Christmas it has been a case of £10 for a handbag, or 3 tubes of paint - paint always wins out.

(an A.D.D moment - I have a butterfly in my room as I type this and have no idea how it got in)

Sacrifice also - having a regular job with a regular income and regular hours. Regular income means not having to worry about not having enough money, and also means that I could move out and live in my own place - Being a graduate, it's not like I don't have the qualifications and the intelligence to get a very well paid job...

But to me making art and being happy in life is more important than having money (although I really do want to move out and soon so my parents can have their house back! LOL)


but yah. that's that said.

Revamping the website at the moment - dunno how long it'll take because i'm trying something different this time - making my site in photoshop and importing it over to dream weaver to convert it into website material, so hopefully it won't take quite so long to load as the current one.

Cleared out a lot of my stuff on deviantart, just trying to put up more/better photos as and when i have time - submitting everything as prints too

Going to blitz the studio today when i'm done writing this as it's got to the stage where I can't actually fit in through the door - Been manically busy this month and my normally reasonably tidy studio doesn't know what's hit it! so it's going to be gutted, hoovered and put back together methinks.

At the moment I really can't complain about being bored and having nothing to do - I'm working non-stop pretty much from 11am to 3am. Ees-a-crazy, but better than doing nothing, i'm sure you'll agree!!!!! :D

A really good photoshop tutorial vid explaining curves!

Curves and Adjustment Layers by =kuschelirmel-stock on deviantART

The past couple of days....

Have been a good couple of days!! (Although I could have done with a bit more sleep)

I've made a start on two new paintings

I've somehow managed to accumulate 12 watchers on deviantart

I've made my first news features (2 of them) which haven't been complete flops, which I'm extremely relieved about, because that would have been embarrassing if they went totally ignored

I've done a little (very little - I still can't use the computer for too long because of this arm) work on revamping my website.. for some reason the current one takes absolutely forever to load - I'm not sure what is going on with that - my computer tech guy is hosting that for me on his server so I dunno if it's my design that is too clunky and slowing stuff down, or his server being slow... either way - a lot of stuff will be disappearing from it and a fair bit of new stuff will be appearing on it.

I kind of want to host it myself (ok not 'host' per se, but you know what I mean) because I want to hold the reins with it and update it whenever I want without having to hassle someone else to do it for me or to keep knocking on the poor guys door every few days to ask him to update it - he's a busy guy - he has better things to do than do favours for me all the time - and he's hosting it for me for free too, on top of that - which is why I feel bad pestering. If it was just a hobby or something, It wouldn't be so bad, but... I'm a working artist... I need a working site to inform folk of happenings and exhibitions and shizzle, and often I don't find out about something til a week beforehand!...

Basically I'm aiming for a smoother running, neater, more professional site with better stuff on it, LESS stuff on it (I mean... stuff I did 6 years ago in school is hardly conveying the 'I'm a real artist, take me seriously and buy my work' message, is it?) and the 'about me' section needs to be totally cleared up - People really don't need to know what my favourite movie is. Jeez - that site is actually quite embarrassing now I think about it - that kinda nonsense might be ok for myspace but not for a proper artist.

onward

Put a painting on ebay 2 days ago - ok so it hasn't sold yet, but it's had a good few views - people may not have bought it, but it's apparently not shit enough to ignore, and is worthy of at least being looked at, which gives me hope.. It's not a particularly good painting anyway to tell the truth - I started it about 5 years ago and it's just been floating around gathering dust and I thought I might as well just finish it off and try to get rid of it - I don't really have the space to keep stuff any more - so things need shifting. I'm not totally sure about ebay as a selling tool for art anyway - looking at the other stuff there that is much better than mine, and not selling or the artists have put on there for a pittance - like £4.00 or something (which I think is ridiculous - I charge for my paintings in terms of material+Tash-hours gone into it - and I base that upon minimum wage per hour that people would get paid in a normal job, which is like £5 an hour or something. it seems that only established artists get anything for their work anyway on there so I won't be too disappointed if it doesn't sell - a little peeved, because I need the money, but it's not a particularly big deal or particularly worth getting upset over. Once I start getting my stuff out there and people begin vaguely recognising my name, then all good things will start to come my way. I just need to keep my head down and keep working hard.

It annoys me when people complain about not getting recognition for their work - like they do one thing and have arrogance to think they're amazing and the world owes them- that money, fame and all the rest should come to them without them really putting in any hard graft behind the scenes in terms of generating publicity themselves and talking to galleries and taking the time to make connections.
The world owes you nothing. If you don't put shit in, you don't get shit out. It's as simple as that.

Caved in and got meself a twitter account 5 days ago and last check already have 31 followers . I'm guessing/hoping this is not bad going for a 5 day old thingy! um... what else....
One of the paintings I'm doing at the moment I'm doing in 'real time' (or trying to) Basically I take photos every hour I'm working on it (aka 'whenever I remember to) and post it up on twitter, so a kind of 'watch my progress, understand my art a bit better' kinda things...

aaaaand....


I think that's about it actually!

Painting on Ebay!

finished a painting today! It is now on ebay!
Here is a picture



and here is the link!
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150367009699#ht_500wt_1053

Painting in real time

today (or as much of today as I can manage - (I'm painting in oils so have to wait ages in between layers for things to dry) I'm going to be doing a painting and posting Twitter updates every hour or so (I'm in the garden so no clock so partly guesswork, partly looking at phone to keep an eye on the time) with photos of my progress!

http://www.twitter.com/Tashlentine

Enjoy, and feel free to pass comment :D

I'm thinking this will also be a good way to discourage laziness and actually get me to work a bit more consistently and less sporadically! Painting really drains me- especially after last week where i was painting pretty solidly from 11 in the morning to 9 at night with only toilet and food breaks (!) i've had a few days off now, And feel much more rejuvenated and revving to go! In the meantime, I've been working on getting some bits together to revamp my site - seeing Alec Egan's fancypants new one is making me want to pull my finger out a bit and sort my poor excuse for one out! hehe


The painting you'll be seeing me doing now is one that will hopefully get me into an exhibition - due for submission by the end of the month. Keep your fingers crossed for me please!!!

Also - any artists reading this, please feel free to follow me on twitter and drop me a note on here letting me know who you are and I'll return the favour :)

Tunnel

Tunnel by ~Tashlentine on deviantART

This photo has done extraordinarily well (for one of my photos) in terms of favouriting/views on deviantart! Am very chuffed/surprised!

70 years of oz

I published a news article on deviantart to celebrate 70 years of the release of MGM's 'The Wizard of Oz' by F. Baum - featuring art and photography found on the site (and there is a LOT!!)

here's the link:
http://news.deviantart.com/article/90251/

enjoy!

Deviant feature

people seem to like my ladybirds! i've had like 6 features on this one:


ladybird 9 by ~Tashlentine on deviantART

And now I've had these two both featured in the same article! nice way to bring a smile to my face in the morning eh?!

Lunch by ~Tashlentine on deviant

and

ART
Inverse by ~Tashlentine on deviantART

Here's a link to the article - there are some extremely cool photos on there!!
http://news.deviantart.com/article/90149/

A good blog

I have 2 weeks to do 2 paintings, i wanted one to be in oil, oil takes ages, so looking around, i found this
http://allthestrangehours.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-to-get-oil-paint-to-dry-quickly.html

which is very useful - the things to do/things to avoid using oil paint

this is an old version of this guy's blog (but i know where the article is on it)

The new version is here:

http://rourkevisualart.com/wordpress/

Well worth checking out!

A little overambitious

Trying to get 8 paintings done in 2 days was... a little overambitious. Ok, a LOT overambitious. I only managed to get 3 done that were vaguely passable because I was stressing over wether or not I'd be able to get things done in time or not. If nothing else, I've learned a valuable lesson: There is no point in rushing. More haste = less speed + less quality. Besides, people aren't stupid - they're not going to pay for something that's badly done, and frankly, I'd be embarrassed to try and push something that isn't my best.

I had THE most unconstructive day in the studio I think I've ever had yesterday - I did absolutely F.A. I was in there painting all day, but you know those days when the 'gift' decides to pack its little bags and go on holiday? (usually when you need to rely on it. typical.) Yeah? I had one of those. It's SO frustrating, I can't tell you - to see paintings lying around that are good and then to be completley incapable of painting something that's basic is the most infuriating thing in the world! Plus I decided to try to paint on board which was in itself a bad idea because I hadn't worked on board since I was in school.... now I remember why! If you're going to work on AS level material, you're gonna get AS level results. Total waste of a day. A word to the wise? Just because you were good at doing something almost 6 years ago does not mean you are good at doing it now. If you haven't done a specific thing for that long, I'd suggest NOT doing what I did and trying to do it off the bat, but to have a practice first. I'm going to have a break from the studio today and try and realign my chakras or whatever you call it (get self together by removing self from source of annoyance) and hopefully will have better luck in there tomorrow.

Here are the aforementioned three:

Epic Fail.

Crackle Paste

The one by Golden worked a treat! here's a section of my latest piece that shows it nice n' close up!

It's pretty expensive - about £10.50 from Pullingers and is a very light mousse texture which you have to spread on at least a few millimetres thick in order for it to work, but this is what it looks like on canvas - this is over a layer of white emulsion, then with a layer of blue emulsion and then acrylic paint over the top:

Very brief update

* arm is royally buggered - going to a muscular-skeletal specialist asap to get it sorted - this RSI is taking far too long to heal so am avoiding all unecessary typing. Fortuanately for you this includes lengthy rants on here

* still plugging away at the USA collection, pictures to follow - done a few more pieces

*Art show on saturday. found out about it today so have 2 days to do about 8 pieces. Ambitious/crazy/stupid much? pictures to follow.

All I have to/can say right now

Hope all my readers are well,

Tash
x