daily themes

theme for the day - Day 1
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

I've started doing these from cards that I wrote and put in an empty drawer. At night I shuffle them up and pick two. Then when I sit down to do some art I keep them in mind. We'll see how it goes. I didn't have much time for art yesterday so all I ended up from these suggestions was this simple sketch, but it was good to get back to my daily sketching.

Today I have:
Change Tools
Read a Page from the Closest Book (that would be Eat, Shoots and Leaves



My birthday ended up better than I thought it would be when I woke up feeling horrible to bad weather early yesterday. Before I knew it the skies had cleared and it was a beautiful spring day for me. And since Jon had the day off we were able to enjoy it together with our daughter. And that is all I need.

We've been in Boston for five years now so I know winter is not over, but I do think it is safe for me to hope that we will have more good days than bad.

Now to show off some recently listed reproductions from my mLeeRedux. I'm working to keep both that and mLee fresh this week.

New Business Ideas

Reproductions
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Hi guys and thanks for all the well wishes I have received. I'm alive and on the road to recovery. But am almost always tired and at least a bit run down. In fact, I bet I will have to stop and start writing this blog entry a number of times before being able to finish it because I always have a million things to do, most of them involving the hippo. At five weeks her sleeping habits are changing and we are adjusting to them and only starting to get the hang of them. I hear her fussing a lot during the day and run to check on her only to find her asleep. I've learned to detect what cries need immediate attention and what ones don't.

Heroes was on TV, saved onto our Tivo and commercial free after we got home from running errands. No matter how Monday goes, and how tired I am at the end, I will not put off watching Heroes until another day. We were up to late watching it, but it was worth it!







With much blood sweat and tears I managed to finish carving that block that I started working on eons ago and I think it turned out great. I finished it on Saturday and as I was going to bed asked myself if I should work on printing it Sunday or do some small blocks over the week and save the printing for next weekend. Giving myself a break since I am still ill. Well blee nixed any plans of doing anything on Sunday. She was a nightmare baby. Neither one of us got a single thing done unless you count Jon eating a burrito and me getting photo mailers for an order.

The simple fact is that it is harder for me to produce less work now and that is likely to remain unchanged for a very long time. I don't have massive amounts of new work coming out anymore, but when I do I think it is top notch and getting better. I think the work from my last printing sessions back in July was some of my best, and it selling out quickly proves that. It is time for me to raise my prices. Just on future work, I will not be going back to my old pieces and raising them. I won't decide my new price structure until I actually print and am looking at the new work.

To counter the price increase I am going to be offering more reproductions in my shop so that more people will be able to collect my work. I will continue to only offer pieces that have not only sold but have sold rather quickly, or were personal favorites. I even have two pieces framed
and hanging in my studio because I missed looking at them when they sold. I like them a lot, but my focus is going to remain on originals.

Oh, Jon and my fifth wedding anniversary is tomorrow. Hopefully we will be able to do something. Our favorite restaurant is pretty family friendly so we might go there. And as a real treat I am having somebody over to clean on Thursday! I am thinking I will stay in my studio with the baby and do some work and tend to her while the woman does her magic on the place.

Summer in the City - NFS
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

Summer in the City

I'll never sell the original but I now have a quality reproduction of it up on Etsy. Being able to share it while keeping this for myself makes me happy. I know I have probably done plenty of pieces just as good as this one but I just have such an emotional attachment to this piece I can't part with it. I love the shapes, the shade of orange with the hints of purple peeking out in key areas. Orange and purple is my favorite color combo after all and I think I pulled it off flawlessly here. I'm happy to be able to share it with people a year and a half after I originally made it.

I sold my first two reproduction prints to a fellow artist. She made a note in the sale that she hoped to be able to afford an original soon. She was a longtime favorite of mine so we worked out a trade. It was fun for both of us. I'm looking for art for the babies room and I try to trade art instead of paying with money whenever possible.

Do I go to NYC next weekend? I want to but it sounds so exhausting at the same time.

Magnets in use
Originally uploaded by m.Lee

The UPS man came Friday and delivered my magnets so now I have a nice set up in my Etsy shop. I can turn any of my pinback buttons into magnets simply by removing the pin and replacing it with a magnet. But once it becomes a magnet there is no going back because the glue forms a very tight seal. The magnets themselves are nice and strong too. Just one magnet is holding up a reproduction print that I printed out on my printer the other day. I just wanted to test it out to see how it looked and I was so impressed with the results that I decided to list it. I made two of them, the other one is of bamboo. They really have nothing in common with the originals other than the image itself. They are about a third the size, the paper is totally different and there is a border. But they are nice in their own right. My plan with these is to never offer reproductions that are even close to the original size. They will always be smaller. The ink and paper were tested to resist fading for over 100 years and that is good enough for me!

Last night I made a big decision and signed up to have a booth at the JP Open Studios the last weekend of September. I did it last year and it went very well and while I totally wanted to do it this year I was a bit nervous about signing up with the baby due a just a month earlier. But I decided that it is important enough to me to be worth risking the $90 sign up fee. Even though I did well last year I learned a number of ways to improve my setup by watching other sellers. Instead of just having my art in my portfolio for people to thumb through and pick from I want to have a rack filled with pieces mounted on foam core and wrapped in plastic with prices on the back. That way people can pick stuff easily. I will also have my new buttons and magnets in little bowls and in packets of three for people. It should be fun. Jon will be there with me helping me manage my booth while tending to blee. She will be a bigger hit than my art!