Marketing is hard. I’d much rather be painting or walking Mable or just about anything else but it’s a necessary part of being an artist. The mysterious and ever evolving algorithm on Facebook and Instagram make it that much harder. My audience grows very slowly, I’m just at 300 followers on IG and that took 6 years! My Facebook hack last summer pretty much decimated my art page and followers.
I was listening to a podcast the other day that got me thinking about how to draw my followers, collectors and friends to a non IG/FB platform and it dawned on me that my very much under utilized blog and gallery is right here on WordPress.
Introducing: This Month is the Studio! Each month, I say with the best of intention, I will be putting out a newsletter type blog taking about what I’m working on: my ideas, success’, failures and general goings on from my home studio and of course my new pieces ready for purchase.
March 2022 (because why not start now)
Since January I have been taking a free, weekly online workshop, painting and creating with a group of women from all over the world. Paint Wisdom Studio is the creative baby of Connie Solera and this workshop is called Monopalette. It is so refreshing and inspiring for me to learn and share with this wonderful and supportive community.
My Warrior Women and my Ladies art series’, which I’ve been playing with for the last little while, are finding their voice lately. I’ll be sharing these pieces in my blog as the months unfold. But here is a sneak peak to a few pieces that I sketched out while I was at the off grid cabin last fall.
I am not going for super detailed with my Ladies, just an impression and a feeling of who they represent.
I’ve also recently started to keep both an art journal and a studio log. I’ve always only painted on canvas or canvas paper so it blew my mind to see the art journals of my fellow participants! One journal is even an older hardcover book that I paint in! A radical, mind blowing idea that found a perfect home in an old copy of the Sword and the Stone. I finally have one place to keep track of my ideas instead of pieces of scrap paper taped to my wall!
A page from my art journal
In next month’s “In the Studio” I’ll talk about getting ready for the show at the end of the month; how I decide which paintings to take and of course my creations!
Thanks for reading my little blog! See you next month! 🎨 on!
I read somewhere that a famous artist once said that it’s better to paint over any older unsold paintings than it is to discount them and sell them at below the artists market value. I have 8 such paintings, truthfully I have about 15 of these pieces, older and unsold, sitting in a box, standing in the closet in my studio or hanging on my walls. I live in 600sq.ft. Space is limited here, wall space is ever shrinking as a continue to create and evolve.
In the past I have sold a couple of older pieces either at an art fair or through Facebook at a reduced price so I know it’s a possibility but as I have previously mentioned in previous posts and blogs, my style changed in 2020. These pieces were created pre 2020 and it’s fairly obvious if you are a regular follower.
It doesn’t mean that I don’t love them; I learned from each of them on my artistic evolution but I need to let them go now. So I guess this is “Last Call” on these pieces. Don’t be sad, it’s just part of my process. At least I have learned to wait for a few months and in some cases years to paint over them because I used to only wait days or weeks before getting the gesso out! A friend recently asked me how I could do that, paint over pieces, compared it to erasing them from my artistic journey. Since I have the digital images on file I am technically only repurposing the canvas; it’s a practical decision.
I am not in a rush to paint over these, it will be a project for the dreary days of the fall and winter, and it also requires me to be in the right headspace. For now, I will be taking the ones off the wall and standing them in my studio closet, which strangely enough, is the hardest part for me.
Two weeks from now I’ll be taking part in my first show since October 2019! Crazy! Before Covid I had already decided to take 2020 off from shows and focus on building my skills. I was pleasantly surprised that I had a pretty successful 2020 and early 2021. The set up part has been so long that I am feeling a little rusty! I am trying to spend a little time each day getting everything organized all while continuing to paint and work full time. Good thing I like lists!
I’m looking forward to the show that’s happening here in CP on September 11th and 12th. It is looking a bit different this year because of Covid rules but it will be good to see my art friends again and of course my art followers. My style has changed since October 2019 and I think people who know my art will see the difference.
I sat down the other night to plan out what my booth will look like and I quickly came to realize that I’m taking too many pieces for the size of my booth..great. Now I have to pick and choose which pieces go up when, and all I can think of is what if the perfect buyer is at the show and their perfect painting is in the back storage area? That’s how my brain works!
I have been spending some time deciding what goes up and when and I did a little creative planning earlier today (yes, it’s on my living room floor) and under Mable’s watchful eye I now have a basic layout for the big wall; I feel better now. Often though, when it comes time to setting up, I do end up changing my mind anyways! Later today I will work on the 2 side wall layouts as well. We will only have 2 hours to do our full booth set up (I think it normally takes me 3 hours) and I feel much calmer now that I can visualize what the big wall will look like. My labels are printed, business cards are on order and I’ve assembled almost everything that I need for my booth. I still have 2 weeks, thankfully!
In the meantime, and because I need to paint everyday, I’m developing two new series: one called Warrior Women/ Forest Guardians and a second series originally entitled Stand, an idea that came to me 18 months ago and has been nagging at me ever since. If you follow me on Instagram you will be able to follow my creative process on both series.
It’s like a new beginning! A fresh Facebook art page appropriately named annescanvas and a new personal site but honestly I don’t remember it being this much work the first time around! So many details to remember, not to mention adding in all the photos of the art work with their individual details and price.
Maybe I’m feeling like it’s so much work because I’m still grieving the loss of the original pages. Facebook doesn’t seem to give a s**t that I’ve lost my pages: how can a company that big have zero people to assist someone? It’s beyond me ..
So I plod a few minutes everyday, coming up with new bits of info and fill in the blanks to rebuild what a hacker stole in under 8 minutes! Crazy!!
I did manage to post a message on my original art page that appears to have been sent to my followers even though it’s not visible anymore if you open the page. I don’t know, I can’t explain it!! At least I am painting again.. I wasn’t for the first few days, I realized and accepted that although I am grieving my lost information I can’t stay stuck there.
I like the rise-from-the-ashes mythology of the Phoenix: maybe I’ll get there one day but today I feel like a baby goose floating on the water.. now to figure out how to change with FB link….
This has been a difficult 36 hours. I woke up yesterday to find my account on Facebook was hacked; passwords, email address and phone number all changed! Just like that! I tried every tip found on the Facebook help page and nothing worked. I am not overly computer savvy, I am not overly Facebook savvy but why oh why is it so hard to recover your hacked account?
According to my friends, my personal page is just gone, removed from friends lists and contacts, no trace of any online presence from the last 12 years. The only thing left is my now inaccessible Art by Anne Forsythe page. I can deal with my lost memories and photo’s; I’ll be able to reconnect in some fashion with my friends and family but what upsets me the most of I can’t get into my art page. Unless I can resolve the hack, it will just go on, no new uploads, no new art. Very upsetting. I cant reach my followers to tell them what’s happened, again, very upsetting.
I’ve spent the last few hours trying to reach someone, a real live person at Facebook and to no great success. Due to covid restrictions, no person is manning the phones? Really Facebook? come on..No real person anywhere to help one of their users sort out this mess!!
In an effort to communicate with FB, I opened a new account, found a few different links in which to leave messages and following a note on a community help board, my new account was then disabled. I kid you not!
I am not a well known or a well established artist, but most of my sales came from regular postings on FB, so what will it look like now? I have no idea. I have Instagram, I still have access to that, after I quickly moving to secure that account at 530am yesterday.
I am at a loss. Is there another online forum similar to FB? Has this happened to anyone? Should I just build another profile and start again on FB? ugh..this is not how I wanted to spend my long weekend!! If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear from you. Normally this would be shared to my personal FB page and I’d move it over to my Art page..so can I please ask you to like, follow and share my blog? Leave me a comment if you have experienced this an how did you resolve it? I’d appreciate hearing from you. Until I decide what to do you can reach me here or on my Instagram. I will be disabling the FB link found on my website if it hasn’t been already.
Bloom 9″x12″ Acrylic on canvas $110
2 of my most recent Bloom pieces to keep me company while I navigate this FB mess. In the meantime, I’ll keep painting and posting here, Fb’s loss is my blogs gain!
My previous blog post was a great video about the process of a castle, this wont be anywhere near as fancy or put together but showing the process of my then super secret commission I painted this winter. It was a gift for my nephew from his parents, recapturing a special memory of a father & son canoe trip. This is another glimpse into my creative process.
This was a first for me, my first painting with a human in it! For some, figure drawing or portrait painting comes easy, but it is not my favourite thing to do so I generally avoid it. What scares me about portraits is the symmetry of the face and body; faces in general are no my current strength. Nonetheless I did not hesitate, I said yes pretty quickly.
The scenery was spectacular so I had no reservations about capturing the mountains or the water. His easy, releaxed, taking-it-all-in pose is what I knew I had to capture. I was sketching within minutes of getting off the phone. I committed to sending off a few so they could see that I could capture what they were looking for. A few days later I sent them off for approval.
I was happy that I had the canvas in stock and could begin right away. My intention was to grid the photos; gridding is a tool used by artists that places a 3×3 grid over the reference image to help balance scale and perspective. I am a huge fan of gridding, it allows me to accurately recreate the image in proportion as I learn to be more comfortable with perspective drawing/sketching. If you saw my previous blog post, I returned to the grid reference after every stage to keep it proportioned. This one, as it turned out, was very different.
My process generally looks like this: evaluate the image, pick a canvas, prime it, grid it and get to work drawing. With this piece I was combining 2 images of the landscape with his relaxed easy pose. When it was time to grid it, I didn’t.
It was the first time I could actually see the shapes on the canvas! So one Saturday night I sketched the whole thing on the canvas using my watercolour pencils. In one 45 minute session, the guts of the painting went down on the canvas! It was an amazing and unexpected experience.
The sketches can look wonky but I knew it was ok, a base of lines to work from.
Last year my nephew purchased a mountain scene and at this point I decided to match the colour palette of the 2 pieces so they would be complimentary to each other. So now it’s blocking in colours and shapes all the while keeping the shape of him steady. At this point I stepped back and redid the skyline where it meets the trees.
Slowly but cautiously, the layers are unfolding. Skyline, clouds, mountain and water. I always work from top to bottom and from background to foreground, so it was more of that for many sessions. I had premixed most of my paints so I didn’t have to worry about remixing and not matching. FYI The underpainting of the hills is the same greens from his the final layer of his painting; adding to the cohesiveness of the 2 pieces. When the sky was in I did a little happy dance in my studio..it was exactly how I wanted to it to be.
Trees, water and that pinky/red/purple lifejacket. I had fun with that one! The second photo is the ugly stage of the painting and alot of artists get stuck here. I have gotten stuck here a few time myself so I recognized the feeling. What kept me focused was the sky..it was great to me. We are in the final stages now.
This was the sneak peak photo that I sent to my brother. I knew at this point it was about 80% done. From here on in it was slow, easy changes to the proportion of his body oh and I was totally in love with the hat! I only worked on this commission during daylight hours, to ensure that my colours were true, so my weekends were for this piece! I looked forward to those weekends! Seeing it unfold in the afternoon light is part of my process and because of Covid, my weekends were free! At this stage, I took a break from it for 2 weeks to recharge for the last push.
Sometimes the sudden realization that I am done catches me off guard! I feel like I come to a screeching halt! All that was left now was a few tweaks and checks; a few last minute panic fixes; but I knew it was done. In a check in with my brother, he asked if I loved it and my response was this: “I give it a high five every time I walk by it!” Every day until I wrapped it up, I would come at sit with it and I was overjoyed with how it turned out.
I loved the challenge of this piece and I am very proud on how it turned out. It was wrapped with TLC and delivered on time and in time for his birthday.
I hope you enjoyed a little insight into my process and the evolution of this special piece.
Here is a little video my friend Choleena put together for me! She is the awesome artist webmaster who helped me redesign my website earlier this year. When I shared with her that I always take a lot of pictures of the process along the way, she suggested a little video..and here it is!
This was the favorite castle from an epic trip in July of 2016! This painting of Eileen Donan Castle was a lot of firsts for me as an artist and I absolutely love the way it turned out! It was a surprise Christmas gift for my Sister and travel companion and I managed to keep it a secret for 3 months! My sister and I loved this castle, and even though it was raining that day we managed to have a grand time exploring the castle with one of the onsite tour guides. We were even shown some hidden rooms and hallways away from the many tourists! Such a great day! They also had the best giftshop!
I hope you enjoy this video as much as I enjoyed making this piece of art! The awesome music is
Looking for a unique Mother’s Day gift? I might be able to help!
The collection is called Mom’s Garden and they are mainly 8”x8” acrylic on canvas colourful garden scenes.
Mom’s Garden #2 8″x8″ Acrylic on Canvas$65
Check out the available artworks menu on my website for all the current pieces. I will be uploading more as they are completed so be sure to check in often.
Shipping within Canada can be arranged in time for Mother’s Day. Please don’t hesitate to contact me through the website or on Facebook.
I’ve also uploaded a few more pieces in Garden Series too! Prices and sizes are with each piece!
If you are looking for a custom piece from either collection please get in touch to discuss your options!
Early in my art life I created a couple of floral paintings: nothing elaborate, because I didn’t know how to be elaborate but using techniques I learned at a Paint with Janet class. To my surprise, they sold!! And ever since, at irregular intervals, the purchaser who happens to be my massage therapist, would suggest I paint more, that she receives lots of compliments, and she was sure they would sell. I thought I was done with that style. To say I was hesitant and resistant 😏 would be an understatement.
In January, I was wondering what was next; Christmas was over and I was looking for my next idea and Amy’s words rung in my ears. A few weeks before I had reworked a few repurposed highly textured canvas and I thought they’d make nice backgrounds. So I dug out my old brushes, and some colours that I haven’t used in many years and got to it.
In one afternoon I created these 2
The Garden Series #3 Sold
The Garden Series #4 Sold
And a new/ old series was born. I have since made 5 more. (One is enroute to its new owner so I can’t reveal it yet)!
The Garden Series #8
11″x14″ Acrylic on Canvas
$125
The Garden Series #9
12″x12″ Acrylic on Canvas
$130
The Garden series #7
12″x12″ Acrylic on Canvas
$130
The Garden Series #6 Sold
I love painting landscapes but I learned over the last month that I also need to play and create joy-filled pieces and this series, with their pops of colour on rich backgrounds; really do fill me with joy as I create them.
My available artworks gallery has been updated with the 3 remaining pieces of this series. I will be making more, no worries there! I’ve got an idea for Mother’s Day so stay tuned!
Annes canvas 