Month: May 2021

May 2021 Digest – Upcoming Changes to this Patreon + Coming in June

It’s been a busy month behind the scenes!  I’ve continued my journey with Making Art Work, despite our official graduation happening this past Friday.  There was so much great material that I needed time to absorb and I got a little behind!  

I’ve kept a whole list of changes I’d like to make to my art business based on all the revelations I had during this course and I’m STILL adding to it as I wrap up the last 4 of 12 modules I’ve yet to complete.  

I’ve also been caught up in a massive redesign of the Birthstone/Gemstone Goddesses website utilizing all the wonderful info I learned in MAW.  It’s probably the most ambitious I’ve gotten with a website to date and I can’t wait to (hopefully) roll it out with a launch celebration this month!

I can also finally share the GREAT news we were waiting on before.  I’m so hyped to report my husband, Kevin, will be starting a new job soon!  It’s the kind of IT job he’s always wanted where he gets to advise others on networking and cloud services.  We expect a lot of doors to open thanks to this amazing opportunity!

This means things are about to get crazy for us now that we can resume our plans to buy our first home!  We’ve endured mold, gas leaks, and more at our current rental and can’t wait to get into a safe place that we can really call home.  I expect this will mean more comfort that will be conducive to happiness and making art!

Coming in June

Here’s what I have planned to share this month:

  • A new digital coloring page for $5+ Patrons
  • New addition of Metallic Stickers to the Secret Shop for All Patrons
  • Website Launch Celebration! (Hoping I get it all done by end of the month!)
  • New Birthstone Goddess fashion sketches for my Fine Art shop.  All Patrons will get first dibs on them in a post here before they go up in the shop!

Upcoming Changes to this Patreon

As we enter into a new phase of the Birthstone Goddesses where I have less art to share and more invisible work like designing page layouts, writing, etc. for the art book, calendar, etc, I’m considering changing the way this Patreon works.  Patreon has been stressful to maintain of late with everything going on and I always feel bad when I don’t have new art to share.

To keep my stress levels down, I’m considering changing this Patreon to a Tip Jar format temporarily (possibly permanently).  The tiers will still be similar to what I have now, with a base tier and a couple more premium tiers for those who enjoy some of my higher priced perks, like Premium Tutorials, etc.  

The main difference will be that I only add material when I feel I have something interesting to share, which may not be each month.  You’d basically be tipping me to help support my art and for the following perks, (which should all look familiar as it is exactly what you’re getting now, I would only be changing the frequency at which I add to some of them):

  • Access to archives of coloring pages, digital wallpapers, & Premium Tutorials added as and when I’m able to produce them
  • Access to Patron-only posts (Behind the Scenes peeks, Secret Sketchbook posts, etc.) added as and when I’m able to produce them
  • Secret Shop access for all Patrons
  • Ability to vote in polls  
  • Private Patreon Discord server access
  • Eternal discount codes that don’t expire
  • Art launch announcements, including first dibs on collecting new originals

I also hope to add a fancy Merch tier that will be replacing the Art Collector tiers down the line.  These will be tiers where the longer you stay pledged to them, the more cool swag you will accrue as you reach your loyalty milestones!

These plans are all in the works, however, and I will definitely warn you all before things get massively shuffled!  For now, my Patreon will remain the same as it is currently with at least one post per week.  I just wanted to give you all a head’s up for my plans for the near-future!

Digest of May’s Posts

Rewards Added In May

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For now, I’m celebrating learning so much via MAW and can’t wait to share the fruits of my labors with you soon!  Thanks, as ever, for your generosity and encouragement.

♥ Ang

Mermay 2021

MerMay 2021

I have a confession to make.  As a young budding artist, I had a unicorn phase.  But what most people don’t know is that coinciding with and shortly after the unicorn phase, I also had a mermaid phase!  Okay, I won’t say they were phases because I still love these staples of high fantasy.  I couldn’t let May’s MerMay art event go by without drawing at least one mermaid!

For those who haven’t heard of it, MerMay challenges you to draw mermaids inspired by various prompts.  I didn’t have the time to participate this year, so I chose to do one really cool mermaid instead.  For this mermaid, I had everyone play the Let’s Make A Mermaid game over on Twitter!

Commenters on my Twitter suggested a purple and teal-haired frilly tailed mermaid with koi & tan skin with a goth aesthetic. Poor thing is also afraid of the dark & a bit absent-minded!

Our bioluminescent gal, Lucy, here is the result!  I painted Lucy in Procreate on the iPad with a looser style than I’m used to.  I’ve been trying to break my reliance on tedious line art for my own health.  The results were quite fun!

I really need to try this event properly some month!  What fun I could have with mermaids, octomaids, and more.

What’s your favorite kind of Mermaid?  Did you do MerMay this year or enjoy drawing seafolk?  I’d love to peek at your creations!

♥ Ang

Behind the Scenes: Gemstone Goddesses Website Redesign

Behind the Scenes: Redesigning the Gemstone Goddesses Site

I’d normally save this kind of article to be exclusive for my Patrons, but I wanted to share this particular article with everyone to offer a little peek behind the curtains of building a website for a creative project.  

I’ve already written a Patrons-only series of articles where I go deeper into the website re-design process for my Angelic Shades site, should you want a more in-depth glimpse of why I made certain design choices, designing with my audience in mind, etc. with many visual aides that guide you through the process.  

You can check out that series here as long as you’re pledged at any tier here:

The Old Site

Lately, I’ve been re-centering my art business and making sure I have a strong core presence online with my websites and social media before I move into expanding any further.  The pandemic taught me that I’ve let my online presentation go lax and without the promise of consistent income from in-person events anymore, it’s been far past time to step up my online biz game!

While I have Angelic Shades as my main Art Nouveau/Fine Art site, my Gemstone Goddesses project has far outgrown the single page space it had on that site!  I’ve created so much work for this project that it doesn’t fit in a single collection anymore.

I also had a problem.  I started out this adventure creating with the intention of a single Birthstone Goddesses set.  Somewhere along the way, my ambitions evolved and I realized it would be amazing to do more Goddesses dedicated to other gemstones, as well!  Why not a Goddess for sunflowers and Sunstone and the like?  And thus, my project evolved to be more inclusive with the name Gemstone Goddesses.

This meant that my old website that featured the Birthstone Goddesses in a calendar-inspired splash page became outdated:

The New Site

Now, my website needs to be more inclusive of other Goddesses and future-proofed for additional entries into the series.  I took what I liked about the layout from my Angelic Shades redesign and applied it to my old Gemstone Goddesses site.  Here’s the redesigned Angelic Shades site for reference:

Here’s a mockup created in Photoshop of how I want the new Gemstone Goddesses site to look.  The dotted line shows where the viewer will have to scroll, with everything above that line being the most important info I want my viewers to see first.

I’ve included a lot more info for viewers to explore on the new site.  I’m not sure if I need to include the bar which lets folks explore by gemstone color, but I like the idea that if someone doesn’t know the name of the stone, they can search by color to find what they need.  What do you all think?  Would searching by gem color be useful to you?

A side by side comparison of the old vs new Gemstone Goddesses site:

Before I even made this mockup, I did a very rough version on paper first to sort out my thoughts.  This helped me figure out how to minimize the navigation menu and what sub-menus I’d like to include.

Next comes building the new layout in WordPress!  I also want to re-photograph all of the Birthstone Goddesses’ framed pieces, but that may not be doable until after our house move.

I want to do something a little special when I re-launch the site.  Perhaps a give away or a hidden Easter egg?  We’ll see what strikes me when the site becomes closer to being a reality!  For now, it’s nose to the grindstone to create all the interconnected gallery pages that will form the vast majority of this website. 

I hope you enjoyed this peek behind the scenes!  Working on this site may mean less art being shared for a little while since I do everything myself, but thus is the cost of wearing multiple hats for your creative business.

More soon!

❤ Ang