Archive for October, 2010

Ah, my new favorite hangout in downtown SLO. Kreuzberg is a Berlin inspired used book store and coffee lounge. Tonight was a soft, soft opening. They are set to have the real soft opening on Monday with an official “Grand Opening” in the future. Tonight they were offering free cake, coffee, and hot cocoa. Coral, Evy and I all dove head first for the chocolate cake and cocoa. It was a super yummy good time. I did this iPad doodle with Sketchbook Pro while relaxing in the deliciously overstuffed leather sofa.

Coral says it’s her favorite iPad art I’ve made yet. Before we left I snapped this photo.

I had the camera set for a long exposure after strategically placing it on the end of a counter. It was much darker in person, which I liked. My photo doesn’t capture the ambiance at all, so you’ll have to go check it out for yourself! I know I’ll be there quite a bit.

Kreuzberg has my kind of hours too. They are open from 5am – 2am.
Their address is:
870 Monterey St
San Luis Obispo, CA, 93401

See ya there!

UPDATE!!!
Kreuzberg has moved into a new location!
Check out their new and improved spot at:
685 Higuera St.
San Luis Obispo CA 93401

The new space has way more seating and they’ve really beefed up the menu. It’s awesome!

This is the third installment of “Flashback Friday” and I’ve got to tell you…I’m having fun with this little experiment. Honestly, I was scared to commit to a feature on this blog that meant I would have to post once a week, but it hasn’t been a hard thing to accomplish at all. I’ve even found myself looking forward to it. (Fast forward six months. Thinking to self: why the f*ck did I start this thing?) Anyway, these two drawings are from Sketchbook #9, which I worked on from June 2002 – May 2003.

Here’s the inside cover…

and page 11.

I guess I wasn’t into drawing eyeballs as much as X’s that day. Not sure what this has to do with celebrating our independence. I’ll leave the interpretation up to you, my loyal readers.
Enjoy!

My eight year old sidekick, Evy Monster, and I made some turkey hand art today for the New Times Holiday Issue. They put out a call for submissions a couple of weeks ago and in typical artist fashion we made ours the day of the deadline. If they get a lot of submissions I suggested we host a one night Turkey Hand Art Show in the gallery, so I hope a lot of people got inspired to whip out the old box of markers and trace their hand on a piece of paper. I would love to see the walls of the gallery lined with turkey hands. Hey, how many times do you think I can use the phrase “turkey hand” in a single post?

It’s Friday and that means it’s time to pull out the old sketchbooks. Believe it or not this drawing was inspired by some Robert Rauschenberg prints I had seen inside a super fancy building in Beverly Hills. I was interviewing for a job and as it turned out the owner of the place was none other than Georges Marciano, one of the founders of Guess Jeans. The private indoor parking lot was full of all kinds of awesome art. It’s hard to recall now, nine years later, what I saw, but I do remember seeing some big Roy Lichtenstein prints. When I made it inside the building all the walls were covered with art. It was quite spectacular. Anyway, in the office I waited in before my interview started there were, if I remember correctly, two to four prints by Rauschenberg. None of them I had ever seen before. They were multi-layered screen prints and the most prominent image was a big fat Rauschenberg signature. It wasn’t down in the corner per usual though. It would be right across the middle of the image or down the side. So, to put an end to this long story here is the drawing I made soon after my little visit to Beverly Hills.

Luckily, to spare us both some time, I don’t have any stories to accompany the next two drawings.

One for you…

and one for your homies.

It’s always good to draw your hand. There are so many contours and shadows. It can be quite a challenge. As you can see, I kept mine simple. There is a good chance I drew that while ignoring a teacher talking.

All three of the drawings above are from my 1998 sketchbook, which I’ve noticed is labeled “Sketchbook #3″.

I hope you enjoyed this peek into my old sketchbook archive. Come back next Friday to see some more.

See ya,
Jeff

Coral made this super awesome stencil of Pascal yesterday! And she says she isn’t an “artist”. Silly girl.

Have you heard of “regifting“? This is kind of like that, but instead of receiving a gift and then giving the gift to somebody else I returned it back to the original giver. Awhile back my friend Matt (check out his awesome creations at baxtermoerman.com) gave me this skateboard that he had made. He knows I like to paint on stuff and he wasn’t going to do anything with it, so naturally I was happy to take it when he offered. It’s been laying around in the gallery for awhile in the “things to paint” pile. Well, lo and behold, I’m on facebook the other day and see lots of “Happy Birthday, Matt!” comments. Right then and there I decided to regift the skateboard to him for his birthday, but not before I embellished it a little bit.

Happy Birthday, Matt!
Enjoy!

Ok, if you’re an artist and you don’t have a Facebook Fan Page now is the time to set one up. This post isn’t about how to set up a fan page. You can find all you need to know about that on Facebook. So, once you have your page all set up you need to get the word out and get some fans. Somehow this “Suggest To Friends” link went unnoticed to me for months until a friend of mine pointed it out.

When you click that link this window pops up.

All of the friends you have in your personal profile will show up in this box. If you look close you’ll notice that some of the profiles are faded, those friends have already become fans or “liked” your page. Click on all the profiles that have not “liked” your page yet. Once they are all highlighted click the “send invitations” link. Obviously, the more friends you have on your personal page the more fans you’ll be able to get on your fan page. If you can get your friends and family to use the “suggest to friends” feature you’re sure to get a lot more people visiting your fan page.

When my friend first showed me this feature I had about 600 “fans”. Luckily, I had a lot of friends to suggest my page to. After I sent the invitations my number of fans jumped up to over 1,200 in a couple of days. About once a month I use the “suggest to friends” feature because I get new friends on my personal profile that might not know about my fan page.

Keep in mind it’s nice to reciprocate. If any of your friends have fan pages be sure to “suggest” their page to all your friends too. No need to be greedy. The more fans we all have the more exposure we’ll all get.

You can see the fan page for my gallery at www.facebook.com/theclaassengallery.

This is newest piece to add to my “mini painting” series. I still have to add a layer of resin to the top to give it that nice yummy candy look. If I can put my procrastination aside for a bit then I just might resin this thing later tonight. Oh yeah, this one is 3″ x 3.75″. Once the resin is done I’ll have this up in the etsy shop for $30.

As always, thanks for looking!

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. This little bit of information has helped me tremendously in my own art career and I know it will help you too.

Become synonymous with your craft.

I’m going to say that again so it sinks in. In fact, I’m just going to type it out in all caps.

BECOME SYNONYMOUS WITH YOUR CRAFT.

This should be one of your ultimate goals and I’ll tell you why. First, think of the names of some of your closest friends and how you refer to them or better yet, how you would introduce them to somebody. There is a good chance you add a title to their name. Sometimes it’s an official title like “George the architect” and other times it’s a little less official such as “George the cokehead (or wife beater).” You may not even realize that you do this or that people are doing it with you. I think it’s a default behavior we fall victim to because we all love associations so much. Becoming synonymous with something has been out of your control for the most part, but now that you are aware of it you can decide what to be synonymous with and take advantage of it. Ideally, you want to get to the point in which the people you know think of you anytime your craft (art, design, photography, etc) is mentioned and vice versa.

If you have dreams of becoming a professional artist it will be easier as soon as people begin to know you as “Jill the artist” and not “Jill the housecleaner”. Here’s why. As long as people associate you with house cleaning (or serving coffee or whatever you do as a day job) they won’t think of you when they hear about an opportunity that will help out your art career. Here’s an example from my own life. I never listen to the radio. My cousin, however, was listening to the radio while driving to work when an ad came on asking for artists to submit work for a chance at getting their art on a TV show. My cousin instantly thought of me. As it turned out I emailed my submission and was chosen. The company paid me to use my work in a pilot they were filming. They even paid for my gas so I could drive the artwork to Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the show wasn’t picked up, but I still got paid and a lot of people (cast and crew) saw my work. If my cousin thought of me as “Jeff the skateboard hoodlum” he might have called somebody else he knows that’s an artist. This is just one of many opportunities that have come my way because of being synonymous with what I do.

Ok, so how do you get rid of that unwanted title people have chosen to add to your name? It’s easy. Start referring to yourself with the title you want. Get business cards that state exactly what you want to be known as. When I first got business cards they said “Jeff Claassen – fine artist”.

Another thing you can do if you’re not already is start living up to the title. I know there are some artists out there that hide the fact for some reason. I’m not suggesting you go yell it from the rooftops (unless that’s what you want to do), but it’s good to start talking about it. When people call you and you’re in the middle of painting don’t just tell them you can’t talk because you’re busy. Tell them you’re in the middle of painting and you’ll call them back later. When people ask how you’re doing or what you did last weekend tell them it was a great weekend because you were able to get a lot of work done on one of the paintings you’ve been trying to finish.

You can even take it a step further. I have a friend that’s a realtor and literally asked me to think of him if anybody I knew mentioned they were looking to buy a house. It worked too. Whenever I hear, “we’re looking for a house” I think of him and say, “Call my friend John.”

I love Twitter. At first I was hesitant, but tried it out despite my skepticism. Now I’m slightly addicted. As a DIY artist that is responsible for all aspects of my business (making products, selling, packing/shipping, marketing, customer service, etc.) twitter has proven to be a great tool at keeping people informed. All my followers now know what youtube videos I’m watching, what I’m eating, and the ungodly hours I choose to go on donut runs. What does this have to do with being a professional DIY’er?

For starters, it gives your fans a behind the scenes glimpse at who you are and what you’re about. Have you ever watched an episode of Behind The Music or Cribs? If you have there’s a good chance you sat transfixed watching somebody you would never normally be interested in. Leif Garrett, anyone? If people know who you are they are going to be excited to support you. And if they like what you post twitter makes it very easy for them to retweet your post to all of their followers.

One thing to keep in mind when getting started is to not bombard your followers with links to buy your stuff. Be sure to mix up your self-promotional posts with the personal ones. Nothing will lose you followers faster than incessant “look at my stuff and buy it” posts. I’ve actually set up a separate account that I use solely for promotion. It’s so obvious that anybody who chooses to follow it knows exactly what they’re signing up for. I still post self-promotional tweets on my personal account, but I mix it up.

The one thing that has really helped out with promoting my goods on twitter is the “hashtag”, which is this symbol #. I saw people using the hashtag before keywords (example: #painting) and had to investigate as to why? As it turns out people can save searches for their favorite topics and see posts from all the twitter users that use a particular hashtag/keyword. For instance, if you want to see what the entire twitter community is saying about fashion simply save the search. Using the hashtag is a great way to have people see your posts that aren’t following you. I’ve even picked up new followers that found my tweets with hashtags. I’ve posted links to items in my etsy shop and have seen 20-30 more views in a matter of minutes. Same with blog posts. The key, of course, is to find popular hashtags. Search for a few in your field to see how often people are posting with the same tag. Here are some of my favorites:
#etsy
#diy
#art
#painting
#craft
#style
#streetart

You can also try some specific local keywords for where you live. Where I live (San Luis Obispo) local twitter-ers will use #slo and #centralcoast. So, when you have an art show on the Central Coast promote it on twitter with “#centralcoast“.

When you get really obsessed with Twitter you’ll want to tweet using a third party. Here are the two that I use and swear by.
Tweet Deck – Super easy to use and you don’t even need to open a web browser to use it, which I think is great.
Hoot Suite – This is awesome because you have the option to schedule your tweets! I love this feature. The site is a little crowded, but it’s still easy to use.

I still have a lot to learn about the world of tweeting, so if you have any tips and tricks please share with us by leaving a comment. Thanks!

Please check out the Flickr Set to see all the photos from last night.

(photo of Thierry Guetta, aka: My Brainwash, by Gregory Bojorquez)
When pricing your work it’s good to consider how long you’ve been selling your art. Perhaps you haven’t made your first sale yet or maybe you consistently sell two originals every month. It should be obvious that if you’ve never sold your work before it would be wise to charge less than a person that’s been selling consistently for fifteen years.

Unfortunately, a lot of artists new to selling see work that is similar to their own at high prices and assume they should charge the same. Just because your work is similar you must keep in mind that the other artist has worked long and hard for years to arrive at their prices. There is a good chance they have a long list of collectors, have received some press and also have representation in a reputable gallery (or several) as opposed to selling out of their garage or on a street corner. In a sense, they have paid their dues and know what people are willing to pay for their work. A lot of big name artists are in such high demand that they even have waiting lists of collectors standing by to snatch up the next available piece. If you are just starting out there is a good chance you don’t have any of those things. I know that sounds harsh, but that’s the reality and we all have to start somewhere. Don’t worry, if you keep it up you’ll get there too.

Of course, I always encourage artists to know the market their work fits into and researching what else is out there. It’s good to know what similar art is selling for so you can set goals and work towards those higher prices. Be realistic with where you’re at in your art career and price accordingly. If your work sells out fast then you know to price higher the next time around. Remember, if your work does sell fast don’t feel like you got ripped off or cheated. There is a bigger value than you think in having your work out of your studio and out in the world to be seen. Also if your work does sell fast you now have bragging rights to say your show sold out, which will create more demand for your work in the future.

If you’re a mid-career artist or a full time professional I think it’s safe to assume that you’ve figured out this whole pricing thing by now so if you have any tips and pointers for artists new to the game please leave a comment.