| Most recent works to date |
[26 Apr 2008|03:34am] |
All of these are archived on sandpaperdaisey.deviantart.com, which has been an invaluable tool to me during this transitional phase. Clicking on images will take you to their full view on DA.
Two Video Game Designs
Grace, proposed hero design for The World Ends With You coming out for Nintendo DS.
Scorpion, proposed "Noise" design for The World Ends With You coming out for Nintendo DS.
The Last (ever!) TFA published in News4U: Shadowmen on the Phone
I have done several comic pages since my last entry but they will not be featured here as they involve characters from another artist's series.
sandpaperdaisy.com is about to undergo a massive redesign which will effectively complete The Great Schism. Not one link on the site will be in progress. Every link will lead to a working store or blog or a rich array of CONTENT. This blog itself will be fed right into the homepage.
As my online presence has slowly and gradually grown, so will my site. I am beyond excited about it and impatient to start...
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| 12 Mistakes of the Young Artist. |
[15 Apr 2008|06:03am] |
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Over the years I have been guilty of an amusing mound of mistakes when attempting to present my artwork in various ways, whether it be to galleries, online, or in scholastic presentations. The following are a few to learn from:
1. No front-loading frames. This means you. If you catch yourself looking at them and thinking "how cheap ♥" pop a beer (foreign or domestic does not matter) and walk slowly away. While these frames are cheap and slick looking, they are also increasingly undependable the more you use them. I have had several pieces fall out of the frame while presenting them to galleries, or even *SHUDDER* in the gallery.
2. It must have a wire. No matter what those people say, MAKE SURE you have a wire on the back of your picture for easy hanging. Again, I fought another gallery over this. I had suitable mounting on the back for screws and even though they never specified that pictures need a wire on the back, they were ready to reject my work without even looking at it. (The story had a happy ending, but only because the adorable little volunteer registration guy and his middle-aged handyman lover buddy took pity upon me and specially rigged the walls so my pieces could be displayed.)
3. Businesspeople suck. Be prepared. The most well-meaning, enthusiastic, genuine businessman who has suddenly decided to "go into the arts" is still perfectly capable of losing your slides, being unreachable by phone, and even worse, losing your art or vanishing with your art if their business goes under. How do I know this? Guess. What can you do to protect yourself? For one, maintain CONSTANT CONTACT with anyone who has your art for any reason. Get as much contact info from them as you possibly can, flood them with your contact info, and when possible give them duplicates (slides, cds, etc). And for the love of god hand them your policy on "appropriate use" of your art.
4. Open air shows...! Spontaneous, free...yeah, you still need a mat and frame. If anyone else loves "Plein Air" or "Open Air" shows where you all get little signs around your neck like marathon runners and sit around doing art all day as a public event, take heed! A gallery may still be nice enough to display your painting or charcoal piece(s) if you did not think to mat them before turning them in, BUT THEY ARE NOT GOING TO SELL. And you probably want to sell that hideous picture of that stupid picturesque building that you would never, never have otherwise drawn, right? Then plan beforehand the size of your paper or canvas and bring stuff to mat or frame it WITH YOU. A fully-finished piece will look great in the show and will sell much better than something a patron has to frame...I have easily sold such pieces on the street before gallery, where such "sidewalk art" is considered natural and even charming, but never at gallery time.
5. Oh, and about mats...when a show says "appropriately matted," that is what they mean. I got burned good on this one. I spent an ungodly amount to print up a lovely digital piece and it never saw gallery space because I chose to slide it directly into a frame like a poster. I looked around the show and every single piece, no matter how innovative, had mat-BOARD as well as frame. Frame alone is not enough. Well la~de DAH!
6. Framing faux-pas. To name a few: front-loading frames, glass or plexiglass that is scratched up (even if you think it doesn't look bad, they are prepared to get really picky, really quickly when they have to narrow down a huge amount of show entries), scuffed frames, assembled frames that are not flush, black or colored mat-board. Your gorgeous, original, AWESOME piece can easily be rejected by some idiot with a particular "framing" axe to grind. If you suck at framing and you care about the show, get your stuff framed by a craft store. As you slowly die a little inside, consider that it's still a better feeling than knowing a city-full of people didn't get to see the best thing you've made all year because of the "bad" frame.
7. Alien Cogitations. I was literally told I missed out on Grand Prize because of one piece I did having "alien cogitations." The sophisticated lady who judged that show was an "Environmental Designer" [read: port-o-potties and benches] and I assume she meant "alien CONNOTATIONS." Why did she think my piece was about aliens? It featured two rather ethereal people looking at each other, one bald, and was called what I considered to be an innocuous/appropriate title, Encounter. Yeah, no. Be hideously careful when choosing the title of a piece so as not to invoke some moron's prejudices (and worse, their malapropisms). Again, as you die a little inside.
8. Conventions: Don't send a friend to do an artist's job. For the love of god, if you want to make any money at a convention at all, GO YOURSELF to help run the table. Even the best and most faithful friend has no effective way of talking up your art, adjusting prices if you notice your prices are too high for the general range, spontaneously entering art shows, and spreading the word of your website(s) like a VIRUS. You are your own biggest fan, so go forth and evangelize. If you cannot go, minimize potential losses by not spending an inordinate amount of money on business cards and prints, provide your friends with alternate pricing labels, and have no expectations.
9. Google Image Search! Why am I invisible?! From Google Image Search: Help: "Google analyzes the text on the page adjacent to the image, the image caption and dozens of other factors to determine the image content." In other words, you have to have the text you want near the image. For years none of my images have been on image search because I don't have a little caption under them saying "By Heather Landry // Sandpaperdaisy." I am having to rework pretty much everything to change this. Avoid my pain.
10. Maximizing your online images. Seems obvious, but PUT YOUR ONLINE NAME and/or ART SITE ON EVERY ONLINE IMAGE. Think of your images as an advertisement for what you actually want people to buy, the book version or the print. It's okay for things you're selling online to just have a signature (which you should keep consistent) since people will most likely be turned off by some big watermark. But anything lower rez that you're not actively selling in single-image form is fair play for a little ADVERTISEMENT. Make damed sure that when people download your images for personal use, those images lead you back to your site. Filenames can be changed.
11. Consistency woes. This has caused me no end of trouble. In a nutshell, check every outlet you are going to use your art identity with before establishing one. What do I mean? On deviantART I am sandapaperdaisey. My site is www.sandpaperdaisy.com. (no extra E) This journal is heath-art. NOT good, eh? Sadly this is something I can't really fix easily, but I want you to avoid my pain. Make a firm decision about your online identity, then run it through every potential exposure channel (domain name, MySpace, deviantART, eBay, LiveJournal, Amazon), then sign up for all of them at once when you find an untaken name.
12. Beware the Photo Center. In a nutshell, if you're going to try to save money by getting slides or black and whites or some other uncommon format developed at a supercenter's photo kiosk, BE CAREFUL. I went to one and had my photos explicitly marked to be made into slides; what I got were awful 3x5 color photographs that cost me roughly $50 more than the slides I wanted (since I wanted two slides of each exposure, I got two photographs instead). And to top it off my negatives were no longer able to be made into slides. There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth that day, especially since they were for an important grant presentation...
I could go on, but I won't.
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| Plans. |
[17 Feb 2008|07:45pm] |
I've nicely failed to keep this journal updated with everything new I've created. But I'm in the mood to update things right now for some reason, so I'll go ahead and talk for a bit.
Professional Alias: I will be constructing a "bland" site exclusively to show potential business clients. This site will be associated with my new pen-name. Sadly I can't share the pen-name with you because I have to have this new identity as completely separate from the Sandpaperdaisy universe. My last potential client thought of me as a very talented "erotic manga artist" if that will give you an idea as to why...and this was after seeing my legitimate comics. I am trying to figure out how exactly I'm going to display samples on each different site...I suppose each site will literally have to feature different art. That probably means a lot of work ahead of me...however, I will provide people accessing Sandpaperdaisy the ability to see all of my commissioned work at least on this site, using photobucket images with generic names.
My first logo commission: for my dear friend and entrepreneur, Chris Brouette.
As you can see, it is to advertise his site www.chrisers.com. It's a little online store. The little man with the paddle is Chris himself...the story behind the image is our little secret.
Gray Ghost: All of my fan-art will be moved soon so that it is no longer associated with Sandpaperdaisy either. I intend Gray Ghost to have a life on deviantART and I'll find free hosting somewhere to construct her a nice site.
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Transitionary Period: There will be a transitionary period with warnings and notifications before my three artistic personalities are separated forever. These personalities are True, Tame, and Fan. I don't say True, Professional and Fan because in my opinion my true face is just as professional as my blander site will be. I hope to get most of my business from people who don't mind TEETH. But for the more conservative among us there shall be my Tame site.
There's a new Things Fall Apart also, title of _Priorities_.
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| AWAKE Page on Glass Dreams |
[21 Jun 2007|03:22pm] |
Okay I finally found a little time to build a simple site for AWAKE. Now all comic pages are laced together for easier browsing (first previous next last). It's available off Glass Dreams. Now to build and put up the Killing Dreams pages for the site as well. ^^; Of course it might help if I wasn't like 10 pages behind on that. :D I guess even though it'll throw off my layout slightly I'll go ahead and put Glass Dreams on my main site so people can actually find it.
Sample AWAKE Pages:
page 7
page 8
page 14
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| Deviant Art printshop |
[18 Feb 2007|04:38am] |
Dev Store
Three prints currently available, more coming soon. (Very soon, I just drew the next one tonight.)
Also! This weekend the site for my 32-page comic Awake goes up and I will be updating Things Fall Apart and Mute Elation as well.
My gallery will first be updated with new links and info and then will be revamped immediately afterwards. This should take place by March.
Finally, I will start creating art prints based upon my characters in The Balance. It's time to start getting you hooked.
--//Heather//--
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[20 Oct 2006|07:40pm] |
CURRENTLY SHOWING AT:
digitized: an exhibition (Arts Council Website)
October 12-November 10, 2006
Fifth Third Bank Lobby
20 NW Third Street, Evansville, Indiana
Monday-Thursday, 9am-4pm//Friday 9am-5pm
Things Fall Apart now fully updated to include October and November 2006.
Peace.
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[25 Sep 2006|07:25am] |
The Balance preview page is updated with three pictures.
The sketchbook page is updated for multiple screen resolutions and also features the option of clicking on the scrolling picture for the full view.
Two large size banners made, more to follow soon.
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| and yet more of the updating. |
[23 Sep 2006|06:08am] |
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All links to both sites have been fixed.
This includes a News/Events Page, a "The Balance" preview page, and a "Donate" page for the new Sandpaperdaisy.com.
The classic version has also been updated with a donation page, and store and auction pages.
Html on the Mute***Elation page has, I hope, been fixed so that the content and the sidebar aren't touching.
Off to bed.
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| TFA Goodness |
[25 Jun 2006|03:41pm] |
Things Fall Apart site has been updated. Now browsing is a bit easier...I started indexing the strips by year. I still apparently should find a better font for the entirety of my website though...not looking forward to that!
Here are the latest three TFA strips, by the way:
ALSO, I will be making some more digital art soon with a summer theme. No particular reason, except I really wanted to start using bright reds, blues and greens all of a sudden.
I attended the 2006 Anime Mid-Atlantic convention, looking though the Artist's Alley was an eye-opener. Next time I vend I'll have to cut prices and find a way to make production cheaper. On the bright side, a lot of original work was for sale, so I may be able to just do my own thing and still make some money. I updated my business cards to reflect my new site...now I must make an effort to have cards on me at all times (and start getting them out there!).
Well, TTFYN.
---Heather//dAISY
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[18 Mar 2006|07:30pm] |
All right. I have tested the main page on firefox and on an ancient version of IE with 800x600 resolution. Hopefully its getting so everyone can view it...for awhile it refused to display on firefox until I messed with !--DOCTYPE though...MOST annoying. I continue to work on the damned thing at work each night. Last night I made a round of content pages for "Wet" media and "Multi" media. I am starting with six content pages per section and will add from there.
I am attempting to include a few things from the webmaster angle as well as simply the asthetic angle. No clue if this is going to be useful of not, but I suppose it can't hurt. A footer with copyright and contact info is inconspicuous and comment info within the source file is invisible...so let those read who wish to do so.
On an unrelated note, my scanner has broken. I had to take photographs of this month's Things Fall Apart (below) and re-ink them in photoshop to get crisper lines. I am still not altogether happy with the results but hope to have fixed this problem soon.
My goals this week:
--Fix the head tags on each page and then generate more new pages during work tonight
--Work on the two commissioned paintings for David and Juliano Sunday//Monday//Tuesday
--Work on the next Things Fall Apart strip (it will take significantly longer than any of the others, I anticipiate, especially if the scanner issue is not resolved soon)
I will be able to relax and breathe a sigh of relief April 12th when all these goals have been met...or else.
After I return from my vacation April 18th I anticipate the leisure to begin a whole new cycle of productivity. Who knows if this will happen, of course...but if so, I can't wait.
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[09 Mar 2006|05:03am] |
//Site Updates//
I have rennovated Sandpaper Daisy Galleries. The site is getting a completely new layout and palette.
So far I have created new layouts for the following pages:
Main Page
Articles
Commissions
Digital
Dry Media
Events and Shows
FAQ
Multimedia
Portfolio
Prints
Publish
Resume
Coming Soon
Things Fall Apart
Wet Media
---currently only the home page is uploaded. I plan to upload the pages above after I write the code for the content they contain...hopefully we're talking no more than a couple of days before this is done.---
---A new section will be added under "Art"...SKETCHBOOK.---
---This journal has its first friend, Kayce. Welcome!---
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| sketchbook art |
[11 Jan 2006|03:16pm] |
I definitely need to have a site devoted to my sketchbooks, or at least a location people can go to see some of my more elaborate sketchbook pages.
It could be linked off of Sandpaper Daisy.
Speaking of SD, I need to get cracking on that...
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heath_art's journal
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