12/11/2005: "Updates / How to Become a Famous Artist... (part II)"

Well, in keeping with my new goal to do a little web updating every weekend I updated my in progress gallery, and also added thumbnails to my purchases page and updated my commissions page as well.

Also, I tried to finish that book How to Become a Famous Artist and Still Paint Pictures" but after an interesting beginning (I'll paraphrase "You have to come to terms with the fact that you suck and your paintings will never sell and they'll just collect dust in your attic until your humiliated heirs throw them away one day").

The whole time he's telling you that, he intimates that he has secret knowledge that will turn everything around for you. After chapters full of teasers he finally gets down to brass tacks and it turns out his big advice is to read the social pages of your newspaper, ingratiate your way into the "important and influential crowd of rich people" in your city, where you will proceed to manipulate these individuals vanity and avarice in order to get a solo exhibit at the gallery of your choice and sell all of your paintings.

He also recommends paying upwards of 5 grand on a professional looking catalog of your best 20 paintings. No where does he even mention a little thing called the Internet (though I admit after the big about manipulating the rich and powerful I started skimming a bit) and the chapter I'm getting to explains why you should move overseas to an expat community.

More to come...

Replies: 8 Comments

on Sunday, December 11th, Rod said

Wow Elise, The addition of the thumbnail photos on the purchase page looks great and makes such a huge difference!
You're really getting to be a pro at this self-marketing thing. Shucks, you don't need other peoples books to help you at all. ;)

on Sunday, December 11th, Elise said

Thanks a lot Rod, it's a lot of baby steps at this point. I appreciate getting feedback about how the site works too, like, do things download in a reasonable amount of time, oh...and subi mentioning things about listing whether stuff is framed or not..all those things I don't think of.

And as for other people's books, I still need them all right...maybe not this one by Joe Innis, but there are some really good ones out there. And, there were *some* interesting things in his book. I think mostly I have it in for him because I *hate* the idea that the only way you can make it as an artist is to manipulate people into buying your work. I mean, I believe in the psychology behind supply and demand and I'm sure that you *can* manipulate people into buying your work...but what kind of artist wants to make sales that way? it's just too depressing.

on Monday, December 12th, Dio said

That book sounds like it was written by someone who read the failed and pointless - How to Become a Famous Writer and Still Write Books... :(

What pointless advice. :crazy:

on Monday, December 12th, holly said

I just showed our fabulous departmental secretary (read: the woman who runs the department) the prints I bought and she's been going apeshit over your site and your work for half an hour. She's all crazy about your fiddlers in the Bluegrass series and the Alleuvials. She's also a painter with a fantastic eye-- I'm betting she buys something when she sees my prints. Where was I going with this?

Oh yeah, what Rod sais: you don't need help from books-- it's starting to happen for you. Just hang in there. And ditto the thumbnaiils-- they look great!

on Monday, December 12th, Elise said

Hey Dio, that's funny about the other book title! I did agree with the author on one point though, if you're going to be a painter you actually do need to learn how to paint.

And Holly, thanks a lot for showing my site to your co-worker. Praise from a fellow artist is particularly rare and prized!

I just hope that now you won't be disappointed with the quality of the prints. They're the first ones I've had done and although *I* think they look wonderful, I'm not a pro like you (I've never even purchased a print before this)...so I hope you'll be brutally honest with me.

on Monday, December 12th, holly said

Holy crap! That piece on your in-progress page, the woman's back with the blue and purple mountain in the background, is stunning! Apropos of nothing, it's just incredibly gorgeous.

on Monday, December 12th, Elise said

Thanks Holly,
That's one of my new favorites as well (great minds and all).

When I first did it I couldn't stop looking at it for the longest time. But then after awhile I couldn't decide if I liked the purple and blue in the mountain, as the colors aren't integrated anywhere in the bottom half of the canvas and stuff like that really bothers me. I started to think maybe I should redo the mountains in more of a reddish brown color, like the mountains in the new painting of the lilac nude in front of the glacier.

I might change the colors in photoshop and then post them to see which looks better. But the figure turned out exactly the way I wanted (I feel particularly complimented since you don't like the nudie stuff)
:)
The name of the mountain in the background is called lion's head (the one in Juneau, not Capetown), and it's really one of my favorites in this area.

http://www.juneauphotos.com/photos/1423.jpg

on Monday, December 12th, Elise said

Wow, I just reread my post and I didn't mean to come across so conceited...
:confused:
But the truth is, sometimes I do pieces that I don't think are any good or that I really struggle with and other times one will come along that I love, I mean, why paint at all if you aren't doing pieces that you love right?