Check out my Facebook Fan Page (I update weekly!)

I have never updated my blog as much as originally intended. I have lots of posts in my head, but it's tough to nail them down sometimes!

But, if you want to keep up with me on a regular basis this summer of 2010, check out my Facebook Fan Page... I update it a lot more often! (And, you will get to peek inside my studio from time to time as well.)

www.facebook.com/pages/Carmella-Jarvi

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!

This is why it's been so long since I've posted!

Here's my recent marketing tool, my "Summer 2010 Schedule" postcard. (I'm posting it, emailing it and snail-mailing it to my mailing list. I only do regular mailings about once a year.)

This is why it's been so long since I've posted! I am painting like mad and working on sending these new works home with collectors!

I will be an Affiliate Artist in residence until August 23 and I WILL do more regular posts... but everything just got away from me (funny that it's been one month since last post:-o)

Finally, I knew I wanted to do a promotional piece like this. But because of some tight deadlines, I wasn't able to get it out for the very first reception. However, I knew better to have it good and ready for most of the events than to have an overlooked mistake because of rush job and be humiliated when the error was realized!

Quality should be a top goal for marketing materials!