Widget?

I'm trying out this widget (look to the right) from Craftcult, which shows a slideshow of items in my Etsy store and lets you see the prices, feedback, hearts, and other stuff. I thought it was pretty useful, let me know if you see if and have an opinion either way!

As I mentioned before, I will close my Artfire store until further notice around Sept. 19, since they only have Pro accounts and since my online sales activity is fairly sporadic and not a fulltime pursuit, I don't want to have a monthly charge at this point in time if I can't devote a lot of time to promoting it. I am going to keep working on making my Etsy offerings better and more diverse.

That reminds me, I have some UFO and alien themed things up right now -- the second in a series of UFO/Alien/Conspiracy theory paintings that I meant to get cracking on a long time ago, and I relisted some ACEOs that I haven't had in the shop in awhile.

First here is a new 6 x 8 inch painting with a bug-like lizard alien, Saturn and stonehenge that will make you look crazy for buying it and me crazy for painting it. Who can resist!!



Since everyone loves ghost bottles, I did a couple of ghost bottle ACEOs a couple years ago too but I didn't quite get around to selling them. These were hand-cut art paper, and although it looks like watercolor it was watered down acrylic paint.

More UFO abduction...


And more!...


Anyway I did these a couple of years ago but I had them tucked away for awhile and they are ready for sale again!

After the hurricane

Back up in New Jersey in time to help out with hurricane preparations, I was plastering patches on the wall where water was getting in, in the basement, until late last night to try to minimize damage. As it turns out very little water got in down there except, of course, in the room where my things are being stored. Fortunately they were all up on shelves or tables, or in plastic tubs, so the puddle of water that leaked into that room did not damage anything of interest or value.

And today, giant mushrooms were already growing in the back yard!

We didn't even lose power, though I had prepared tons of raw veggie food items and a lot of non-perishables, in case we did, since we don't have any non-electric cooking devices - not even a camping stove.

Yesterday I did a small painting to pass some time, based on the popularity of this print in my shop I thought I'd start doing some small ghost bottle paintings. Here is the first, "Elixir of Arminta." I need to get more small canvases, but when I do, expect more...

Also, here is a scan of the painting that I repainted last week, since I didn't have a scanner at my disposal when I finished it. I think the scan shows the colors much better than the photo did, since they are very vivid and bold here. The photo shows the colors in natural sunlight, but the scan more accurately represents how it looks indoors I think.

New art and old but new

I have been meaning for awhile to do some more paintings inspired by '60s science fiction book covers, science textbooks and the like - I love that retro look for "sciency" things that especially in science fiction is only based on the most loose and psychedelic misunderstanding of how "sciency" things work.

I don't know how many I will do but here is the first in the latest batch, it's called "Drifting through the cellular sea" and is available on Etsy.

I have also done a repaint of one of my most popular designs. First painted in 2001 or 2002, I'm not sure which, "Black Lantern Spell" is an image I have done several times, including one large painting that was about three by four feet in size. This time the painting is 9 x 12 inches, suitable for easy framing on flat canvas board.

I'm always willing to do repaints of images that are in my gallery at http://www.artbysarada.com in a variety of sizes at set prices, but here's one that is all done and ready to go. I hope that from my new repaints I may also be able to offer prints, since the original 2002 designs were done at a time that I did not have access to the resources to do so.

That's all for now - lots more to come soon.

Halloween sales!

Mid-August is when Halloween starts to seriously kick into gear, since the decorations are up for sale in stores, and people are getting ready to stock up on Halloween goodies before they get too distracted by back-to-school shenanigans. So I'm going to try to put more of my classic Halloween art in my Etsy shop, as I'm doing new versions of old favorites. Please visit my Facebook fan page and "like" it for a new coupon code!

Around Sept. 18 I won't have an ArtFire shop any more -- I had a pro account and went back to a basic account, but those no longer exist, so once my current month's subscription runs out I am not going to renew and will just focus on Etsy.

In the meantime I have a 10% off storewide sale on ArtFire, so check it out by clicking the owl painting above! I mostly have prints available there and a few paintings not available elsewhere. The sales prices will be live, no need for a coupon code. If there's enough interest I might be able to keep the shop around longer.

That's all for now, going to get back to working on some crisp, cool autumn art from a 107-degree day in Texas!