Yellow Sun
6″ x 6″ oil on panel
Red Sun
6″ x 6″ oil on panel
Ring of Fire
6″ x 6″ oil on panel
Mini Sun
4″ x 4″ oil on mini black canvas
Day 17 ~ Water Skiing at Chelan
I’ve been thinking a lot about my amazing daughter-in-law who is having troubles with her back at the moment. Earlier this summer she posted a picture on Instagram of herself water skiing. I thought it would be fun to try painting it sometime, so I saved it in my collection of things that inspire me. I had so much fun trying to paint this water…
6″ x 6″ oil on gessoed panel
Day 9 ~ Lemon Stand at Cinque Terre
Two of my daughters took a backpack trip to Europe a few years back and returned with some fascinating photographs of place I had never seen. I was so intrigued with the five villages along the Italian coast called Cinque Terre, definitely an artist’s paradise. This painting was inspired by a photo they brought home of a lemon stand…
8″ x 10″ oil on canvas
$125
This was the only painting I did before the challenge, just in case I get behind… 🙂
New Cards ~ New Printer
I tried out a new printer for cards that Shawna recommended, and I’m totally delighted with the quality of the cards. Not only the quality, but the great help I received just to make sure my order came out right. Thank you Shawna for all your advice. 🙂
For a trial I selected two of my paintings…
I used photo shop to make the back and the front, in order to send them in to be printed. This is what they looked like…
Cat Print is the name of the company. I was able to get a custom size for my cards, and this really appealed to me as I wanted them to be square 5″ x 5″.
These two cards are available for sale in my Etsy shop, and there will be more cards coming soon, as I’ve been getting ready for an Art Walk I’m participating in next month. More on that later, though…
I’m also working on my 2015 Calendar… I’ll be sharing that here later, too. 🙂
Has anyone ever ordered clear protective sleeves for note cards?
Day 23 ~ Björknäs
I bet that title caught your attention…and probably very few people would be able to pronounce it. From my theme of joys of childhood comes one of my most favorite childhood memories…the summer house of my grandparents in Björknäs, Sweden.
8″ x 10″ oil on canvas
My mother took us to Sweden when I was 12. My grandparents had an apartment in Stockholm, but in the summer they lived in their summer place in the country complete with an outhouse and great big cast iron pot with which to do laundry. I was fascinated watching my grandmother heat water to a boil in that big pot, and wash the clothes with a big wooden stick and lye soap. Then after rinsing she hung everything on the line, and it all smelled so incredibly clean. My grandfather had a garden, and we ate potatoes everyday that he had dug up from his amazing vegetable patch. My grandmother would make hot chocolate for my brother and me in the morning and we would dip her homemade bread in it. Unforgettably delicious!
We slept in cubbyhole beds something like this…
But there were curtains in front of them and they were situated in the dining room. What fun to cuddle up in our own secret hiding places every night. To this day I want to build some of these in my own house. So fun!
This month the Virtual Paintout Blog is featuring Sweden and Artsy Lucy has painted three paintings for the “30 Paintings in 30 Days” of houses in Sweden. She is the one who inspired me to do the Swedish summer house. As for the Virtual Paintout, I really admire the artists that do this. I spend hours trying to find something to paint and it never seems to work for me. Check it out, you might like it… 🙂
And if you have done a painting on the Virtual Paintout, I would love to hear about it and see a link. 🙂
Pricing Paintings
While looking through all my paintings… old and new… and pricing them for the sale this weekend, I found this old painting I did a couple of years ago from a photograph of the most colorful town in Italy…Burano.
11″ x 14″ oil on gessoed board
I painted it because I loved the colors, and I have been trying to use more colors, like the purple in the sidewalks. But I wasn’t thrilled about the way it turned out back then, so away it went, out into a large box in the garage. Now after all that time, I pulled it out again and I really like it. Funny how time can change your perspective. I’m pricing this one at $85.00 with a white frame included.
This is what I have been doing for the past two days…pricing paintings.
Putting little stickers with prices on them, so I can compare everything. Finally, the stickers had to go, and I used white tags instead, but they did help me decide what to charge.
How do you price your paintings? Any suggestions here? I’m pricing these low in hopes that I will sell a bunch. I don’t know if that is a good idea or not. Any thoughts?
Simply Painting 