One of the long overdue tasks gathering dust on my TO DO list is an update of this website. It functions fine as my blog, but for first time visitors, I imagine can be a bit burdensome to figure out. This was pointed out to me by a friend who was nice enough to be telling someone else about my work and wanted to show photos of the kind of stuff I do. He phoned me later to complain saying, “All I could find was pictures of your dogs! Where are your PAINTINGS???”

Whoops! There are a few original paintings for sale in my Etsy shop, but the vast majority of them have not been photographed properly. So they end up selling at local shops and markets, never making it to the website in any other format than my quickie phone snapshots as works in progress. Remedying this is my January project, though I have to admit – I’d much rather be painting!

I did web design and internet marketing for several years, so you wouldn’t think this would be a major undertaking, right? Well, you’d be wrong, my friend! My rustiness coupled with how fast technology changes (oh WordPress updates and your insistence on stripping any attempt at line breaks!) has made for some slowwww going. I’m realizing now that I should have just bit the bullet and started from scratch with a completely new design instead of the patch job I’m currently undertaking (which is ultimately proving to take longer than a complete redesign would have anyway!).

To make up for all that complaining (did I mention that since I’m self-employed, you get to endure my water cooler chat? Lucky duck!), I’m including a very cool vintage typography tutorial I stumbled on that teaches step by step how to create some of the beautifully intricate designs of vintage typography ads, like so:

credit: webgraphics.net

The author uses Adobe Illustrator, but I had no trouble following along in Photoshop. Whenever I look at that vintage style of lettering, I’m blown away by the detail, but I’ve never really looked at it to break it down. I think of it as always being hand drawn, but of course there are plenty of examples of lovely work like the one above that are completely computer based. And when you start to reallllly look, you notice that the fancy lines and swirls are often just combination of very simple shapes. Time-consuming, yes. But totally do-able.

Enjoy!

I forced myself to set everything else aside & focus on painting for a few days this week & words cannot explain how GOOD that felt. I was planning to just push the paint around & allow myself to breathe without trying to create a salable painting. I played with a couple of canvases, pushing & pulling different colors & glazes & ended up with this beautiful turquoise base that I thought would make a perfect background for a sketch I’ve been working on. And so…ta dah! (non-iPhone pics coming soon!)

She still needs to be scanned & properly varnished before I can offer prints or the original for sale, but soon enough she’ll be in the shop!

This particular painting & my disrupted process as of late has got me thinking about a question I get asked fairly regularly – how long does it take to complete a painting?

In this case? About a year.

The painting itself was completed in the span of 3 days. I did the background on 1 day. I painted the bulk of the girl & the crow the next day & then added more shadows & highlights & finishing touches on the 3rd after I’d had a chance to see it in the daylight.

But that doesn’t include the sketching part of the process. I’ve got a sketchbook full of bird girls, sisters of the very first Caging the Forest Bird. That doesn’t include the time to research source material. The internet certainly makes it easier to find pictures of things like crows, but I usually prefer thumbing through the illustration archive books I have collected that show detailed etchings of various animals. That also doesn’t include the years of practice & classes & study to develop my style. And I’m just starting out in my career! For a full time artist who’s been working for 20 years, it is the sum of his experience that is poured into each new work.

How many hours it takes to make something is often called into question when determining cost, especially with craftspeople. I think sometimes we forget all of those other hours, days, years spent allowing the perfect blend of ingredients to come together.

(For the record, I am in no way saying that my work is some kind of “perfect blend”. I love what I do & feel incredibly grateful that I get to do it for a living, but I’m fully aware that I’m still learning & growing as an artist. It’s just one of those art questions that pops up often enough that even *I* can recognize how infuriating it must be, especially to the Picassos of the world whose work can be deceptively simple.)

The k.g.b. empire is taking over Vancouver! If you’re local & don’t want to wait until my next market or craft show, you can now pop down to a few fabulous Vancouver retail shops & stock up on Cagey Bee goodies. I love this city & am so thrilled to be part of such a supportive community. I really love the way we showcase local designers. Main Street, Commercial Drive – the only chain stores to be found are Starbucks (which are getting a little ridiculous in their ubiquity, I’ll admit).

So if you’re looking for something special (for Valentine’s Day, perhaps?), here’s where you can find the bee:

Bird on a Wire

website: http://www.birdonawirecreations.com

2535 Main Street @ Broadway

This a new shop that just opened last year. A beautiful location with a fantastic assortment of art, fabric goods (the quilt in the front window had me drooling), jewelry & all sorts of creative wares. You can find a selection of my lockets, postcard packs & prints in stock.

Chic Winds

contact: (604) 683-8292

375 Water Street (same block as the steam clock)

The owners of Chic Winds are incredibly sweet & encouraged me to branch out into retail after spotting my work at one of my markets. They carry a mix of local artists, including First Nations jewelry and artwork, plus a line of Tibetan jewelry picked up on their travels. I was happy to see one of my prints hanging in such good company, a print by painter April Lacheur of Yapes Paints. At Chic Winds you can find my lockets, a handful of Scrabble tile pendants, 5×7 matted prints (not for sale anywhere else), wood block panels & a few original paintings too.

Plush

website: http://www.plushonmain.com

4296 Main Street (just south of King Edward)

Oh, Plush. You guys just rock. The girls manage to cram so much Vancouver fabulousness into such a small shop that I’m constantly surprising myself by noticing new items that I seemed to miss before. Felted soap in Chai flavor? Pouches by kukubee? Yes, please! You’ll also find some Cagey Bee lockets, mini wood panel prints covered in shiny resin plus a couple of original paintings on canvas.

Happy New Year my little bees! I’ve been spending the last few days in a sort of nesting mode – reflecting on 2010, making plans & dreaming up goals for 2011, tidying my space & generally soaking up the quiet that comes after a very busy holiday shopping season.

For most retail businesses, online as well as brick & mortar, January & February are very slow months. I’ve seen a lot of folks talking about how to build your sales during this slow period (note to self: do a blog round-up post of the best ones) but for right now I’m content to fully enjoy this slowdown.

I want to breathe deeply.

I want to visit art galleries & good friends.

I want to pull out my sketchbook & paints & allow myself time to create without any expectation or deadline.

I want to use these next couple of months to recharge my batteries & find the inspiration that will shape the rest of the year.

2010 was an incredible year for me & for the first time that I can remember, I didn’t want the year to end. Usually I’m quite happy to say goodbye to the year before & excitedly make plans for how I’m going to do things differently in the year to come. I’m not a resolution-maker, exactly. With an ADD brain, making lists – the act of putting pen to paper – is crucial to allowing my mind to focus, so goal-setting (or goal-reiterating) is an all year long pursuit for me. But this year? 2010? It was such an incredible year for me that my plans for 2011 are probably my least ambitious ever. I need to spend some renewal time before my next growth spurt.

A couple of intentions that were sorely neglected last year that will make my list for 2011 once again:

1. I need to move my body more. I don’t particularly need to lose weight, but the long hours I spend painting, filling shop orders & making jewelry mean that my lifestyle is getting awfully sedentary. In the summer I ride my bike & play tennis & go on long walks with the dogs, but when it’s cold or rainy (which means pretty much all winter), I don’t do much of anything. The dog-walking shortens to once around the block. I start to feel stiff & sore. My energy level is non-existent. Definitely time to get back into doing yoga.
2. I need to spend more time in the studio. I’m thrilled to be able to make my living creating art, but the realistic picture of what my work week looks like does not often include a lot of art-making. Putting together application packages for art shows, making things like magnets & lockets to sell at craft fairs, going to the post office to mail out shop orders, signing & packaging prints, bookkeeping – all very important tasks for running my business. And all very easily can bump “Paint!” off the TO DO list.

Last year my goal was to paint for at least 3 hours a day every single day. I failed miserably. For 2011, I think I need to reshape the goal into something that works better for my lifestyle. Setting aside at least 1 day per week where I do nothing else but paint, for example. No post office. No answering email. No scheduling appointments. There really shouldn’t ever be anything that can’t wait 24 hours to be dealt with, right?

Getting better systems in place to handle the rest of my business more efficiently is also part of that process. If the rest of my business was more organized & streamlined, I would have more time to paint. This is also something I want to work on in 2011.

To make sure every day starts off with a bit of creativity, I’m searching for some drawing exercises to create a sort of “morning pages for artists” plan. A lot of writers start their day by writing 3 pages. It can be anything. Literally. If you can’t think of anything to write about, you can just write, “I can’t think of anything to write about” over & over & over until it has filled all 3 pages. But the point is, you’re warming up your instrument. You’re writing without editing. You’re loosening up & allowing the words to flow. I want to do this with visual art.

Instead of reading the paper or catching up on silly gossip blogs while drinking my morning coffee, I plan to pull out my sketchbook. Before I’m allowed to do anything else or let the busy-ness of the day swallow me up, I will draw. It has to be at least 3 pages, but it doesn’t have to be (& actually shouldn’t be) anything I *need* to do. Sometimes signing up to participate in themed art shows is great because it gives you a deadline & forces making art to the top of your list. But I’d like to spend more time this year allowing ideas to flow that don’t have a project in mind. I’m going to start with sketching different objects, but I’m going through all of my art books to come up with a solid list of ideas for those cranky mornings when sketching my coffee cup, AGAIN, really doesn’t feel all that inspiring.

Are you setting any goals or intentions for 2011? I’d love to hear them!

It may not be the cover of the Rolling Stone, but I was tickled to have one of my paintings, Sarah and the Orca, used as cover art for the December 2010 issue of Common Ground magazine. Holla!

Common Ground is a Canadian publication in its 28th year with a focus on health, growth & wellness. You can find it all over the place at little coffee shops & restaurants, though if any member of my family has wandered in ahead of you, the stack may be quite slim.