A new year, and new resolutions…

…to break, or not to break.

I just wanted to let you know I am doing a little housekeeping around here. I have changed this site to more of a gallery website, as opposed to a blog where I would (in theory) post regularly, insightful and engaging content (huzzah!) because let’s face it. talking about painting is about as interesting as…um…watching paint dry.

Not that I won’t be posting at all, just that I will only write a post when I actually have something to say. (And isn’t that refreshing?) I am also splitting off my children’s book illustration work to a new website/blog, that does not yet exist. I am starting to work on some new projects post Pandamorphosis and I think it will be less confusing to various interest groups (Not to mention me) if they have their own corners of the room, so to speak.

As soon as I get the new site set up and decorated, the illustration page will disappear from here, and move over there. Trust me, I’ll let you know when that happens.  Most of the time you can find me playing with the panda kindergarten, (because…um…pandas!)

At this time, I’m not prepared to set up any sort of commerce or sales site here, but if you are interested in acquiring any of my work, I urge you to visit The Rob Schouten Gallery, where, Rob, Victory or Patricia will be more than happy to assist you in bringing art into your life and home. You can find them here.

Till next time….

Other Rooms; Oil on Linen/ (c) Anne Belov

On Ethics and Elephants

Elephant in the Room? What? Where? Oh, that Elephant

In the interest of full disclosure, I must point out that I never thought about marketing in terms of the ethics involved. When I think about marketing my books to an unsuspecting public, the thing that leaps to the front of my mind is the “ick factor.”

Writing and cartooning are recent additions to my creative work. I’ve been painting more years than I care to remember, and it’s been my “day job” for the last 25 years. Almost seven years ago, pandas knocked on the door, demanded entry, put their feet up on the coffee table, and insisted that I write stories, draw cartoons, and perpetrate blasphemous adaptations of Sargent and Whistler paintings, all starring pandas.

They were really most insistent.

Arrangement in Black, White, and Gray //Anne Belov //all rights reserved

Selling paintings is mostly, although not entirely, different than selling books.  I’d have to sell  hundreds, if not thousands of books to equal the sale of one decent painting. And so marketing raises it’s (often) not so lovely head.

A recent post by Jane Steen got me thinking about the ethics of self publishing in general and about marketing my work in particular. I am, to say the very least, a reluctant marketer. By following a number of blogs about both the art and the business side of writing, it led me to realize that I was going to have to make peace with marketing, like it or not.

My cartoons appeared on my blog, The Panda Chronicles for almost four years before I published The Panda Chronicles Book 1: Your Brain on Pandas. My method for getting the word out was intuitive and organic. When I started my blog, I finally dove in to Facebook, and sought out panda fans, to see if they thought my panda-centric humor was funny, or whether they would chase me through town with pitchforks and burning torches, tar and feathers at the ready. (They liked them! Huzzah!)

I shared my cartoons freely and my fan base grew. I got an unanticipated bonus by reaching out to people on an individual basis because fans became connections and some friendships (real ones) have grown as a result of this, with meetings and gatherings of panda fans in real life.

The panda Faithful at San Diego Zoo in 2013

To be honest, this is a rather time consuming way of selling books. But I am a glutton for connections, maybe because I spend so much of my day holed up in my studio painting and drawing. When I look at the alternatives: auto tweets, constant buy my book/services links, guest posts which are barely disguised infomercials, I realize that the ick-factor detector is a pretty good ethical guide.

I think we must continually ask ourselves how we respond to marketing appeals by others as we try to figure out how to sell our work. Everyone has different threshold levels of what is offensive or annoying, but if it offends me, why would I do it? I’m still trying to figure it all out, and if I listen to my gut and avoid doing things that make me uncomfortable in the marketing of others, I think I am on the right track.

The sands that publishing is built on are shifting. As more people publish their work independently, we have to figure out how to be ethical, not only in the actual writing, but in how we tell the world about it. We are all on our own, trying to figure out just how we going to continue paying the mortgage, but we are also in it together.

My practice of making connections has served me well, in personal satisfaction and real bridges built, if not yet in monetary terms.  My followers number in the hundreds, rather than the tens of thousands, but they are real names, some even come with faces attached. I have decided to trust that what feels like the right path both artistically and ethically.

What do you think?

hey! Buy my book!

You can see more pandas (for free!) at The Panda Chronicles. You can also…um…find out where to buy my books there.

Wait, is it summer already?

Every year I think, this summer I’ll take a little time off, I won’t plan a whole bunch of work related stuff, like art shows or Kickstarter campaigns that mean I’ll be working, working, working during the most beautiful time of the year on Whidbey Island.

Ha!

I’m busy getting ready for a exhibition of my paintings at The Rob Schouten Gallery, and feverishly gearing up for this year’s Froggwell Biennale extravaganza.

I’m very pleased to say, that I just sent the last package of rewards for my Kickstarter campaign, to fund publication of Pandamorphosis. Wow!

Pandamorphosis, my (first) wordless picture book!

Thanks to the excellent work of my editorial and production team, Beth Bacon and Kate Burkett, we finished work in record time, and produced a book I’m really proud of.  We are still working on ebook versions, which we hope to have done later this year.

Meanwhile, I’m a little…um…behind on my painting projects, so as we roll into July, (with 84 degrees and blue sunny skies today!!!) I am still tethered to my easel.  Is it worth it?

“Radiance” // Oil on Linen on shaped panel// Anne Belov (c) 2014

Yeah, I think so too.

There’s more happening over on The Panda Chronicles! Inspector Panda returns to his new adventure tomorrow with another installment (there will be an art history quiz, so get ready!)

See you soon.

The End of a Perfect Day

I drove toward Langley with the windows down and the music blaring. 70 degree days are rare in a Pacific Northwest spring day, and even rarer in April. I’d gotten some work done, so I felt good about taking the evening off.

No, wait that’s not right… let me start again.

I spent the evening in a room with over 200 people, gathered for a common purpose.

Hmmm, sounds like a school board meeting.

One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer
Oil on panel
A. Belov //All rights reserved

Pouring rain would have been more appropriate than this cloudless blue sky. We 200+ people gathered to say goodbye to our friend Jude, who less than one month ago lost her battle with lung cancer.

Everyone knows the old stereotype that at your funeral, no one will say a bad word about you.  That was certainly the case tonight.  The difference is, that everyone was right about Jude.  She was good, 110%. Those of you with long term friendships know that sometimes you think your friends are jerks, and that they annoy the hell out of you.  Never in the 20+ years that I knew Jude, did I ever wish she was one bit different.  We, her friends, more than likely gave her plenty to complain about, but she rarely (if ever) did. As I listened to friends, family members, and her co-workers from the Everett Clinic say goodbye to her, and read us their remembrances, something became very clear:

She had this effect on every one of us.  She was smart, she was funny, she remembered what was important to you and about you and you felt like you were the most important person in the world to her, and when you were with her, you were.

I met Jude and her husband Chris a year or two after they had moved to our little corner of paradise.  I was single at the time, and struggling in the first few years of tossing my crappy job aside in order to paint full time.  I had countless dinners at their house, they came to my shows, bought paintings, and welcomed me into their family.  We went for walks, and leaped about in aerobics class. We watched Princess Diana’s funeral on TV together.

As years went by, we got busy with other activities, I started seeing someone, Jude’s job got more demanding, she started playing tennis, but we always kept in touch, even if we didn’t see each other as often as we’d like.  But when we did, it was as if no time had passed at all.  We could just get down to what ever needed talking about. That is a rare thing and I’ve learned to treasure that kind of friendship when I find it. She gave so much.

My friend and advisor is gone.  I can hear her voice in my head, complete with  Philadelphia accent. “Hey! Cut out the whiney stuff! You have stuff you want to do. Don’t wait. Do it now. Don’t let anyone stop you. You are amazingly talented and there is no time to waste. Listen to me, I know.” 62 years is way too early for you to go.

Goodbye Jude. I love you to the moon and back.

Can You Stand One More Post About Kickstarter?

I am in the countdown for the last hour of my Kickstarter project to fund Pandamorphosis, my wordless picture book, which I have been working on for about four years.

Pandas are yearning to spring forth!

Being tuned in to all things “Kickstarter” I’m always interested in reading news stories about it.  In the last two days I saw a story about how film-maker Spike Lee used Kickstarter to fund a film project, and I just read the “from the editor” column in Smithsonian Magazine, about how a recent article that required travel to foreign lands, was funded with Kickstarter. Still another article came up about a publishing company that was going to use crowd-funding to fund and assess appeal for a book.

One of the questions that I see pop up is “Is it fair for people who are already famous to use something like Kickstarter to fund their project?”

My answer, after a little consideration, is a resounding yes.  The truth is that even people that we perceive to have “made it” already, still need to keep working, and the gatekeepers, whether they be publishers, movie studios, music companies, or art galleries are growing increasingly squirrelly over making a financial investment/ commitment in “the talent.”

Pandamorphosis: at 245%  with 30 minutes to go. Go team.

I think that the fact that scholars, well known film-makers, and musicians are using crowd-funding gives the process visibility and credibility that it didn’t have at its inception. It gives small fish like me the opportunity to raise money for a small-ish project.  Yes, there have been artist project grants available from various sources for more than 30 years, but for those, you have a large number of artists competing for a small number of grants, that are decided by just a few people. Crowd-funding changes the dynamic and allows artists and creatives of all varieties the chance to take their project before the people who may be interested. I think it is a wonderful thing to come into being.

Well, my project has just about 30 minutes left to run. It’s been a wonderful experience, and I’ve gathered more than twice as much funding as I originally asked for.  Most of the money will go for project expenses and reward fulfillment, but there will be a small amount “leftover” to fund more projects that come out of my studio.

Thank you to all who have participated and supported me.  And if you’ve never contributed to a crowd-funding project, I urge you to get out there and find a project you love. Sign up as a backer, even if it’s just for a dollar. You might just have some fun, while doing something good.

More Lessons From the Land of Kickstarter

Well, if you haven’t heard already, I am just over 48 hours into my third Kickstarter project. I’m ready to publish my Pandum-Opus, Pandamorphosis at long last.  This is a project I’ve been working on, off and on, for over four years, several of those years quite intensely.  At last I think it’s ready, and apparently other people do too.

I decided to take a gamble this time, after listening to webinars, reading articles, and masterminding several other projects for some of the other Whidbey Island creatives, and only run my campaign for 16 days. (Cutting out the deadly second/third week lull.)

Pandas are yearning to spring forth!

Here’s some of what I learned from all these experiences, especially regarding the “crowd” from whom you are trying to get funding:

1. Be prepared. And by that I mean, don’t just start trying to make new friends in the week before your project launches.  (This probably doesn’t apply if you have designed a seriously cool gizmo that everyone is going to want or are an experienced game designer. Your audience will find you and throw large bags of money in your path.)

2. Thank everyone…the same day that they pledged, if you are awake in your time zone. No matter how tiny their pledge is.  Someone who doesn’t know you personally, and pledges just $1, is saying that your project is so cool, that they just wanted their name attached to it.  And if you do know them and they pledge that same $1, maybe that came out of their grocery money for the week. A pledge is a pledge. Say thank you.

3. Let your friends and supporters know about it, without running them down with your cart in the supermarket. (OK, sorry, Diane…it was a blind corner, hope your foot is okay.)  Ask your good friends for their opinion on your project before it launches.

4. Blog and tweet about it without being a jerk.  Give them something fun, informative or entertaining in the post as well.

5. While I think it’s fair to contact other project creators if you have supported their past projects, to ask for a shout out, you should only do that if you had some back and forth conversations with them and they have some chance of remembering who you are, OR some affinity for the type of project you are doing.  Don’t expect it though.  And don’t be this person who sent me a message through the Kickstarter message system:
“Because you have been funded, I was wondering if you could help me fund my project on kickstarter. By sending the url to your funders.”

( I removed any identifying information about their project.  really, I should report him to Kickstarter for spamming me and probably other successful projects, but he has enough trouble already.  His project description was  full of typos and grammatical errors.)

6. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  If your video is just you talking, no matter how cool your idea is, the video should be 2 minutes max,  unless you’re George Clooney.

Pandamorphosis: at 116% in less than 48 hours. Go team.

Ordinary Illuminated and Tim’s Vermeer

I’m in a show that starts this Saturday in Seattle, called Ordinary Illuminated.  When June Sekaguchi, the curator suggested the theme, I was just about beside myself.  Painter of Stuff is how I sometimes refer to myself.  I love taking something ho hum, like blue painters tape, and putting it in a really realistic still life with a bunch of other blue objects. It’s the play between objects, their shapes, their colors, the way light falls on them that makes them fascinating to me, not just what they are.

40 Shades of Blue// Oil on Panel//Anne Belov //all rights reserved

So, when I was listening to the radio the other day, I heard an interview on Studio 360, about how Tim Jenison re-created Vermeer‘s painting, The Music Room.  Now, he didn’t do what most painters do, which would be to get as good a reproduction as they can find, and then to copy the drawing via a grid and then while looking at the reproduction, figure out as best they could as to just how Vermeer did it.

Oh, no.

He built a whole frigging room with the light coming in from the same direction, ground his own paint, ground the optical lenses that he used to look at the scene he re-created, and went about it very scientifically.  Then he made a movie about it. Or someone else did, and it opens later this month. I plan to see it, even though I have very mixed feelings about the whole project.

It’s not that I have any qualms about doing master copies.  I’ve done quite a few of them, including a couple of Vermeers.  John Singer Sargent is my particular specialty. I learn a lot about putting paint on a canvas every time I do one.  In the interview with Mr. Jenison, he complains about how hard it was, how long it took him to paint the patterned turkish carpet.

Well, Duh.  It is hard to paint stuff so that it looks real, really real, or mostly real. It took me over 40 years to get good at it. I feel your pain. (sort of.)

Arrangement in Black, White, and Gray //Anne Belov //all rights reserved Okay, so this is SLIGHTLY different than the original…

On the whole, I’m looking forward to the movie, no matter how mixed my feelings are about it. I think that anything that gives non-painters an appreciation for how hard painting really is, is a very good thing.  If the movie becomes popular, there is always the possibility that there will be a new wave of appreciation for realism in fine art circles again. I’m all for that!

In the meantime, I hope you’ll check out my show if you’re in Seattle, or go to the Metropolitan Museum if you’re in New York. They have five Vermeers. Yeehaw! The National Gallery in Washington DC has four.

Anne Belov and Jennifer Frohwerk at the Ida Culver House Ravenna

date and location…

More art observations from the road….

From Boston, we headed on down the tracks to the Big Apple, the big kahuna as it were, of visual art.  NYC has so much going for it, that it’s hard to know where to start.

So, we started with the 100th anniversary show of the 1913 Armory show at the New York Historical Society. As you may recall, The Froggwell Cultural Institute led the way in Armory Show anniversary exhibitions, with the 98th anniversary of the aforementioned show.

Salome by Robert Henri, recreated by Karen Trimble

About 6 of the paintings that we …um…recreated, were included in the NY Historical society show, and I was very pleased to note, what a good job we had done um…recreating these works.

More art to see today….on to the Metropolitan today.

Saying Goodbye, and Thank You….

No, I’m not leaving, even though I don’t spend as much time on this blog as I used to.  The goodbye is to my friend and teacher, Jack Beal, who passed away almost two weeks ago.  Jack was an amazing person, and an amazing artist.  Considered by many to be the father of Contemporary American Realism, he was a painter to be admired.

I first met Jack and his wife, painter Sondra Freckelton, when they began to offer art workshops at their farm in Oneonta NY in 1990.  They were painters whose work inspired me as an art student in the 1970’s, and I was thrilled and a little nervous to meet them.  They put everyone instantly at ease with their warm welcome, and some of the people I met there, I am friends with to this day, even though we live scattered across the country.

Someone to Watch Over Me// oil on linen// Anne Belov// 2006 all rights reserved

The painting you see above is one that I did after my last trip to the farm in 2005, it is of the guest room where I slept, in an alcove off of Sondra’s studio.

Breakfast With The Queen of Diamonds//oil on linen//Anne Belov // 2006 /all right reserved/

I learned so much from  Jack and Sondra, and I owe a great debt to them.  My paintings are the better for having studied with them, and I am a better person for having known them.  Jack’s health was not good the past few years, but Jack, being Jack, managed to surprise everyone several times and survive into his 80’s. He was not always the easiest person to be around, but he was honest in his enthusiasms and generous with support.

He lived big, and is gone too soon.  We will miss you.

 

Upcoming Events

Thanks to all who have checked in lately. Here are some upcoming events taking place in the next few months.

I was recently invited to be in an exhibition in Seattle, Still Life 21, which will be held at the Ida Culver House in North Seattle. Here’s the info:

Opening Thursday, March 14th, 4:30 – 6:30 p.m. A group show at Ida Culver House Broadview 

Modern day still life depicting the new detritus of life revealing the context of objects in our culture. New views, deconstructed perspectives, and alternative approaches to materials will be considered. The show continues through July 7, 2013

40 Shades of Blue// Oil on Panel//Anne Belov //all rights reserved

This is one of the five paintings that I will be exhibiting.

In April, I will teach a three day workshop at The Whibey Fine Art Studio in Langley, in the practice of egg tempera painting.  For more information on the class, or to sign up, check the WFAS website.

Limone #2 //Egg tempera and oil on linen //Anne Belov // all rights reserved

Hope to see you at one of these events.