A Winter's tale - another commission finished

Today has reminded me why I love painting and why this hobby of mine has stayed with me when so many others have gone. No, it's not because it earns me money! The smile on the clients face when he saw his painting for himself for the first time. He was rather pleased to say the least.

One happy client with his commissioned artwork by Roy P Awbery

A Winter's Tale by Roy P Awbery - close up

This painting was very challenging but I got a great deal of satisfaction from finally getting this one right. The original plan was just to have a night snow scene but, as the painting developed, the client asked for the addition of wolves and an elk.

I managed to capture a sense of movement with the animals which was not easy. I'd not tried to do it before but it seems to have worked.

I'm seriously pleased how well this one turned out and now understand why my followers were not too happy with the very simple Jumble Animals. Lesson learned!

Free Paintings - Giving my Art Away

Free Paintings? Really?

No, I really am going to give some of my original and most recent paintings away for free. Why? Well, for a couple of reasons really. The first is that not everyone can afford to own a piece of original artwork or perhaps has even considered wanting to own something. I think art should be easily accessible and not confined to those who are likely to frequent expensive and oftentimes intimidating galleries. Secondly, as a relatively new artist one of the key routes to selling regularly and consistently is to be known. But, without gallery representation how can one become known? There are thousands of artists out there and every one of us needs something that allows us to stand out from the crowd - a unique selling point.

Okay, so you may well buy in to my first point but are now wondering how can the second one possibly work. After all, I’ve just said that artists need to sell. Well, I’ve been trying all the advice on how to manage social media and this has been reasonably successful but I am by no means a viral internet sensation! My efforts on Pinterest have been the most productive having turned a monthly audience of zero into over 30k in just a couple of months and its still rising. Pinterest and Etsy both drive the majority of my non-commissioned sales. But commissions are where the real earnings come from but, as I said before, an artist needs to be known. So how does giving my art away for free do that then?

There must be a catch, right?

There really is no catch. My plan is quite simple. Give some paintings away for free to complete strangers in the hope that they will, in return, visit my website and shop and maybe buy something else in the future. But, more importantly, I’m also going to be asking them to post their find on their own social media so that I get a wider audience potential and certainly an audience that I would otherwise not have had access to.

Here’s how it will work in practice. First, I will produce a series of small (10 x 8 inch canvas) acrylic paintings, mostly abstract in nature. I will sign and date each one but will also add information with the painting that will include my website, social media links and my shop. I will also include a leaflet explaining why I’m giving the painting away and ask for the new owner to highlight their find on their own social media and tag me in. That’s all the payment I need.

Now, in my day job I get to travel a lot, both in the UK and abroad. So, my plan is to deposit a painting in a public location in every new town or city that I visit. The painting will be packaged up with a note on the front explaining that free artwork is inside and I will include a picture of the piece so that people can decide if they want it or not. The package will also have contact details for me so that I don’t end up on the news having caused a security scare! I will also check with the owners/managers of the locations I intend to leave the painting to also prevent any undue concerns.

Where will the free paintings be?

My first trips out will be before the end of January to my home town of Reading and then Newbury in the UK and in early February I will be visiting Vienna, Austria where the third painting will be deposited. In March I will be in Ottawa, Canada so these are going to get quite a global coverage! I’ll keep doing this for a while and see what the response is like and will return to the blog to let you know.

What paintings will be given away?

Each painting that I create for this free giveaway will be posted here in the Free Artwork section of this website.

What do you think? Commercial suicide? Great idea? Do let me know.

How I paint art that sells

I’ve been painting in water colour and acrylic for just one year but have been successfully selling my paintings for at least half of that time. So, how do I do it? There are plenty of websites that tell you how to advertise and promote your work across the social media platforms but these don’t tell you what you need to do with your art to make it appealing in the first place. Unless your paintings are the sort that people want to see every day in their homes they are never going to sell.

My aim when I started painting was to explore and experiment with as many different techniques and subjects as possible and wasn’t even thinking about selling my work. Indeed, it didn’t cross my mind that anyone would even be remotely interested in my work and my early paintings were certainly not of good enough quality to sell.

However, as I continued painting I was also posting my efforts across social media including Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook and even LinkedIn (although I think I was rather abusing that particular platform!) and also telling my friends and colleagues about my work. It turned out that they in turn were telling others. So, it was possibly inevitable that someone might see something they liked and eventually they did. And then so did someone else! It then snowballed from there with requests for commissions.

The commissions have been interesting because none of them were based on subjects that I had previously painted so I saw them as personal challenges. The point is that all of my paintings span a diverse range of subjects and that means I have a range of artwork that could appeal to an equally diverse range of tastes. I also knew that I didn’t want to specialise in just one genre such as landscapes or abstract. I wanted to be free to paint what I like and when I like and in a variety of sizes. The result is that I have a wide range of paintings that I advertise on my website and on Etsy.

Now, I have to be honest and confess that although I do paint a wide range of subjects I have also recently moved into creating a series. The reason behind this is twofold. The first is that if my paintings are successfully selling then it makes sense to make more. The second reason is do with consistency; if I paint two cityscapes months apart they are highly likely to look and feel totally different which could be confusing to collectors. So, I now paint the same types of paintings as a single series so that each painting will have something of a similar style and then be recognisable as my work.

So, I will continue pr producing a range of different paintings and this year my plan is to exhibit my art at as many shows as p possible and then get to test my theory further.

How to become an artist - 5 steps to becoming an artist and starting an art career

How to become an artist

5 steps to becoming an artist and starting an art career - learn to sell paintings and artwork

I first picked up a paintbrush on 27th December 2018 having never painted before. I’d never had lessons or any form of tuition or help but I did have a brand new, unused, pan of water colours and some water colour paper. My adventures in art all started when, bored after the excitement of Christmas, I was looking for something to do. Now, I have many hobbies and am forever dabbling in different ones ranging from astronomy, photography, electronics, Raspberry Pi programming…the list goes on and on. So how does that get me to selling paintings and calling myself an artist? Read on my friend, read on.

To alleviate my boredom I opened the water colour set that my wife had bought for me for Christmas two years previous and decided to have a go at painting something. The result was rubbish! Not to be beaten I decided to have another go the following day. It was still rubbish but better than the previous day. And so was the case for the 3rd day. Somewhat frustrated that I wasn’t painting like Van Gogh or Michael Angelo I set myself a personal challenge - to paint something, anything, every single day for 30 days. This was intended to be an experiment to see how my work and ability progressed. So, my first tip on how to become an artist and sell paintings: paint every day, even if it’s small and just for a few minutes, but paint something. Anything.

As I set about painting each day I also spent a lot of time reading articles online on painting techniques and also looked for books on the subject. To augment what I learnt online and in books I also watched many YouTube videos that showed different techniques for both water colour and acrylic. I soon learned what different brushes were for and what interesting effects one could achieve by using unusual tools such as scrunched up foil and ripped sponges and tissue paper. Painting doesn’t have to be with a brush and certainly not just one! So, my second tip to learn how to become an artist: soak up as much information as you can about painting methods and techniques and then put these into practice each day you paint.

Now, a funny thing happens when one does something for 30 days straight, or at least it does to me. The activity becomes a habit, or an addiction depending on how one views it. Either way, I found that after 30 days I felt compelled to paint something every evening. Of course, as I progressed my paintings became more complex and also larger. This meant that I was no longer completing a new and different painting every day but I was still painting every day. The other thing that I noticed was that I didn’t settle on a single genre and actually enjoyed dancing from one subject matter to another. One day it was flowers, then landscapes, then starry skies, then cityscapes and even abstract. My 3rd tip on how to become an artist and sell paintings and artwork: don’t settle on a single genre - have fun by exploring the possibilities of painting anything and everything.

Of course, none of this actually meant that I’d become an artist and I probably still identified more with my day job as research scientist. However, this changed about 6 months into my painting. Yes, by the summer of 2019 I was still painting just about every day. So what changed? Put simply, I posted everything I did on Facebook and Instagram and showed people, mainly friends, what I was up to. People seemed to enjoy seeing the process of producing my paintings and they could also see for themselves how my work was developing. Indeed, some even challenged me to produce specific types of painting, which I loved. After a while I started to get offers to purchase a few of my paintings, which was quite a humbling surprise. But it didn’t stop there. Some people told others about my work and I started to receive requests for specific work to be painted - my first commissions. These quickly grew until my most recent commission which was a 5 feet wide mountain scene which I sold for £800 to a very happy client. I also found that my earlier work also began to sell and I can now honestly claim to have people collecting my art. Some of my paintings have now reached as far afield as Canada and the US! Tip number 4 on how to become an artist and sell your artwork: tell people what you’re doing and show them what you’re up to and encourage them to share.

My final tip on how to become an artist is really quite obvious. You have to put yourself out there! I did my first craft show recently and was not expecting to sell anything but sold 4 paintings one of which needed a credit card reader to complete the transaction! I was so glad I purchased a Square reader! The experience was addictive and great fun and I am now looking to sign up to as many shows throughout the coming year as I possibly can.

Since starting out as an artist I have now sold over 100 paintings, in oils, acrylic and watercolour and completed many paid commissions. Do I self-identify as a research scientist? No, I’m an artist and I’m loving it!

My first painting in December 2018!

A recent commission!