ANNE LEUCK STUDIO

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Unified body of work...you be the judge.

BusinessAnne Leuck19 Comments

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I didn't take into consideration the spacing, each piece is formatted in a 1920 square, so the spacing might change the way the images are seen. I'm now leaning towards A with the B booth shot as shown above.
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care to comment further?Picture 5
I need your help, I have lots of art fair deadlines coming up this week - I'm on the fence with my slide selections. As a jury member you will be reviewing up to 1200 sets of slides. In the first round each set is projected for 5-10 seconds, the set is either rejected or goes on to the next round, more time is given in the next rounds, booth slides can be tie breakers.

My question for you: which of these 3 groups (A,B,C) makes the best initial first impression as a unified body of work? (click on the image to enlarge)

Tuesday Set up...

Business, My Candy Colored WorldAnne Leuck2 Comments

Rich & I headed down to the Merchandise Mart yesterday morning to set up for my show which starts tomorrow. It was nice to have today to catch up...and I've still got work to do tonight but I should relax a tiny bit as the hard part is done. Some photos from the day:

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The entrance into the underworld of the Merchandise Mart from Kinzie Street.
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It was so dark I couldn't get a good photo so I desaturated it...it's remarkable how much freight goes in & out of this building in an average day. We have 500+ exhibitors for our event alone setting up over 2 days...you pull in, unload and they take your work up on giant dolleys. You then go park your truck and by the time you get upstairs: your work is in your booth! wah-la!

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so before...
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and after...
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Will put more goodies and the magnets out tomorrow...okay..now I'm excited, I needed that visual reminder that I am really set up and pretty much ready. This really is an amazing event with lots of good energy and shoppers...and it's always so fun to catch up with my artist friends from all over the country! (and to trade with them! stay tuned..hopefully I'll have new treasures to share in a few days.)

Mojo

BusinessAnne Leuck1 Comment

Just whipped up this card to go in my new mixed sets of holidaygreeting cards for One of a Kind. Cafe Press only lets you order sets of one design andpeople always want mixed so this year I will give the people what theywant! Running out to Xpedx to see if I can find boxes or bags that fitbetter than my current stock of clear bags.

Adrenaline is coursing through my body...This always happens, I worry for 3 weeks prior to an event but the mojo always kicks in at the last minute and brings all these other great ideas along with it! The clincher, I only have 'x' amount of time so I can only do so much...and in the middle of my short time to pull it together we are running up to WI to be with my family for the Thanksgiving Holiday (which I am VERY grateful for - but the timing is always tough). I'm just relieved that I'm back in 'super anne' mode, I was getting worried! okay..now I sound a little manic depressive don't I?

Wishing you & yours a wonderful holiday filled with lots of laughter and good cheer!

Crunch Time...

Business, VideoAnne Leuck2 Comments
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Picture 17

Phew...after we loaded the truck, I came in and finished 2 more paintings...this is a close up of a tiny portion of one of them. We hit the road tomorrow morning for the

Prairie Village Art Fair

this weekend in Kansas City. I've been in SUPER ANNE mode which is neccessary to produce my

Newsletter

before heading out of town and pull everything together for the first show of the season: (getting my booth display and equipment all back together, packing

paintings, figuring out what stays and what goes and how to hang it.

Making price tags, getting portfolios, credit card machine, receipt

books, mailing list, bags, weights, and my brand new front

Awning

  for

my Tent....woo hoo: additional shade!). 

It's almost a relief to just focus on one part of my business for a week....I've always felt that if I just chose one direction I could be really successful (and probably more sane) but for some reason I feel the need to be involved in all these different facets of art: the Art Fairs, Pet Portraits, Illustration, Licensing, Wholesale, my Design work for Animal Welfare Groups...did I forget anything? Some day I would love to have a business manager that facilitates all that 'stuff' so I could just do the creative part...know anyone like that?

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Picture 20

Also edited and uploaded another video clip - this one is of me painting a recent pet portrait of Dudley & Murphy (above) for Stacy of ZuZuPetals. You can watch it on my Pet Portrait Blog. 

It's actually easier to upload video to Blogger than to Typepad...go figure.

Artists Found on FLickr

Business, Inspiring Artists &...Anne LeuckComment
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I just found another wonderful artist..this time on Flickr. This ceramic piece "large head with avocado" is by Kim Murton of Washington state. She also has great illustrations and 2d work on her Flickr site. I found her on a flickr group...yes, I'm finding that all these sites have multi-layered networking capabilities.

It's one thing to know there are many talented artists out there but now with sites like etsy and flickr you suddenlty realize you have no clue...you are just skimming a little corner of an endless, awesome pool of amazing talent, creativity and cleverness. And those are just the sites I'm referencing...there are a gazillion others that I

don't even know about as well as all the amazing illustration artist sites (but that's a whole other post). Here are some I know about and a few I belong to:

AbsoluteArts.com

MyArtSpace.com

Fine Art America

Imagekind.com

Do you have any favorites that you would like to share?

Website Updates!

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Several times of year I seriously think about hiring a web designer,but then time slips away and I just continue morphing this monster Icreated so many years ago! That's what I did this week:

  • I added my newly completed painting "65 South" to my front page. I love this painting and am now ready to let go of 12 Acres if the right buyer comes along.
  • Reworked many of my Custom Dog & Pet Portrait Order pages: Starting with the Sketch Process Page, I used Brutus as a case study.
  • Updated and simplified the Face Portrait and the Full Body Custom Canvas Painting order forms.I still have to figure out how to get a downloadable pdf on my site. The dangers of doing everything yourself. The other problem I can't update my leftside menu frame, it'sm making me crazy.
  • Uploaded my Mission Statement page...I recently completed a longer version for a potential licensing deal and have meant to post this on my website forever. I just want people to adopt and not buy animals, if they really new the statistics I think they would adopt. Speaking of: I heard Oprah is doing a show on puppy mills tomorrow...I am so happy about this, people need to know. She could in this one hour show change the lives of thousands of homeless pets (I'm hoping in addition to getting these mills shut down that they make the point to encourage people to go their local shelters to adopt instead of buying dogs). We'll see how it all plays out tomorrow.
  • Updated my Animal Inspiration page - added a few more recent photos to the very old ones.
  • Updated my listing to show recently SOLD pieces...always a joy to do!

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