Here's the photo and here's the painting of Riley. This was for the winner of the gift certificate donated to the Scituate Animal shelter. Thank you for helping animals and supporting the arts!!

another week gone by...

Well, I did manage to get that cocka-poo painting done. (I did take a pic and will post soon). I must admit that I'm glad that this order came in. Even though it was a winner of a gift certificate (for the Scitutate Animal shelter) it made me say Hey sit down and get this done. I guess it had been a while because I ended up doing it twice. I didn't like how the first one came out at all. I did end up bringing it to work here at the office so that I could use the copier and the light box that helped a lot in the "mapping" process.

I really need to start working on my time using skills. Less Facebook, more marketing research. Seriously, it has gotten pretty bad. I have a list of websites to check out and I do plan to do that during down time at work (and there's a lot of that lately).

On another note: it's Bird Watching season. Jason and I went to the CT River in Vernon VT and I saw a rubythroated hummingbird, 2 bald eagles, a great blue heron, orioles, veeries, kingbirds, swallows, Canada geese, comorants, sandpipers, song sparrow, a crow and other birds that I don't even know the name of. And then on Sunday we went to the Quabbin Res and rented a boat. There I saw a bald eagle (and really close too!) and the ever elusive Scarlet Tanager.

Have a great week!

Happy Monday. So this past week was pretty filled with events that all had to do with Metal Music LOL so I spent a lot of time sleeping late in the morning. But I had a lot of fun at the same time.

So I did break back into those acrylic paints. I did a picture of cat o nine tails. One thing that I've noticed about acrylics vs watercolor is that I have yet to achieve the ability to really get the color that I want. And yet I can put it down on the canvas and more or less correct it, I'm still in that watercolor mentality that says "Once it's down, you can't erase it." So it's almost frustrating.

I revieved an email from a gift certificate winner from the Scituate Animal rescue, so I'll be working on that this week.

another week....

So I'll have to admit that I really didn't get a whole lot done this week in terms of being creative and artsy. I managed to get the promo email out and that's a good thing. But it makes me think that I should go and upload some of the new paintings (there are so many I feel like I've been out of commission forever) because I'm using a lot of the same for my promos. There are some new ones I did want to use, but the constant contact site said were too big and I have no idea how to reformat them. owell. But there are 2 things that I need to think about this email marketing thing:

1.) My newsletter says I should be just as annoying as a Cabelas catalog. And send out emails a lot! I use Cabelas as a reference because I get catalogs from them practically every week (and they yet to carry decent hunting boots and hip boots in female sizes). But I'm not sure that I have enough news for a newsletter every 2 weeks or twice a month But that brings me to my next point....

2.) I went out to dinner with a friend of mine on Friday and we drove by my paintbox and I said "See! There's my u. box that I got to paint!" and she was looking at me like I had 2 heads. She had already said that she got the email, so I explained it to her and then said, "it was all in the email I sent." and then she said, "Oh well, I really didn't read it.... just looked at the pictures." So am I saying too much in my emails??? Maybe I should just cut it down to 1 annoucement per email? One painting per email? Now she's a head of marketing department in her firm so I do take what she says about marketing to heart. I'm just an artist. And she agrees that they should be sent more often.....

With that said, Watch out. I'm going to start haunting your email boxes :)

U.Box is done

So here are the pictures of the utility box complete. I was there last night doing a final coat of shelac as they were calling for rain last night and off and on today. I think the fish head on the back came out better than the one in the front. I can't wait for my next mural project LOL