Without the state

Ocean Park - paintings by Richard Diebenkorn

I've been looking at the Ocean Park series of paintings and prints by Richard Diebenkorn (via this book, but also here.) There is something about them that keeps drawing me back. They are deceptively simple with subdued colours, apparently just variations on geometric subdivisions of a rectangle. This makes them seem akin to Mondrian, but they have much more depth to them. They clearly owe much to Klee, but also to de Kooning, at least in terms of colour values. In the end though they are themselves and stand on their own merits.

When I was at school, studying maths we were always told to 'show your workings' and in many ways that's what is going on with the Ocean Park paintings. Variations, second thoughts have been painted over, but their ghosts remain.

I think this is part of their appeal to me, since I've always been intrigued by the idea of palimpsest, even before I became an artist. Both the urban and rural landscapes of Britain can be viewed as archaeological palimpsests. Take the time to look around any British town or city you will find signs of previous activities. The street pattern in many Northern industrial towns can often be mapped against ancient field boundaries, while alignments going back into pre-history may still be seen. (http://locateit.leeds.gov.uk/CharacterOfLeeds/UrbanHistory.aspx?p=3) Beneath the streets archaeological investigation and civil engineering projects alike reveal layer after layer of activity. (http://www.crossrail.co.uk/sustainability/archaeology). The same applies in the wider landscape. Anyone familiar with Britain, will read into these paintings the pattern of fields, woods and lakes which almost define the English landscape. That landscape is almost entirely man made, even in the supposed wild areas like Dartmoor or the Scottish Highlands and has developed out of complex and cumulative processes of human intervention.

So just as imperfections and variations disturb the surface of the modern world, revealing its past to those who look, so the Ocean Park paintings reflect the process of their creation, revealing the changes made and to my mind, humanising their geometrical abstraction.

I'll come back to this another time with images from prints inspired to a degree by Klee and Diebenkorn, and also to some new work I'm planning which will attempt to marry the geometry of this work to another interest of mine, the rock carvings and standing stones of the Neolithic era. Here's some tasters with a couple of trail proofs.

For sale on Etsy

I'm an artist printmaker, I took this up on retirement (for the second time) but even before then I was always taking photographs and have done so for over 50 years now. The visual arts have always been important to me and I've always been fascinated by ephemera and by things like old maps, travel posters and graphic design generally.

I have two shops on Etsy, one selling my own work, the other selling vintage graphics in reproduction. This post is about the second, which you can find on Etsy as Panchromatica Designs (why Panchromatica? - that's a long story, some of which is told in very early posts on this blog.)

A chance discovery of some large digital scans of pulp magazines led me to set up on Etsy selling copies of these and some floral prints.Since then the range of images I sell has grown to include advertisements, architectural drawings, maps and plans, vintage photography, botanical prints, Golden Age comics and pulp magazines and a host of other subjects. All the images I sell are public domain or otherwise out of copyright. Having the shop gives me the excuse to go digging around in digital archives and to browse antique and vintage stores in search of new and exciting things that I can then share with my customers.

The shop on Etsy is arranged by sections – think of them as departments in a store. Each section is based around particular content, so for example if you want motoring prints, the motoring section is the place to look. If instead of the print subject you want to look for a particular medium such as photography, engravings, woodblock prints etc, these are best found by doing a shop search. I'm adding cross links to other similar items but this will take some time as listings fall to be renewed when I take the opportunity to revise and update them..

Most of the images I sell are ready mounted (sometimes called matting) to fit standard frame sizes. This makes it easier for you to frame as you choose using ready made frames, while still allowing you the option of a custom frame. The standard sizes are given in inches, since most sales so far are to the US or UK. However if you want a mount to fit a standard metric frame I'm happy to oblige for no extra cost. I can also provide mounts to non-standard sizes on request. All my mounts are in antique white. I have found this complements most images. Standardising materials and frame sizes helps me keep costs down and means you get a great image at an affordable price. If you really want a different colour, let me know before ordering and I will give you a quote and a revised delivery date.

All materials used in matting are high-quality and to the same standard as those I use for my own original art work available from my other shop. All mounted prints include a backing piece in the same card as the mount and are packed in a protective cello bag and shipped in securely packed reinforced packaging.

Unmounted prints on heavy art paper are sent flat in similar packaging for those made on heavyweight art paper. Lighter weight prints my be rolled in artist tissue and sent in a mailing tube.

In addition to the selling of these reproduction prints here, I also go to specialist fairs and conventions where I can. If you have a specialist interest and you think I might be interested in a stall at one of your events, please get in touch.

I also offer a service to small businesses, guest houses and hotels, restaurants etc, in fact any business looking to decorate their premises with either reproduction prints, or with original art. Contact me for details of how I can help you.

All the images in the shop are also available as notecards. There is a listing in the notecard section with further details.

Prices in the shop are retail. Please get in touch if you are interested in reselling any of these images in a retail shop.

Please note - although most of these images are either in the public domain or out of copyright, most also incorporate significant amounts of work by me to restore and prepare the images for printing. When you buy from me you are buying the physical print with no further rights to reproduction. If you want to use any of these images in print or digital publications please contact me first.

The long tail and original art

One of my aims when I opened my Etsy shop selling vintage graphics was to have as wide a variety of images available as possible. It took me a while before I realised this was tapping into something called the 'long tail'. The graph shows how this works. The area in yellow is the same as the area in green, but represents a large number of distinct items sold in relatively small quantities, rather than the small number of items sold in large quantities represented by the green area, which is where the best sellers like the Dan Brown books or '50 Shades' series are to be found.

By aiming for wide variety, I am targeting this long tail. At first this was an accident, now it is a deliberate tactic. Note that this is not the same as catering for a 'niche' market. As a strategy, niche marketing is aimed at being a big fish in a small pond, concentrating all your efforts on a small but specific and well defined segment of the population. Catering to the long tail is the opposite. Because I print to order and therefore don't have to either anticipate what will sell or keep large stocks, I can spread my efforts very widely. As a comment on the Longtail blog linked at the end of this article put it "The market is a mile wide and an inch deep".

I'm not alone in this of course, this is the Amazon model where over time products with a low sales volume collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current bestsellers and blockbusters, provided that distribution channel is large enough. This is why I wouldn't attempt this approach on an independent web site. Etsy as a brand already brings huge numbers of people to their site and I can tap into their searches to make my sales.

This possibly also explains why original art doesn't sell so well on Etsy or similar sites. The market for 'things to hang on the wall' is huge. That part of it looking for original works of art is much smaller. Out of that smaller market the proportion who will like your style and subject will be even smaller even if they find you. In addition, since the search process relies on using words to find images, the search terms for original art are very much harder to pin down, especially for abstract art. There are visual search tools but they do not have the reach of Google text searches. In my case it is even more difficult because Etsy's failure to properly differentiate between reproductions and originals or even between a downloadable file and the physical image once printed, makes the search results whether on site or via Google, hopelessly contaminated. 

Based in part on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail

I didn't find it until I'd finished writing, but see also this site:

http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/faq/

New name, new domain

In a few hours time, you will be able to access this blog using a new domain www.withoutthestate.com. The old typepad domain will still work, but I will be using the new domain in all links etc from now on. This coincides with the new name and strapline.

The inspiration for the name is twofold. First is my strong belief is that the state is taking to much to itself, crowding out what should be the normal activities of civil society, working 'without the state'. That doesn't mean buying in to the empty rhetoric of Cameron's 'Big Society' masking as that does an anti-social agenda of priority to corporate interests over the personal.The second is the related idea of working outside the state - 'outwith' in the Scots usage - as an end in itself in a process of building institutions one by one as in the strap line, which is the old 'Wobblies' slogan.

 COLIN WARD (Image via Wikipedia)

Although I would not describe myself as an anarchist this is all heavily influenced by the work of the late Colin Ward, in particular his book 'Anarchy in Action'' who was in turn influenced by Gustav Landauer.

This will also mean an end to the arts based posts on this blog. These will move to a new blog still under development, which will combine a broad based arts blog with a new sale site for my own artwork. The domain name for that will also be new, although it currently redirects to a site hosted by Clicpic.

The decision to do this has developed out of work on a business plan for my art business which is testing out a process in e-book on business planning for working artists. I'll post details of that site when it is ready.

The other big change will be the removal of many of the sites in the blogrolls here and their move to the new site.

Business Planning for the Working Artist - extract from e-book

I haven't had time to work on this for a few days, but to whet your appetite here is an extract from the  draft as it now stands. This is addressing the question of WHY - why does an artist need a business plan?

Unless you are content to let your work pile up at the back of your studio or in the attic, you need to sell your work. That puts you in business and the ultimate purpose of any business is selling a service or a product to someone willing to buy it at a price that makes you both happy.

Being in business as an artist is of course different to a degree. Selling art and selling cars may share some characteristics but they aren’t identical. When you sell a painting or a print, you are partly selling something of yourself. Paradoxically though, you don’t lose anything when you sell. Each painting, each print you make takes you one step further towards being a better artist. So, in a strange way, selling your work, by giving you the capacity to make more, can be an integral part of your development as an artist – and let’s be honest - who doesn’t get a buzz when somebody likes your work enough to pay over cold hard cash for it?

If you would be be interested in getting a copy of the e-book (FREE!) when it is finally published, sign up for my newsletter using the form on the right.

The business of being an artist.

If like me you have come to making art as a second (or in my case third!) career it means you are probably trying, if not to reinvent yourself, then at least some sort of renewal.The idea of a creative life seems a popular choice for those of us in that position, with more of our life behind us than we can anticipate in front. It isn't surprising. You make what you want to make, you interest yourself in what you want to be interested in, and you do all of this when you choose to, not at the behest of any boss.

It's a grand dream isn't it?

Unfortunately self interest is fine so far as it goes, but what is missing from this picture is the need for enough people to share your interests, to like what you make of them and in so doing give you enough money to carry on pleasing yourself...

I can't find the source now, but I recall reading recently that the average income of an artist in the UK was less than £10,000. Bearing in mind that this includes people like Damien Hirst, it is clear that for most artists, while they may dream of making a living from their work is that is what it is likely to remain.

That doesn't mean you can't approach your work as an artist as if it were a business. In fact it means just the opposite. Most self-described artists will be supplementing their income in various ways - by teaching or by working in some unrelated activity.However, the more time spent teaching or answering the phone in a call centre the less time you have available for your own art. Somewhere along the line, you need to strike a balance.

Finding that balance is something only you can do. It will mean taking a long hard look at your life in the round - and who you share it with. You will need to look at your financial reserves which may mean thinking about your artistic ambitions and how they mesh with your need to eat. Finally you will need to organise yourself to maximise the return on your investment of time in making your art.

The "Business Planning for Working Artists" e-book I am working on will look at this last question in particular, but a key element will involve thinking about who you are and who you want to be. Only when you have dealt with that issue can you start planning your business. After all, you want your art business to support you, not the other way around. 

You can get a free copy of the e-book when it is ready by signing up to my newsletter using the form in the side bar on the right. Don't forget, if you sign up by 20th January you can get a free print too. See this post for more information.

 

IKEA Heights

IKEA Heights from DaveAOK on Vimeo.

The soap opera Ikea Heights is a melodrama shot entirely in the Burbank California Store without the store knowing. (via Deconcrete via Hyperallergic)

More prints on the way and a new 'Print of the Month Club'

I'm starting work soon on two new series of prints.

The first of these is inspired by my longstanding love of jazz and blues. I hope to have about six images in the set, in editions of no more than 10 for each image, so this will be a strictly limited production. I'm still putting some ideas down as sketches, but it is likely that these prints will incorporate various different print media, probably screenprinting or linocut plus some digital elements.

The second will build on these digital prints that you can see here on flickr. These are based on Neolitihic rock art found in Northumberland and Scotland. The pictures shows images made entirely digitally, but the new set will, as with the Jazz set, be 'hybrids' incorporating various print forms.

Image by ibanda via Flickr

I'm also looking at new ways of selling these prints. One option I'm considering is a sort of 'Print of the Month Club' where you would subscribe to receive over the year one or both of these sets. If you take only one set you would get a print every other month. I appreciate that this implies a certain amount of trust on your part but the deal I'm thinking about would include the option to cancel your subscription at any time and also to return any print that you were unhappy with for any reason. Guide price per print would be around £50.00, but that may vary depending on the final images. You would pay a proportion of the cost of production for the whole series, probably 30% with the balance due in stages with each print.

To find out more as I develop the idea, please sign up for my mailing list using the form in the sidebar on the right.  The next edition will be going out at the beginning of January so if you sign up soon, I may have more information available by then.

Hot night in BA #1

I've been experimenting with various ways of combining 'traditional' media with digital. Of course the definitive work on this is probably Digital Art Studio but even so I'm sure there is much to be still discovered.

I have many images that have gone from a photo through a process of manipulation and digital 'painting' to create a digital print. I have also used digital images to create a solar etching and used a scanned drawing to create a digital print. This however is among the first that is genuinely mixed media. The background in this case is a screenprint, while the figure is printed digitally. The digital inks appear to have bonded with no apparent problems to the acrylic base.

I have also made a version using a scanned monoprint for the background.

Image for sale. It isn't on my web site yet, so contact me for details.

 

 

 

More dancing

No apologies for yet more exquisite dancing. This season of Strictly come dancing has the highest number of genuinely good dancers I have seen. Kara Tointon, Pamela Stephenson Matt Baker and Scott Maslen have all produced great performances. Gavin Henson must remain an outsider I think. Of them all, for consistently delivering at a superb standard the winner I think should be Kara Tointon and the performance last night was no exception.

Pamela Stephenson seems to be the exception to something I have noticed over the past three seasons, which is that women 'of a certain age'  (ie over about 50) tend to be voted off before men of a comparable or even lower ability and before younger women. In 2008 Cheri Lunghi and this year Felicity Kendall were both voted off earlier than men with much less talent. See the two routines below for evidence.

Could be my age of course...