Show Notes Archives | Page 7 of 52

#228 Jennifer Orkin Lewis: Artist, Illustrator, and Teacher with August Wren

Artist Jennifer Orkin Lewis is an illustrator and teacher who creates under the name August Wren. Her work reflects her deep love of color, pattern, and nature. She works in watercolors, as well as gouache paints. Jennifer’s art has been featured on products for many companies, like Anthropologie and Kate Spade Home. Her art can be purchased on prints, scarves, and even jigsaw puzzles. She’s also an author and book illustrator and her latest book is called The Sketchbook Idea Generator.

Listen here or download from iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, CastBox, or Stitcher.

Jennifer Orkin Lewis

Jennifer’s website is augustwren.com

On Instagram, she is @augustwren

She offers classes through Creative Bug and Sketchbook Skool.

Her retreats can be found at uptrek.com and travellur.com.

Here are some great takeaways from our conversation:

If you’re experimenting with a new material, it’s a good idea to work with it 30 minutes per day over a period of time. That will enable you to try different things with it and see what it can do for your art.
It’s also a good idea to use inexpensive materials if you’re trying out new things, like cheap paper with new paints.
Give yourself as few rules as possible when trying to make art every day so you don’t get bored with themes.
When licensing your artwork to be used by others, make sure you maintain control of your art. Be specific as to how they can use it rather than allowing them to use it for anything.
Even if you are making art for others, like a licensing client, try to still make the artwork for yourself, because then you will be doing your best work.
Jennifer gave us a great reminder that you don’t have to say yes to everything. Take the time to think about the project and be sure that it aligns with your art and business goals.
During this time when things are so unsettled in the world, Jennifer has found that it is good to connect with other artists weekly. She talks with a group of four artists, and she’s found that it helps her creatively.

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#227 Dionne Woods: Painter and Coach at The Turquoise Iris

Artist Dionne Woods created the business called The Turquoise Iris. She got her start painting furniture and then canvases, and she taught herself so much along the way. She’s now a pro at the details of an art business, like shipping your art, filming while making art, and finding experts when trying something new. Dionne now shares what she’s learned and coaches others through her membership groups. She has also created a digital magazine called The Turquoise Iris Journal and a podcast called Paint Talks.

Listen here or download from iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, CastBox, or Stitcher.

Dionne Woods

Dionne’s Website is called The Turquoise Iris. theturquoiseiris.com

She has three membership groups and they can be found under the Coaching tab on her website.

Her digital magazine is called The Turquoise Iris Journal and can be purchased from her website.

Dionne also has a podcast and it is called Paint Talks. You can reach it through her website or on most podcast apps.

She also can be found under the name The Turquoise Iris on:

Facebook

Instagram

And under Dionne Woods on:

YouTube

Here are some great takeaways from our conversation:

As you start selling your art, you’re going to need to learn things like the best way to package and ship your art. Dionne figured that out by researching many vendors who could ship her large furniture pieces. If you have business problems like this that you can’t figure out, see if you can find a business coach like Dionne who can teach you what she’s learned.
When you’re still in the experimental stage of art making, use cheap brands of paints and other supplies to see what works for you. You can change to more expensive things as you get more experience.
One way to find out if your art is any good is to put it on Pinterest or Instagram and see how people respond. That may give you the encouragement you need to keep going.
It’s good to have different price points in what you are selling to appeal to different segments of the market.
Realize that if you want to start posting videos of your techniques or creating classes, you have everything you need with a phone. You don’t need to invest in a lot of fancy equipment, you just need to get started.
Membership groups are a great way to learn from an expert through videos, live tutorials and discussions, and comments. When you join, you gain access to the entire library of materials and you can use whichever ones apply to you.
Starting your own group for others will also keep you accountable to them. Sometimes you need that accountability to make your own art, so why not do a Facebook or Instagram Live while you create and talk to other artists at the same time? If you’ve published a specific day and time, that will hold you to it.
Doing videos on Facebook or Instagram or wherever, give your potential buyers a better idea of what you are like. They want to hear your voice and see you creating, and that will make them want to buy from you, whether it’s your art or a class.
A great way to add content to your social media easily and quickly is to repurpose your content from somewhere else. For example, if you did a Facebook Live, save it and put it on YouTube. Then take a little piece of that and put it on Pinterest or Instagram.

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#226 Roberta Wagner: Exploring Why Art Matters

Roberta Wagner has a home with a studio in Gig Harbor, Washington. Her day job has always been in the banking industry, but she takes a break from that by making art. She’s made ceramics for many years, paintings, and now textile and paper collage art. Art has always been a part of her life, and a few years back she decided to write her first book called Come Walk with Me: Exploring Why Art Matters. With the help of a few book and photography experts, she’s created a beautiful book that just came out this year.

Listen here or download from iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, CastBox, or Stitcher.

Roberta Wagner

Roberta’s website is robertawagner.com

Her book is titled Come Walk with Me: Exploring Why Art Matters. You can purchase her book in PDF form, as an E-book, or in print.

Roberta is also on Instagram @robertawagnertextileartist and Facebook at Roberta Wagner.

We talked about how Tonia Jenny helped Roberta design her book. If you’d like to see what Tonia does, please go to her website toniajenny.com. I interviewed Tonia for the podcast in Episode 35 and you can listen to it here. We also talked again in Episode 171 here.

Here are some great takeaways from our conversation:

Sometimes we’re doing something, and we don’t realize that it is the art. For example, Roberta did glaze studies for her ceramics where she took hundreds of small squares of pottery and tried out a different glaze formula on each one. She hung these ceramic squares on boards, and that became the art. You don’t have to make something with the intention of it being art for it to actually become art.
When doing a commission for someone, make sure you visit the space before installation so you know what you’re going into. Roberta gave the example of making a rather large ceramic piece that would be installed – but after she finished it she saw that the location was built differently than their plan, so it wouldn’t fit. And I was just talking to a friend today who built a large custom piece for someone, and when he delivered it he found out it wouldn’t fit through their door! Make sure you give detailed drawings for commissions and you see the space before you even start work.
If there’s a part of your business that you don’t like doing, it might be better if you hire an assistant to do that task. Roberta is using an assistant to help her with sales, just 4-8 hours a week. Don’t worry if you can’t afford to pay for a lot of hours. Most online assistants will work for many clients so they don’t expect a lot of hours from just one.
For textile art, you can use just a little glue stick to hold things together before you stitch them. Roberta makes sure she uses an archival glue and not too much so her piece doesn’t get too thick.
Think about how your art will be finished and how you will mail it. Roberta doesn’t mail her collage pieces frames when they’re going out of the country because it makes them so expensive. And yet, when people buy your art, you want it to be finished for them. She mounts them and mats them when they are sold so that they can pick their own frame.
When announcing a sale or a class, make sure you post it on multiple platforms a few times. Remember that your followers are spread out between Instagram, Facebook, your blog, and your email list, for example, and the algorithms don’t always let everyone see what you’ve posted. So post again, and don’t worry about someone getting your message twice. That’s a good thing, and they’ll just scroll by if they aren’t interested.
Remember that it’s OK to make art just to make art. You don’t have to sell it if you don’t want. Art making can be just for you to give you a happier life, to challenge yourself with something new, or to get through a stressful time.
Roberta shared something that she learned from Nancy Hillis. She said to save your art that you think is ugly for six months. When you look at it again, if you still don’t like it, you can get rid of it. But you just may like it, and you may see what you can do to finish it. Nancy Hillis writes books and teaches and you can find her at artistsjourney.com.
Get experts to help you if you are writing a book. Roberta used Tonia Jenny for the design of her book, and I’ll give you a link to her website in the Show Notes. I interviewed Tonia for this podcast, so you may want to go back and listen to our conversation, which was Episode 35. You also want to make sure you have excellent photos, especially for an art book. It may be wise to get an expert photographer rather than take the photos yourself.
Books now can be published on demand, so you don’t necessarily have to purchase hundreds of copies yourself. Amazon can do this for you, for example.

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#225 Amanda Evanston: Painter, Maker, Artist

Artist Amanda Evanston is a painter and instructor whose online community is called The Insider’s Studio. She offers weekly classes, tips and tricks, and opportunities to paint, learn, and grow. Amanda also offers larger online classes, like her recent Abstract Faces class, that are open to anyone. This past year has seen the temporary closing of her retail space, but she has had success selling her collections of art online. Her colorful, splashy paintings can brighten even the cloudiest of days.

Listen here or download from iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, CastBox, or Stitcher.

Amanda Evanston

Amanda’s website is amandaevanston.com

Information about her membership group called The Insider’s Studio can be found here.

She can also be found on Instagram and Facebook.

Here are some great takeaways from our conversation:

If you’re considering going to art school, as Amanda did, first evaluate it to make sure it will be a worthy investment. I’m not saying that you can find everything from art school on YouTube, but you can find an awful lot of free resources that can help you in making and selling your art.
The only way you’re going to get better at making art is to make more art. You also need to recognize that you will make a lot of bad art before you make great art. That’s OK, because you need to keep practicing to get better.
A great way to get started on a painting is to start with what Amanda calls “chaos layers”. Just put paint on the page, no matter what color, no matter what form. That can be an underlayer that you will cover up later, but at least it got you started.
We talked about ways you can offer online classes. You can use a host, like Teachable or Kajabi, where you pay a hosting fee and you get to keep most of the income from the class sales, or you can use a shared site, which will offer your classes to many thousands of people, but they will take a bigger cut of your income.
For membership groups, we’ve talked about this before, but it bears repeating. It won’t just be you running the group. Others within the group will help you just by throwing out suggestions and offering their own expertise.
One thing they offer in the membership is an opportunity to trade your artwork with others. This is a great way to get a collection of small art from other artists.
We talked about the retail world of selling art in storefronts. Brick and mortar stores have been greatly affected by being shut down for months. If you’d like to try selling in those kinds of stores again, do your homework to determine if the customers have come back to that area, and if the store is offering an experience that will get them to come back again.
It’s a great strategy to release your art for sale in collections over certain time periods. That way your customers will learn to expect a new batch of art every few months and they will look forward to it.

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#224 Ali Manning: Book Artist with Vintage Page Designs

Ali Manning is a book artist who creates under the website name Vintage Page Designs. She makes handmade books, using papers and stitching at the binding. Her own mixed media books are inspired by the forests of New England, where she’s lived for over 20 years, and the gardens of her home country England.

Two years ago, she created an online community called Handmade Book Club. She provides tutorials, challenges, and a place where like-minded artists can exchange tips and ideas. Members interact through a Facebook page as well as Zoom calls and demos.

Listen here or download from iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, CastBox, or Stitcher.

Ali Manning

Ali’s website is vintagepagedesigns.com

You can find out about her Handmade Book Club here.

Ali offers a free Long Stitch Journal class and it can be found here.

She can also be found on Instagram and Facebook.

Here are some great takeaways from our conversation:

I’d like to start by giving a shoutout to craft magazines. We all know we can find art inspiration by searching Instagram or watching YouTube videos. But don’t forget that there are many craft magazines out there where you can find how-to articles for just about every art discipline, and you can learn about artists you may not have heard of before. Just go to your local bookstore, and you can find Somerset Studio, which is about paper arts and mixed media, as well as Quilting Arts magazine, many beading magazines, and so much more.
Ali likes to give away value to others. For example, she has a section of tutorial videos on her website that are free resources for anyone to view. Of course you don’t want to give away everything for free. But providing free videos gives people a chance to know what you’re like, it lets them know you’re an expert in a particular area, and it helps to build community. They also give people an example of what you teach so that they can see if they like your teaching style and can follow your descriptions and steps.
Offering online communities is quite popular in the art world right now. Even before we were shut down last year and couldn’t do classes in person, online communities were thriving. Ali created her Handmade Book Club to offer tips and lessons to her members. But the big thing you should know about online communities is that it’s more than just the host offering info and encouragement to the members. The members also offer that to each other. Your community will benefit from the experience and knowledge of every member, so take advantage of that as a way to provide even more content to everyone.
What you offer in your community is up to you, but there are a few things that are common to most communities. Most include a Facebook Group where members can share what they’ve made, ask questions, and make comments. Zoom or some other online meeting space is also common, so you can see the members and you can demo and they can ask questions live. Many groups also invite other experts to come in and teach something that you’re not as familiar with, like Ali does when she invites mixed media artists to share what they know.
When building an online community or classes, think of it as a constantly evolving thing. Make changes based on what your students or members want or suggest. It’s OK if what you’re doing today doesn’t exactly match what you set out to do. You want to respond and grow as you get to know your community.
Ali only keeps her community open to members three times a year, rather than at any time during the year. This way she isn’t always in sales mode 365 days, and she can instead focus on her members and what she is providing them.
Remember that when you join a community, all of its previous content is now available to you. The group will have archives of classes, demos, art talks, and whatever else they offer that you can go back and use. Just don’t let it overwhelm you and pick and choose what fits your desires and what you want to learn.
Within your community, you can create subgroups of specific topics that have been requested by the members.
You can repurpose your content to use as promos or just posts in your social media. For example, Ali had a large how-to video on making a book, and she extracted 30 seconds of it when she was stitching the spine and posted that as an Instagram reel.
Ali wanted to emphasize that you don’t need a lot of tools and materials to make a book. You probably have everything you need already: some paper, a needle, and thread.

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