Tag: Branding for Artists

My Share the Work Challenge + New IG Account!

It’s been a time of trial and change for me lately with our personal struggles with COVID and the way it has impacted my art business.  It’s fair to say my life has been upended!  With that in mind, I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching trying to figure out where we go from here.

And that is when Emily Jefford’s Share the Work free mini-class came to me earlier last week.  I had seen Emily’s name recommended around the art community by people I admire (Naomi VanDoren, to name someone with an absolutely stellar and successful art biz).

Emily invited artists to try out her 5 day challenge which explores our understanding of our art and our business readiness, so I decided to take on the challenge!

I welcome you to explore the blog posts I wrote as I absorbed her lectures and did the worksheets for myself:

To summarize, Emily’s challenge surprised me with just how much focus there is on understanding what meaning your art has to others, but ALSO what meaning it has for you, if you’re comfortable with the act of creating it, what value it brings to your life, etc.  This is important because, as I’ve realized with my many bouts with burnout, if the work isn’t fun for you to physically do, how do you hope to make a permanently sustainable business?

I had some big revelations along the way so I recommend you folks read the blog posts for the details!  May they be useful for others who might be wandering the same road of creative entrepreneurship that I am.

I also got to create a brand mood board, which is something I had never thought to do.  It felt great to define a vision for my Birthstone Goddesses with more intention!

(I also created a blank template of this board you’re free to use.  Enjoy!)

My New Instagram Account

The very last day of Emily’s challenge asked me to do a BOLD thing and my choice was to create an all-new Instagram account for my Fine Art endeavors!  It was scary, but it feels so very good to finally do this.  Over time, my main account has become more about my personal characters, comic experiments, etc.  It’s been more challenging to elevate my fine art pieces when I’m also sharing a silly comic about my D&D party’s latest misadventure or fan art memes on the same account!

So please welcome @AngelicShadesArt which will now be the exclusive home for my Birthstone Goddesses and other gallery-minded projects!  I’d be so grateful if you gave it a Follow and helped give it some love.

I may occasionally double-post to my main account, @AngelaSasserArt, when I feel there’s common interest, but otherwise, @AngelaSasserArt is going to be all about my original characters, storyworlds, ttrpg adventures, and other illustration and geekery!

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I hope my musings prove useful to you guys!  Did you take the Share the Work Challenge too?  Did you have any revelations along the way?  

I’m looking forward to learning more from Emily as I progress into her Making Art Work full time course for artists in March!  Till then, I’m going to take the knowledge I learned from Share the Work and start working towards an even more bold and beautiful adventure for my Birthstone Goddesses!

❤ Ang

Share the Work Challenge Day 3 – Turn Your Vision Into Visuals

In the previous days of the Share the Work challenge, I’ve been diving deep trying to think about what my Birthstone Goddesses mean to me and to the people who might collect them.  Day 3’s goal was to finally turn all of my musings into a cohesive visual! 

Is My Art Worth Selling?

But first, Emily gives you some tips for evaluating whether or not you’re ready to sell your work in the first place.  The biggest sticking points here were did I actually enjoy creating the work?  Could I sit alone with it in a room and be comfortable with it?  I think the intention of these questions is to gauge your excitement and confidence for your work because if you have these things for the art you create, it will come across in your energy as a seller.

I did have some minor revelations here that I actually do not like half of my work from the main set, with the exception of Lady of November, Lady of March, Lady of February, Lady of May, Lady of June, and Lady of September.  I usually do not hang my own art in the house because it triggers my constant inner critic, but Lady of November is the first painting of my own that I chose to hang up!

Most of these pieces were also not necessarily enjoyable to create, either.  The tedious transfer process and inking really hurt my hands after the hours put in and watercolor terrifies me with its threat of ruining hours of inking each time. 

To me, this indicates that my decision to change media to something more loose for the last phase of the series is a good move!  I don’t think the original paintings are unsellable, but they are harder for me to connect to as the artist because of the flaws I see in their anatomy, unrefined concepts, etc.  My gals come as a set that I do not intend to redo, however, so I will have to learn to love them all!

Visualizing My Brand

Before now, I had already decided while building the website for this body of work that I would have a warm neutral theme with a teal accent, which you can see in action on the website dedicated to this series.  I had also created a logo halfway through development.  Despite having these basics sorted out, I’ve never done something as intentional as create a brand mood board.

Beware, because creating a brand mood board was really addictive and fun to do!  It helped me make more purposeful connections between the feel of vintage art with my modern new age aesthetic.  My Birthstone Goddesses were especially tricky to plan around because their color palettes are all over the place to match their respective birthstones and birth flowers! 

A neutral scheme with a bright accent and clean font with decorative headers seems to be a good choice so that my detailed colorful art could shine brightest.

But I’ve also been staring at this board WAY too long, so let me know if you think my mood board just looks like color vomit!

Resources

  • UX Collective – A handy article breaking down the basics of the parts of a brand mood board, what info to include, etc.
  • Canva’s Brand Board Advice – A useful article on building a brand, plus templates you can use with Canva’s free cloud-based design functionality.
  • My Brand Mood Board Template – I decided to make my own template in Photoshop.  Feel free to use this template for your own mood boards!  No credit required, but I won’t turn down a thanks via pay what you want on Gumroad, tipping me via my ko-fi, or pitching in to my Patreon.