New Exhibition, New Camera, New Pics!

Lots of new developments to tell you about! The main one is of course, the ongoing exhibition at Eccles Community Art Gallery. The first day that was open to the public was the Saturday just gone, so I went down there for the whole day to go and meet people and chat about my work. The gallery was pretty busy, I think mainly because one of the other artists exhibiting was a local man whose family has posthumously put on an exhibition of his work and invited down many other relatives and family friends. I chatted to several of these people, and sold a few prints to one of them, which was great! I also had a steady stream of other people who came and looked at my work over the course of the day, so as usual I had lots of nice chats about art with people, which I always enjoy. I also got interviewed by a journalist from Salford Online. I've just checked the website and it doesn't appear to be up yet - I will of course post a link to it from here when it comes online.
Ok, here's some photos of the gallery and me and my work hung in it:

The gallery as seen from the outside

The proud artist trying(and failing) to strike a natural looking pose

The work

The exhibition will be up until the 8th of February, and the gallery is open Tuesdays (10am - 3pm) and Saturdays (10am - 4pm) during that period. I will be there most Saturdays, probably just for a two hour time slot, so if you're in the area, do please come on down and say hello!

In other news…. I finally have a new camera! I haven't really mentioned it here much before, but ever since I have gone full time as an art photographer, ironically, I haven't had a camera! I dropped my beloved and much used old Minolta back in June, and as it was badly in need of replacing anyway (I'd had it for about 8 years, which in technology terms is about a century I guess), I didn't even try to get it fixed. Instead, I was planning to buy a new one myself when the sale of our house went through and we released some of the equity tied up in that. But, as regular readers will know, that isn't exactly going to plan, so luckily for me my lovely family clubbed together and bought me one as a Christmas/Birthday/You Owe Us Big Time present.
 I wasn't sure what to go for, so I bought a photography mag and scanned all the reviews, and then with a little research I found the shop in Manchester that seems to cater to professional photographers; a place called Calumet. So I went there and they were really helpful and gave me pretty good advice I think, and in the end I plumped for a Canon EOS 70D

It's not like a real serious professional photographer's camera, but I would say it's probably at the top end of the fairly ambitious hobby photographer's range, and I think that's as good as I need for the type of images I take. Because the photographs I take are pretty up close I also splashed out and got a fancy new Macro lens as well, which will hopefully add another dimension to my photography, so I'm really excited about that. I've only had it just over a week, and I haven't taken it for a good long photography session outside yet (hopefully soon!), but just in playing around with it and learning it's basic functions I've already seen how much better it is than my old camera, so I'm really excited about the kind of shots I should be able to get with it!

One of the jobs I've been doing so far this week, is editing and photoshopping the huge backlog of images I have , from way back when I went to Hungary in October. I borrowed my mother-in-law's Nikon on that trip, and took about 300 of my "Photo Abstract" images there, which I've only slowly begun to process, partly because I knew I already had such a large back catalogue of images to use for launching myself on the art scene. But I'm a big believer in keeping things fresh and challenging yourself to do new things, and now I have my new camera I can do that. So, I've made a deal with myself that I have to get these "old" photos processed before I can fully move onto the new stuff.

You don't always know until you do the Photoshop magic on them, which shots are going to turn out to be your best, and I'm not sure whether any of the ones I've processed yet are up there with my very best work, but here are some of the highlights of the 100 or so pictures I've done so far:

Maybe slightly different colour palettes than usual for me; I've noticed blue is a colour that seems to dominate my work a lot, I guess because of the nautical subject matter of some of them. Anyway, these are in warmer, and more pastel shades than is typical for me, which I like about them.
Drop me a line and let me know what you think of them if you like!

OK, there's loads more news to share, but in the name of brevity lets leave it there for now, and I'll be back soon with the rest of the updates.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Right, well I'm off to Hungary for Christmas with the in-laws tomorrow, so I thought I'd just pop by to wish all my blog readers a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!, and probably as I won't have time to update before then, a HAPPY NEW YEAR! as well. Thanks for taking an interest in what I've been up to in 2013! I'm hoping to have lots of exciting new projects and news to announce early in 2014, but nobody is really organising stuff at this time of year, so I've been left a bit in limbo on a few projects. We'll have to wait and see what January 1st brings!

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm feeling relatively upbeat about how the very early stages of my time as a full time artist has gone. I'm nowhere near making a living from it yet, but the more I investigate possibilities the more I see that there is a lot of opportunities out there for artists, as long as you can spare the time to work at things. And money. I keep seeing great courses and stuff advertised that would be really helpful, but I only have limited funds available, so some of those great sounding opportunities I have had to regretfully walk away from. That's the one dark cloud on the horizon. Running out of money. The house sale falling through has really messed up our plans for financial stability for next year. But…I guess I knew this was never going to be an easy choice, to pursue something that might be financially not very rewarding, especially at first. And I'm determined to weather the storm. Which doesn't mean I won't perhaps have to try and get a part time job sometime in the new year. I think, as long as it still leaves me with enough time and mental energy to pursue all these exciting arts opportunities, that might not be a bad thing. Anyway, the point is, it's gonna be tough, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, so I won't give up! And in the meantime, there's little nephews to play with, and delicious food to eat, and presents to dish out, and all that good stuff, so I'm going to put all that worry on hold for now and have fun! Here's hoping you, wherever you are, will be able to do the same! Very best wishes of the season to each and every one of you!

Oh, just time for a few more Pre-Christmas things:
I have started up my newsletter. I am still learning the software that enables me to manage it, but hopefully this is a place where you can subscribe, should you wish to:

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Also, remember that artist networking meeting I mentioned going to a few blog posts ago? I forgot to mention that someone was filming it, and they interviewed me! I just found out they posted the finished film online, and I made the final cut! Yay! I've never been interviewed "on screen" before, so I found the whole thing strangely exciting! (I'm also quite impressed with how coherent I sound. I remember thinking I'd said a load of rubbish. Must be the magic of editing!) Here's the video: And finally, how about a new picture, as we haven't had one of those for a while! Here's one of the ones I unearthed when looking for things to show to my repeat customer the other day. This is actually a photo I took a couple of years ago, that was just languishing on my computer until I dusted it off and did a little Photoshop magic on it a few days ago. I'm really quite fond of it now, although I was thinking of maybe correcting the tilt of the image so that the lines are horizontal. See what you think...

Right, well that's about all for now. Have yourselves a very Merry Christmas, and I'll be back in 2014!

The joy of prints!

So, I had a busy day today, that has left me feeling very excited about the market on Saturday. Firstly, I made a trip to a...ahem, well known homewares store, where I got all kinds of cool stuff to help make my stall look awesome, and to buy some reasonably priced frames to frame some of my prints. I have previously bought a couple of table top easels to display prints, but while I was winding my way through the endless aisles of the shop it suddenly struck me that I might find other things that will help with the display process, especially of my cards, and my friends lamps that I will also be selling. (more about those later!).
 I looked at some sort of woven wicker magazine racks and pen holders thingies for ages - they were just what I wanted in terms of shape, but they looked pretty ugly. I toyed with the idea of spray painting them and weaving bits of thread through them, but in the end I opted for a smarter wooden desk tidy thing, that can display the stuff quite nicely I think. That leaves me without anything to display the print son, but perhaps I'll treat myself to a proper print rack for my next market.

Some of my wares arranged in the desk tidy

When I got home there was still no email from the printers, so I rang them up, and they told me my prints were ready! Yay! I was there in a flash, and could see that the bigger prints looked GREAT!, but I had to wait to get home to have a look at the cards, and I'm THRILLED with them as well! I literally can't wait to show them off at the market. I just have a busy day of mounting and framing tomorrow, and then it's showtime!

All 10 designs of greetings cards I'll be selling at the market

So, about the lamps, a few of which you can see above. They are made by a Hungarian friend of mine called Anna Kaszanitzky, who has kind of done similar to me, and followed her dreams to become a self-employed professional lamp maker. She makes amazing lampshades much bigger and more ambitious than any of the things I am currently selling of hers, but just to give it a try, I brought over from Hungary some of her smaller, battery operated novelty lamps, like these:

 They are all individually hand made and unique, so they aren't cheap, but I'm hoping people with love them as much as I do. Eventually, I would like to sell some of her bigger pieces, which you can check out at her website or on her facebook page.

 I am bursting to know how mine and Anna's work will be received. For me especially it's about whether people be attracted to buy at these new lower prices, and will the cards sell well? I'm not expecting the giclees to fly off the shelves, because they are expensive, but I'm hoping the more affordable stuff will sell like hot cakes! Because then I'll know if this really is a self sustainable thing - if I can do something I love AND make a little bit of profit out of it. I'll probably be too busy to post tomorrow, as as well as being the crunch day for getting ready, it's also my birthday, so I won't report in until after the show. So, if you're reading this before Saturday, keep your fingers crossed for me!