Successful artists must work on their craft.

I have been painting... and painting... and painting some more. Last week, I delivered fourteen paintings for my summer solo show at Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, NC. (waterworks.org)

Now that I am done with that commitment, I have 'reset' and begun thinking about what I want to create. Also I've been thinking about what is it, specifically, that makes a 'successful' artist? First, successful artists must work on their craft regularly. IF you are talented and paint on a semi-regular basis, you only get so many winning paintings. But if you are talented AND you treat your art making like a job with discipline and thought, it is only a matter of time before you are successful. If one has a regular, serious approach to their art, eventually they will generate a strong, cohesive body of work that folks just have to buy!

Recently, I have become a huge fan of American Art Collector Magazine (americanartcollector.com) as well as Arcadia Fine Arts. Check out this gallery's website and the artist Brad Kunkle...arcadiafinearts.com

Arcadia sold most of Kunkle's new paintings before his recent show even opened to the public! He is an amazing painter and what makes him even better is he has NUMEROUS awesome paintings, not just a handful with the rest of the show being just OK! He is consistently painting strong work.

So, I am inspired by his paintings AND his sales... and I am off to spend a lot more time with my paintbrushes, sketchbooks and models. Although I will not be posting lots this summer because of my residency at the McColl Center for Visual Art, I will try to post more often than once a month!

Are you ready?

How prepared are you? IF someone gets in touch wanting to include you in an upcoming article or needing a brief bio and image to go with a class write up or upcoming show... do you have these things?

Of course we all want opportunities to share our work and what we do, but making sure you're ready when 'opportunity knocks' is something else. In every marketing and strategic planning workshop I've attended, this point has been stressed over and over. Although it is not my favorite thing to download digital images and rewrite my bio, I make sure to regularly work on these things so I am prepared when asked. (And, once you start marketing your work, you most likely will be asked!)

This image is a pastel painting from my Instructional DVD, Painting Water with Pastels. You can see me starting this painting on the YouTube link... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEWIkFHwPhI&feature=channel.

And, this is the painting I sent when recently asked for an image to include with a write up for a marketing workshop I'm teaching October 17 at the Fort Mill Art Guild. (Here's the workshop link... http://www.fortmillartguild.com/classes/jarvi.htm.) Waterworks Visual Arts Center also requested a couple of images to include with their upcoming publicity (I have a solo show there next summer)... and, since I was prepared, I could say yes.

So even though summer is my busy season, I stopped what I was doing for both of these... (and for an upcoming University City Magazine article I was included in too)... I stopped to take advantage of these opportunities to market my work and further get the word out about "Carmella Jarvi".

Are you ready? And, if not, what small steps could you take to get prepared? Good luck. I look forward to seeing your work soon!