Monthly Archives: June 2017

A dramatic ‘before’ and ‘after’ with BloodLines Art

Posted on by

About two weeks ago I worked with Scott Schaefer as we set up a mini photo studio in our basement and shot more than 80 of my paintings. Scott has his own company where he markets classic Winchester hunting artwork, selling vintage posters online. It’s a thriving business and he has found a definite market niche.

I’ve been hoping to find a market niche of my own with my artwork. Currently, I have two different websites – https://bloodlinesart.com/ and https://tom-blood.pixels.com/

My bloodlinesart website seems to only be visited by other artists. And not that often. I haven’t really done any full-fledged marketing efforts to promote it and when renewal time comes around, I’m probably going to cancel it. There are lots of other places where I can showcase my art that I haven’t fully taken advantage of to date.

The pixels website, which is also called Fine Art America, has done a lot better as far as visitation. About two weeks ago, I was nearing my 10,000th visitor. They come from around the world. I’ve had views from China, Russia, Germany, the UK, France, Italy, India – and that’s just to name a few as well as people from all over the U.S.

The fun thing about the pixels website is that you can order items featuring my artwork on pillows, tote bags, iPhone cases, shower curtains and a variety of other items. Unfortunately, sales have been less than lucrative.

So I decided to try and become a bit more professional with the presentation of my art and Scott got me going with the hi-res digital images he took. But that’s just for starters as he showed me a number of photoshop treatments all designed to make your photography sharper than ever.

Here’s a pic of one of my paintings before:

A true, 'before' picture.

A true, ‘before’ picture.

And here is the same painting that was digitally photographed and saved in a much higher resolution format. (The image is a higher resolution than the download of this site allows.)

https://tom-blood.pixels.com/featured/white-thomas-blood.html

I’ve tried saving my ‘WHITE’ painting image in smaller sizes but with no luck. So please click the link to see the vibrant color and sharp detail that will now be present with virtually all of the images that I have featured on my pixels site. (While you’re there, I encourage you to see many of the other paintings I’ve done!)

To date, I’ve uploaded about 14 of them – so I have a long way to go. But already, the number of visitors has skyrocketed as I’ve had more than 1,000 new views since I began re-uploading my images. I wish I could say that the sales have skyrocketed, too. Not yet.

But I’m hopeful. I plan on launching a new e-commerce site sometime before the holiday season officially kicks off where people will be able to order prints of my work direct from me. Scott will handle the printing and shipping and together we’ll both profit.

I have a lot of fun creating my art. I hope to soon begin having more fun (and success) in my efforts to sell it.

 

 

BloodLines blogging takes a back seat

Posted on by

There really is no excuse why my posts have become so infrequent.

But I’m going to offer a few anyway.

Recently, I’ve been stepping up my blogging activity for a few clients. Unlike my own personal diatribes where I write about the items that are popping into my head at the time, these take a good deal of research and often multiple interviews, drafts and re-writes before we go live.

I generally don’t like to divulge client information without their permission so the clients for whom I’m creating these posts shall remain nameless. Fortunately, the number of clients continues to increase. So I find myself writing about a wide variety of topics.

I’m sure Google is confused by my browsing activity. They must think I have some fairly eccentric and quirky tastes as one day I’ll be researching the Army Corps of Engineers and the next I’ll be investigating Gmax impact testing. I’ve been fortunate enough to blog about museum exhibitions as well as new curricula being offered at university programs.

These days, I’ve been diving into swimming pool construction. Soon, I hope to be writing more about thermal power generation and posting knowledge about fluid conveyance systems. If that all sounds a little heavy-duty, it is. But it’s also quite interesting to go on a crash course of learning, consuming as much information as possible and then doing my best to digest it and create something that’s relevant and useful to the target audience I’m addressing.

My most recent painting is just one of many items that are keeping me away from regular blogging.

My most recent painting is just one of many items that are keeping me away from regular blogging.

On top of all that, I continue to try and get better as a painter. So there’s always a work that is in the works. One is awaiting more brushwork as soon as I decide that I’ve said enough regarding this particular post. I have another painting that is sketched out and waiting to show up on canvas as soon as I wrap this current one up.

So my attention has been elsewhere. That’s a good thing and a bad thing.

Good, because my business has been booming and blogging has had a lot to do with it.

Bad, because in order to keep building your business, you’ve got to keep at it, particularly when it comes to blogging.

What can I do for you?

BloodLines Creative provides a wide variety of advertising and marketing communications services to a wide variety of clients. From concept through completion, you get work that is on target and cuts through the clutter to connect with your target in a way that generates results. If you’re facing a creative challenge and you’re looking for big idea thinking without the big price tag, you’ve come to the right place.