New Leaf
My wife were talking yesterday about a topics for blog postings. She had seen a sign in a store downtown advertising "Now Selling Sanitized Hot Dogs", and it made her jaw drop. What do they do, dip them in Lysol? What were they selling before? She was gobsmacked enough that she wanted me to engineer some connection to the other kind of dogs for the blog.
Truth is, though I've been pretty prolific over the past few weeks, I'm feeling like I am running out of material I am excited about. After nearly 400 posts I've managed to itemize all of Pappy's peculiarities, some more than once. I've been struggling with the notion that it's getting repetitive, and that makes it hard to maintain much enthusiasm.
One of the big interests I have right now is the question of what I am going to do when I retire in a few years. Pappy would like me to walk him full-time between sessions of fetch, but I suspect I am going to need something more to fill my days. Plus walking dogs won't pay the extravagant health insurance premiums of early retirees. About a quarter century ago I gave up on the idea that I could make a living making art. It's one thing to be talented with a brush, but it's another to be disciplined at the business. One needs both.
This year I am trying to lay the groundwork to try again. I want to start by showing the dedication to paint regularly, because productivity is one of my greatest assets as an artist. Then I want to discover how to market my artwork, which was my failing in the past. I've started a new blog, Doing Art (no, not doing like boing, doing like brewing), to document... something. Either I'll just post images of new work, or maybe I'll post on what I am learning along the way. We'll see how that goes, and what happens here in Pappy's blog.
7 comments:
I looked at your art blog -- your paintings are very good. Have you ever tried to paint Pappy? My parents attempted to paint pugs a couple of years ago, but the results were not so puglike.
High one,
I started two Pappy paintings a couple of months ago, and got off to a promising start. I picked one up again a couple of weeks ago, but ended up overworking the head. When trying for a likeness, that's always one of the risks. A pug would be interesting.
Hey, I'm just off to take a look. Good luck pal! J x
We are going to check out your art work site, but it might take the rest of the night to down load. So, we wanted to give our 8 paws and 2 hands worth of comment here about what you should do in retirement first....clearly you should be a WRITER!! You should have written Pappy and Me before Marley got all the credit.
We're back...it didn't take as long to down load as expected.
You are very talented! I especially love Elana's Garden. The purple colors on the house are so striking! Is your art work for sale? It seems like it would be very hard to part with your personal paintings.
I like mugsy's suggestion too...commissioned paintings of dogs for us crazy dog blogger types. I would love a portrait of my two rascals....
Stella and Annie,
Thanks for your dedication-- I did a little dialup this summer, and I'd forgotten the pain. It is hard to sell paintings that you like, but that's one of the things I have to work through. It doesn't serve you well to be too precious about your work. I've avoided the dog niche thusfar, but how is that so different from the Maine landscape niche?
Loved the paintings pal! Elana's Garden was my favourite too. J x
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