Take advantage of my stupidity!

art prints for sale

I have in front of me a small pile of prints. These are gorgeous prints, which I made for sale at conventions and the like. They have been kept in a nice flat file, ever since I started using a print-on-demand service. I stopped selling prints direct, and I sort of forgot about this little pile of treasures…until now.

all gone, you done missed out

I take that back, there’s FIVE left. thirty for a pair, sixty for all five. the largest is 12×16″, the smallest is 9×12″.

to buy them- click here to buy two, click here to buy all five.

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YOU TELL ME.

You guys have spoken loud and clear. 

You like my prints on redbubble (Personally, I agree) 66.67% of you
And a few of you like fineartamerica. 13.33%
The rest said, Other…

You like my originals to be sold here, with a paypal button. 87% of you!
7% said other, 6% said email only.

So, starting over the next month, I will be transitioning my print sales exclusively to redbubble (with only still life and landscapes being available at FAA as well) and adding paypal buttons to all my originals here on the site.
This is going to be a massive pain in the ass, and I have my horror coloring book to work on as well- so it may take me some time. Please be patient with the transition, and buy stuff in the meantime! Email me if you’re not sure where something went, or if there’s a specific piece you are after, for now. And thank you for telling me what you thought!

 

Jamie Lee Hartley, wiry rebel of paint and noise.

1148950_10151786771977579_1292412884_n1. Most artists have a favorite medium, what is yours? If you work in multiple media, which one is the most enjoyable for you? 

In the music part of my life, I like the bass as a favorite medium. I like to play it loud and proud, and with a lot of effects. I carry that same motto over when it comes to painting. I’ve never taken classes on either, and so I just kind of make it up as I go along. In painting, I like using acrylics the most, but I use oils, water colors, melted crayons, and just about any fucking thing I can find that will give me the desired effect, and hue I’m searching for.

2. Do you have any secret shortcuts? I mean, do you use odd tools, techniques, or anything else that isn’t strictly status-quo for your medium? How did you figure out that it worked?

I don’t really know of any type of shortcuts to take in painting, although I did recently discover the using pencil to sketch and idea, that I plan to paint in a lighter color, also doubles as a nice shading effect if you paint over the pencil lines inside an hour.

3. You’ve sold work before? What was the first thing someone bought from you, that you made? How did it feel to sell that piece? Are there pieces you keep hidden away, or keep for yourself, and why?

I can’t remember the first painting I sold, although I’m sure by now I’d think it was horrible. Having anyone interested in something you do as an art form is always a good feeling, so when they want to give you money for it, I say fuck yeah. I need the beer money anyway. I try not to keep anything I do strictly for me, but at the same time I don’t paint pictures solely for the purpose of selling them for money.

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some things from around the studio.

warning, many photos.

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Where my art truly lives.

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With you! It’s only a shadow of itself until it gets to you, and you put it where it belongs- in your home, on your skin. Then it’s alive.

These are images sent to me by clients and buyers of my work, of my art in their space, in their world.

1012022_697694660275915_927277128_nWhen I think of all the people who have bought my work, or who I have tattooed over the years, I start wondering how they are doing. I also wonder if they still appreciate and enjoy the work I did for them, if it still has a place in their life. Recently I asked for clients to send me images of work I had done for them, and these are some of the responses to that question.

I’ve included images from people I tattooed up to 16-17 years ago, art I sold over twenty years ago, and recent things people have bought or gotten done.
If I’ve tattooed YOU, or you own some of my art, post a picture of yourself! Or of your wall where you hung it. Comments are open!

for Paul Imagine, whose work you should buy, once he begins to sell it.

My friend Paul is an incredible artist. He makes amazing stuff, and yet he’s broke…he has no way to sell stuff online, and like me, he doesn’t like paying sites to showcase his work.

So I’m writing this just for him.

The first thing you need to do is sign up for a blogger page. Mine is here: http://amarthart.blogspot.com/. Just go to blogspot.com, and sign in with a gmail or facebook address or whatever you have. There’s your basic site. Blogspot/blogger is the same site. They allow direct sales of your work. They let you use paypal buttons to do that with no code restrictions. They’re also very easy to set up. If you can fill out a facebook page, you can set up a blogger site.
They have a section too where you can buy your own domain name, or you can just use their subdomain, and have it be your shop site, whatever floats your berts.

EPSON MFP imageNow, make a post. Put up a picture of what you want to sell- the art you have. In my case, I have the original of Bear.

mmmmm

Now, head on over to paypal. Sign in, and look up top. Click on “merchant services”.

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A secret formula every artist should know

 

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ignore the text on it-
it’s about 80% high saturation and medium value,
about 20% black or white (low chroma, high and low value)
I’m not saying it’s a masterpiece but it works for this as an example.

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

This rule is not exact- it could be 70/30 or 90/10. But the basic meaning- that a large majority of effects stem from a small minority of causes, holds true in every field- including art and tattooing.

In making a picture, you can apply this rule at every stage of the process. 20% of the canvas will attract 80% of the attention, so finding your focal point and putting your best work right there is a good idea. Leaving the other 80% a bit more loose can help with this. Most people look at faces or figures first in any piece of art-so spending more time on these than on the wall behind them is best. In a landscape, the feature of interest should get most of your working time. If you do that part right, and the rest has some harmony with it, you’re golden. Abstract art is this principle, standing alone.

I have been told to make my values work this way too. 80% of the piece should have similar values, with 20% having either high brightness or low dark, whichever is stronger against the rest. So a daytime snow scene might be in high key throughout, but then has shadows or rocks which are very dark against it, and which account for about 20% of the scene. You could do this with color, or a particular level of detail or contrast, too.

You probably make 80% of your paintings and drawings, with only 20% of the colors you have, with 20% of the brushes you use.

Then there’s the boring marketing part, too.

  • 80% of a company’s profits come from 20% of its customers
  • 80% of a company’s complaints come from 20% of its customers
  • 80% of a company’s sales come from 20% of its products

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Things your tattoo artist doesn’t tell you. (Part Two)
hourglass and candle tattoo

hourglass and burnt candle. two things.

Part one is here.

You can only get one tattoo at a time. I can only do one tattoo at a time. I know you have ten things you want to put into a tattoo- but that’s ten tattoos. And we can only do one thing at a time. Each important concept should have its own singular tattoo.

Most of  the time, you can pick two things. One object and one word or phrase. Two objects. And a color or mood for the background. That’s the limit, pretty much, for coherent, cohesive art on the skin. How big or small the tattoo is doesn’t really matter too much, with this. Good tattoos have flow, and are good to look at. Adding too much subject matter to any one space usually ends up terrible.

You have six siblings and you want to get a tattoo that represents ALL of them. So you think of six tattoos, and then ask us to somehow make that into one tattoo.

NO.

You can only get one tattoo at a time! If you need a tattoo for each of your siblings, I am sorry but you will either need to pick one thing that represents all of them, or get six tattoos.

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Sunday afternoon.

image

I’ll be back tomorrow morning! Got some scanning, and painting to do. Making progress on this one.

Stop, Thief! How to keep your art safe online

CAM02557Short answer? Pretty safe, with some exceptions.

It also depends what you call “theft”. For this essay, I consider theft to mean several things.

  • saving the image file and using it on another site without attribution or source info
  • printing out a work rather than buying a print of it from the artist
  • using the art for a commercial purpose without permission (album covers, crafts for sale, shirts, ipod cases, etc), by tracing and copying the art and selling the copy

I’ll take these point-by-point.

First of all, I don’t consider someone linking to your work theft in ANY way. People who like your work are going to want to share it with other people, and this is good! You post your work online so others can see it. Someone linking to your site is a good thing. Someone sharing your work is good.

However, they may save the actual image file and repost it to their own site or page, giving you no link back, no credit for your work. And that is theft, in a way. To avoid this, you can watermark all your images.

A watermark is great, but it puts a lot of people off, if it takes up large areas of the image or interferes with the image content.

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springmorning

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Unobtrusive but inside the image in a way that’s difficult to crop out.

There’s the first issue dealt with, mostly. You can also use google image search once in a while, to check and see who’s using your images. If you’ve watermarked them well, those uses will lead back to your site anyway. If the people using them are ethical, they’ll also give you credit and link back to your work.

setting up. well, actually, working.

The second problem- people printing out your work instead of buying it. The easiest solution here is to never upload print-resolution images online. This is simple enough until you want to use a print-on-demand service to sell prints or shirts, that requires your upload of large files. I use redbubble for this- because they keep the large-format file hidden from the net, and only show a smaller version of it to customers. Basically, don’t post large files online for public view. Only post images that are too small to print out.

The biggest problem, the worst, is people stealing your work and using it by tracing, or copying it, then printing it onto things they’ll sell. It happens pretty often, and it’s really upsetting. The only real solution for this is again, only post small images, too small to print. You can also be vigilant and search google images for your work, but that takes a lot of time away from making stuff.

I still have not solved this problem, if you have suggestions, leave me a comment! I would love to know how other people handle this.

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