Today, Do I Paint or Do I Market?

Today I am trying to decide, do I paint or do I market. That may sound like a really easy question to answer, but is it? I feel like I have so much to learn still in both of those areas. I still don't understand what a hash-tag is, or when and why you use one. I feel like I am trying to be a juggling act between painting, working a job, trying to learn how to market my own work, and my kitchen that keeps yelling out, "the dishwasher is almost empty and you have tons of rinsed dishes that need to be washed" (some exaggeration) - then there are the clothes that could stand to be washed or put away. Then there is some music that I need to make sure that I know. And, I'm sitting here trying to figure out how productive it would be to try to paint, and watch Lynda.com at the same time if I buy a month's worth of viewing time. She's got some great "how to" videos.

So, I guess the first thing on the list after this post will be the dishes because I have recently washed some clothes, and I can crank up the music so that I can hear it, while doing the dishes so that I will be prepared for that event. I would also like to finish the free video that Lynda.com provided. I am halfway through an 11 hr training video for the latest version of an older program that I have. You might say, "Why waste your time on it if your version is the older version?" I guess the answer is, I still get insights from the newer version, and right now my schedule and budget don't have room for the one month deal - but it is on the back burner, simmering.

It isn't Valentine's Day yet so I can't report on how well the Valentine T-shirts rated with the grandkids - you know, the T-shirts that have a cat on them. If you want to know the story on that, you are going to just have to read last week's post: Valentine's Day Is Coming.

Hope you got a chance to view Brian Neher's You Tube video last week. He has a great contest coming up soon. Actually, entries are already being accepted.

Hoping to work on my square oil painting that I started last week using leftover paint and a paper towel (for the paintbrush).  I'll try to share it next week.

If you belong to Facebook and would like to see some interesting art "info" as well as upcoming workshops in different areas of the country, click on my Facebook banner in the upper right-hand corner of this page and "Like" my Facebook Fine Art page:

www.facebook.com/MargoSchwirianFineArt

UPDATE:  Kitchen - MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!, Painting - composition partially solved and some rendering accomplished

Valentine's Day Is Coming

  

Today, I got a chance to do something rather fun. You see, Valentine's Day is coming up and I always used to give my kids a Valentine card. Then they grew up. Then, grand-kids came along. So lately, I have been trying to think of a fun idea that my grand-kids would like and also something practical that wouldn't make more work for their parents and might even be of some help in some way. And so, the T-shirt! You see I painted their cat into some of my paintings. He was actually watching the dog instead of a lobster and the expression was so amusing that I grabbed my camera and the rest was history. Only now, I decided that I wanted to give them a very special way to remember their cat (the cat is getting up there in cat-age years). So, I went to Cafe Press and invented my grand-kids T-shirts. Here I will share the special Valentine invention called Dinner T-shirt (because Dinner was the name of the painting).

Dinner T-Shirt "Dinner" Margo's Art by Margo Schwirian

Dinner T-Shirt "Dinner" Margo's Art by Margo Schwirian

This is one of the fun things about Cafe Press. If you don't want to open a store with them, then you can simply go in and make a one of a kind item and send it as a gift. I was able to order them each their favorite color. I am having to let go of my inclination towards color harmony in order to give them their favorite cat and their favorite color T-shirt together all in one. I would probably never choose to combine burnt sienna with purple or scarlet red unless I was able to make up a transitioning combination of the two. At any rate, I will now see if I can somehow show you the two T-shirts.

Well, this is the best I can do at this point. Hope you have enjoyed this and learned something new. By the way, if you are an artist, you might enjoy watching a new You Tube video by Brian Neher that gives some great tips about mixing possible flesh tones for portraits:  Link