Not everyone likes contraptions.  :)

As I’ve mentioned in my blog before, I really love to paint outside.  But sometimes you don’t have time to sit outside and dedicate a few hours to a scenic spot. That or the weather is bit much and the bugs are biting. The list of excuses could go on and on. So I try to justify to myself that there is nothing wrong with taking a quick inspirational picture and coming back to it at a later date.  Today I’m going to show how a quick stop by Wells Harbor in Maine late last fall allowed me to paint inside my studio earlier this spring.

I started off by  lightly penciling the key spots in this painting with a 4H pencil on a full sheet of Cold Press 400lb Arches.  The cold press paper has small groves and a rough surface allowing your painting to showcase texture.  I very rarely paint on the smooth hot press paper but the more I think about it, this painting could have used either.  This is actually a lot of drawing detail for my watercolors as I usually like to paint in the details as much as possible. I simply didn’t want to ruin the perspective on the harbor master shack roof line.  Had I gotten that wrong the whole painting would have been for not. The Arches 400 lb paper is so thick that I often don’t need to tape it down to avoid buckling.  I lightly washed over the entire sky with clean water then worked in Raw Sienna.

When the Raw Sienna dried I then re-wet the entire sky again and worked in Cobalt Blue and Burnt Sienna as I tried to muster the dreary Maine sky.  I then carried the colors into the harbor and added in the beginnings of the reflective dock posts in the water. When painting water it’s best to work fast or wet into wet. The trick is to learn how your paper responds as you work it.  The 400lb is highly absorbent and color values really soak into the paper quicker than the other 140lb or 200lb paper I work with. I’m not afraid to dry brush the paint with the heal of my brush if needed either.  I like the effect of highlights happening randomly.  You can see that on the right side of the painting.  Remember, all of the white in a successful painting is the paper coming through.  You can’t add white paint back over this translucent medium and still call it a traditional watercolor.

OK, time for the harbor shack.  The overcast day didn’t allow for many shadows so as you can see, the left side of the shack is almost the same color value as the front.  This caused me to tighten up a little while painting and I’m unsure if I’m happy with the outcome. Of course had the sun been out the entire painting would have had a different feel to it but it’s these slight color changes that can make a painting pop or lay flat.  I think my efforts using Carmine Red, English Red and Violet  is somewhere in the middle here.  I did loosen back up when I painted the rock wall leading to the dock.  A few incidental paint splatter here and there gave the wall just enough character without overdoing it. I then added the land on the other side of the harbor making sure to not feature anything specific.  If you look close you can see a few roof lines of cottages but I didn’t want your eye to get busy as the dock was the focus of the painting.  Next I added the worn tar and cement that is used as a boat launch and faded it into the sand in the foreground.  I then added a bit of the scrub brush to give the painting depth.

I can’t really say what colors I used here as I always leave my painting palette dirty and work in all sorts of colors into one big gross muddy puddle.  I probably used a low of Raw Umber and I’m sure there was Olive Green and Prussian Azure tossed into the mix. I do this because when I’m at a location I see millions of colors and always want multiple colors mixing together creating happy surprises.  The dirty palette always me to immediately allow one color to be influenced by others haphazardly.  You’ll look like a genius if a color works out but more often than not it’s just luck. The maze of dock posts was very specific to the actual “structure” of the dock but as I started adding them the painting started to “lose its looseness.”  After bit of futsing  (my own word for trying to be perfect)  with them I finally just started slamming them down as fast as possible. To me this is the best part of the painting because I saw I was going down a “tight” road again and I forced myself to loosen up.  I then added more shadows in the water (wet into dry) then pulled some of the paint out with a clean wash.  The camera I used doesn’t do it justice but there are actually a lot of little green and blue tints inside the shadow.   I think this deep shadow helped anchor the painting to the paper and was what originally attracted me to this scene in the first place.

Done!  Total time…about five hours.  Most of that “futsing” time on the shack.   I usually mat watercolors but I had this old green frame in my studio and it seemed to compliment the image well.  I did trim a bit off the right side of the painting and the bottom to accommodate the frame but I don’t think it hurt the overall look.    So there you go.  A look at how I go about painting a real scene from my own reference photos inside my studio as opposed to painting outside.  Is it as good as Plein Air painting? Only you can decide.  :)  If you’d like a print check out this link:   http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/5-scott-nelson.html?tab=artworkgalleries&artworkgalleryid=226296       If you’d like the original, don’t hesitate to contact me at [email protected]

Plein Air Painting (the act of painting out in the environment) has become a new passion of mine that I don’t see fading anytime soon. Unrealized in art school, I would often watch my instructor Alex Gazonas and class mate Jonathan Hotz visit local scenic views before, during and after class. Always impressed by their landscape efforts but unsure of my own talent level to follow them, I stuck to the controlled studio space.  In the case of student Mr. Hotz, each time he went outside his results would skyrocket to a new level.  By the end of the school year his watercolors were on par with the instructors. He has since moved on to oil paints and his landscapes sell for thousands of dollars each.  Natural talent for sure but I know for certain had he sat inside painting he wouldn’t have improved so quickly.

As I’ve talked over the last few years, you really don’t see nature the way it is unless you get out there and sit in the dirt and “get to it.”  Wind, bugs, temperature changes, sun, etc, etc all factor how your finished piece may or may not come out.  With that in mind I’ve started my own local plein air painting and drawing club for my home town.  With the creation of a simple Face Book page I’ve been able to reach out to other artists in my community and venture out to our own scenic spots of interest.  Once the group has enough days under our belts my home will be to have a local art show showcasing the plein air beauty unnoticed by many.

So, I’ll continue pressing forward with my cards, books, caricatures, logos, T-shirt designs, humorous illustrations, product design, portraits and just about anything else I can draw to earn a living as an artist … but don’t be surprised if more and more of my posts revolve around plein art painting.

http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/5-scott-nelson.html?tab=artworkgalleries

Freelance artists always need to be on the look out for ways to promote their brand and for some POD sites (Print on Demand) might be the way to go about it.

The way a POD site works is simple. You upload your art and the site prints and then mails them out to your customer. Simple enough. The problem though is for all their work the POD site takes a substantial portion of the profits.

For many years I’ve considered spending thousands of dollars and printing up a line of my own humorous greeting cards. But I’ve since realized that once my cards are printed I’ll then need to generate sales by placing them in consignment shops or if I’m lucky, getting placing them in a well know store alongside other card lines. This can take countless hours of footwork and truthfully I’m not sure I have it in me. I just want to sit at my drawing table and be funny. Thus I haven’t made a total commitment to starting my own line again since my 9th Floor card line was bought out by Dickens in the early 2000′s.

Rather than continue “thinking” about my next move and subsequently doing nothing, I’ve taken one step towards that goal by placing some of my concepts on the Greeting Card Universe web site. The way GCU works is you submit your cards to their review teams and in from two days to three months they will review your creation. Yup– the process can take that long. To date I have had fifteen ideas approved and nine more still in limbo. You can view my store here: http://www.greetingcarduniverse.com/scottnelsongreetingcards

Has it been worth it? Hard to tell. To date I’ve only sold three cards. Truthfully though I haven’t done any real P.R. as I’ve been waiting for a larger inventory to showcase before I send my friends and family to it. If I was ONLY doing this as part of my on line sales effort I would be bummed by the return to date. Yet partnering this store with my efforts at Society 6, Fine Arts America, Zazzle, Etsy and Turning Art will hopefully be a collective effort that pays out in the long term.

If you’re interested in starting your own card line… give GCU a try. It won’t make you rich but it will teach you how the POD world works.

I’ve always imagined that my juvenile art would look good all over kid’s comforters,  wall paper, trash and even their pajamas.  Well I’ve come one step closer to reaching that goal with my latest venture.  I’d like to introduce my line of throw pillows by Society 6.  Bright and colorful, the fun images will make room any bedroom or playroom look fun.  Check them out all 12  (and growing)  at http://society6.com/ScottNelson/pillows

Art can be done by anyone using anything.  It doesn’t matter to me if you use a computer, pencil, crayon or you dip a stick in mud and paint on a rock.  It’s all good.

That said, I often I feel the pressure to use photoshop to keep up with what others are doing. Truthfully I’ve never really cared to learn that technique. Why? I don’t know.  I guess it’s because the way the program functions is  based on math equations.  Now I know using formulas to capture distances allows an image to be shrunken or enlarged and the original picture will always look the same. I just don’t like it. Drawing digitally in JPG formats(Corel Essentials) is my weapon of choice.  I somehow feel more in control and simply want to keep my bad experiences in Algebra class away from my drawing.

Over the last few years I started painting on location and have gotten some great feedback on this new approach. I love it! Yet I still love my cartoon and illustration work so when I started fusing the two looks together photoshop could become very handy.  But to me part of the whole “out in the elements –hands on experience” should not totally stop when I add my characters to the paintings.  A pair of handy dandy scissors works just as well as photoshop for me.

Attached in this post are the characters I painted in watercolor.  I cut them out… placed them exactly how I wanted them, photographed the who picture then digitally removed the small blemishes.  

So is this approach really “Old School”.  No.  But it’s not how most people would do it and that’s OK with me.  I’m not most people.  :) 

I’ll always have a warm spot in my heart for Silk Screen T shirts. Why?  Well the FIRST time I ever made money drawing was when I illustrated the 1986 Boston Red Sox Team in caricatures while an art school student.  Back then the color art I produced was half toned by the silk screen shop (in black and white ..similar to news paper print) and I sold them for $4.50 to my friends and family members.  That is I sold them until Bill Buckner put an end to sales that year.  (Sorry Bill…   I still love ya.  )   I then went on to do color drawings of the Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins for companies representing the actual teams and they opted for the color printing instead of the black and white style I was doing.  Printing results were mixed (especially with the Celtics shirts) back then but it was always fun seeing how they’d come out and it was always a thrill to see someone walk by you wearing your design.

Today you can essentially print ANYTHING without needing to create lots of different silk screen screens. Sure, the price will go down per design if you’re printing thousands but since I’m usually only doing a few dozen shirts at best,  for my dime the results (see samples below)  is Print On Demand businesses like ZAZZLE.  The quality is second to none and I can offer essentially ANYTHING I draw on shirt.   If you like these shirts or would like some custom designed and printed for your event or product line idea, stop by my website at WWW.ScotttNelsonandSon.com and check out more.

WOW!  The choices an artist has on the way he or she conducts their business has really changed!

In 1987 (the year I opened) the best way to capture an assignment or order was to knock on a door and show my portfolio.  If that didn’t work I’d send out a flyer or maybe entice someone via my phone book add. Looking back it seems kind of archaic and painfully slow.  On a good day I pitched my work to maybeeeeee three or four people. Today the internet allows one to capture literally hundreds of potential customers every hour of the week  That’s a good thing__ Or is it?

Because EVERYONE and their brother is essentially doing the same thing to capture said business how do you stand out in a crowd when they’re being bombarded from all sides?  Marketing folks speculate that you have roughly .08 second to capture someones attention on-line and then another 1.1 second to get them to stay on what they noticed in the first.  Even then chances are good that they are not going to look much longer then a few more seconds.  In the event they really start to consider your offer  savvy people will then compare your product to a dozen or so more just like it with only a few clicks of the mouse.   With that kind of competition it’s a small wonder any artist sells anything.

So what’s the solution?  Well if I knew that I’d be a rich add executive somewhere or maybe some late night info commercial guy pitching my “How to capture customers in 23 easy steps” DVD.  But here is a secret I want to share_______  Face to Face time.  Wow– all that blabbing for something you already knew?  But the simple fact is most people don’t actually do it. When was the last time you showed your portfolio or work in person?  People are busy and don’t have time anymore though so you have to be sneaky. Soft sell em.  For example I was out the other evening and I bumped into an old friend who I hadn’t seen in years.  He quickly asked me how work was going. I immediately changed the topic back to him.  Asked how his daughters were and his own job.  He mentioned that his oldest LOVED sports and couldn’t get enough of all the major New England stick and ball teams. That’s when I moved back in for a sale and said,  “Hey, have you every considered a caricature of her dressed as a Patriot, Bruins, Red Sox or Celtic player?  Ding_Ding_Ding– another sale.  A sale I hadn’t gotten with countless social media posts or links to my web site.  Was it because he was happy to see me thus he bought my art?  Perhaps.  Yet I’ve been Face Books friends with him for the last four years and he had never considered buying anything before.

So, if you’re struggling with the artist marketing thing like I am don’t be afraid to go back to basics and put in the face time. 

Although I have a Zazzle account on my web site where you can find some of my greeting cards, posters, T-shirts, calendars and so much more, I’m happy to announce that I will soon have a PRINT STORE attached directly to my home page as well. 

Fine Art America allows customers to not only purchase artist prints but frame them too.   I’ve recently uploaded LOTS of my favorite paintings including numerous juvenile images suitable as wall decorations.  I’m really pleased with the service and know they will do a GREAT job taking care of my customers.  Check them out here…. http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/5-scott-nelson.html?tab=artworkgalleries  

I’ve been doing a lot of plein air paintings lately and came up with the idea of merging my juvenile illustration images with these  “on location” canvases.  I really like the almost 3-D effect that’s created with contrasting tones and textures.                This wave was painted on location at Wells Beach Maine and the Pirate Kids were then added in my studio.     It’s always a joy to love what you’re creating____________ and I do!!!!

Hey, Sorry.  I know it’s been a few months since I posted anything here on my blog.  Partly because I was teaching my summer youth art classes which kept me busy and partly because I didn’t have much to say.  Actually– I have a lot to say but wasn’t sure how to put it.

The life of an artist has to be one of the most frustrating and daunting careers there is. Not because you life is ever placed in peril or what we do is rocket science.  Rather it’s a world filled with High Highs followed by Low Lows.  And that swing of emotions can be in the first few minutes of your studio day. I live and die by the reaction of my customers and due to that issue I tend to stress out a bit.  Fearing every person has to be blown away by what they commissioned me to do.  Truth is– that’s an impossible standard to keep and a customers initial reaction might not be immediately noticeable anyway.  Case in point… I had a customer hug me last week after she looked at the portrait I did. Another customer hardly looked up when I showed a caricature award to them.  Assuming they didn’t like what I drew, my day  was ruined. A few days later I received a phone call from a new client who had been refered to me by who????  Happy hugging lady or indifferent person?    Indifferent person it was.  So go figure.  People don’t always show you what they’re feeling at the moment you want it.  Me expecting that to be is wrong and it’ a lesson I have to learn no matter the reaction.

The reason I’m talking about this issue now is I know I need to please my paying customers in order to keep my doors open.  Yet some words of wisdom I kept hearing lately is,  “I need to please myself.”  At first that statement didn’t even compute in my thick scull.  Drawings are not about me or at least not the caricatures and portraits I do. It’s about generating a likeness and a look that is pleasing to the person buying it.  Yet the more I think about that statement as it applies  to the other silly juvenile illustrations, greeting cards and humorous images I do I’m realizing that it really is true. Have fun painting and it will come out in the finished product.  People will see that and the end result will be a better image. Simple enough!  So recently I had an “AH -HA” moment regarding my endeavor to acquire artist representation.  Love what I’m painting in a technique I enjoy and I will please myself.  Well as I’ve talked about here I love painting land and seascapes and I also love cartoons.  Knowing that I was starting a new portfolio overhaul for my children’s book style what better time than the present to really try something different?  I  will be fusing my love for loose watercolors and acrylic paints with my love for cute critters and characters.  (See attached sample..)   My thinking is eventually an artist agent will see my passion for the two art forms and I’ll be pleasing myself during the process.  A strategy I’m hopeful will work out as I continue to move forward with my art.   Wish me luck.

 A family trip to Lake Singletary in Millbury, MA allowed me to test out my new travel watercolor set during our Memorial Day cookout this past weekend.  Normally the water level is half way up the pictured wall but due to a problem with the local damn, ankle-deep water abounds.  Some family members took to skimming stones while I took to looking for a sketchable muse.   Kids move fast and their throwing action was hard to capture so instead I featured my nephew fishing.  The simple sketch has a loose look to it that I really enjoy and I will try to do more of now that my travel set is always at arms reach in my truck.

Here’s another sketch from my “SketchaDay” program.   Ohh– look at those eyes in the trees.  I’d run too.

I’ve been having fun drawing each morning in my sketch book before my regular customer work starts.  Pushing the pencil is always fun plus it allows me to try out some new styles.   I then give them away to anyone who requests them on my Face Book fan page.   Here’s a sample….

Although I’ve blogged about this before, social media has allowed me to meet cartoonists and illustrators I would have never been able to talk to.   I’d like to start sharing links here of artists I admire or enjoy the style of.   For starters…  here’s a real funny one.  http://putzcomicstrip.blogspot.com/     Subscribe to this blog and get treated each day with a real dose of funny!

I entered one of my short  rhyming stories in the MeeGenius Author challenge ( WWW.MeeGenius.com ).    Manuscript applicants try to make it through the “popular vote” first round and onto the judges second round of voting.  I’m very proud of this story and feel it might make a great early reader or certainly a good bed time story.  Would love for you to check it out at http://www.meegenius.com/challenge/my-day-today-by-scott-nelson .

After spending way too much time entering the Hallmark Card contest, I’d like to report that I finally won. ”Yay!”  What’s interesting though is the  monster truck baby stroller design that won is so two dimensional and basic that it doesn’t come across as my usual style.  This got me thinking that I might need to rethink how I draw things so I’m relevant in an ever-changing market.  In my opinion the car salesman concept  on the right is drawn better and a bit funnier. Yet it wasn’t acknowledged by the judges at all. Since the card market itself has been so tough lately, this win has oddly caused more confusion in my card creating ability then confidence.

I’ve been instructing at the Worcester Art Museum for  the last six years and I really love it there.  The location allows me to break up my studio time by teaching AND it places me in a location that I can be inspired by world-class artwork.   From painting classes and cartooning classes to pen & ink and drawing classes, I’ve taught a bunch of  great student.  Amazing amount of talent they all have and some of my  returning student’s work has really stepped it up a few levels.  Art is looking good in central Massachusetts.

Although my picture quality is never awesome (I think because of the lack of white balance on my Flip camera), I really enjoy making drawing videos.   Here’s a recent quick one and  if you like it,  check out more on my website.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_DngQ8hydg

Nice Interview about me by the fine people at The Visual Story Tellers     http://vsschat2.blogspot.com/     Thanks Jill.

When I was in public schools, I was typically instructed that there is one correct answer to a problem.   No variables.  Just start here…and end here. This is right__This is wrong.  But for me, art has variables that need to be considered.  There really isn’t a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things in my book.  And as a teacher now myself, all I care about is the end result and did the student learn something along the way.  Not sure if I’m doing them a disservice with that approach but I think creativity can’t be limited AS the process is happening.  Sure, structure is good but not if it’s so limiting that the student feels reluctant to push the brush and make things happen. What would be worse than having someone leaning over your shoulder saying “Oh, I wouldn’t do it that way!”   Yes, I might not do it that way but maybe their way is actually better.  And that’s what makes art fun for me. Realizing that each day you can learn something new from not only yourself but from those around you.

With that said I’d like to talk about the following drawing.  It breaks all my own rules but in the end I was pretty much happy with the outcome.   I was recently commissioned to illustrate a multi person caricature. Included in this image I was asked to draw a Theater, a few signs and a public fountain/sitting area.  Considering the fact that many of these elements were not located next to each other in real life, I knew that drawing this street scene would be daunting.  I broke my own rule and pretty much completed the entire background before I finished the figures in front.  Now as a teacher I would NEVER tell my students to illustrate that way.  I would normally ask them to work all over the drawing so you’re creating equal values and light balance.  But truthfully, I was actually scared to draw that way because if I messed up on the street scene, the figures in front would have been a waste of time.  Below is my process_ right or wrong.  In the end did  learn something.  Yes. I learned that I can’t draw windows.  So that’s a good thing.