Marketing for Artists

There is a new class starting in March 2021 at the Art Students League of Denver (ASLD). I was offered the opportunity to take it along with the other artists in the Cherry Creek Art Gallery. We all signed up! It is called Practical Marketing for Artists. It is not yet listed on ASLD website (as of 2-15-21) but Rose Frederick says it will start March 3, 6-8 pm. We took it via Zoom so I imagine that is how it will be presented again. Here is the phone number to call ASLD for information: 303-778-6990.

The course we took was loosely based on her e-book which is available on her website for download when you subscribe to her newsletter. Our class ran 1.5 hrs over 6 weeks. Through our feedback she has extended the time per class as well as the length of the class. We had homework every week and some of that homework required way more time and energy than we had expected. That being said, it was well worth it for those of us who really did want to make the most of her expertise. Our websites were looked at and critiqued by another student in the class, and then talked about in front of the class. This was hard on some, but it was a valuable look at what worked and why, and what doesn't. Some of us thought her suggestions not apropos for artists, but others ran with her suggestions. As with any class, take what works for you and don't worry if you don't feel her suggestions fit your personal style.

I am not sure how this next class is laid out, but I do hope the class that stumped most of us and made us work! will be a bigger part of the new format. It was to examine our values: who we are, why we do what we do, what is important to us, not just as artists but as individuals. This lays the foundation from which we then base not only our website (mission statement, about page, artist statement), but also our social media (SM) ’campaign.’ I am not sure ‘campaign’ is the correct word, as we are all left to do what we want with the information provided. But this initial hard work gives direction to all we put out there. We all do SM to different levels.

The majority of us had a very generic artist statement. By that I mean it could be anyone’s. It really didn’t say much about who we are except in a very general way. Made to focus on our values, the new, improved statements actually differentiated us in very distinct ways.

I did not save my original artist’s statement to be able to show you the difference. Lack of foresight in writing this article or embarrassment, who is to know? Suffice it to say, I can’t give you the ‘before and after’ as I so like to do with my paintings. I do highly recommend the class if you are interested in taking your promo pieces and marketing to a new level.

New Year

First, I want to start off by sharing with you two recent responses to my work. The first came from the judge for the November to ART MUSE online juried contest. One piece I submitted was Marbled Water. Here is what I received as a finalist: I like the unusual viewpoint and the variety of shapes that come together in an  abstract design. The suggestions of seeing through the water and the reflections from the hard edged buildings are very well described. Nancy Tankersley

Marbled Water, 30x30, oil on linen

The second came in an email this morning from a friend and collector who now lives in Vermont. Her brother-in-law teaches color at the Parsons School of Design in NYC. Here is what she wrote: Dan is a professional artist who teaches color at Parsons School of Design. I always enjoy his comments on our artwork. He loves your work, the light you get, the precision. This trip he particularly enjoyed looking at your painting of the cattle and horses and dog crossing the road in Wyoming. I can't remember exactly what he said but he loved the way you used colors and asked me to tell you how much he likes it!

Cattle Crossing, 12x24, oil on panel

It is always gratifying to discover how much your work impacts others. For someone who teaches color to comment so positively on my use of color is high praise indeed! I attribute it to John Singer Sargent. He is my inspiration.
With the holidays and family from out of town visiting etc I haven't had much time at my easel this past month or two. I have done another little 6x6 to show off today. I took the photo reference at the end of the hollyhock season. I think I needed a little color and hope for Spring.

Hollyhock, 6x6, oil on panel

The Critique

Critique, 30x24, oil on linen panel

 I don't believe I have posted this painting before. It is really hard to put out there a portrait of sorts of someone so well known in the local art community here in Denver. This is from the Master Painting class I took a few years ago with Kevin Weckbach. I am very grateful for the time I was able to spend under his tutelage so the last thing I want to do is put a bad painting of him out in public.That happens to be my easel behind him with my nifty tennis ball tube turned brush holder hanging on the wall. People who have seen this painting ask if that is me sitting on the left, but alas, no; I took the reference photo and then used it as a class project for dark/light pattern.

I have explained dark/light pattern before so to briefly review what that means it is to find a pattern either in the light or the dark values and then push the medium values either to the light pattern or the dark pattern. This one I used the darks to carve out the light. The dark values marry to one another to create a circle that moves the eye around. To do the assignment, for instance, the brown hair highlights of Tomiko on the left were toned down so as to not be disrupted by her highlights and to blend from Kevin's black shirt to his navy pants to her brown hair, etc. Her sweatshirt was overall a darker gray to unify with the darker areas of her hood folds. Kevin's blue cargo pants were overall darker and flatter too. I brought the mediums back out after the critique but still keeping the pattern in mind.

The other things I liked about this composition were the repeating square shapes and the angles both in the painting being critiqued and the easel and the brush holder. That is what we call the "abstract quality" and in this case, help guide the eye as well.

Here is Kevin critiquing the start of the painting where you can see what I was talking about marrying the values.

Bad Advice?

One of the worst things I think I was ever told when learning to paint by an instructor was to "stop resting on my laurels" and learn to paint. He was referring to the fact that I liked to paint in big bold simplified shapes. Every week he would say what was good about what I was doing and why it worked, but then would tell me now I needed to learn 'to paint' and not be so stylized as obviously that was easy for me. And boy, was it hard to break myself of this viewpoint. 

It was my first formal class in oil painting, which I took at the Arts Student League of Denver when it was located in Lodo on Larimer Street. He started us out in black and white only, then to gray and then moved on to adding one color at a time. Here are two color examples I came across recently, and I still like them! Painted on gessoed cardboard, you can see where the top example was punctured. Being that these are now 30 plus years old, they have held up remarkably well, don't you think? I think they were painted in acrylics, not oils, though.

I had recently seen an artist friend post her new paintings on Instagram and they reminded me so much of my own work way back when. I really like what she is doing. I still paint in bold simplified shapes, but in a more 'painterly' and 'refined' way. A part of me is wanting to go back to the day and revisit flat color. Play around a bit. Simplify and exaggerate.

The Critique of The Crit

critique of The Crit painting

Here is a photo from last week's working critique. Kevin is critiquing my painting that I am doing of him critiquing another artist's painting. My painting of The Critique is not done in this photo with Kevin holding it.
As I was working from the outside in on this painting, Steph's painting just blocked in. 'The Critique' is done as dark/light pattern where I wanted a strong sense of light versus dark. Even at the angle it is being held at here you can sense that strong structure of what is in the light group and what is in the dark group. When you squint, the mediums marry themselves to one or the other.
Below is the painting on my easel this weekend as I continue to build on it. The structure is there so it is a matter of  time before it is completed.

The Critique, 30x24, oil on linen panel

The reason I like this particular subject is because of the repetitious shapes that the dark values carve out. The lines in the painting he is holding repeat shapes in the background and also help lead the eye around the whole painting. This particular composition has repetitions of rectangles as well as triangles. The viewer is taken in by the direction of the two figures looking at the painting.

Janice Nowinski Workshop Day 2 and 3

Day Two: I decided to start a new painting and leave the boats for now. I was a bit confused by the end of day one so I brought in a larger board and decided to go graphic with big simple shapes. I used a photo of my son since figures seemed to be the modus operandi. It is a photo I had taken to be part of a series I had started on reading years ago but had been distracted from completing. I started this series before the iPhone came on the scene but I have kept those photo references in an envelope as I add to it in case I revisit that series. NOTE: an ironic addendum to this. In yesterday's WSJ was an article on the decline of summer reading from its apex after WWII. The link to this article by Lee Siegel is not available but when I did a search I see that this is a recurring theme of his. I realized I had read other of his articles on this topic on the decline of reading books.
After quickly blocking the shapes in on this very slick surface I was ready to correct the relationships and start painting. It was suggested that I leave it as is. So I did. After looking at it awhile I think I did not have the right proportion board in relation to the photograph. My math is off, in other words. That is one reason I think the hands are so large. I can't find the photo to verify this.
I think this piece has potential. It was well received as is and deemed complete by the class and by Janice. Not sure I agree. You can judge for yourselves. What I may end up doing is starting a new one instead of my normal reaction to over painting the original. That is something Janice suggested that is starting to make sense to me. So there is a takeaway from the workshop.

Reading On a Jet Plane, 20x16, oil on slick board, 20x16

When I took these pieces to work one of my coworkers really liked this painting as well. Another coworker asked why I was taking a workshop and not giving one? Good question...Amazingly enough I had an email yesterday asking me to go to WI to give a workshop. I'm thinking on it.

Day Three:Another figure. I wanted to see what I would do with editing an image and not being so *literal in its translation. I left out quite a bit from the photo reference and am quite happy with this one. No one recognized it as the wall sculpture outside the Denver Art Museum. I don't think you are supposed to climb it but one day where I was meeting a friend, someone did!

Here are some photos from the critique at the end of the third day:

All three of these paintings were done from black andwhite photos. Nicely done, too.

Sampling of works completed during the workshop.

More critique...love the translation of Matisse.

*Note: "literal" became one of the hot button words of the workshop-not sure we all agreed on what that word means. I had to define the term "graphic" more than once when I used it to describe my work. Another interesting topic for another post. How we think we can redefine words to fit our own definition.

Janice Nowinski Workshop Day 1

I have not taken a workshop in years. In fact it has been so long I can't remember when the last one was. I took a three day workshop this past week with Janice Nowinski. I do not know her work but I was intrigued by the title description: photo as catalyst: Extracting and Transforming. I was hoping to break down some of my self-imposed barriers and to trust my instincts when editing and painting from photo references. Day One was Monday. Janice talked about what she meant by extracting and transforming as we viewed the photos and photos of art that we had all brought in as per the syllabus. We were to bring in 5 photos. Including postcards of favorite artist/painting. It was remarkable some of the themes that popped up on the display board. There were many Odalisques. One participant painted this theme all three days. Many had brought black and white photos of themselves or family members to paint. The first day I was the only one who did not paint a figure! I painted boats. It was interesting to see those who painted something personal vs those of us who did not. It seemed the class was half there to explore themselves thru their art. What can I say? I left the first day wondering what in the heck I walked into. Did I misread what the class was about? No. I was wondering if I was getting in my own way again and maybe I just needed to roll with it.

Here is the painting from day 1 of the workshop. It is not complete; but it is what it is for the time being. My goal was to make order out of chaos. The jumble of boats both in the foreground and the background seemed a challenge to me and I wanted to work on repeating patterns and colors. I think it is a good start.

Sligo Boats, 16x12, work in progress or study for larger painting

"A Solid Show"

Last Saturday my mentor, Kevin, came over to view and critique a portion of the paintings I intend to hang in the upcoming Littleton Museum show. I have been holding off investing in frames until he could come over. We all know that paintings we like don't necessarily make the cut, while others we deem unworthy turn out to be winners!

As to be expected, he picked up paintings lying around my studio that I did not deem worthy.  I was surprised as two of them were paintings I wiped off, as in scrubbed and sanded, to "start over." He thought I should finish them and include them! That the compositions were strong and the subjects were cool. Really? A few others he said were ready just as they are. I will keep them at the back of the list but not off the list. I am still wondering...

The actual paintings I wanted him to critique left me with a "to do" list but overall not that much. I got most of them fixed up last Sunday and have only 2 left to work on which will allow me time to do a few more pieces. He said I would have a "solid show." Wow! Thank you Kevin!

Alley Critique

I took this painting in this morning for critique as I believed I had made the red bud too light in value. Before going back in and working on it I wanted Kevin's opinion, and he did agree. BUT he said maybe I should use the purple/pink color of the redbud, mixed with the green from the trees behind it with the sky color, which he said is too blue, make the overall value of the sky lighter, and then the red bud would be okay. He said the sky is just a bit too blue for the overcast day it was. Otherwise, he said it is a fine painting and I did a good job on the local tone feel of it. (ie no light and shadow, and three value groups: light, medium and dark). I also took in the "truck" alley painting, and it is not near being complete so there was a lot to say about that one. I will give that in a second post as I want to put the before and after in one blog post. and it is thundering and lightening out right now and I want to get off the computer!

Critique on the Alley

I know we are all getting tired of seeing the same old painting, but bear with me. The comments Eddie made last Sunday at the Summer Art Market on this painting that I mentioned in my last post were: One, don't call it a recycle bin. It is not a recycle bin, or a dumpster as you can't physically put anything in it. It is paint; the painting may be representing an alley with bins or dumpsters or snow. I am not sure why he was making that point, but so be it. The second thing he said was that what makes this a painting vs just a representational piece is the purple in the water; he said he knows the purple wasn't there (true) but I put it there because it worked, and that is what makes this painting so good, among other things. The bar has been raised by this painting and now to find out if I am up to repeating it consistently...

The Alley Critique

The last Saturday of March, I brought in Harvard Gulch alley for critique. I have been working on it since. Kevin voiced much of what I had been thinking. It is interesting to note, that the one area he really liked he said I should repeat in the one area where it was weakest. That was all I needed to hear, as I knew what the weak link was – I just didn’t realize what the strong area was. He said he particularly liked the upper left hand corner; the trees and the light. Funny thing is, that was one of my major areas of trouble, so I finally got tired of trying to replicate the photo and went right into orchestration. Ie what did I want from it, and then I just went for it. Getting a rhythm going with movement and color which I then carried into the whole mass of trees that create the backdrop. So Now I had to Do That with the snow and melting snow on and around the alley…Snow is not my forte, but I have been studying it more intently while the past two storms went into melt mode. Not with paint, unfortunately, but going out and watching the play of light and shadow and seeing what the pavement looks like with wet snow in light and shadow which had gotten me stuck. Looking at the alley now, I may have overdone it, as is my wont. But at least I have it reading better and simplifying is becoming easier for me to do, once I have gone overboard first. I do love oil paint and its forgiving nature.

Another thing he told me was to unite the light by using a mother color, and do the same in the shadows. I thought I had done that in the shadows but I apparently went to far there as well. I do think the light is popping more now. I still have a few things to touch up, but I am just about there.

A note to those who receive an automatic email upon my posting - you must use the link in the email to come to the blog and respond here for the comments to post. Thank you.

Painting from Hell or Gurgy sur L'Yonne street scene

I did not do as much to this as one would think given the difference in how the two were photographed. (DEC 31 post) Kevin asked if I had the photo reference with me, which I did not, but I did have the sketch from the original idea I had worked out. I had totally forgotten about the sketch it has been so long since I worked on this painting. What Kevin suggested I do was to paint from the sketch, as it was great. His critique then came from the sketch and its center of interest of the clump of vegetation almost dead center. So in essence, darken the building that is in the left corner and lighten the white building; darken the roof of the white building and simplify the plane facing the viewer. I also added the light "triangles" to the vegetation along the edge of all the buildings beginning with the left corner. I tried to lighten the building dead center that is integral to the vegetation, but I did not like it, but looking at the sketch next to the painting, I see that I still should think about that. Or darken the building with the two windows...that would make the other building appear lighter. Silly me, I thought the white house was the center of interest.

Critique Update

Lockkeeper Along the Yonne River
Here is where I am at after working on this painting yesterday. I darkened the jeans so that they tie into the bike more. I now can't decide if I should lighten the gravel road and the middle field or darken the shadow of the white jacket. I am going to think on that some more.
High, Wide and Lonesome
I pretty much repainted this one since the critique last Saturday. I did everything Kevin suggested and more. From darkening the sky, simplifying the road, the middle ground and the mountains; making the wedge of hillside read as one value; reworked the car and Donna sitting in it. I think the only thing I didn't touch are the dry grasses along the road.
I am having a hard time photographing this painting due to its size. I just don't have the setup for it. It took me hours today just to get one that was acceptable.
On the Beach
On this one, I lightened the top edges of all the boats to be the save value as the overturned boat, redid the walkway to the building and also put in the ropes. Didn't take too long to get this one fixed up.

And that is as far as I have gotten. It sure helped to have a snow day yesterday from work.

Saturday Critique

Today I went to the Saturday class of The Masterpainting class; I have not been in quite awhile and today was the critique for the months assignment. I did not do the assignment, but I did want some paintings critiqued. I did bring in an assigment from last spring that I didn't get feedback on as well.
High, Wide and Lonesome, 36x18 inches. Simplify. Too much going on. I asked if I should force the middle ground back further and he agreed. Simply the road by taking out all the break ups and value changes and give it more gradation, from darker at the bottome edge to lighter at the crest; Simply the wedge of hillside on the left side to be more one value; Accentuate the Jeep Wagoneer so it is more the main focus by making the light edge lighter and the highlight on the rear edge more instense and unifying the shadow shape with the wood panel (ie, tie it in by bluing it) and lighter trim. BUT he said, on the other hand, if he saw this painting in a gallery in Santa Fe, he would think it a very good painting as it is. He just wants to push me.

The Lockkeeper, 15 x 30 inches. Unify the shadow side of the lockkeeper and tie that shadow shape into the bike and the cast shadow. And also unify the shape of the light hitting him. Again, he said it is not much that needs to be done but that would strenghen the painting overall. I could also try lightening the gravel road first to see if that helps. Loved the background.
On the Beach, 20x 16 inches. I am close to this being a local tone or front lit approach. Since I was going for front lit, I am going to keep it there. Very little needs to be done to "complete" this painting. Lighten the green boat's flat plane facing the light, lighten "Oliver" so that it is not the same value as the sand, but not too light since it is a canted plane, and all of the tops of the boats around the rims to match the value of the white/pale green boat in the rear.


Painting without a name, 10x16 inches. I brought in my B&W photo of this painting to show him what I was aiming for but knew I was missing completely. He agreed with my assessment of it being a "who cares" painting. He suggested looking at some Richard Diebenkorn books to take it in a more abstract direction. I like this suggestion. He said the composition is strong, the light, medium and dark patterns are interesting, so do away with the detail that I was getting to involved in. ie keep the shapes flat and accentate the graphic. The name of the is village Semur-en-Auxios, and is located just off the main road between Dijon and Paris.
Grand Lake Regatta, 16x12. This painting was actually done as a class assignment from last spring on Local Tone. I am still not there after 4 tries. He said to take it to light and shadow would be easier, but I really want it to be local tone. With that in mind, I must darken the light strip of water to read with the foreground water. I must lighten up the sails and take the warm patch out. Keep the value cool. So, back to the proverbial drawing board. I am determined to get this right. Not because it will ever be a great painting but for my own edification.