Artistic Souls and Genetic Eccentrics

(This post edited on 01.27.2012 to replace photos lost in creating Google+ Page)

From a Scientific American article earlier this year: "Not all eccentric individuals are creative," seems to be the premise of this article, but it really asks if all creative types are eccentric and profiles us with a brief list of our weirdness. It seems we're born that way! I'll admit to about half of these traits, but I'm not telepathic, don't hear voices or music, and I've never been a square peg--I can fit in anywhere!

This article really is worth the read and a fresh perspective on an old topic of great discussion and exploration. Carl Jung comes to mind. And the book Physics and Art. And the book Goedle, Escher, and Bach. Yes, artists can be capable of exploring all sorts of realms. Why Creative People are Eccentric

For years I sang with two choral groups and discovered that many of us were creative in visual arts. Did creativity include eccentric or weird? Far from it. There were several physicians, economists, lawyers, and "numbers" people galore who sang with both groups. Many of us also play several musical instruments or act, in addition to the focus on vocal performance. Most of us speak several languages, which goes along with the numbers bent and a musical ear. I had was fortunate to work with all of these singers--all perfectly normal, at least to me, a member of the group. We weren't born to sing, we worked very hard at it. Hours of practice went into each performance.

We've all heard stories about how great scientific or technological breakthroughs came to fruition due to problems being worked-out in dreams. I don't know visual artists who dream their imagery, but many painters do stand before a canvas and lose all sense of time as the image creates itself. Writers often describe creating characters who take over to flesh out themselves in fiction. We have the good fortune of experiencing "happy accidents" that move us along as we create. Everyone is born creative, most of us have happy accidents, and a few of us develop eccentric habits. Again, we work very hard at building a strong foundation of skills that give us a predilection for having happy accidents while creating.

After several hours of "Alpha Activity" this afternoon, I have to move on to a little "Gamma Activity" and get some real work done today. All my alpha activity is cerebral, though, as I've been researching great blogs and got sidetracked by a Happy Accident. My genes made me do it.

I'm trying to get to the skill level I need to build yet another website, my own domain gallery, another creative venture that simply isn't in my genes. I have to work at it since it's the hub of all my art sites. The choices to be made are strictly left brain and the right brain must create new paintings to go on the new site. Or is it the other way around? Whew! Is there smoke coming out of my ears?

Snow Day!

This photo is from my Montgomery studio window about a year ago.

Our Florida temps aren't cold enough for snow, but we've had to drag out the jackets. We'll be in the 40's tonight. So, time inside, to research my online studio activities. Time for a cup of hot tea.



Please take a few minutes to read the article if you're a creative soul. I'm sure you'll find points to agree with and points for disagreement. I did. Comments welcome--please share with friends if you find the article and post interesting.

This is my last post for 2011. Have a very healthy and prosperous New Year!

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios

Marketing to Your 69 Billion Facebook Friends

That's right, 69 Billion potential customers for your art! This post is about the Six Degrees of Separation which Facebook has now reduced to 4.7 degrees.

If you're not yet marketing your art using Facebook as a tool, you might want to give it some thought. It's one of my most powerful tools, yet some of my Etsy artist contacts are "scared" to give it a try. Someone might scam them. Someone might scam them at the local car wash, too, as happened to me several years ago when my bank card was swiped on an employee's personal scanner. I'm taking my chances with Facebook.

I held off using Facebook for the Studio because of software changes Facebook was making and I had no information on how to setup Gail Kent Studio, but it all worked out. I setup a personal page with 2 friends on it for several months, then made the transition to Artist Page Account. It was fairly seamless and I love having the Facebook Artist Page Account as a professional page.

Most of us have experienced psychologist Stanley Milgren's Six Degrees of Separation theory in which we meet people who know people we know, and we think "what a small world!" The world has indeed gotten smaller with worldwide internet usage. This morning I looked at the traffic on one of my artist sites to see, as usual, an international trail posted with visitors from Holland, England, India, South Africa, Kenya, and half a dozen American cities.



Here's a link to one article about the Facebook effect on the Six Degrees theory. http://gigaom.com/2011/11/22/six-degrees-what-does-it-mean-to-be-facebook-friends/. This reinforces my earlier post about marketing your art on Etsy and other sites and the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) as you choose your tags or keywords. http://gailkentpainter.blogspot.com/2011/11/marketing-your-fine-art-on-etsy-for.html.

With 10% of the world's population, 721 million sets of eyeballs my friends, as active users, Facebook has determined there are 69 billion friendships established according to the above article link. Whether weak connections, or strong, each one is a potential exposure of your artwork to someone who may be moved to actually connect with you to acquire your art. They may "trail" you for a while before buying in a way they couldn't before. They will know you; they will know your art. They will buy your art.

Before our US Thanksgiving holiday, I'll photograph and upload eight or ten new small works painted specifically for my reproduction site and put the small paintings on Etsy as affordable art for holiday gift-giving. They'll most definitely go onto Facebook, my number one marketing tool.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studios

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com 
 Twitter -  Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent,  and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios (in process)



.

 

A Keyword Worth A Thousand Pictures?

How about a word worth 12,000 pictures?

Keyword importance in marketing your fine art cannot be overstated! We rise to the top or get lost based on our tags choices.

In my previous post, Marketing Your Fine Art on Etsy, we explored some steps in deciding on the best way to approach generating sales through your online presence:
1) selling your paintings in an Etsy shop 
2) offering your paintings on hosted artist websites 
3) creating your own art website domain yourself or hiring the talent

My own offerings are through Etsy and several other sites. I'm trying to find the time to setup my own domain--slow going since I like to paint, too!

About those hosted sites--as I said in a prior post, we can't just post beautiful pictures and expect the orders to pour in. Websites aren't designed that way, not Etsy, not the artist hosted sites, no sites work that way.

If you've already setup a site, do a search for your art. Don't be surprised if in a matter of hours after uploading your work, you are buried behind hundreds or thousands of other beautiful pictures. Where did your images go? You input all those keywords based on trending words and your images aren't there. "Google" yourself under both the web and image tabs, not much there either if you haven't expanded your presence through links and words.

Last week I searched for my own art on one of my paid membership hosted sites. I'd always been able to bring up many of my painting and photo images under multiple keyword searches. Not this time. I went 20 pages deep, 25 pages, 30 pages--Nothing! 

Then I happened upon the culprit. I slowed down enough to read the artist names on each picture and noticed page after page of the same artist. He has 12,000 pictures! I was fuming angry! I couldn't produce 12,000 original pieces of art if I cloned myself 100 times over! So, I thought maybe it's a sweatshop of artists doing the work. Apparently not, but it doesn't matter.

Abstract work from hosted site

My work is lost since my paid hosted site allowed this production line "painter" to post about 400 of his pictures since I posted mine.  His art and my art have nothing in common--nothing but keywords. Not everyone plays fairly with keywords. We're talking money here. Aspen Trees in Fall by Gail Kent is a sample of my traditional work.  Now I'm reasonably intelligent and can figure out how to trump him with my online SEO, but this is within my own website. I can still work around it, but it will take time and energy that I need for creativity in the absence of my 100 clones.


So lets get busy building our presence and crank out our 12,000 pictures! I'm not linking to the 1st guy to get to 12,000. He promotes himself quite well without my help!

Your comments are welcome - share how you've dealt with similar frustrations and resolved the problem on Etsy or other sites you have.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studios

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com
Twitter - @Gail_Kent, and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios  (in process)

Marketing Your Fine Art on Etsy for Profit

Marketing fine art on Etsy can be profitable if you do your homework. I've had several Etsy shops including one now active for marketing my paintings and photography. Etsy bills the site as "The World's Marketplace" and I have to agree that they are now a multinational business. They recently had a marketing blitz in Berlin (one great art city!) and there are French and German blogs that I've bookmarked so that I can see local items and read the local marketing. Links for these sites are for French  http://fr.etsy.com/blog/  and for German  http://de.etsy.com/blog/

Marketing for a flea market stall and selling in Etsy shops are two entirely different arenas and you have to remember that when listing your fine art on Etsy. I frequent thrift, consignment, antique shops, and indoor flea markets at home and when traveling. I have managed to score a few pieces of really good art on my outings, but there is some incredibly fine art to be found on Etsy, too,  and you don't have to leave home to get it.

It's smooth sailing on Etsy

How to begin your homework:

1. Research your work's fair market value
As artists, especially painters, we cannot price our work by the hour. It isn't piece work. Even if you are blessed with divine talent and can whip out a painting an hour, you must price it for the art that it is--unique and extraordinary. We cannot sell a $300 painting for $25 in an Etsy shop because we think we are competing with other $25 items for sale. We are not competing with a knitted cup wrap or a vintage moo-moo someone bought for fifty cents. Though some of those colorful moo-moos could be framed and hung on the wall.

2. Research other websites that offer fine art and compare
There are many artist's sites around with membership prices of "free" to $300 per year or more. Each is different and you just have to start where you're comfortable and get your feet wet. Pay close attention to the genre that is most popular on each site by looking at best sellers. You may want to plan  your own independent website rather than one hosted by Etsy or other sites, if you have sufficient contacts in your personal networks to promote a site.

3. "Convo me" it's how Etsy shop owners network with one another
When you get a shop set up with a few items listed, it's time to interact with other Etsians. It's so easy to do. Just visit other shops and favorite people and shops and then add them to your circle. There is an underlying reason you do this that we'll explore in another blog. For now, you just want to make contacts and have a few conversations with people who create interesting work. I've met established artists from around the world, and a few crafters in this way.


4. You can play roulette or you can sell art
Yesterday, I took a look at my "favorited' items list which brought up shop owner information. One shop had favorited over 50,000 items. Really?! Targeted favorites are what you want to collect. The Treasury list is an excellent way to connect with favorite item and shops. Just jump in and create one. You will be marketing 16 other artisans, but you are also marketing yourself, too. You are not competing with these artisans.  More in a future post.

5. Etsy shops generate web presence through search engines
After you've done all your Etsy shop homework, you need to learn about search engine optimization (SEO) marketing  in order to be successful in today's marketplace. You can very easily make the jump from one little shop to hundreds of your own images and articles available to the public through Google and other search engines.

Now you're ready to Promote, Promote, Promote! Etsy may be just your first piece in the puzzle of how to sell your art.

Here are the links to my shop: http://www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
and to  Etsy USA site : http://www.etsy.com 

and here are sample Treasury lists for you to browse through so you get the idea.

http://www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio/treasury?ref=pr_treasury_more
I post these to my Twitter and my Facebook accounts.


All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studios

Find me or my work at the following addresses:
Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com
Twitter - @Gail_Kent, and Facebook -  www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios/ (in process)