One of my favorite artist friends asked me if I’d do Art Every Day again this year. Sure! But this is all I could manage the last couple of days–little sketchy bunnies.
If you are one of those souls sending art or stories out into the world, how do you organize things? How do you number/catalog art and keep track of what you’ve sold? How do you keep track of what stories you’ve sent and to whom? Do you use a program or a notebook?
Today, practical advice would be appreciated.
That said, how good are you at switching from the creative side to the business side? Is it easy stroll in your mind or a pitch down a energy-sucking pit?
Marta Pelrine-Bacon 
What an interesting idea! I used to sketch every day, but now I’m lucky if I get one done a week. Some days I wish I had a business partner that enjoyed all the tediousness of running a small business, or at least was better at it than I am. I usually have to force myself to organize. Strategy and planning tend to come a little more naturally for me, but is also a huge time suck because I spend too much time imagining possibilities instead of actually implementing most of what I dream up.
Oh, I’d rather be implementing than strategizing. But I’ll have to force myself to work this stuff out.
And try art every day for a month. See what you can do.
I love the title of this post. And the bunnies are cute, too. 🙂 Can’t wait to see what comes out of this exercise!
Thanks, Sherri. Silly bunnies.
I’m with Sherri — LOVED the bunnies and the idea of doing a small doodle a day (or if you have time and skill, a big work of art) is a good one. Maybe I should take it up. I’d have to do three today, but I could catch up, right?
Just kidding. I’m doodling all the time.
But I loved what you did here, and I think the expressions you captured are cool too. They say a lot. I can see greeting cards with these guys on them, easily.
Can you tell I have nothing to offer on the business question? Yeah, I thought it was obvious. *Sigh* Good luck; let us know what you learn.
I doodle all the time too, but now I’m doodling with a mind to share. And you should draw every day! You can do it! Go, go, go.
*rubs hands together in glee*
See, this is where my talents can shine! I love to handle the money and I love to organize stuff. If I had to quantify my creative/business sides I’d say I’m 15% creative and 85% business. It’s not an energy sucking pit to me at all – quite the opposite, in fact. I could spend days in office supply stores, like a kid in a candy store.
If you wanted, I might be able to help you with this kind of stuff, helping to organize and track it.
I wish I had more business skills! And thanks for the offer. I don’t know yet what I’m doing, but maybe I’ll ask you if I have a question…
Yay for doing art every day. Is there a link for this? I’d like to check it out.
I think you should start small. Actually, keeping small has made it possible for me to do something every day. Sometimes I double up if I skip a day.
Keeping organized is kind of difficult. Especially with every day stuff going on.
Right now, I have a box to store things, and a bunch of little portfolios with plastic pages. I’m trying to work up a system, but I keep getting more paintings than I have organizational skills.
I have a couple of portfolios for prints in my shop. With them, I try to keep a photocopies sheet with name, info, series number, and the name and address of who I’ve sold to (but I’m not great at keeping this up to date. bad rowena) then I have a portfolio for original paintings/drawings. That is not yet organized into shop/no shop.
I want to do one portfolio of unlisted work that moves into the appropriate listed portfolio when I have put it in the shop, but Ihave not managed it yet. I can’t keep up with photos and listings yet. I haven’t sold so many original works yet, but I’d like to keep a color print of each original I have sold, just so I have evidence of doing it.
Pieces that I don’t like enough to put in my shop are going loose into the archival box. All these portfolios and boxes are small. These are how I keep things under control with my day job of SAHM. Everything has to stay within my storage and shipping dimensional capacity.
I really don’t think my system/nonsystem is all that effective or efficient. I’m still learning.
Rowena,
I think there is an “official” site for art every day, but a tiny group of us are doing it on our own. The real month may be in November and, you know, that’s NaNoWriMo anyway.
I’ve spent the weekend coming up with ways to organize my work… may we both keep learning.
PS. I think you could join even at this date if you’d like. Let me know.
The art-every-day thing sounds cool. Do photos count?
When I was seriously writing short fiction, I used a database I’d built myself. Then, as they say, Things Happened. I have no idea if that database is still on my computer. (I’ve upgraded 2-3 times since.)
For book-length fiction to be marketed to agents, I use an online site called LitMatch. (However, the word “use” there shouldn’t be taken too seriously; I may go to the site maybe once a month, if that!) LitMatch lets you log in one or more books, search for agents w/different criteria, track your submissions, and aggregate your experiences with others’. (E.g., so it will show average query-response time for Agent X.)
But LitMatch won’t actually submit your queries — at least, as of my last visit there. Alas. 🙂
Yes. Photos count.
I’ll look into LitMatch. Thanks for the suggestion–though I’m not submitting anything at the moment (GRE/MFA and everything else holding me back).