Making bad work, kicking procrastination, 3' paintings, and my first wholesale order

Lots of firsts for the first part of the year! Now that I’ve got some extra time at home I thought I’d take advantage of it and rewind on the last three months. I realized I had my first permanent art installation, my first paintings over 3’ long (!!), my first online sale, first time setting up a business bank account, and my first wholesale order…whew!

Let’s dive right in.

3’ Paintings and a pizza parlor

I had a lovely lady contact me back in January who recently bought and renovated a pizza restaurant in town. She mentioned she saw my work a few years back up at Starbucks and loved the look of my veggie paintings and wanted to buy some to install in her restaurant (the cherubs they currently had up just weren’t doing it for her haha). I was so excited! Food and art-two of my favorite things coming together! She ended up ordering three 2x3’ paintings from me and so I had to find a top-notch fine art reproduction printer in town that could blow up my original paintings to something that could fill the walls of a restaurant. AND I’d need to find frames. No small task! Luckily a few years back I had toured Fine Balance Imaging and Printing on Whidbey Island and was really impressed with the quality of work and the breadth of things they were able to print on. So I gave them a try and they far exceeded my quality expectations! I’m so happy with how they turned out. It’s so weird and cool to see your art blown up to a scale much larger than you’ve ever worked before! Makes me want to create art on a larger scale in the future. I was also able to find 2x3’ frames at Michaels for this project-woot!

First wholesale order

As I was walking around downtown Edmonds in February and browsing all the lovely shops there I stopped and chatted with Jen, the lovely owner of a new boutique called Crow. Jen loves supporting local artists, sharing their wares with the world, and is a jewelry maker herself! After a brief chat with her I handed her my business card when I found out she was open to bringing in new artists into her shop. She contacted me a few weeks later and my first wholesale order was created! I reached out to my friend Amber Leaders (who is the wholesale queen) for advice and made sure I was doing everything properly. I’m so glad I did! She told me to think about what I wanted my minimum order to be and that you sell your work to the retailer at half price (usually). I later learned it’s also great to create an order sheet for your and the business’ records when you drop off the order. And bam! Just like that my work is now in a retail store! Crazy!

kicking procrastination by painting plants

I also had a show scheduled with another Edmonds shop but with the Coronavirus going around like crazy here in Washington that’s been postponed. Leading up to that I wanted to create a new mini series of paintings and I ended up making a bunch of tiny plant paintings! It was the perfect thing that I could create in my mornings before work since my commute was now from my downstairs to my upstairs instead of an hour long bus ride. They all have the same color scheme and I think that really helped when it came to creating more. I knew I was sitting down to create a painting of a plant with the same three colors and a white Posca marker for highlights. Putting limitations and guidelines on what I was creating was streamlining the process! I had such a hard time wrapping my mind around doing a painting in 15 minutes like I’ve seen some other artists do. “Just create in your downtime in between stuff! Create when the kids are napping or are otherwise occupied! Just create something every day!” Yeah ok…I had never found that small amount of time to be enough to get much of anything done creatively until I put constraints on what I was making and focused on one subject alone to paint. Now, I’m not saying this is all I’m ever going to paint anymore-I still feel like I’m trying to find my style and what I enjoy painting the most, but this definitely was a breakthrough in getting in a painting a day. It always seemed so daunting to me in the past but working small (5x7”, almost postcard size), with a previously chosen subject matter, and a limited color palette really worked! When I have too many options to choose from I’ve found I tend to procrastinate, so this definitely helped.

I don’t know about you guys, but working small also frees my mind up to be okay with making mistakes and throwing “ugly” paintings out. I value my art supplies so much I sometimes have a hard time being okay with making “bad work”. Even though I KNOW I have to make bad work to get through to the good work and being able to better translate what’s in my head to what I am making on paper. It’s hard when you want to be frugal but also know you need to invest in yourself to further your artistic career! Definitely felt a push-pull going on there and it helped knowing that if I screwed up on this tiny 5x7” piece of paper I wasn’t wasting a larger piece of watercolor paper.

bank accounts and online sales

On the business side of things I finally completed setting up my separate bank account and it’s been a whole new mindset! Having a separate set of funds and “Jennifer Elizabeth Studios” on my debit card (well, Jennifer Elizabeth S because that’s all that would fit on there) has been a game changer. It’s separate from our personal finances now and it’s been freeing to know I have this specific amount just for my business and to see things flowing in and out of it. Keeping receipts, tracking expenses and sales, and saving up for a booth to use at farmers markets and craft fairs! I feel so adult! My first online sale came through this week as well! I had my shop up awhile ago but didn’t realize I didn’t have it set up properly to accept payments. Doh! Now that that’s fixed I’m open for business! Well…sort of…with the COVID lockdown I’m not planning on sending any prints out until the strongly suggested stay-at-home order has been lifted, but we’re makin’ progress people!

authenticity & wrestling with artistic style

I also spent some time recently thinking about my style as an artist. I hear it’s something you can’t rush and it just comes naturally over time but I’m not a terribly patient person, haha! Ragon Dickard’s Patreon article on Finding Your Style is such a gem and I highly suggest checking out her Artsy Business Articles and giving her $5/month (no this is not a sponsored post I just get SO MUCH out of her articles I had to share) to have a peek into her smarty-pants-business-minded brain of hers. Her post really got me thinking about what colors I like, why, what styles of other artists I enjoy, etc. to get me thinking about how I could narrow down my style. I feel like there is so much mystery (and magic?) around how artists create what they create. I find myself always digging deeper into artists’ websites, stories, blogs-anything I can get my hands on. I find it slightly disappointing when I see an artist posting an in-process picture on Instagram only to read the caption is asking people how their weekend was. How did you get to where you are? What is your process like? What paints did you use? How did you get past the ugly beginning stages to get to the beauty we see in from of us right now? Did you have a mentor? Are you self-taught? Did your parents encourage you when you were young? Did you fight them when they said you couldn’t make it as an artist? Were you a loner in high school scribbling away into your notebook at lunch or did you come into art later in your life? Did you use a reference photo or create your work or is it all from your imagination? How do you balance making art, not burning out, and having a life outside of that? How do you afford time for exploration in your work vs. making things that you know will sell and pay the bills? How do you tell your story? How much time are you spending studying masters/other artists you admire vs. creating something in your own style? How much time do you spend mimicking before it becomes your own style? How do you create a body/collection of work? How did you get into textiles? Pillows? Anthropologie? How do you not become a sellout? How do you keep from going crazy working from home all the time? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS PEOPLE.

Anyway, what I think I’m getting at here is I have a desire to be an authentic artist (as much as “authentic” is thrown around these days it’s lost some of its meaning, but work with me here). Down to earth. To share what really goes on and to create work that isn’t just following a trend or mimicking someone else’s work. The artists I feel most connected to are also the most vulnerable and open with their life and artistic process. I know I would’ve loved to see more “behind-the-scenes” of artists I loved growing up. I might’ve been more encouraged to pursue art more seriously at a younger age if that were the case. Give me the grit and the backstory and the honest-to-goodness bottom line. I want to hear about that awkward handshake you had with the store owner as you introduced yourself as an ‘artist’ for the first time and believed you had something of value to share with the world.