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!