A Monday Morning in Barichara 9 (B&W) by Alan R Estes

Like most typical Mondays, I started my day with a nice warm cuppa and some quality time with my feed reader to ease into the work week.  I saw two fantastic posts today that I simply had to share.

The first is over at Empty Easel. Kate Harper has posted a very motivational interview with Rice Freeman-Zachery, author of Creative Time and Space: Making Room for Making Art.  

QUESTION: What is the most common reasons artists give you, to explain why their art is “on hold”? How can we avoid this before it happens?

Everyone likes to talk about how their families couldn’t adapt if they took over the living room for painting, or quit cooking dinner, or didn’t do carpool duty several days a week.

The one, single, biggest problem, is that people don’t take their creative lives seriously.

What you need to think about is what you want to remember as you’re lying on your deathbed. Do you want to remember mounds of snowy, neatly folded sheets, or do you want to remember painting a tree?

And how do you think your family wants to remember you? As someone who always had shiny tableware, or as someone who was joyously mixing pigments and singing at the easel?

Your family loves you; they want you to be happy. If you’re an artist, you can’t be really happy unless you’re creating.

Check out the full interview:   10+ Ways to Make Time for Your Art: An Interview with Rice Freeman-Zachery

The second comes from Alyson Stanfield:

Not too long ago, I was using the Art Biz Blog to post short snippets of information. For instance, in an October 2007 post, I mentioned a blog entry by someone else and encouraged you to read it. I wouldn’t do that today. Instead, I’d use Twitter and tweet it. Or I’d write a longer blog post that went more in-depth about the original post: what was good about it, what I disagree with, etc. Social media has evolved and changed the way I approach blogging. Here is how I see the missions for the top three social media platforms I use.

Read Alyson’s full post where she discusses her personal strategies for blogging, Facebook, and Twitter: Outline a Social Media Mission

Have you read something that really inspired you today? Feel free to share it in the comments!

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Hi, Artist,

This is just a quick reminder that if your blog is suffering from neglect, indifference, confusion, or identity disorders, we’re here to help.

Cynthia Morris and I are scrubbing in for the Blog Triage class, which begins next Wednesday, August 19. At the end of the procedure, you will:

* Be clear on what your blog is all about

* Have more things to write about than you ever

dreamed possible

* Form a stronger connection with your visitors

* Have confidence to be an expert in your field

* Be proud that your blog is much better looking

* Have a plan to maintain your blog’s health

* Be on your way to becoming famous!

The class is limited to 30 people and just a few seats remain (really!). Grab your spot now if your blog needs some TLC. All of the details are here:http://artbizcoach.com/classes/blogtriage.html

Enjoy your end-of-the-summer weekend,

Alyson

 

If you end up doing the triage class with her, let us know what you think!

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Hello Sunshine Earrings by Vickie Millier

We’ve posted photography tutorials in the past, usually geared toward photographing 2D art. But we couldn’t resist sharing this great tutorial on photographing your 3D work, whether it’s dolls, jewelry, or other objects, found via Digital Photography School.  We know your art is awesome, so why all this fuss over how you photograph it?  Writer Natalie Norton sums up nicely:

I’ve recently spent a lot of time perusing sites like Etsy and other “small market” online vendors.  The other night I spent a considerable amount of time on Etsy searching for something very specific.  As I was sifting through the gazillions of similar products-alas, none of which ended up being exactly what I was looking for- I noticed a trend: If a product had a bad photograph, we’re talking the little thumbnail preview image here, I would not even click through to see the product details.

Natalie’s tips in a nutshell are:

• Turn of the flash
• Remove distracting elements
• Utlize Simple Staging
• Employ creative depth-of-field to highlight product detail

We strongly recommend your check out the full article at Digital Photography School.  Remember:  in the online environment, the quality of your photographs can make or break your art!

For further reading:

Image is everything: Photographing your art

Live Studio: Photography Basics

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“I’m a Survivor” by Fabio J Napoleoni

We’ve been spending a lot more time than usual on Twitter the past few weeks and we’ve seen a lot of people tweeting about holding sales events, making sales, and even excitement about receiving new commissions.  So we’ve been wondering:  How are you doing? Are you hanging in there? What (if anything) have you changed to keep your art business afloat in this economy?  Care to share your personal survival story?

Things you need to remember for ALL types of re-rooting.

•  Assume you will need more hair than you originally think

•  Make sure you keep the hair about 1/2 longer than you want the final length to be. You do need to cut to style the hair, so better to have it longer than too short!

•  You will have sore fingers

•  You need patience, rooting a doll can take several hrs to several days depending on the size of doll and the complexity of the rooting pattern.

Things you need to have for your re-root

•  doll or doll head

•  hair for the doll either saran(nylon) or natural fiber. Some people use actual human hair, or you can use longer MOHAIR. You can get either a weft of hair (saran or mohair) which has the hair all sewn together or a Skein of saran, or a package of mohair locks.

•  scissors & nail clippers

•  needle nose pliers &/or a small crochet hook

•  darning needle &/or felting needle

•  invisible thread or thread the colour of your hair

•  water (if you want)

•  a lot of patience

Here are a few good places to buy hair on the web:

http://www.restoredoll.com/index.htm (saran hair in skeins)

http://www.yadenofibrecraft.com.au/ (mohair locks, I usually use the long or super long)

http://us.sk-coolcat.com/front/bin/home.phtml (CoolCat has both wefted saran & wefted Mohair)

Ebay also often has an abundance of wefts both mohair & saran. You can also look at your local beauty salons, or places where people have “tracks” or extensions put in. a track of hair is basically a weft.

This is the link to my flickr account with images for re-rooting.I will be adding more as soon as I find my good camera!!! I had done more, but my camera has gone missing with the images on it, so here’s a few I took this afternoon.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wickeddollz/sets/72157614354025860/

Before you get to the re-root you need to remove the hair

Before you remove the hair you need to remove the head. If you’re using a vintage doll, preferably one who’s hair is beyond repair. (TRY NOT TO USE VINTAGE DOLLS THAT ARE IN GOOD CONDITION, they really are irreplaceable) You can just pop the head off. Newer Barbie & Barbie type dolls have special mechanisms to keep children from choking on the heads please refer to this guide for good instructions on how to remove modern doll heads :

http://reviews.ebay.com/Off-with-Their-Heads-How-to-Behead-Barbie_W0QQugidZ10000000000102175

( this is not something I have written, but it’s a good explanation)

Cheap dollar store dolls usually have heads that will just pop off like the vintage Barbie dolls.

Now you need to scalp all her/his hair off. Using scissors cut the hair as short as you can, then take a pair of nail clippers (sharp ones work best) and snip the hair down to the scalp. The curved shape of the nail clippers seems to conform to the doll head so that you get a really close cut.

Now take either needle nose pliers or a crochet hook… or both and swirl and pull the hair out from the neck hole. Reaching into the head from the neck-hole pull out as much hair as you can, this should give you a pretty clean scalp/head to work with.

At this point you may want to paint the scalp the colour of the hair you are re-rooting with, or you may want to leave it be. IF you are painting the skull you SHOLD prime it with plastic primer so that it doesn’t crack and chip while you’re working on the hair. There will be SOME cracking and chipping regardless.

Deciding on the pattern:

Following the old pattern is usually the best idea, BUT if you want to change the style, or your doll head had no original hair there are a few choices you can make. The hair usually spirals down from the crown in rows. But if you want a fast thinner style you can simply re-root around the outside of the hair line and pull it back into the center in a pony tail , a lot of cheaper dolls have this style, and it can be quite effective especially if you paint the scalp.

If you want to make a part in the hair make a double row of holes in a line in the direction you want the part to go, you will re-root this then THATCH the part. Re-root the rest of the head in the normal spiral pattern.

Thatching can be fiddly; you re-root each hole in your preferred method and then weave the hair from side to side, making a nice part in the hair. If you’re OCD this is the part you might like best!

I’m going to send you to another outside tutorial for a good look at thatching. This is written for a Blythe doll but the basic premise remains the same. (Take a quick look at the scalp while you there to see what I mean by SWIRL pattern in the re-root.)

http://www.puchicollective.com/tutorials/blythetutorials/rerooting-thatching-and-finishing/

Quick and Dirty Punch re-rooting :

You need a special tool or maybe not so Special. A Felting Needle is used to push or “punch” the hair fibers into the holes in the scalp of a doll who has previously had rooted hair, OR into holes you have made using a hot needle BEFORE you start your re-root. I usually try and use dolls that I have cleaned the original hair out of, it makes following the pattern easier.

However if you need to make holes in the head you can make them with a heated darning needle. Heat your needle with a candle so that it gets hot. REMEMEBR TO USE CAUTION! You will need to clean your needle because the carbon will leave streaks in your scalp. Personally I try and avoid this step. IF I need to add hair to a doll that has NO HOLES I try and use a “WEFT” of hair. But If it’s quite a small doll this is not always practical. I will come back to “WEFTING” a doll later.

 The Felting/Punch Method

The barbs on the felting needle will cause the hairs to tangle inside the doll’s head creating a “knot” that holds it in place. This is a fairly permanent method of re-rooting dolls hair, although and brushing or pulling of the hair will make some of it fall out. Push a few strands of hair into the hole (either one you’ve made or one of the cleaned out holes) head using the blunt end of a broken felting needle or some other blunt needle, then I push a good felting needle into the hole and push up and down a few times to knot the hair fibres, then push some more hair into the hole with the blunt needle, and repeat the process. You continue doing this same process until each hole in the doll’s head is filled.

 This is a good method for ART dolls that will not be handled very much. It is not suggested for any doll that will be played with or that has extensive styling to be done with their hair. YOU WILL LOOSE HAIRS.

You can also punch root into soft materials like wax. I haven’t.

The Wefted Re-root!

Making a wefted re-root is not super hard, just a little persnickety and time consuming.

It’s a good solution to a doll don’t that has no holes. You can just use your sewing needle to make the holes, a longer needle is better, but basically anything will work. You could also need a thimble just to save your fingers if the needle is being stubborn to push through.

Basically you sew the weft straight on to the scalp moving in a circle the same way rooted hair is done.
I use invisible thread, but you can use any thread preferably the same colour as the weft. It’s better if your scalp is the same colour as the wefted hair, but if you make sure to keep the wefted part close together it doesn’t matter that much.

If my wefts look like there is a big gap between the rows I will simply loop the thread under the last row and pull the two rows together.

You do not need to sew into every hole (if you’re using a scalp that has had its hair removed and still has the holes.) but like any sewing you want to keep your stitches small.

So you keep going around until the top is almost completely filled. You will need about 2-3 wefts for a larger doll. This also depends on the amount (or length) you are getting in each weft.

 When starting or changing wefts I fold the first bit under so that it doesn’t have any of the thread from the weft hanging out.

Keep enough space at the top to make a small slit in the scalp with a utility or exacto knife, BE CAREFUL not to cut your self! Take a small piece of the weft which is not sewn to the head, and roll it into a tube, sew the bottom of the tube closed (where the sewn weft is) and push that through the slit you have made.

If its wavy just style it and bush it down over the rest of the hair, this covers up the top wefted bit quite well. If it’s straight, you need to brush it the way you would like it to cover then use a wet towel and a hot iron to fix the hair in the style or position you want, DO NOT KEEP THE HOT IRON ON TOO LONG or you will MELT the hair! ALWAYS KEEP THE TOWEL DAMP WHEN IRONING THE HAIR INTO PLACE!

A mohair weft is done exactly the same way but it’s even easier to hide the wefted parts

The Knot Method:

  This is a pretty sturdy type of re-root. If you are using synthetic hair you will be able to brush it, although you always need to be gentle with dolls hair. It not only comes loose it can easily break, and unlike us it doesn’t grow back!

Thread a larger darning needle with about 20 strands of doll hair. I usually end up threading the needle and having to fold about ¼ or the way down. Carefully push the needle from the outside of the top of the scalp and pull it out of the neck hole. Next take the hair plug out of the eye of the needle. Tie a knot on the end of the hair you have pulled through the neck hole and pull the hair plug from the other end until you feel tension. Cut the hair plug at about 1/2″.  You want to make sure that your knot/plug is not too bulky in the head. I’ve used this on Barbie and kiddles and other fashion dolls. It does allow you to work with smaller amounts of hair.

Sometimes you may want to wet the hair with cool water so that it is more slippery, but some people find that more awkward. The only time this is absolutely necessary is if you are working with MOHAIR. You will find it much easier to do this method if the mohair is WET. Mohair also uses smaller amounts, you obviously cannot count 20 hairs for mohair so you need to kind of eyeball the amount you want remembering it will “PUFF UP” considerably when it dries

make sure when using water with mohair you use cool or cold water! Also do not agitate the hair, simply pull the starnds apart

The Knot method is also very good for rooting eyelashes. The procedure is the same, but you need a smaller needle and do only one or two threads/strands at a time.

If all else fails you can always buy the hair and glue it into place!

Further re-rooting technique

http://www.fatcat.com/dollraves/arttips/reroot-mauro.html

About the presenter:

Noelle Hunt gathers inspiration from retro kitsch items such as pin-up girls, big-eyed children, pity puppies and tiki bars, she studies the objects of her affection and reshapes them in a modern style, dubbed “nouveau retro.”

About EBSQ Live:

EBSQ Live is a once monthly series of live online DIY demonstrations. If you have an area of expertise and are interested in submitting an idea for conducting a future EBSQ Live! presentation then please contact Melissa Morton at edu@ebsqart.com

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Alot of the time, we talk about finding our target audience, about finding the perfect agent/business manager, or maybe getting those galleries/shops to hold our art. So when we do in fact get a nibble on that line – we’re all going bananas. You start to think everything is going to turn around and success is about to happen.

In the creative business, however, things change, people are fickle, offers pan out or they don’t.

Such is life. Such is the business of the arts.

Whether you are an actor, writer, painter, designer – all of these opportunties can come and go, fleeing with trends, staff changes, or money issues. You can become burnt out, frustrated, confused, disorganized. You may be doing all the work on your own besides creating the art. You do the photography, the design, the web maintenance, accounting, customer service, marketing and promotion, etc.

On your own it will be tough. On  your own you can only go so far . . .

What we have to do is to focus more on the core foundation within our business and career. We usually think money and opportunities first, when we should be thinking : TEAM.

A team is a support group gives you:

- financial support

- business support

- emotional support

- word of mouth support

- connections

A TEAM IS YOUR LIFEFORCE

A team should be able to offer you the guidance you need when you are down or indecisive. A team is there to support you and cheer you on as you take on new things. A team is there to let everyone know about you, to give you emotional support when you need it. They are the puzzle piece to our life!

Without a team, you’re just a one-man band hobbling the streets in desperation for pocket change! Really. Without a support group, you can only go so far. I know!

CONNECT WITH THE RIGHT PEOPLE

And when I say we should connect with other people, I have to stress that you should connect with the RIGHT people. We all can learn and gain the help we need from others in different work.

Connect with more that just Artists.

Connect with people that get your vision and understand your work.

Connect with people who CARE.

So, how do you create your own TEAM?

- Find networks online to discuss and connect with other artists and business people. There are forums, social networks, and web groups like EBSQart.com

- Attend events and meetups. There is alot to learn from others in real life that we can’t get entirely in the interweb. Consider Tweetups (Twitter meetups), art expos, art shows, business networking events. It doesn’t have to be all about art. Look into events that will connect you to people of all careers who could be great friends and in turn be a vital part of your team!

- Ask for references. Know artists who already have a good team? Maybe there are some people who you don’t know personally and would like to get to know more and learn from. Places like LinkedIn are a great way of getting connections with people who can be a powerful part of your network of friends.

Having people in our team that can give us guidance and support are the lifeforce of a creative business. It helps us remain strong when things get us down. A team keeps us moving, evolving, progressing, and advancing. A team is priceless.

——————————-

Natasha Wescoat (natashawescoat.com) is a licensed artist and social media creative utilizing the web to promote and sell her art. Learn more about the artist at her official website or her blog, Natasha’s Art Candy (natashasartcandy.com)

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Spam Martini by Torrie Smiley

During the past 2 weeks I’ve seen my inbox flooded by concerned EBSQ members inquiring about the validity of an emailed solicitation that mentions “ebsqart” as the place where their art was viewed. The way the email was worded, most folks knew right from the start that it was a scam. Others were hopeful to sell something unexpectedly during this bad market.  All of the folks who wrote to us expressed concern for their fellow members.  I pointed them all to EBSQ’s Art Scam Alert forum.  If you’re not a forum regular (and roughly 75% of our membership has never visited the forums, or stops by rarely) you probably didn’t even know we HAD a place where you can review art scams reported by other members as well as report suspicious email you might have received yourself.

Now, this is one of the many sections of the EBSQ forums that is private. Only paid members have access. But we did want to point it out that it’s there. If you’re a paid member and would like assistance accessing the private sections of the EBSQ forums for the first time, please drop us a line. You’re missing a slew of other great Premium resources available to our community!

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Inspire Someone by EBSQ Artist Tara Catalano

There’s no question 2008 has been a tough year for so many EBSQer’s.  Many of us (myself included!) are overdue for a creative jump start. What gets those synapses firing and itching to make something new?  

Looking forward to 2009, we’d love to know what (or whom) inspires you to keep creating art.

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Gift the gift of EBSQ this holiday season!

 Support your favourite artist by gifting them with a membership to EBSQ. Available as a one-time fee for an annual, biennial, or permanent account. (This is also a great option if you’d like to purchase an account for yourself without an automatic recurring payment.)

By popular demand we’ve brought back our half-off permanent account sale. You’ll be able to purchase a permanent account now through December 6, 2008 for just $325. A permanent account means you’ll never have to pay dues again. Ever. That’s a pretty good value for an unlimited upload art portfolio!

Red Ribbon Fairy by Jasmine Becket-Griffith

Red Ribbon by KiniArt

Ribbon of Time by Elizabeth Lisy Figueroa

Today is the 20th Anniversary of World AIDS Day. This year’s theme is Leadership.  Here are some of my favourite resources to help you take intiative.  20 anniversaries is 20 too long.

• World Aids Campaign: Get Involved
• Keep a Child Alive
• ONE.org

Take the Lead. Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise.

-Amie Gillingham