Saturday, November 28, 2009

Healthy sales in the pre-christmas market. My new work has been well recieved.

The group exhibition has been going well, half of my pieces sold within 24 hours of the opening and I hope a few more will go before the exhibition is over.
I leave a few more works into another group show tomorrow. If it goes as well as the other I will be very happy. My new work has been received very well, with lots of interest in a quiet market. Sales in general have been down, but my works have sold very well, with further buyers who have shown interest in some of my pieces still to come back to make their purchases according to the show curator.
It has been a pleasant surprise, as there was always the doubt, in that dead fish were not an ideal subject matter to garner sales in a hard market. On the other hand, the old motto still stands true, Quality sells! And the fact is I was happier with this work than I have been for a few years, I feel I am back from firstly my lay-off due to ill health and then further strife with the studio in Marlay Park.

Leaving the studio was the best move I could have made, since then it has improved and lightened considerably. Looking back the latter works from the Marlay studio were all very dark and depressing. Since I moved into the new studio by the pond my work first brightened, and then became free-er and less contrived, I have now come back to more structured work again, but I have managed to keep the life and energy within it.

I am looking forward to 2010, and the promise of a very successful year, both in output of work and sales.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Time marches on, the pre-christmas shows have started. I have collected some work from my framers to go into a group show next week. The work looks very well in the frames I chose for it. I am hoping some of them will sell, but one problem with the Christmas group shows is that they usually have twice as many works hung as would be normal. As a result they can look very crowded and my work is not particularly bright and brash enough to stand out at first glance. I am exhibiting five altogether, they are from my fish series, all square in shape ranging from 10 inches up to 18 inches. It will now depend on how and where they are hung, hopefully they will be hung in proximity and not split up here and there as can happen when the people hanging are trying to squeeze extra numbers in.

I am still progressing with my web-design course, but not really able to do much work in the studio. I am hoping I will get a few commissions after Christmas. I usually do in early January, and my web-design course finishes in mid February, just in time to let me get stuck in to any commissioned work that comes in.

I am going fishing tomorrow, I need a day's R and R. The weather is going to be wet and very windy again though, but still, the fresh air will do me good.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

My new website..

My Angling website has gone 'live'. I finished it and uploaded it to the server.
I haven't changed the content as such, but I just replaced the tables with CSS and a bit more design with the images and layout. I also have a full page image on the index page which will switch into the content homepage automatically after 5 seconds (If the link isn't clicked beforehand). All work was done purely with raw code using plain notepad.

I've finished playing with the site for now and it is a lot cleaner than the older one. I am now considering re-working my art gallery site, and replacing the template I am currently using with a completely new build.

If I've any sense I'll wait a while first..... LOL. Well at least until we start using dreamweaver.....

....but who said I was sensible?.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Time is flying by, It's a third of the way through November already. Sadly the web-design course is taking up so much of my time I am not getting time to paint. I have almost finished revamping my angling site though. I will probably upload it in the next week or so. I built it the hard way, using nothing but code, both htm and css.

I built the header image in fireworks, but I have built the hotspots for the links in the image using pure code. The fish is the near 7 pounder I caught late last year, I have another composite image built for my index page but I don't have a copy of it on this computer to upload.

I have a few paintings to collect from my framer this week, they have to be delivered to a group show at the week-end, it will be nice to have a few exhibited, it seems ages since I had an opening.