The Denver Philharmonic Orchestra

So on Twitter again I had a follower who started noticing my work and what I was doing and came to me one day with an idea to help The Denver Philharmonic Orchestra . She was looking for a cool, hip design that might bring new interest to their fine organization.

One of the big issues we talked about was the difference between “The Denver Philharmonic Orchestra” and “The Colorado Symphony Orchestra” and how we could separate the two. I also talked to a few people and they had no idea that there were two orchestras here, so we wanted to make “Denver” prominent in the design. They already used a violin in their logos and on their website and since I always wanted to learn to play one, the violin gets shown in the design. The color blue was just something I wanted to do because blue is a crowd pleaser.

I did a few drawings of different ideas and finally one stuck. We went with a design that was more like the wine labels we came up with and I couldn’t be happier. I think the design came out very cool and hip and I hope it brings a little more attention to the orchestra.

You can find them on Facebook and on Twitter and while you're there ask them how you can get your very own t-shirt or tote bag.

Kicking Cancer Out Of Texas

Here it is again folks, the 3rd Annual Kicking Cancer Out Of Texas event. I’m a bit sad that I wont be able to make it out because it was so good last year. But if you're in Texas anywhere near Houston you got to make it out. Its at the Upper Kirby Room at the Upper Kirby District Building 3015 Richmond, Houston, TX on February 4th. Help kick cancer out of Texas and enjoy good food, wine, even better company and the best art Texas has to offer even if mine came from Denver.

Here are pictures of the ones I did, hope you like!

Sponsored by Renton Western Wear

Blogging For Other Blogs

As of right now, only one of the blogs I have written has been posted, but I have been getting a lot of requests to do guest blogs lately, maybe I should ask some people to do some for me? once read on one of those “how-to blog” blogs that doing guest blogs was a good way to bring you more readers and make you look like you knew what you were talking about. I need all the help I can get.

I find it a little harder to write blogs for other blogs than it is to write for my blog. Something about having someone else reading it with the idea that it has to be good enough for their blog messes with my head. Here on my blog I can put up what ever the hell I want to talk about and I never worry about it because its all me and the way I am.

I just hit 100 followers on my blog and I think that’s a good number that lets people know you have something to say and people want to read it. I noticed my way of thinking has changed a bit. At the beginning it was all about getting people over to my blog. In some ways that might always be the same, but at the beginning, that’s all you have. Write something and hope that someone reads it, then you get a few of the other bloggers out there wanting to blog about you or maybe they get you to answer a set of questions they ask everyone, then the place where I’m at, you get asked to write a guest blog. It seems like these people like your blog enough that they feel you can bring something to their own blog. This is a great feeling. You work hard and some one recognizes it and it feels good.

So whats next? More guest blogging? Getting paid to do a blog? Writing for a paper or magazine, wouldn’t that be cool? Who knows what the future of my blogging will hold, but I do know this, I’m not about to stop. I got too many things going on and I need to tell you all about them.

Please share any insight about how far a blog has taken you or what new things you learned because of it or what new people you have met. There’s a whole blogosphere out there and it need to be explored.

Happy New Year

What a great start to this year we have had, its been really busy here at the offices of Art By Nemo! From about October or so its been rolling and its still going strong. Last year I showed some of the first commissions I got and this year is no different.

This first one just might be the craziest one yet. it’s a logo that a fellow twitter user uses on her blog. We had to add on some legs and put her walking a guinea pig:

Then a cute little puppy:

And a cute little girl, I really love how simple and beautiful this one is. Everything about this one is nice the dandelion, the pink shirt, everything:

One more thing, we just got accepted into the Cherry Creek Art Festival which is a pretty big deal here. Since we got here that’s all I heard, you gotta do the CCAF, all the best artists do it, you aint no one till you do the CCAF. I even had a gallery owner say all his artists have been in it; he also told me it was really hard to get in and that I might have to try a few years before I get in. well well well huh……..

So where im I going with this? Just a few days before we found out we spent all our money on framing supplies, so we have been scrambling around to raise the money to pay the booth fee, so if theres a commission that you have been thinking about ordering please get it done now, thank you very much!

I’m in a Gallery, Now What?

And you thought it was hard to get into a gallery - once you get into a gallery the hard part just begins. I hear from artists all the time “how do you get into a gallery?” “how do you know what gallery to approach?” Well folks I have been over this over and over. If you know anything about me and my work and how I work, you should know getting into the gallery isn’t so hard. Now finding a good gallery and keeping it fed is the hard part.

Sometimes as an artist you want to set a few months aside to work on a new body of work to show at a new venue, but if you are in a few galleries chances are you might be selling a few things every now and then and if the gallery is really good you should be getting a call telling you you need to replace the piece or pieces and they might want pieces that are just about the same.

Well if you get into too many galleries, guess what? Yup, you get that call a lot and you need to jump if you want to stay on the good side of your gallery owners, then on top of that you might be pulling in commissions from the gallery, even asked to do special stuff for ads or other things the gallery may get into and you want to do everything your good galleries tell you. Just like the way you expect your gallery to work for you, you need to work for them.

The bigger you get the more and more people are going to want a piece of you and its hard to say yes to everything and keep getting more and more out there, you cant get into new galleries or have shows when all your art is going to those galleries who sell your work. Now theres nothing wrong with that, I myself love receiving checks in the mail from them. But some how you need to stay on top of the demand.

The way I do it, well try to do it, is to work on different things on different days. As of right now I am working on a new hummingbird series done on canvas panels with paint pens, very bright colors, which is a little different than my other stuff, and I try to kick one out every weekend. Then Mondays and Tuesdays sometimes Wednesdays I work on a series for a show I have coming up in March, which I am almost done with. Then Thursdays and Fridays I work on this circle I am drawing, just trying to draw a big circle as more of a “fine art” thing I have been thinking about since I moved here in Denver (blog about that to come). Then after work I sit down and draw “art cards” while I watch TV (art cards are like baseball cards). I do put everything on hold for a commission, which lucky for me comes about every other week or so and they last about 1 to 2 days each and lately they have been coming in pairs, yeah poor me right.

So the harder you work for your galleries the harder they work for you and the easier it seems they can sell your art and make you money. Please I would love to hear from you guys about how hard you work for your galleries and what you're doing to improve your relationships with them.

The Pencil Project

Oh man, has it been a year already? Do you folks remember my pencils? I talk about it more here and here’s the rest of the blogs about it.

Well I only managed to use up 119 which comes out to about 1 every 3 days.

A Drawing A Day In 2010

For 2010 I plan on making and posting an ACEO on Etsy every day, I know I know, a drawing a day has been done and they are all over Etsy and eBay and websites all over the internet and most people have already been doing it for years. I don’t care - I even did it about 5 years ago when it was cool to do it. If any of you remember from way back when on big myspace days, I made about 150 or so and sold them on my myspace blog, them moved them to eBay. I blogged about my findings here and here.

So with all that said here is my new project for the year, this time I feel I could hang in there a little longer because this is my most popular style and I really like drawing them. These ACEO‘s I will be making are just a little something to do for the fun of it. Talking to “art school type people” I have been getting a lot of crap about not growing as an artist because I don’t experiment with my work. Maybe I do spend too much time making art I think I can sell, but I still am making the art I like to make. However I take most stuff to heart and I have been making these little drawings for awhile now in my sketchbook and not really thinking of them as “art” because they aren’t really my circle drawings that I’m known for. Well I am going for it and showing that my art isn’t just my circles, sure some resemble my back and forth pencil lines but in many other shapes, not just circles, others might be circles and spirals but will be drawn in different ways that I have been wanting to try out but was scared to, some might even be used in my art if I like them enough.

So here’s to a year of making an ACEO a day, lets see how I do, oh and tomorrow I will post the results of my pencil a day project!