Acrylic Painting on Wood

Don’t you just hate throwing stuff away if you can find a use for it?

That includes pieces of wood that I can give a new lease of life to by painting on them to create mini master pieces!

I love painting on wood because you can take advantage of the texture in the wood grain, even the knots of the wood can give you a creative slant on the style of painting you’ll end up producing.

Using acrylic for painting on wood is ideal. Starting off with thin glazes of colour that soak into the wood grain, built up in layers to bring strong enough colour where you need it, without overpowering the paler shades … perfect.

They may not win a major art prize, but I do love my wood paintings.

I’ll be painting the skirting boards and door frames this summer!

What will you be painting on?

The above image is just one section of the original which is much wider as you can see in the framed picture below.

Click Here to View Sizes and Framing Options

Chester is a few minutes from the Welsh border so you don’t have to go far to enjoy the pleasures of a Welsh Landscape.

We’re lucky enough to be able to see the Welsh hills from the kitchen window which makes the whole pot washing up process a lot more pleasant, when I decide there aren’t enough pots to stack the dishwasher!

UPDATE: Sorry if You Missed It!
This Free Course Is Now Closed

A Free Artists Course May Be Made Available in the future – keep a look out for updates

I don’t know if this applies to you, but I do know it’s a question I get asked a lot by our Art Hobby & Craft members.

“How Do I Get A Website Online for My Craft Business?”

If you’re an art and crafts person in need of a powerful solution to selling your arts and crafts online, or you just want to blog about your favourite hobbies.

And if you have asked that question, here’s the…

Answer:

Craft Business Website Solution

The quickest and easiest, not to mention most affordable, way to get your art, hobby, or craft business online is to use the open source content management solution, called WordPress.

Now, if you really haven’t heard of WP, then don’t confuse it with WordPress.com – that’s where they host a free blog for you, no, no, no!

I’m talking about WordPress.org, which is still free (open source) – but don’t go downloading it whatever you do!

There’s a much easier way to get WordPress installed so you can start blogging about your arts and crafts, or start selling your craft work online.

WordPress Basics for Artisans

I’ve put a couple of videos together to show you exactly how to do this in under five minutes!

• Craft Business Website Course // CLOSED

I’ll be adding a few other videos soon that will help you even further along, I’m just testing and monitoring the WP 3.0 upgrade effects that may need to be pointed out to you.

Bookmark the page so you know where to return to check for new video uploads.

WordPress is much easier to use than most people think until they try it for themselves.

9 times out of 10, this is exactly what my team and I use to create client websites. Granted, we completely re-design the look and functionality so the client has a bespoke website design. Which is why a website design, even on WordPress, can cost upwards of £997

BUT

… if you have some time to DIY and are happy with the WordPress free themes, or can even budget for an affordable Premium WordPress Theme, it’s a breeze.

There you go, I’ve just helped you to get started with your craft business website online and saved you over £900 to boot!!

Do You Think You Can Do It?

If you believe you can, you will … believe you can’t, you won’t … who was it who said that?

I know you CAN do it!

CLOSED

Sadly a lot of independent art galleries have vanished from the high street, but there might be other options open to you locally.

Build Business Relationships Locally

Building relationships with different types of local businesses is a good start to finding alternative ways to display your art and craft items locally.

The video above shows a few original paintings and engravings I displayed in a local furniture store in Chester. The store owner needed some art work to fill his blank walls, to enhance the homely atmosphere of his furniture layouts, and I needed somewhere to hang some of my art work at the time, so it was mutually beneficial.

Getting your art or craft work seen locally, especially if you are looking for buyers of your work, is to put it where people are looking for your type of art or craft items.

As touched upon at the beginning of the article, galleries are often not the first port of call these days for buyers or for artists, unless you live in a pretty large City with a thriving art community. Or maybe finding a gallery that will take your work is a challenge?

Getting Your Art & Craft Work Seen

Your first goal is to get your work seen!

Many people buy art on impulse, it’s often an emotionally driven purchase. Having your art or craft items on display in alternative spaces, provides you with the opportunity of attracting their impulse buy.

If they see your work when they are buying related products, such as home furnishings or furniture, they are seeing how well your art work fits their main purchase. Seeing this a good match, they are able to buy your work at the same time.

Selling Your Art Work

Although you may be lucky enough to find a local business willing to buy your art or craft work directly from you, others may offer you a sale or return agreement.

You’ll also find many business owners willing to display your art and craft work for free. In that case, I’d suggest you offer a goodwill commission percentage on any sales of your items.

Any commission percentage you agree with a local business will without doubt be a lot lower than the percentage you’d give to a gallery, which means more reward for your creative efforts for you!

Take Creative Action Locally

Your next goal is to take some creative action!

• Scour your local high street or local venues and match potential outlets to fit your style of art or craft work.
• Short list potential local businesses where there is sufficient foot traffic – potential buyers.
• Go speak to them in person and outline the benefits for them in displaying your work.

Have YOU had your art or craft work on display locally in an ‘alternative space’?
Please tell us below about your experience and success.

Art Prints by Diane of Chester
My original paintings are not currently for sale, unless someone begs me to to take a large cheque of course.

Thought I'd share these beautifully made Cold Porcelain Flowers and other artistic craft delights with you today.

The weather is pretty grey and cold where we are, and these certainly brightened my day, bringing a glimpse of the Spring season which should be on it's way to us soon.

If it's not very springlike where you are, I hope these brighten your day too.

Enjoy

Ron is an exceptionally gifted arts and crafts master! Cold Porcelain Flowers by Ron Gutman

Cold Porcelain Recipe (eBook)

Well, those of us based in the UK are enjoying a mixed weather kind of summer and other members of Art Hobby Craft are enduring their winter weather.

No matter what their weather, AHC members are making sure that their handmade arts and crafts creations keep flowing.

Member, Corbin has been very busy.

If you are like me, a little quirky (on the inside – grin), then you'll just love Corbin's quirky character creations shown here in this slideshow….

Find more photos like this on Hobby arts and crafts people art hobby handmade gifts

Corbin has certainly been busy, as have many AHC artisans as you can see in these arts and crafts photos

Enjoy…

Are you an arts and crafts creative?

Ethical Art in Landscape is the theme of Laura's A Level project.

This video shows the first stage of the process, which began earlier this year. Laura explains the environmental and ethical perspective she gave to her creative thoughts on this project.

Laura has also added her video to the Pledging for Change competition post over at Art Hobby Crafts as we are considering entering, depending on whether sufficient AHC members can demonstrate an ethical approach in their arts and crafts work.

The joy of recycling discarded materials for me is to see something that would normally be thrown away given a new lease of life, albeit in a different form.

One of my other favourite Art recycling projects, in addition to creating 'paperclay' is to transform old paintings, including frame, into brand new paintings. 

I received a large old print with gold frame yesterday, so that is on my art project schedule for recycling and transformation.  It will no doubt become an abstract painting. 

So, what are you into creatively recycling?  

You can always find Art in a Summer Rose Garden

We have enjoyed a beautiful spell of warm weather, with a little rain to keep the grass green and the flowers blooming, here in the UK over recent days.

The garden is brimming with all manner of:

.  'blooming' things

.  drying seed heads

.  birds, frogs and other wild life

I confess to thinking "garlic frogs legs" this afternoon when one of the little critters hopped out on the drive as we were hosing the porch roof.  I think he'd popped over for a cooling spray in the midday heat.

As one pair of frogs legs isn't enough to go round the dinner table, he was gently cooled off and allowed to hop off on his way.

I was going to photograph him, but he'd vanished into the flower beds before I had time to pop in for the camera.

I did however get some great photos the other day of summer flowers and dried seed heads in the rose garden.  This image, Summer Rose, caught my eye and, with a little bit of time and artistic creativity it was transformed into a piece of artwork and added to my online art gallery.

It captures some of those warm summer tones fading in the cooling late afternoon light.

Enjoy the mini heat wave

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Art by Diane of Chester