Eau de Salon - just being silly. Or shall I say, “Oh, de Salon!” Well, anyway, I went to my monthly Art-Marketing Salon last night - the brainchild of art-marketing guru Alyson B. Stanfield. It’s a group of 7 of us (4 ladies, 3 gents), and we gab and throw around ideas and discuss marketing plans and our work. We are all at different stages in our careers and have entirely different art! It’s very stimulating.

We had the bonus last night of getting our copies of Alyson’s new book, I’d Rather Be in the Studio! The Artist’s No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion, which had just arrived in the mail. I had mentioned the book to everyone last month and found that I was the only one who’d already seen it. (I got my copy fresh from the library when they first arrived!)

My apologies to Alyson, though. I had thought, “I’ve probably already heard most of what she has to say and lord knows I don’t need another book that I never use, so I’ll just get it from the library before buying it.” Well, like I told the gang last month when they were wondering whether to buy it, “Yes, it’s worth buying!” I told them my story, and about how I learned important new things in every section I read. The two things I need most are systems (for handling my stuff) and routines. Alyson’s book has those things covered, and then some.

So, now we’ll be going through the book as a group, kind of like a book club. Should be fun!

This will be my “Paint the Color Green” entry. I have things to say about the Earth-safety type green, but that will be on a later post. For now, I want to talk about the difficulty/fear, that many people have of painting the color green. I admit, I was really bad at it when I first started in watercolors. I had no clue what to do, and it was always a hit or miss (usually miss) proposition. Either I headed straight for my Sap Green or my Viridian. Sap Green was usually pretty good, but the Viridian was almost always disastrous.

What finally helped me was - well, actually, there were two things. One, I found watercolor artist Jeanne Dobie’s fabulous book Making Color Sing.  On page 25 she had a much-needed chart for mixing greens. Two, I decided to make an exercise of painting a “green” painting. I looked out our sunroom windows and painted all the greens I saw. To this day, I still call this my “green painting.”

That being said, it wasn’t until I discovered Daniel Smith’s Quinachrodone Gold (I’ll call it QG) that I finally found true happiness. You cannot go wrong mixing greens once you have this color. Here’s a quote from Danial Smith’s website:

Everyone’s favorite, Quinacridone Gold replaces Raw Sienna and adds versatility with its glazing and mixing capabilities. It is an excellent low-staining golden yellow pigment that can enhance any mixture.

Try glazing an old “failure” with Quinacridone Gold to begin a rescue operation.

Highly durable and extremely transparent, all the Quinacridone colors excel in vivid clarity and intensity.

It can be mixed with any of the blues with gorgeous results, resembling real-life greens. But it really shines when added to greens, those greens that were never quite right on their own. Mixed with Veridian, that difficult color, it finally looks realistic. My favorite blue, Phthalo Blue, when mixed with QG, becomes a vivid, WOW green!

A friend told me a couple of years ago that there is a shortage of Quin Gold now, because of those new metallic orange-y colored cars that are so popular. I think they have caught up with the demand now. Give it a try and let me know how you like it.

After 3 weeks of having my life on hold, with furniture out of place and ladders all over the house, our drywall repairs are finally finished! The guy we hired could come only two days a week, which is why it took so long. And we had to leave the furniture pushed out of the way the whole time, because when he worked he covered all the areas at once. I was cast out of my studio so that he could work on the ceiling.

Just when I’m trying to get some work done. What a mess!

You see, my studio used to be my son’s bedroom. One morning, many years ago, Jeremy came upstairs and said, “Guys there’s a big bulge in my ceiling!” That’s how we learned that there was a leak in our spa, which was above in our sunroom. His ceiling paint was the thumb in the dam and held back the flow.

Today being Cinco de Mayo, our drywall guy, Tom, told me the story of how he almost “bought the big one” on a Cinco de Mayo several years ago, due to a reaction to meds. Yikes. He said that he hates that day.

Well that reminded me of my son Jeremy and how he put a knife through his hand last year on Cinco de Mayo, wrestling with an avocado. I’ve decided that I don’t like that day either…

I went downtown to paint today in the middle of a blizzard - or something resembling one. There were already 4 inches of the white stuff on the ground when my friend Jeff called to say, “Saddle up!” He had called a few minutes earlier to ask if I was going to paint today. I told him I was planning to, but when I came out of the shower it was snowing like crazy. He said he’d check to see if anyone else was coming.

Since I was sure that no one was crazy enough to be driving downtown on a day like this, I settled in with a DVD by Richard Schmid, called “The Captain’s Portrait.” I had the remote in one hand, ready to select from the menu, when the phone rang. It was Jeff, saying that Cindy from the mountains was already on her way and that the rest of the gang was already there. No way!

Well, I figured that if Cindy was crazy enough to come in from the mountains, I wasn’t going to be a wuss. I grabbed my lunch and my coat (aka “saddled up”) and headed out the door. As soon as the garage door opened I thought I’d made a big mistake. It was snowing like crazy! Here I was leaving my cozy home and my sweet little doggy and my DVD…but, hey, it was an adventure and a very arty thing to do.

The whole way down the mountain I kept thinking, “This is the stupidest thing I have ever done…” When I pulled in to the parking lot at the studio, Cindy was just pulling up, too. I went over to say hi and she got out and said, “I think this is the stupidest thing I have ever done.” Oh well, we had a fun day painting and a nice lunch together.

I left early and stopped to get my snow tires taken off on the way home. I figured, “Who would be stupid enough to be taking off their snow tires in the middle of the blizzard?!” Good call. I was the only one there and didn’t have to wait at all. I just might be the only person in Denver who had winter tires on that morning and summer tires on in time for the spring weather the next day. Onward and upward.

Well, I did it. I bought back my donation to the art auction. They were going to let it go to someone for $39!!!!! For that amount, I will reuse the frame (which was about $300 wholesale!) for something else.

With regard to the canvas, first I’ll try saving the rattlesnake mug and do something cool around it, painting over the sunflowers. They were a little too quaint and cutesy. But if that doesn’t work,  I’ll paint over the whole thing. It’s not precious to me.

And, I’ve learned my lesson about donating. Never again will I donate something that I’m not proud to have my name on…

A friend was commenting recently that she desperately needed a new set of paint brushes. She was dreading the huge cost. I told her that I have all new brushes and it didn’t cost me much at all. Here’s my trick:

Look in the Sunday paper for the crafts-store ads - Hobby Lobby, Michaels, etc. At least here in the Denver area, these places have a 40% off coupon for one regularly priced item every week. I take my coupon to the store and buy the most expensive brush that I need. The next week I do the same thing, and so on and so on. Before long, I have a brand-new set of brushes for very little money!

Yesterday’s paper here in Denver had a 50% off coupon for Michael’s.  Woohoo! I might buy a big canvas this time.

After a few last tweaks here and there, my website is finally ready for the big launch! Thanks to Pat Velte for all the hand holding. She was fabulous.

Now, all I have to do is dust off my e-mail mailing list, give it a few tweaks, and send out an announcement. I know, I know, “You knew this day was coming. Why didn’t you already have that done?” Simple answer, I’m better at crisis management. (That’s a nice way of saying I’m disorganized.)

But also, I’ve been conjuring the details of the announcement in my head for weeks and am finally able to deliver on my plan.

Sure enough, no one bought my donated, original oil painting during the first weekend of the Rocky Mountain PBS Art Auction. It will have another go this weekend, and they will assign a lower starting bid. Unfortunately, they will have a ridiculously low starting bid this time, and the people who buy it will not really be looking for art. They will just stumble upon it. And they’ll get my painting for $35, or some ridiculous amount! And they’ll assume it’s a cheap painting. That’s painful.

So, for next year, I have some thinking to do. For sure, I will list a lower “value” for the painting, based on what I think is a reasonable starting bid. That’s always tough for me, because I don’t want people to stop bidding too soon, thinking that it’s just a silly piece of art. Sorry, but if they see a higher value they will look at it differently.

But beyond that, I need to get serious about what I donate. Up until now, I have been clearing out inventory. I usually donate framed prints that I don’t want to store anymore. Or framed originals that aren’t gallery quality. I figure I’m anonymous, so it doesn’t really matter what I donate. Wrong! It has my name on it! It’s being viewed worldwide - with my name on it!

I guess next year I’d better donate only things I’m proud to have my name on…

I don’t know about you, but I don’t need someone telling me to take care of the Earth on a special day. This year, like every year, I won’t be doing anything differently on Earth Day. I will continue to conserve water (our well produces only 1/70 of a gallon per minute, so that’s a no-brainer) by using very little of it and keeping what I do use from going down the drain - that water will be used on my outside plants. I will still recycle all of our waste materials - why wouldn’t I, it’s easy? I will still plant trees and other plants every year - it’s human nature to want to be surrounded by living things. I will continue to drive as little as possible because, unfortunately, my Toyota ArtMobile (okay, it’s really a Previa) is not as economical as a Prius. I will continue to use the heat from the sun to heat my house. That’s why we built a passive solar home 24 years ago and haven’t spent a penny on heating bills in that time.

I look forward to the new air cars, which are in use now in France and should be in the U.S. by the end of 2008. I want one! And I look forward to the new, efficient and inexpensive solar panels that are on the horizon and which are discussed in Ray Kurzweil ’s book The Singularity is Near.

So, as they say, every day is Earth Day. Just ask my daffodils.

My daffodils finally thought it was safe to burst into bloom yesterday. Unfortunately for them, the snow decided to celebrate their arrival today.

I was just finalizing visions for a new painting (I figured I’d call it “Feeling Yellow”, a take-off on my Feeling Purple painting) in honor of my favorite spring flowers, daffodils. I might have to wait until the weekend for my models to recuperate before I can sketch up some ideas.