But no one was buying. (Warning: Bad art displayed, here)

I always wanted to make a living with my art.  At first, I wanted to design posters.  I assumed that if a subject appealed to me, then it would appeal to other people.  However, I think most artists create with that in mind.

I’ve been given many suggestions by well-meaning people for making money with my art.  Design tatoos?  Most of the work suggested would really make me hate doing artwork. (Note: if you like tatoos, I don’t see anything wrong with it, they’re just not me).

So off I went on a journey to make money with my art.  My first try was portraiture, which I’m still willing to do.  It’s just hard to find enough clients with so much competition.

I should mention the woman in this portrait was 110 years old at the time.

Then I had a great idea of doing very small pictures that I could do quickly, and sell for cheap.  Limited success there.  Here’s one that actually sold:

Then the whole ACEO (Art cards editions and originals).  These are cards that are

2/12 inches by 3 1/2.  Many people collect them, and some artists are very successful with this.  A popular theme is cats.  I thought, I like cats!,and did my best.

I was a little bored with the subject matter, and could not compete with the ones who really could do cats very well.  Here is my sad try:

Also, landmarks on ACEO’s seem to work.  However, I didn’t have the patience to do good drawing of NYC.

So,now I’m back where I started from….doing pictures I like, and hoping to earn money from them on hold.  But not given up, as I learn more about marketing.

Hopefully, my meandering career will be of some help to young creative people out there.  Some will tell you “art is a product”, but in my experience, how you feel about what you’re doing affects the quality of the product you’re producing…..and bad products don’t sell.

Okay, back to work!