Day 10 - 30/30 Marketing Your Art Challenge + Four Boats & Save The Mermaid Parade

Four Boats, Bernard Maine

Colored pencil and ink on canvas, 9"h x 11"w - framed in a lovely walnut frame 13.5"h x 16.5"w 

$350

Today's Challenge on Leslie Saeta's blog was to start researching galleries to sell your art.
This is more of an ongoing challenge - not really something you can really do in half-an-hour - but it plants the seed and she gives a really clear check list including gathering, names and addresses, websites and phone numbers, researching who already exhibits there.
I am looking forward to the day when I have a body of work big enough, and consistent enough to approach a gallery.
Looking forward to tomorrow's challenge.

About the Painting
This painting was created after taking a class with Robert Kogge at the Art Student League, NYC. It's a really interesting technique that involves drawing with colored pencils on a clay-primed canvas. At certain points in the process you wash over your drawing with colored inks. when it dries, you continue to build up the color again. It is time consuming, but it really creates a unique illusion of depth and illumination. The photo reference is my own, taken in Bernard, Maine at the working dock and waterfront. Dozens of dingies in all shapes and sizes, wood, fiberglass and aluminum, line the docks on any given day, creating all sorts of interesting shapes shadows and reflections.
The painting has been shown at the Fire Island Lighthouse Annual Art Show 2010, The Monclair College, Robert Kogge Student Show, March/April 2011, and The Art Guild of Port Washington, Member Show 2011

Help Save the Mermaid Parade

And now a plug for one of my favorite events in NYC - The Coney Island Mermaid Parade. Superstorm/Hurricane Sandy was devastating to the Coney Island area. There was over four feet of ocean flowing through the museum, through the amusement parks, Nathans, and many other Brooklyn landmarks. They've been rebuilding as fast as they can, but it's expensive AND throwing one of the biggest and craziest parades in NYC is expensive too! With nearly a million people watching and participating in the parade, the financial boost to the neighborhood on the first weekend of the summer is key to the survival of hundreds of businesses.
If you live in the NY/NJ area - I highly recommend attending. It's like Mardi Gras meets the NYC Halloween Parade meets the Mummers meets the Thanksgiving Day Parade. Everyone is happy and dancing, there are hula hoops and glitter and pasties and endless imaginative costumes and floats. Not to mention thousands of mermaids and pirates, and sea (and space) creatures made of bubble wrap and solo cups.
Please, check out and give if you can to the Coney Island Mermaid Parade Kickstarter Program. I've provided a link to the site on the top right.

Thanks for looking!