valeriecritchley's Blog

Thank you for all your wonderful responses to my offer to help a few Braveheard women market their art.

There has been such an overwhelming response to this, that I'm thinking of taking some of these women's concerns and putting them in to a TIPs for women artists section somewhere.

I wish I had the time to be able to help each and every one of you seperately, but as you know, being a mother, wife, grandmother etc who works full time, it can get pretty tough.

I'm also going to focus some of your issues on my Art Marketing Website. Right now, all the information on that website is purely free. Later, I'll be offering some ebooks on it.

Here's my daily TIP for the day:

Make yourself a website. Think about it. Millions of people use the internet every day. If you don't have a website, you could be missing out on potential sales.

That's not to say that you can't make a living without a website, however. If you already have your artwork represented by "brick and mortar" gallery, and you're making enough sales that way, and you're happy with that, then that's fine.

But if you would like to make more money, or you're not making enough, then an onine presence may be just what you need.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Just because you have a website, doesn't mean that people wil flock to it and start buying your artwork. No.

Now you need to attract people to it. This is called drawing "traffic" to your website.

There are many ways to draw traffic to your website, but one very usefull tool is "social media", otherwise known as social networking.

And, you thought facebook was just for kids!

There you go. Check back later for more TIPs or check out my website devoted to help artists market their art. www.artmarketsell.com.

Happy creating!

Whew! Does this seem to be a busy time for you as it is for me? It seems I have been going nonstop!

For starters, I have a 6-year-old that keeps me busy and, happily, 3 grown children that call me almost every day.

My pocket guide on Growing Vegetables in Pots on Your Balcony or Patio is scheduled for print in August, so I have been busily gardening, and taking photos for it. I love gardening, and garden regardless, but the guide has kept me especially busy.

My first ebook for artists on How To Write Your Biography, is coming along well, and I am continually working on building up my websites.

If you think this is it, you're wrong. There's more. I also started writing articles for pay! Yay!

So, at the end of the day, I fall into bed and even the musical snoring going on beside me doesn't keep me from falling asleep.

Hello braveheart ladies!

I am pleased to announce my new website "artmarketsell".

Never would I have imagined that I would have a website like this, let alone two!!! Much of the encouragement I have received to tackle such an undertaking has been through this global community, and I thank all who have given me one-on-one words of encouragement along the way.

Also encouraging for me has been the videos. I listen to my favorite ones over and over again.

So, what is my new website all about?

It is designed to help struggling artists to make a living at doing what they love - creating artwork.

Instead of the artist having to spend weeks and months trying to figure out how to market and sell their art in today's economy, I have attempted to do most of that research for them - A One Stop place for artists.

Let's say you used to do artwork, then you got married, had kids and were busy raising your family. Now your kids are grown and you want to get back into art. You know how to make the art. You just don't know how to make money with it.

How do you approach galleries? Should you get a website? Should you use an agent?

All these questions are covered in this website.

So, for all you NEW artists out there or RETURNING ARTISTS, check it out: artmarketsell.com


Thank you, and have a great day.
Valerie

Artists - What are your biggest challenges as an artist? Where are you now and where do you want to go? If you are having trouble getting there and you want some one-on-one help, let me know.

Tell me what your biggest challenges are and I will email you personally.

As mentioned in a previous blog, my grandmother and I did a lot of arts and crafts together. By the age of 5, I was painting fabric with fabric paint and Grandma was sowing the painted squares into a quilt.

One day while painting fabric, I remember thinking, "I am very good with my hands. This is what I want to do when I grow big. I want to be able to paint and do things with my hands."

It took many years, but I finally became an artist. But, so did my husband. This caused a delema. He still had to work full time at construction to support us financially. I was busy raising three children. Do I market and promote his art or mine, as there was not enough time in a day to do both?

Being the typical self-sacrificing mother and caregiver, I gave up my career for the husband's and spent much of my spare time, effort and money to promote and market his art.

It was a calculated risk. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. Now looking back, I see where I should have done things differently.

Much time was spent learning about how to market art and a lot of mistakes were made along the way. How does thesaying go? "I wish I would have known then what I know now?"

I want to open my heart (and my background in art marketing, experience and knowledge) to women out there who are struggling to have financial independence. If you are an artist and think you need an agent to sell your art, I have a lot of information and advice for you.

For starters, you can email me with any questions about art marketing that you may have.

Then have a look at my website. Keep checking back as things will be added to it.

If there is anything on the website that you think I should add, please let me know. If it is of benefit to you to add it to my web, then it will also be of benefit to me and other people who access my site.

Soon my complete Ebook on Art Marketing will be finished and you'll have access to all the infinite details and secrets of Art Marketing.

The greatest woman I have ever known was my grandmother. She gave birth to 14 children, lived in small cabins with no running water or electricity, and often looked after the children by herself for months at a time while grandpa was out on his trapline.

She took me in when I was just beginning to get old enough to remember things, and remember I did! I remember her kindness and patience and love. Oh, the mischief I must have gotten into, but she never raised her voice with me.

She was an artist and she could sing. I must have been only about 4 years old when she helped me make my first quilt. She would plug in the iron, put it on low, lower the iron board and taught me to iron. We used iron-ons to transfer line pictures onto squares, then we would take those liquid fabric paints that you got in tubes (the very oldest models of course) and painted the pictures. Once all the squares were finished, she helped me sew them on my very own sewing machine. All the while, she would sing to me little tues like "rubber dolly" and "Billy boy."

Also, by the time I was in school, I could read and write like a third grader.

These stories are only the tip of the iceburg when it comes to this lady. What she handed down to me was more than reading, writing, singing and crafts. She gave me the gift of how to be a human being. Simply speaking, if everyone in this world was as giving, as patient, as forgiving, and as selfless as my grandmother, there would be very few problems in this world.

The nice thing about being menopausal is that we get to get up in the night and have snacks and watch TV because we can't sleep. We get to soak in the hot tub quite often because that's the only way we can get the joints to stop throbbing. And, when we forget to do that one very important task, we have something to blame it on. Oh, and did I mention, when we don't feel like working at the computer even one more hour, we can use our failing eyesight as an excuse.

The other nice thing, is because of our age, we have built up the experience to know how to "pace" ourselves, so we can go until, say, 8:00 pm.

I am no different. At 48 years old, I have learned not to get upset with every negative remark because 5 minutes later, everyone has forgotten all about it. Just when the body says it can't take any more, you take a deep breath (and a coffee break) and voila! You incredibly take on another 16 hours.

Yes, at our age and with our experience, we CAN handle anything. Also, if you are like me, and from what I am reading many of you are, and we have another family later in life, we have the smarts to be able to deal with the child that says, "I don't want to go to school today because I don't feel well." Back in my 20's I would have been arguing with that child for at least 20 minutes. Today, I just reply. "That's fine. Let's get you dressed, and ready for school. We'll get to in the car and drive to the school, and if you're still sick when we get there, we'll come back and you can climb in your bed." In the process of getting ready you can usually figure out if they are faking it or not. If you still haven't figured it out by the time they're dressed, for sure you will know by the time you get them to the school, because really sick kids do act differently and this will have given you enough time to see it with certainty.

So, if I have forgotten to post something here, I have a good excuse. And, if there are spelling mistakes, it's because my glasses are in getting adjusted again. That's okay. I'll fix it up on a better day. There's always a tomorrow and some tomorrows are much better than the tomorrows of today.

Art is something I like to do as a hobby, ... right now, that is. If I had a choice whether I wanted to write full time or do art full time, it would be a difficult decision to make. Probably writing.

I think I would be lost if I couldn't do either one or the other.

But I'd like to share some things for artists who are just starting out. It has to do with putting together a portfolio.

Today, creating a portfolio is so different than it was 25 years ago.

Now a days, you need 3 portfolios.

1. Is your hard copy portfolio. Which is an actual book that you would take with you to show galleries, etc.
2. Is a digital portfolio. This would have pictures of your artwork on a cd or some other device.
3. Is an online portfolio. Somewhere that people can go online to see the kind of artwork you produce, and some reference to where they can purchase it.

I hope this extra knowledge helps inspire any fledgling artists out there who need a little push, just that little extra guidance and direction.

As an artist, writer, typist, I have no problem working from the left side of my brain. In fact, this is what I love.

If you are a painter, sketch artist, photographer, writer or do anything else creative, and you absolutely love doing it, then it wouldl be great if you could do as much of it as you want. Right?

Unfortuneatley, many of us creative people, lack business sense. I love this global community because it encourages us and gives us the insight and education to be able to things we love. But we worry about being a "starving artist". We shouldn't have to.

So in order to help all you creative artists out there, I have been working nonstop on my website, vcscripts.webs.com. I'm putting together a section on "How to market your art", and "How to market your art online".

As a trained researcher, I will do all the research for you on how you can sell your art, so you don't have to spend days and days trying to figure it out.

You won't have to buy anything. You'll get great advice on how to market art for free!

Why do this? Well, to draw people to my website for one. Plus maybe while people are there, they'll buy other stuff. But, as an artist who has struggled, especially those not so computer or internet savvy, I feel for what they have to go through. The site also let's publishers get a taste of my writing and researching skills.

So, if you want to be a famous artist, but are having some problems marketing your art, this should be just what you are looking for.

So, I have to go now, so I can get back to all that wonderful research, because I have lots and lots to add.

Val

I'm so happy to be here in this global community. The inspiration! The knowledge! The support! The encouragement!

It's all phenomenal! It opened my eyes to see my business in a whole different light. Thanks to all, I went back to the website that I started months ago, and started building and building. Now I have focus and purpose.