My OSCommerce Store–Part 2

I’m now in the somewhat tedious process of setting up my OSCommerce store and adding my products.  Unlike what I’ve done in the past, I want to give customers options regarding mat size and color.  I’m hoping this may be an added incentive to buy.

The OSCommerce set up may seem confusing at first, but it’s something you get used to.  I’m glad I have the template.  Even with just a few products added, I feel like it’s a real store.  Though the template was spendy ($170), overall I feel it was a good investment.  Cheaper than the eBay fees I threw out the window each month.  But that’s a different story.

Anyway, options.  One thing becomes quite obvious when you first start setting up your store–you need a plan.  I have products.  I’ve pretty much put myself in a few niches.  My work has an overall theme.  Using this information, I set up categories and subcategories to put my paintings.  I had originally set up categories for paintings, prints, and cards, but have since decided against it.  I have a Zazzle store for cards of which the quality I particularly like.  Prints, I’m going to have to think about.  The fact is that I don’t want to stock that inventory.  I’m going to have Zazzle as my source for other products and stick with paintings. 

So from just a painting category, I’ve moved to subject:  landscape, still life, etc.  My thought here is that I want to cut to the chase.  The least amount of clicks until a user is where they might like to be.  So, onward and upward.  More products to add.

Watercolor Tip–Sealing and Varnishing Your Work

You have two choices when you work on an alternate support such as clayboard or watercolor canvas: you can frame behind glass as with a traditional watercolor, taking the same precautions that the painting itself does not come into direct contact with the glass and that there is a space between the artwork and the glass or you can seal your work and frame as an oil or acrylic painting.  Because paint lifts so easily off of these surfaces, for my part, I feel safest sealing and varnishing.

The later definitely has some advantage.  If you paint on large surfaces, a matted painting framed behind glass can be an expensive purchase and a heavy one for hanging.  Some artists have remarked that paintings on the larger sized watercolor canvas sealed and varnished sell better because of they are easier to frame and the frames, lighter without the glass.  There is a school of thought that also recognizes the fact that oils sell at higher prices than watercolors.  Perhaps it’s the long tradition of oil painting that adds a certain mystique to the works.  Or perhaps it is the advantage of being able to frame without glass.  Victorian watercolorists took great pains using bodycolor and gum arabic to “heighten” a painting to make it look like an oil in order to get higher prices for their work.  For me, I looked at framing without glass as a means to transport works easier for shows, to say nothing of it being safer.

I experimented with several different approaches to come up with a sealing method that I use now.  Now I must say that I like a glossy finish, so the products I mention are all about accomplishing this goal.  For clayboard and canvas paintings, I first begin with the clayboard fixative.  I use about three coats, allowing ample time to dry between coats.  After this, I use the Krylon Triple-Thick Clear Glaze.  The “triple-thick” refers to the fact that one coat of this product equals three coats of other clear acrylic fixatives.  I will apply at least two coats until I achieve the finish I’m after.  I follow this with a UV resistant varnish, also by Krylon.  I typically will spray six thin coats to complete the process.  There are a couple of things to bear in mind when doing this: first of all, make sure you have a big space that is covered to do the actual spraying.  Make sure nothing is near by that may get a bit of the spray.  You will want to take off your glasses, if you wear them.  Found that out the hard way.  Make sure the room is well-ventilated.  There will be lots of spraying going on, so be sure and take that precaution. 

Another approach is recommended by Golden for varnishing acrylics.  This method requires an isolation layer so that this layer would protect the acrylic should the varnish need to be removed.  The isolation layer is the Golden soft gel gloss, mixed two parts gel to one part water and brushed on.  I applied this layer onto watercolor canvas.  Despite being the glossy finish, it wasn’t as glossy as I liked, but maybe if you’re looking for more of a matte finish, you may appreciate the look.  I didn’t like applying this with a brush either.  The mix is quite watery and brushes easily, but I preferred spraying.  This layer is followed up by the MSA Archival Varnish.  For prints, this is up to eight thin layers.  I do at least six layers for paintings and prints.  It’s an easy precaution to take to protect your work.  Since I’ve used the MSA Archival Varnish for prints, I have now taken to use it instead of the Krylon varnish.

I have tried both of these approaches with watercolor works on paper.  I mounted the work on matboard before beginning.  I can’t say I was happy at all with the results and will just still to using this for alternate supports.  The nice thing about varnishing your works is that you get a really nice looking product when you’re done.  I find the gloss finish really adds a lot and looks like the watercolors when they’re first applied juicy and wet.

Lock, Stock, and Barrel, 12" x 16", watercolor on canvas

Available at ArtByUs

Watercolor Tips–New Territory

For new challenges in watercolor painting or just for some fun experimentation, there are a variety of supports that lend themselves to watercolors.  Here are just a few and some of the special characteristics of each.

Textured Clayboard
This is a lovely support to work with and one of my personal favorites.  The textured surface as opposed to the smooth offers the same opportunities for creating texture as one would find with cold press watercolor paper.  Prior to using it, I have found that it is wise to gently wash the surface of the clayboard under the faucet, using your hands to “wash” the surface.  The reason being is that with my first uses of clayboard I was dismayed to find little spots where the paint wasn’t taking as well as others.  I called them “footprints” because of their shape.  This was especially vexing after noticing them only after a painting was well underway.  I found that doing the preliminary washing solved this problem.  Do be careful not to get the backside of the clayboard wet.  The clayboard inked stamp on the back is water soluble.

As with the watercolor canvas which I’ll discuss below, the most important thing to remember about clayboard is that paints will lift easily.  That is, if you like to glaze your initial washes you may find that you need a very gentle touch so as not to disturb what has gone down already.  This is good in one respect, but if you’d rather not have to worry about it, you may try adding a little acrylic matte medium to your paint.  Do bear in mind that this medium has a lot of body and your paints will handle very different.  Your brush strokes will show, which while maybe uncomfortable for a watercolor artist, does lend itself to new texturing possibilities.

Watercolor Canvas
This is an exciting opportunity for watercolor artists to use this more traditional oil support.  The canvas is available in sheets and on canvasboard.  Much of what has been said about clayboard also applies to the new watercolor canvas.  Colors will lift easily.  This can be a blessing if you’ve decided that you are unhappy with a work.  Just put the canvas (or the clayboard) under the tap and begin again.  Bear in mind that staining colors will do just that.  I have found though that this can be a great way to add some added color/texture to the canvas when I begin again.

Watercolor canvas also takes a lot of paint, more so than paper supports.  You’ll need to mix up more paint for your washes than you would normally do when painting on paper.  If you find that your washes are streaky, try adding a bit of ox gall to your wash water or even wetting the canvas prior. 

Now let’s say you’ve completed your work.  You can frame either under glass as you normally would do with a watercolor.  Another possibility is to frame it without glass like an oil or acrylic painting.  This requires sealing and varnishing your work, which I’ll discuss next time.

My Oscommerce Store

Blogging has made one point very clear to me–valid links are vital, especially if you’re trying to sell.  The changing links of items renewed made me consider opening my own shopping cart using Oscommerce software.  I’ve all but given up on eBay.  While other sites I’m posting to are doing fine, I wanted to have more control over links, items, and presentation.  Hence, my decision to open up my own store. 

I’ve done a couple things to move in that direction.  I’ve given up GoDaddy.com as my hosting provider.  The upload speed was getting slower and frankly, just by looking around I found out that there are a lot more providers out there providing more bells and whistles–and excellent support.  After a great deal of research, I moved to HostGator.   You have to be impressed by a provider that appears in so many top 10 lists.  It has also been around since 2001, a long-time player in a competitive market. 

The support has been fantastic.  Quick.  To the point answers.  Intelligent responses.  I’m very pleased.  My website loads so much quicker too.  It was through switching to HostGator that I set up Oscommerce.  Set up was easy through HG.  Soon, I realized though that I needed help with my set up.  Don’t bother with free templates.  I browsed through so many poor examples I can safely recommend to buy a template.  I settled on one from the Oscommerce Store.  I chose this site, thinking its focus to the shopping cart would give me better support. 

This is where I’m at now.  Oscommerce is installed on my website, but not yet live.  I’ve installed my template.  I’m now going about setting up my store.  Look for later posts describing my experience and how it worked for me.

Disaster Recovery

What these two weeks have been–and it wasn’t even my disaster. I assumed the role of network administrator at work a few months back, recognizing a need for dedicated administration. The disaster I predicted happened. My whole life for the time it was down until it recovered revolved around a server. Funny, there was an article recently, which unfortunately I haven’t located, that talks of how stress keeps people from exercising. With all of this going on, I haven’t exercised, written, blogged, nor painted. Not much in the way of any creative outlet. There’s something about computers and data that puts me into a mother bear mode. I was going to see the office through this disaster no matter how tired I was.

So yes, I do have a life outside of writing, albeit one that is as far removed from the creative process as can possible be. Oh, wait. Don’t they say on the WordPress home page that code is poetry? In a way it is, but code has rules that can’t be broken. All this talk of disaster has me in the mindset now to avoid my own.

Back ups. Back ups are vital. The business recovered because it had a back up. For my part, I set up regular back ups on all of my blogs and website. WordPress has a great back up plug-in to not only allow scheduled back ups, but recoveries as well. I actually had to use that recently when I changed providers from GoDaddy to HostGator. The change went smoothly, but I did email support quite a bit with issues along the way. Anyway, so back up.

I utilize both a remote back up via my hosting provider and a back up on a flash drive. Something about the added insurance of “something in hand” is quite comforting. I’ve also put together a folder on my hard drive of necessary plug-ins. I use several, so having to reinstall WP without my suite of tools would hamper me. Again, back up.

I checked in with the office on Monday and all was well. Now I can get back to my creative outlets.

Watercolor Tip: It’s All About Mediums

My husband, who is an oil painter, talks a lot about mediums, how to use them and the mystery surrounding them.  Watercolor has its share, some with more practical uses than others.

Gum Arabic
I like using gum arabic.  Gum arabic is the binder in watercolor paints, albeit some brands have variations of this theme.  It has a couple very good applications.  For one, it will add a luster to your work.  Some beginning watercolorists may be disappointed with watercolor, that it seems lifeless after the paint as dried.  Gum arabic can add this bit of gloss. 

There is a long history of its use with Victorian watercolorists.  Gum arabic and bodycolor, or gouache, were mixed with watercolors and used to make watercolor paintings resemble oil paintings and get the prices that oil paintings were fetching.  Only fair it would seem, with the medium many consider the most difficult.  The Victorian watercolorists would mix it with their paint or use it after the painting was done to "heighten" certain areas.  Of course, this is with a very gentle hand, so as not to upset the painting.  Now before purists cry "foul", this was a point of contention at the time, but there’s no denying that the paintings of this era are absolutely stunning.  Just check out some of the work of William Henry Hunt or John Fredrick Lewis. 

You can use it in several ways.  I like to wet an area with a gum arabic/water solution if I want a bit of control over where the paint will go, perhaps to control the amount of blending in a variegated wash.  You need only a drop or two with your water to accomplish this.  I’m talking about maybe a quarter cup of water and the gum arabic.  I mix up just a small bit to use when I need it.  Too much and the paint won’t move at all and the risk of the paint cracking increases.  Just pre-wet the area and drop your paints in. 

Painted areas where gum arabic has played a role can lift easier.  This can be good or bad, depending upon your painting.  Adding it to your paints and then misting a painted area with water and blotting the area can lend a nice texture to say rocks or foliage.  The misting gives the irregular pattern and the gum arabic makes the paint easy to lift.

Watercolor Tip: Correcting Mistakes

It’s inevitable.  At some point you may make a mistake, color dripped where you didn’t want it to go, you change your mind on the color.  Watercolor, they say, is an unforgiving medium, true, but not all mistakes are irreversible.  You’ll find that as you become more experienced with painting, you won’t panic as much when something happens.  You’ll have the tools to deal with it, use it to your advantage, or be able to scrap the painting.  Remember you can always use that other side for testing colors.

Let’s say you were painting that barn and a bit of barn color went into the field.  There are a few things you can do.  The sooner you act though, the better.  You want to act before the color has completely dried and worked into the paper.  I keep a small, cheap synthetic bristle brush for just such a task.  You want to wet the brush and gently scrub.  You’ll also want to keep a paper towel handy to blot the water and to prevent from disturbing nearby color.  For small areas, I’ve also found the Incredible Nib to be a good tool.  Go very gently though–you don’t want to damage the paper.  Let it dry thoroughly before attempting to rework it.  This is where your choice of paper is important.  Some papers, like Lanaquarelle, won’t handle scrubbing very well.

Other techniques can also be used.  I’ve found that masking an area will lift up some color.  Probably not the neatest of solutions, but one I have used.  An exacto knife works well for little dots of misplaced color.  If the area is small, a bit of gouache will also work.  I say small because gouache will alter the appearance of the paper and unless you’re planning on that bit of added texture, it may be too obvious.  The gouache I use is Holbein Acryla gouache, titanium white.  This shade is the most opaque.  The acryla gouache is permanent.  This is important if I’m going to go over the area.  Gouache of the non-permanent type seems to come up too easily.

So, it’s not a lost cause.  You can save a painting and when someone asks, you can say "I meant to do that."