Choosing What Size to Paint, Storing Paintings, and Selling in Restaurants

1. Choosing What Size to Paint, Storing Paintings, and Selling in Restaurants What Size Should I Paint and Try to Sell? She asks: "Is it best to paint the same sizes as a rule? I keep trying to appeal to all kinds of buyers with very small works and up to 11 by 14. It is so hard to sell art in this area that I keep thinking if I have lower items, people will buy more. Yet, it does not seem worth the time for that small stuff sometimes." Certain places are not as good geographically for selling artwork as other areas due to limitations in the amount of money that's in an area. Not everybody in the world thinks that art is as important as other people do. And not everybody in the world has the money to pay for art even if they do believe that it is beautiful and significant. Tell yourself, I'm going to keep painting a lot, and I'm going to work on small and mid-size and some large paintings, and I'm going to test the market a bit and see what happens. We need to start somewhere in terms of trying to sell our work if that's what your goal is. And as a word of advice, It feels so much better to sell a painting for less money than to have a bunch of paintings that are high-priced in your closet because you can't sell them. How do you store your paintings? I stack them vertically if they're small enough. I have a couple shelves that have small ones. I don't have a ton of painting sitting around unless their either incomplete paintings or bad paintings that I haven't finished or don't want to show until I have the chance to solve the

2. problems in them. Store paintings just like books, keep them vertical and keep them dry. Keep paintings where you won't have moisture issues. How do you paint loose and not get caught up in the details? Grab the biggest brush that you have and don't grab a smaller brush. That's the easiest and most straightforward answer. Just keep the big brush in your hand and honestly, force yourself not to use smaller brushes. Maybe at the very end take out a small brush and give yourself a limited number of brush strokes with it. That is one of my practices. I also step back and squint and look at the big picture, because the big picture matters more than the little details. A lot of times, we're working on small details, and they don't help. Remember that they don't make as big of a difference as the bigger shapes and the more prominent structures in the painting. And so, you don't always need as many small, small details as you might think. So, go with the big brush. How do you make an acrylic painting look like it was done with oil? Soft edges and blended colors. 18:35 Because oils take so long to dry, you can come back hours or days later and blend in the edges and colors—that's what's distinct about them. A lot of times, with acrylic paintings, people don't spend time working to soften those edges. And so it looks a little bit plasticky, hard, and cut out. Taking time to create soft edges is essential.

3. Jed Dorsey - "Soft Day at Camano Crossing" 19:14 A big transformational time in my career was when I started using the Stay Wet palette because I was able to blend colors; I was able to mix longer and keep the paint wet longer. I was no longer just grabbing a tube color. I use colors that I've mixed on my palette, and then, as they get blended and nuanced, it works on the painting to harmonize colors and do things that are also subtler. When you're blending, keep inter mixing those colors to create nuanced mixes. And not just straight-from-the-tube kind of colors.