30 Paintings in 30 Days - Day 21 - Wilma WIP 2

Another crazy impromptu addition of colour - this time a lime green. Then finally, bright blue. I thought about adding bright yellow to finish it off, but I quite like the white there. I've already started on the lineart of my next abstract today.

Places to Find Renee Dillon Art

There are a lot of different social media platforms these days. Which is good, because it means that there is more likely to be something that has the features to suit your needs. But it's also bad, because it means that reaching your audiences in the different places they want to see your work can be tedious and repetitive. When every new post needs to be shared on several different websites, it can get pretty time consuming. It can also be easy to forget a site when you have some new content to upload there.

Because of this, I decided to make a list of the social media outlets I've tried and the pros and cons of each as far as artists are concerned. Or at least, as far as I'm concerned.

Renee Dillon Art on Blogger
Of course, there's this blog. Almost forgot to put this one on the list. Blogger is pretty intuitive and easy to use. Anything I haven't figured out how to do on my own can be googled and someone will have explained it. There aren't any limits on the number of characters you can use or any nonsense like that, so you're pretty free to talk about whatever you like. 

Renee Dillon Art on Instagram

It took me a while to get into Instagram, as you need to have the app on a phone or tablet. It has pretty limited function if you're using a computer. This can be annoying if I just want to upload a picture to a couple of different places (like Facebook or this blog). Otherwise, I'm rather enjoying Instagram. There are some other great artists on there, and I've found quite a few people whose artwork I'm interested in.

Images have to be square, which keeps your gallery looking tidy, but it can be frustrating if you're trying to avoid cropping something out of an image. Also, I'm not a big fan of hashtags, but I don't think my images are searchable if I don't add a few relevant hashtags that people might be looking for. I seem to be getting over my aversion to hashtags the more I use them, but I still prefer tags. The thing I dislike most about tags, apart from the fact that they make the post untidy, is that you have to be very specific. #Colourful, #Portraits and #Colourfulportraits yield different results depending on how they were tagged, and you can't search for more than one tag at a time.

Renee Dillon Art on Facebook

Having a public page on Facebook is pretty simple. There is a category for artists, and I can switch between posting as my personal account or Renee Dillon Art pretty easily. You don't have to log in and out of accounts to do this, which I like. The biggest problem I have with Facebook is that I share my posts to my personal page so more people see them, and people who like the shared post don't appear on the original page. This means it looks like no one is liking or commenting on my images, even if they are. I'm not sure how to encourage people to go to the original page to like or comment if they see my images on a shared post.

Pinterest

Pinterest is definitely one of my favourite social media outlets, even if it isn't particularly social. I like to make collections of different kinds of images, and it can be useful to determine what you like about certain collections of things. I have examined my art and clothing boards to determine what common features I like about the things I pin, which can be useful information for buying or creating things of my own. In my art board, for example, the common features of the art I pin are things like bright colours, bold outlines and busy patterns. I also like animals and people's faces to be the subject matter, though sometimes I like landscapes and abstracts too. 

Renee Dillon Art on Society6
This one is a website where you can have your artwork printed, either as framed prints, or on various products such as clothing, throw pillows, quilt covers, mugs and greeting cards. Having my own quilt cover is very exciting to me, as my day job involves selling bed linen, and I'm definitely going to design something and have it printed up one day. Apparently you have to pay $1 to have your identity verified to sell on Society6, which I haven't got around to just yet.
EDIT: I have now paid the $1 and have two designs, Samantha and Jasper, uploaded. More will be coming soon. I'm particularly interested in getting my colourful patterned dog art up there and printing myself some nice cushions.

Renee Dillon Art on Fine Art America
This one is another website that offers prints of your artwork, focusing more on different types of wall art than Society6. The metal prints look pretty interesting, and I'd like to print one up to see how they look. You can also sell your originals through Fine Art America.

Renee Dillon Art on Saatchi Art (Formerly Saatchi Online)
This is a website that I quite like to browse. It has more of a fine art focus than most of the websites I've listed here, but anyone is still free to join and submit their artwork. Unlike Society6, you can sell originals as well as prints on this website, with a commission going to Saatchi Gallery if it's sold through them.

Renee Dillon Art on Etsy
I do like Etsy. There are a lot of beautiful things on there. But I feel like a lot of the people on Etsy are either there to sell or there to look at beautiful things. It definitely seems hard to stand out from the crowd enough for someone to actually buy what you have for sale. That said, I have sold art a couple of times on Etsy, and I haven't really given it much of a chance, so it can happen. Maybe when I have a bigger portfolio of art for sale I'll give it another shot, if only for an extra place to do some advertising. After all, every place you post your work is a chance to expand your audience.

Daily Paintworks
This is another site I like to browse. There is a pretty high volume of quality work, and I almost always find an artist whose work I want to look into on the front page. Unlike most online galleries and social media, the posts on the front page are the newest, rather than the most popular, so people that don't get much exposure elsewhere or don't have a lot of followers already can have some time in the limelight. I'm a fan of that. However, to display and sell your art on Daily Paintworks, there is a monthly fee of $12.95. This membership comes with a lot of features like a website, auctions, competitions, etc, so I think it will be worth it, but I'd like to get some of my free options on other sites going and build up a larger body of work first.

Renee Dillon Art on Twitter

This one baffles me. Twitter seems to be hugely popular, but it's really my least favourite form of social media. The strict limit on characters makes no sense to me. Unless you're a celebrity or already have a strong following from elsewhere, it just seems like yelling into a void.


I'll update this list as I find more places to display my art. I know there are others, some being more appropriate or useful than others, but every little bit of exposure helps. It's nice to finally have the list together and have a good idea of what I need to do to get my artwork out there and available to the people that want to see it. You never realise what a huge task marketing your work really is until you have to do it.



To add to the list:
Spoonflower
Cafepress
Zazzle
Lulu
Teespring
Tumblr
Color Throwdown
Pals Paper Arts

Mallard Ducks - Color Throwdown Challenge CTD307 - Acrylic Painting Portrait of Two Ducks in Green, Blue and Yellow

I finished painting my pair of mallard ducks and thought I'd submit them to this week's Colour Throwdown challenge.

The challenge seems to be geared towards stamping and cardmaking, but I think this is okay. I plan on printing my small artworks onto greeting cards anyway, so I guess it still counts as card making, in a way.

"Mallard Ducks", CTD307, Acrylic Paint on Paper, 6x6

Getting the green right was pretty tricky. There's another shade of green under this one that was way too dark. It's still not quite the shade from the challenge, but mallard ducks are a little bit darker than that anyway. Hopefully doing these colour challenges will be a good way to practice colour mixing, rather than just mixing up something I hope will go with what is already on the page.

Don't forget to follow me on Facebook at Renee Dillon Art or look up ReneeDillonArt on Instagram.

"Dobby the Whippet" - Colourful, Contemporary Acrylic Paint Pet Portrait

This charming little fellow is a whippet I've called Dobby (because of the big, floppy ears, of course). He's the first in a series of small pet portraits I've been working on. I've been wanting to get more into representational painting since I had some success on Austin. I also wanted to see how much water my sketchbook paper can withstand without warping (turns out, very little, but it can be mushed back into shape with a heavy book, so that's nice). 

"Dobby the Whippet", Pet Portrait, Acrylic Paint on Paper, 6x6

I intended to have a bit more purple when I started, but I quite like the bright primary colours together. It's a bit Fauvist. At least, I think that's what the Fauvist movement was about. I was never that into art history, personally. A quick Google images search shows me that I can't be too far off.

I have a bunch of sketches of different animals - dogs, cats, cows, ducks, bunnies, llamas, etc - so expect more animal portraits in the near future, hopefully as delightfully brightly coloured and cheery as this one. 

Work In Progress - Corgi Acrylic Painting

More pet portraits coming up today. I've been working on painting a few at once, and this is my favourite from today's batch. The others...possibly need some work. Maybe. But let's not worry about that right now, let's look at the doggie.

"Pete the Corgi", Work in Progress, Pet Portrait, Acrylic Painting on Paper, 6x6

The colours are a bit less bright in this photo than they are in real life. The orange comes out nicely, but the bluey-green shades on the corgi look a bit faded. I'll take a better picture once I've finished with the lineart and shading. Thinking of going a bit more mixed media with this one and adding coloured pencil or crayon too. Will see how the mood takes me. The other animal portraits I worked on today include mallard ducks, a cow, and an american pitbull terrier.

In other news, I'm super excited that I finally found square, black frames with white matboard for sale in my town. There are a bunch of places that sell standard size frames, but square ones are really difficult for some reason. I would have thought Instagram would have made square photo frames more common by now. But at least I have an option for framing my portraits now. After I've finished painting this little guy I can try it out.

"Austin" is Now Available for Sale

So, remembering that I have a blog today. I'm not nearly as consistent with it as I would like. I've been posting nearly daily on Instagram to try and build up a following on there. I find that I get very single minded with social media, and post in batches on one while neglecting the others. Then realise I haven't posted anything on my blog or Facebook page for a month. The difficult part is that blog require words as well as pictures, and what I have to say isn't always relevant to the artwork. Maybe I should talk generally about my life more, I don't know.

Anyway, I finally got around to putting a Paypal Buy Now button on my blog so I can actually try to sell some art. I couldn't find out how to set it up so the button doesn't let two people buy it, so in the unlikely event that two people buy before I have a chance to disable the button, I'll refund the second purchase. EDIT: Fixed this problem and hopefully it will now only sell one painting to one person.

"Austin", Geometric Art Nouveau Style Acrylic Painting, Acrylic on Canvas, $1800

Will try to get a decent photo of it hanging up on a wall. So many things to do. I've also made a list, below, of the social networking sites and galleries where you can find my work (or will be able to find my work in future). Thanks for looking.

Renee Dillon Art on Blogger
Renee Dillon Art on Instagram
Renee Dillon Art on Facebook
Renee Dillon Art on Society6
Renee Dillon Art on Fine Art America
Renee Dillon Art on Saatchi Art (Formerly Saatchi Online)
Renee Dillon Art on Etsy
Renee Dillon Art on Twitter

"Austin" - Geometric Art Nouveau Style Acrylic Painting

I've had this post on hold for a few days, mostly due to a busy couple of weeks at work. But also due to the fact that I'm a little apprehensive to call this artwork 'finished'. Everything that that entails is a bit daunting. While I intend to hang this piece on my own wall for now, having a finished artwork involves putting it up for sale, as I intended to do from the beginning of this project. 

It can be pretty scary sending your creation out into the world. It means seeing how it will be received, after you've already imagined the best and worst scenarios possible. It means taking a first step towards being taken seriously as an artist - a first step towards even taking myself seriously as an artist. It means acknowledging that it won't happen straight away, that I'm still many hours of advertising and marketing and art making away from having fans or making sales.

The scariest thing about taking this step, though, is that it means testing my mettle. I'm seeing how far I'll go to accomplish the things I want to accomplish. I'm betting hours of my time and a large portion of my dignity on the idea that I'm willing to keep going until I can say that I feel successful as an artist. I don't know what form that success will take just yet, but enough that I reach a moment where I can think "Yes, this was a worthwhile endeavor."

"Austin", Geometric Art Nouveau Style Acrylic Painting, Acrylic on Canvas

I've decided to call this piece "Austin". While I was painting the bright colours, Austin Powers came to mind and I couldn't quite shake the idea. As soon as I thought of it, I knew I had the name. I still have a couple of spots to touch up, but for now I'm calling it basically finished. Time to start on the next one. Stay tuned for more geometric art nouveau style paintings.

Art Nouveau Work in Progress Continued

My Art Nouveau painting is coming along nicely. I've been adding colours here and there to see what it will look like. I'm thinking of adding purple and a little lime green in parts. I might make some of the yellows a bit more orange too.

If you'd like to see regular updates of this work in progress, follow me on Instagram or like my Facebook page, Renee Dillon Art.

Art Nouveau Style Acrylic Painting - Work In Progress

Admittedly, it's been a little while since I've updated my blog. Mostly that's because I've been thinking of taking my art in a new direction lately. I enjoy making tiling patterns. I enjoy fabric design and scrapbook paper design. But the design part of that equation was where I stopped enjoying what I was doing. There were things to contend with like deciding how many papers to go in a pack (while still fitting the upload limit on Etsy) and working out what size repeats should be to fit people's craft projects. I wasn't feeling satisfied about the end result because the colourways I really loved got lost among the colourways I figured someone else might like.

So ultimately, I decided to work bigger. Rather than making art that exists only in the digital world, I'd like to get back to creating art that exists in real space. A real, tangible thing that I can look at and say "Yes, I made a thing." Put it on a wall, maybe, I don't know.

I like the idea of creating something that is infinitely reproducible, that can be used and enjoyed by many people. But I also like the idea of something of which there is only one - something collectible and coveted and rare. I like the thought of somebody seeing my art and loving it so much that they want to put it in their house and look at it every day. And I like the idea of people seeing my art on this blog or social media and just enjoying what I do for free, as I've enjoyed the work of so many artists who share their work with the world.

All of this soul searching has resulted in me deciding to try a big canvas artwork for a change. Not something I'm typically comfortable with. My usual working size is less than A4 (usually even less than A5). I wanted something with large visual impact, though, and I knew for an abstract that the scale would be an important factor. What I've ended up with, so far, is this.

I'll go through the process in a future post, but basically it's a geometric Art Nouveau style abstract. It will be painted with yellow, orange, sky blue and hot pink acrylic (Jo Sonya and Monte Mart Silver Series paints). The thick black lineart was painted with a Posca paint pen. I'm sticking with my love of tiling, seamless, repeating patterns. I actually really liked it at the lineart stage, so in future I might work on some purely black and white pieces too.

Once it's complete I'll have to think of a name. Once again, I'm thinking of giving my abstracts people names rather than vague artsy nonsense. There's just something I like about a painting called Margaret or Georgia or Sam. It makes the painting seem friendly and relatable. After that I'll probably set up an account on Saatchi Art. Maybe I'll put it in my (currently empty) Etsy shop.

Come back soon to see the colours start to go on. I'm already really pleased with how it's turning out and can't wait until it's finished.