Yearly Archives: 2007

Happy New Year’s Eve & Been Tagged

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I want to join in wishing you all a Happy and Safe New Year’s Eve! Tomorrow starts a new year … wow!! I am eager to hear what a New Year means to you. Tomorrow I am going to post on the simple things of life … and then Wednesday I will return to our marketing saga. Thank you so so much for being part of my life ~ you have enriched my life greatly

Citrus Seas

Citrus Seas, Digital © Diane Clancy

I have been tagged by Kris Cahill of Art & Clairvoyance … Here are the “Rules”.

THE RULES:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.

2. Share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.

3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

First come the 5 facts … oh dear, this is hard work! I have no idea whether these are weird or random .. you will have to decide yourself.

  1. I have not cut my hair at all in about 25 years .. for a short period time (1 or 2 years) I did cut my hair back then … but that is the only time (about 25 years ago) I have cut it in the last 40 or so years.
  2. Back when I was young, someone offered to read my palm … they asked if the length of my fingernails was average for me … I had never thought about that. I cut them short and then let them grow out long until they bother me and then I cut them short again.
  3. I have lived in the same house for over 30 years and I love living here.
  4. I wanted to be at least a twin if not a triplet so that someone would understand me. I used to cut stings of paper dolls out that were all connected together and identical. Once when I was a kid, my mom told me she wanted to be a twin too.
  5. When I was a kid, I used to sometimes do my homework up in the maple tree in the front yard. I would perch my books up there and then pull myself up onto my favorite limb and be in my own world.

I can see I have actually told you quite a few revealing aspects of myself. Hopefully you enjoyed this. Thank you for participating!

OK … now for tagging 5 others … It was hard to keep it to 5 … please know I thought of you!

  1. Debi Cates of Debi Cates Photo a Day
  2. Ruthie Hochman of Ruthie’s Reason
  3. Collin De Ruyck of Your World Gallery
  4. Chris O’Byrne of Online Arts Marketing
  5. Elis Cooke of Into the Blystic Elis Cooke

~ Diane Clancy

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Illustrator Friday – Soar

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Illustrator Friday has a challenge every week. This week is Soar. This is a pretty straight forward interpretation … for those of you who follow my blog, you know I like my bubblescapes … This is my soar.

Soaring

Soaring, Digital © Diane Clancy

Soar

Above the Earth

Above the world

Above everyday life

Off on adventures

To Who Knows Where

Having fun

Being Aligned

Being Alive

Soaring

~ Diane Clancy

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Getting My New Cards

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I have been sharing my story about the process of exploring marketing my artwork through selling cards to get to licensing my paintings so that many people can enjoy my vibrant and uplifting work. You can read about other parts of this journey in recent posts starting here. This is one of the cards from this printing that I did. I have many left if you would like to own some of them.

Reflections in Blue I

Reflections in Blue I, Pastel © Diane Clancy

So I now have 6,000 cards arriving at my home (which also doubles as my office) … or should I say, my office which doubles as my home. They are not nearly as overwhelming as I was afraid … whew!! And one of the cards was not printed well color-wise. It was too far off the color of the painting … and more importantly, the color of the file that I sent them. If you prepare your file wrong, it is your problem.

But they promise printing within a certain color tolerance. So I called them up. One that felt was very much within tolerance (and I could live with that). But the other one was clearly out of the tolerance range. So they very quickly and efficiently reprinted that one card. Of course, I now (and still do) have 1,000 cards with the wrong color and I am still not sure what to do with them. Modern Postcard was great about reprinting – very respectful and the replacement cards came out GREAT!

So now what? I gave Vision Works the cards they ordered and figured out how to make up an invoice. Now what? I got ready to get in my little car and start to go out and beat the pavement to see who else would like to have the opportunity to have my beautiful paintings in their stores and homes.

The journey continues …

~ Diane Clancy

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Kwanzaa

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Two days ago I mentioned that day was the first day of Kwanzaa, December 26 to January 1, a 7 day celebration started in 1966. Kwanzaa is for the African American and Pan-African community to celebrate their heritage and reinforce positive community and human values: a celebration of family, community and culture. I find it a very moving, welcoming, uplifting observance from the ones I have attended.

Violet Mist

Violet Mist, Digital © Diane Clancy

A core part of Kwanzaa is the 7 Principles:

(NGUZO SABA (The Seven Principles) taken from the site of Dr. Maulana Karenga, founder of Kwanzaa, link above)

  1. Umoja (Unity): To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
  2. Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
  3. Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brother’s and sister’s problems our problems and to solve them together.
  4. Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
  5. Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
  6. Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
  7. Imani (Faith): To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

~ Diane Clancy

p.s. Shall I continue with marketing tomorrow?

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Featured on 2 Blogs

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I was asked by Collin De Ruyck to be a featured artist at Your World Gallery. Yesterday’s post is welcoming me to the blog and today’s post is one I wrote introducing myself and my art. I hope you will consider checking out this to see another resource for artists. I am pretty excited that someone likes my work enough to feature me!! There is also an interesting story about how Collin got into art in his own life (in the section World Artists across the top).

Aqua Rising

Aqua Rising, Digital © Diane Clancy

I am also on a list of the 50 Awesome Blogs on the techXtreme blog. Abhinav Sood is a very knowledgeable young man from India who can run circles around me with technology .. so it is a fun connection to have! I met both Abhinav and Collin on BlogCatalog where there is a lot of networking going on. BlogCatalog also has a place where you can list all your other social networking sites so people can find you easily. If you go check me out, please contact or friend me where you are … I find it great fun to be connecting to others in a variety of ways!!

Tomorrow I have already written my post about Kwanzaa – I think you will enjoy it. After that, I already have 2 more of the marketing posts ready. So stay tuned for a busy week!

~ Diane Clancy

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Two Things Challenge – Tidy/Ends

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I like to enter the 2 Things Challenge each week. This week is Tidy and Ends. It was hard to come up with an idea, but at least the execution was easy for me this week! So thank you! I hope you like my entry.

Tidy Ends

Tidy Ends, Digital © Diane Clancy

Today is the first day of Kwanzaa, a 7 day celebration started in 1966. Kwanzaa is for the African American and Pan-African community to celebrate their heritage and reinforce positive community and human values. The 7 principles are wonderful – perhaps tomorrow I will list them .. I have been very moved when I have gone to Kwanzaa celebrations!!

~ Diane Clancy

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Joyful Christmas

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Today is Christmas ~ many people celebrate this holiday around the world ~ in honor of Christ as a symbol of love, peace, forgiveness and holiness. No matter what your thoughts are of Christ as a man and religion, I bet we can agree that holiness, peace, love, forgiveness, kindness and joy are wonderful ~ and that we can all use more of them. Here’s to a celebration of joy and peace to each and every one of us in this whole earth that we inhabit together. Here’s to remembering we ARE together in this ~ with each other, and with the earth!

Indigo Radiance

Indigo Radiance, Digital © Diane Clancy

~ Diane Clancy

Enjoy This Season

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I hope you are all enjoying this season … no matter what you celebrate. Bringing light, peace, joy and love into the world is something most of us can agree on … no matter our spiritual, religious or political beliefs. So here’s to more love and joy for us all!!

Green Mist

Green Mist, Digital © Diane Clancy

~ Diane Clancy

Illustrator Friday – Horizon

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Illustrator Friday has a challenge every week. This week is Horizon. This is a pretty straight forward interpretation … for those of you who follow my blog, you know I like my bubblescapes … This is my horizon.

Green Dusk

Green Dusk, Digital © Diane Clancy

Horizon

The horizon is always there

You may see it, or not

But it is there

The Horizon beckons

Calling us onto new journeys

And new adventures.

The Horizon is

About Possibilities,

Potential and

What Can Be

Please join me in

Reaching for

The Horizon

~ Diane Clancy

Actually Printing the Cards

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Today is World Peace Day! Here is the link to learn more about this great day on the winter/summer solstice. This is to encourage each of us to spend some time today in prayer and meditation for world peace. A great idea to my mind!!!

Plum Sky

Plum Sky, Digital © Diane Clancy

In this journey of printing cards to get to licensing my artwork, I have now chosen Modern Postcard as my printer. If you want to see more of this odyssey, it is in the last several posts. The size of the cards was a decision I needed to make. They had a very reasonable price for cards that are 4.25 x 6.” Their prices (at that time anyway) were very high for 5 x 7″ cards. There are printing concerns regarding the initial paper size each printer uses. For Modern Postcard, they waste a lot of paper with the 5 x 7″ size card. So that made my decision about the size!

Given that I like control and input in how I do things, I wanted to make the file up myself and not use one of their templates. I bet you can guess that I spent some real time choosing the font that I used. A font (especially a decorative font) is another representation of oneself to the world. I eventually chose the Parisian font. It is delicate and elegant … and I love it and it makes my heart sing! And I think it looks great with my work. You can see this font on the images I created lately with words as part of the painting. That is Parisian.

Now for the images. Of course, printing each painting on a card is expensive (at least to me). “They” suggest printing cards in series. I had a buyer already who was kind enough to take a risk on my work and he had already agreed to buy some cards. I was not the first local artist he had done this for either. He outs his values into action!! Dick McLeester of VisionWorks is a great person and sells progressive and uplifting magnets, books, cards and bumper stickers. You may want to check him out.

I decided to choose 6 images that are some of my most distinctive and unusual paintings. You can see what I chose here … and these cards are still for sale. I prepped the images and got the sizes correct and make sure the dpi was right. And I put it all together into a file in a graphic design program for each painting. I used Quark then but now I would use InDesign. You can also do this by uploading your image into their templates …

So I took a deep breath and went to the next step. One can print (or at least back then) in steps of 500. I decided to take a leap of faith and print 1000 of each of the 6 images. So I put them all on a disk and sent them off. Nowadays one would just upload them. Now we will wait to get them back from the printer!

~ Diane Clancy

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Two Things Challenge – Sweet/Star

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I like to enter the 2 Things Challenge every week. This week it is Sweet and Star. This is my entry. This was deliberately made easy for the holiday season … but I spent hours working on different directions to get the one that flew the best. I worked in 5 different programs before I came back to this … And I tried to find stars that I could do like the bubbles … but it didn’t work … so it came back to this. Check out the other entries … I need to too. Sweet and Star, Digital © Diane Clancy Here is the painting without the extras … this I will put in my portfolio for licensing and prints. I am back home now so I will be able to catch up on YOUR blogs!! Thank you for staying in touch with me! Blue Moon, Digital © Diane Clancy ~ Diane Clancy Technorati Tags: 2 Things Challenge, portfolio, licensing, prints … [CLICK TO READ MORE]

Choosing a Printer

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Recently, I have been posting about cards and licensing … you many want to read some of these recent posts. So, I have all my samples of cards from 8 printers with researched information from 12 of them. Modern Postcard is the printer that most local artists use so I need to either confirm them or beat them by some other printer. Green Seas, Digital © Diane Clancy The variety of samples is amazing! By the way, I still have all these samples … it seems if I am asking someone to send me their product, I should respect it and keep it in case the situation arises where that is the kind of printing I need. Some samples priced themselves off the map immediately. And most of those printers were clearly more oriented toward corporate business. I began to see the wisdom of the local artists who had chosen a printer with a specialization in artists. So that narrowed the field down greatly!! Another other big factor was the type of paper used and the printing method. One very nice place had wavy-ish paper and soft color printing. If I were a watercolorist, I might well have gone with them. The paper was also lighter, meaning not as heavy a stock. So, I had to think a lot about how I wanted my artwork to represented to the world – because that’s what cards are. Little pieces of my art. My painting are vibrant, colorful and full of power … [CLICK TO READ MORE]

Cards for a Track Record

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This is a continuation of the post Cards and Licensing. To recap, I want to license my artwork to make it accessible and to create an income stream. So I need to show a track record of people wanting to buy my paintings. So, what to do? It seemed to me that cards were probably the best way to sell my images in an affordable way on my way to licensing. Chi Chi in Butterflies, Digital © Diane Clancy By now, some of you have realized that I am fairly persistent and committed in this process of building my career as an artist. So, if I am going to print cards, then first I have to research cards. How else does someone of my personality start a project? Remember a couple of years ago the card market was quite different than it is now. I looked through all the art magazines that I had – Art Business News and several other ones. I copied down all the places that advertised printing cards. I also looked in my computer magazines – Mac World and others. I now was armed with lots of places to research. Being still on dial-up internet connection, I mainly used the phone to start. I started a list for each place (12 in all I believe) and started keeping track of names, numbers and the details of price and what they offered. I got samples from probably 8 places … do you begin to see I am … [CLICK TO READ MORE]

Cards and Licensing

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I want to pass along the Nice Matters Award that I received. I am passing it along to Neda Doany at Papiers Collés Blog. Neda is a fantastic artist and an incredible writer. She also writes very thought provoking posts and is insightful and inspiring. But Neda also treats everyone well and with respect … and that is why I am giving her this well-deserved award. I do believe she has a few other awards (like Thoughtful Blogger) that she has not put up yet. Nice Matters Award When I first started thinking about how to get my paintings out into the Universe (without parting with the originals), not surprisingly I thought about cards. I still want to get my work licensed for two big reasons. #1 is I think that is an important way that my work can be enjoyed by many in an affordable way – many people like my artwork and licensing is a way that can be very accessible. Mother Watching All, Oil © Diane Clancy #2 is that licensing is a way that (potentially) I can kept receiving income from work that I have already created. It could be an important income stream for me as an artist. With licensing, I could get residual income for a long time. Now there is not necessarily much money from each item sold (the percentage is usually fairly low), but sell a lot and it adds up. I actually did quite a lot of research several years ago … [CLICK TO READ MORE]

Illustrator Friday – Backwards

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Illustrator Friday has a challenge every week. This week is Backwards. As usual, there are many ways to interpret the topic. I have chosen to continue with using words on my Bubblescapes to represent ideas … it has been fun. I wanted to represent a mirror and then show the words backwards in the mirror … but perhaps we ARE the mirror. These colors remind me of a mirror too. I didn’t have time to do it more formally. And somehow the colors remind me of backwards too … not sure why. Backwards, Digital © Diane Clancy There is the obvious and the subtle When it comes to Backwards. The colors are Backwards here too … These colors are Backwards from my usual. Then there is the Helpful Backwards .. Reaching out for new ways And the Unhelpful Backwards … Insisting on Looking Backwards Instead of at Life Which do you Choose .. Every Moment. Again, I thought you might enjoy without the words too .. So here it is! by the way, I have several posts written up about marketing that I will be uploading the next couple of days. Night Jewels, Digital © Diane Clancy ~ Diane Clancy … [CLICK TO READ MORE]

Two Things Challenge – Hold/Value

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First I would like you all to know about Staci Rose’s interesting blog (http://stacirose.blogspot.com). She makes beautiful and creative jewelry and had some very interesting posts. She mentions me in the last week and it is a fascinating post about her. Staci was kind enough to give me a Nice Matters Award! Thank you, Staci! I appreciate this award very much!! Nice Matters Award After much thought and work, I have decided on my entry to the 2 Things Challenge with a focus on Hold & Value or Holders of Real Value. This one stumped me for a long time. Partly because I feel most of my artwork IS already about what I value. I want to be enhancing your spirit and raising your energy and vibration with my work. I want to help you align with the highest part of your being. That is what I value the most. So then I thought back to last week’s challenge and decided to go that route. By the way, each entry this week earns $10 toward charity.  You have until Wed to enter, so please consider entering! Hold Value, Digital © Diane Clancy Rima, I hope the words work for you … I used bold and I think bigger to make them more visible. I hope that works! And I hope the words don’t obscure the rest of the image itself too much! I just have to show you the painting without words … I love it! I am not sure … [CLICK TO READ MORE]