I have never really liked Instagram or enjoyed using it. I am however, trying to embrace it and put more posts out for my 9100 or so followers who have been kind enough to follow me even though I don’t post very often. I am currently doing a 30 day experiment by posting everyday to see how many followers I will pick up during that period. I am using Creator Studio to schedule all 30 posts ahead of time.

I get lots of questions from artists about how to sell art and/or how to increase sales of their art. It’s a complicated answer with lots of interconnected components. There are lots of online resources to cover the totality of selling art. This post targets one specific strategy that I have used for more than 20 years to help increase the sales of small paintings.

This painting is obviously sibling to the one shown in last week’s post, and they belong to the same series of paintings.

I love to paint on these 12x36” canvases. I always paint these so that they can be displayed horizontally or vertically, and sign it at a 45 degree angle in the corner so that my signature can be read clearly when displayed in either orientation.

This was such a fun painting to do. I really love working on 12x36” canvases - they are certainly one of my favorite sizes. I particularly like the proportion of 1:3. I always paint these so that they can be displayed horizontally or vertically, and sign it at a 45 degree angle in the corner so that my signature can be read clearly when displayed in either orientation.

I have a great demonstration today on mixing green. Green always seems to be the most difficult color for many students. They want to use it right out of the tube. There are no green colors that I use out of the jar that don’t need some sort of modification to make them useable. You always need to add yellow or white, or mute them with red, or any number of other processes to make them be painting worthy.

In this video I am painting an abstract expressionist piece with Golden Heavy Body Acrylic Paint on a 36” square canvas. This painting’s color combination is tetradic, or two sets of complementary colors. The tetradic colors are green and red and violet and yellow.

Sometimes I feel like I’m doing the same thing all the time in the studio. Don’t get me wrong, that’s good for consistency in the work. But like many artists, I get into a rut, or get bored with what I’m doing, so I throw in some experimentation to get me moving forward.

Do you ever find yourself trying to make art that sells rather than making art that makes you happy? I know there are many artists who struggle with this issue. I hear this from my students on a regular basis. They will say they are thinking about doing what they see others do because that particular thing or style or whatever is selling.

The paint used for this painting are all Golden Heavy Body Acrylic Paint: Mars Black, Neutral Gray 6 and Titanium White. I am painting on a gessoed piece of Fabriano Artistico 300lb Cold Press Watercolor Paper.

I am absolutely loving the simplified approach to painting demonstrated in this video! I am essentially painting a value study because I am only painting with values and no color. The colors used for this painting are all Golden Heavy Body Acrylic Paint: Mars Black, Neutral Gray 6 and Titanium White. I am painting on a gessoed piece of Fabriano Artistico 300lb Cold Press Watercolor Paper.