The show was well attended. We only had two short rain showers and the drop cloths worked well to protect my paintings. Many people said very nice things about my work. And most important, I SOLD FOUR PAINTINGS! The following are the four that sold.
I am very pleased! I am also encouraged to do more shows.
Tomorrow is the big day! I will be participating in the Shenandoah Valley Artfest 2023 in Woodstock Virginia! The weather this week has been terrible, and for a while it looked like the festival would be a wash out. Things are looking a little better, so fingers crossed.
I assembled all of my racks, which was a bear, and staged my setup in my garage. I think this will look fine.
I will be showing about 20 pieces. There are a few that I don’t have good photos of, but here is a gallery of most of what I will be showing.
I hope to see some familiar faces. This is my first show, but hopefully it will encourage me to do more!
Since I shared my small studies I have been working on my Natural Bridge commission. Today I took it to the client to discuss any final changes and they only had one small thing they wanted me to change. They were very happy with the result and had many nice things to say.
Commissions are difficult and stressful. When you paint for yourself, no one has to like it but you. If you’re lucky enough to have someone else who likes it enough to buy it, that’s great. With a commission, someone agrees to pay you money for something before it’s created, and they have some expectations for what they want. As an artist, you need to figure out how to meet those expectations.
Fortunately, applying my design thinking background seems to help. Using DT methods with the studies I did allowed me to better understand their expectations. One of the things they said when the saw the almost finished painting today was that I had incorporated all of the things that they liked. Needless to say I’m pleased.
This is the fully complete painting. It is 18×24, the largest watercolor I’ve ever done. Painting that large was quite different but I made it work. I will deliver it soon and hopefully they will allow me to come over and photograph it once it is framed and hanging in the place they have chosen for it.
