Shamelessly Fishing

How was your Christmas by the way? It's only polite to ask, mine was great. Had a lovely relaxing time with some gorgeous presents and I've spent the last few days working on a painting, yes you heard that right, a painting. I'm actually going old school this time. I thought I should, for the moment at least, break away from my usual style of computer edited illustrations and try something with a bit more depth. So acrylic and brushes it is.

I went into my local art shop yesterday actually and had a look at their wonderful range of brushes, I do that sometimes. I never buy one though, I can't in good conscience pay upwards of twenty or thirty pounds for something I'm going to paint with.

Don't get me wrong, if I was raking it in hand over fist and making thousands of pounds on my artwork then I'd see it as a legitimate investment....

Oh who am I kidding, I couldn't hand over that much money for a brush of all things! A brush!!

Anyway, I did pet them for a while and look at them fondly, but in the end all I bought was a new fineliner and a metal ruler. Which are both equally as thrilling. I'm looking forward to starting on my next piece, but patience, patience, I haven't finished this one yet. It's already eaten up about 24 hours of solid time, not in one go I hasten to add, over the course of the last week. It's nearly finished I think, maybe a few more hours yet and then it will be done. Will I be happy with it? That's quite another story.

As for the shameless fishing I mentioned as the headline to this post, well that refers to a website called Freeindex, you may or may not have heard of it. Basically it's a place where businesses post up small adverts for themselves, for free, so that local clients can source the things they need from people who live near to them. I have an advert up there in the vain but hopeful wish that there may be people out there who might find me and decide to pay me money in exchange for my art work. Stranger things have happened right?

So the reason I'm fishing, and the reason I need your help is because they have a review system on freeindex. The more reviews you have, good reviews I hasten to add, then the higher up the list of local businesses you go. Those with the most reviews of course, end up in first position and are more likely to get chosen by clients. Which is a fond hope of mine...

What I am asking of you therefore, if you have a kind word to say and a spare minute or two to say it in, would you be so good as to review my business. Now granted, there may be the chance that I haven't done any work for you yet, but I can assure you, if I had done work for you, you would be really, really pleased with it. You'd treasure it. You could always hire me and find that out for yourself but that can be for another day. Right now all I can say is, imagine you did hire me and I designed something breathtakingly wonderful for you at a price you could afford and quickly too. That's what I do by the way, I'm not making that up. Anyway, imagine that, hold it in your mind...hold it....visualise it....got it? Good, go to this link:

http://www.freeindex.co.uk/wr.htm?id=240067&br=1


Thank you my friends. You're giving a small artist a huge help and I won't forget it. x

Christmas Eve...

Well, it's the day before Christmas and all through the house...it's pretty quiet to be honest. The presents are all wrapped, the food is lurking in the fridge waiting for the magic fairies to cook it and I'm busy pondering illustrations, as usual. I've been working all week on trying to get Knight Time Creations out there to the masses, it's not easy. It takes a lot of typing and surfing etc but I think I'm making progress. Certainly hope so.

Working on a new piece of art at the moment, trying to break the mold...well maybe not THE mold, whatever that might be, but my mold. I'm trying to move away from my usual style and do something different, whether or not I will be successful remains to be seen but it is taking me a lot longer than my usual art work. It's much more intricate and detailed and I think I'm going to colour it using acrylics, which again is unusual for me. I tend to work primarily with digital colour on handdrawn pen and ink images. I like the finished result, and so do a lot of other people which is gratifying, but you know how it is. Dozens of people tell you what you're doing is great and you take it with a pinch of salt, one person tells you you don't quite float their boat and you instantly have to alter everything you're doing and totally shake yourself up.

Maybe some people would take critiques with a pinch of salt and just bask in the praise, but I don't want to bask, I want to adapt, evolve, change, create. I want to broaden my repetoire and show people what else I can do because quite frankly I don't want another person out there to turn round and say, no offense intended, that my style isn't right. Whatever my style IS, it appears on many occasions to just not be right for a lot of people. I'm not going to sit back and accuse them of not understanding me or of having no taste or anything like that, no, I'm going to blame me, not them. I'm going to try and change and adapt and make my style into something else. Not as a replacement to my usual work, but an addition. I want current and future clients to realise that just because my previous work might not be in the style they had in mind, that doesn't mean I can't create something new. I relish a challenge and I'm really excited to see how my new pieces are going to turn out.

Merry Christmas by the way!