Make Art That Sells: Week 1 March Mini

This year I signed up for an Art Bootcamp.  It's an online course produced by Make Art that Sells (MATS). I'm going to be writing a blog post weekly about my experience with the Art Bootcamp so you can see if it is something you would like to do as well.

Every Monday, they give you an assignment and you have one week to complete it.  It is a 4 month long course and by the end of it, you will have 4 new portfolio pieces, each in a different market.  Unlike other online courses, this online class has deadlines.  I love deadlines.  Without deadlines, I would never ship my work.

It started March 1. I spent most of my working day on Monday reading the preliminary stuff and going through the modules, getting to know what I didn't know.  I also did a pre assignment that I didn't see in my e-mail until late last week.  I think Google's algorithm has changed and lots of stuff that is important to me doesn't get shown in my feed and I have to go searching for it.

I finished that just about when the teacher Lilla was about to start her live Zoom introductory meeting.  It was a great meeting and I felt empowered.

Some of my favorite takeaways from the class on Monday were:

"When you are fully YOU you have no competition" -Lilla Rogers

Whatever style you do is fine. Just be sure to hone it and own it. (Hone it and Own it might become my new mantra!)

Draw people doing things.

Don't teach a class you don't want to teach.

You are the boss of your art career.

The color you don't like can be a very good color for you to use.

Be you. Everyone else is already taken.

If you want to learn something, teach.

People buy your JOY.

Use daily affirmations like:

Making art is really easy for me

Art flows out of me

Making art is effortless

Draw, draw, draw.  Use color. Use design. Then promote it.

The assignment this week was a mini. The first week of every month is a mini. It is a time to play.  The worksheet and the assigned icons and letters she asked us to do are really just a jumping off point to give ourselves permission to PLAY. We still don't know the assignment for this month or the market we are creating art for, we are to spend the week playing.

She suggested a color palette, and said just to find the art supplies we already had in those colors.  I pulled out my acrylic paint markers.  They are portable and I can sit in bed and play with those colors making the icons and motifs she assigned to unwind at night.  And I found it was a good choice. I've been wanting to use the paint markers, and I found with my goal to get all the 9x12 alien paintings done this month, I really can't spend a lot of working time on this class, which means goodbye evening YouTube and Amazon Prime watching, hello doodling in bed. 

She suggested that the more we play, the better.  I'm quite enjoying the play and I'm finding that I am more present in my play when I don't have a pencil and when I don't have to plan anything out.  Just see what I can do.  I think this will be really good for pattern design.  I have been interested in pattern design because, how cool would it be to buy fabric you created, or see stencils you designed in Michaels.  Way cool. Right? If I get nothing else out of this class than this habit of play, it will be worth it.

I've decided, especially this first week to see how much material I can produce. A few years ago, I was taking art classes at Utah Valley University.  Most of the drawing classes had a sketchbook requirement of a certain number of pages.  I decided that to up my game and to learn faster, I would double the number of sketchbook pages I was assigned. It worked.

Maybe you have heard of the art class experiment. A teacher is teaching two classes with the same art medium tells the first class that their grade will be based on how many works of art they produce.  The second class is told they only need to produce one PERFECT piece of art.

At the end of the semester, the teacher compares the art work from each class and sees that the worst piece in the first class (the class who tried to produce a bunch of work) is better than the best work in the second class (the class who produced just one masterpiece)

We all have 10,000 bad drawings, paintings, sculptures, sentences, ceramic pieces in us.  Go ahead and create and even if it isn't good enough for anyone else to see, you will have learned something and your next piece will be better.

Happy Creating!

#makeartthatsells

#matsbootcamp

#pamelahanksillustration

#doodlepower