by Henk ter Heide on Sunday April 11, 2010
As the regulars among you will have noticed. I have changed my layout and started promoting my art.
Both are things I’ve been dreaming about.
Changing my layout for months. Promoting my art for years. 
Layout
To see my new layout there’s no alternative to visiting my site.
But in short I have cleaned it up.
I’ve created a basic layout that showcases my art without all the clutter to encourage people to visit other pages.
If you are interested you’ll find the tag cloud, categories and history of this site on the “archive” page.
Promoting
How to promote my drawings. Or even, if I should promote my drawings is something that I’ve been doubting for years.
If I compare my work to that of people like Van Gogh or Rembrandt how would I even dare to promote my drawings.
But an article by Seth Godin (he advises entrepreneurs) pointed me in the right direction.
A shoe salesman only has to prove that his shoes are better then those of his competitor.
My job is a little more complicated.
I don’t have to prove to you that my art is better then that of other artist.
I have to get you to buy art.
That job turns out to be far more challenging then you would think.
Everybody who reads this site regularly knows that they need art.
That is why they read this site.
The problem is that they don’t know how much art they should buy.
It’s easy when you are very rich.
Someone like Bill Gates buys art as an investment and gets to enjoy it to.
But what about us regular people?
How much art do we need?
Godin advises to just take an arbitrary figure. Something you can maintain.
So I’m assuming that you are a about the same as me. I have my good months and my bad months. But I could spend 1% of my income on art and enjoy it without having the feeling that I’m robbing myself of something else.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Sunday May 24, 2009
Last week I wrote that I would print out a picture of some actress and draw a portrait of her. But it’s taking a little longer then I expected.
I’ve run into a little printer problem and a big self confidence problem.
This is not the first self confidence problem I’ve had over the last few years. And every time I find that I get very angry with you, my visitors.
I like to compare myself with Vincent van Gogh a famous Dutch painter.
Nowadays his paintings sell for millions of dollars a piece but in his time he wasn’t famous at all. His brother bought a few paintings from him but that was about it. He even checked himself into a madhouse at some point in his live and nobody cared.
That’s far cry from how I feel my live as an artist.
I’m not famous at all but I do have a public that’s waiting for every thing I have to say and every thing I have to show.
Sometimes it feels as though they are like vultures, ever circling.
It’s not fair.
But then after a few days my self confidence problem passes and I realize that I’m the one who’s not being fair…
I’ve bought a new bed.
To make room in my bedroom I have to move a cupboard that for years has been standing in the room. I don’t have any room for it in the rest of my house so I will be throwing it out.
Curiously I opened one of the drawers to find out what was in side and found five sketch pads I’ve filled over the years.
Looking them over I remember why I have this blog.
Every few years I feel creative and buy a sketch pad and draw for a while.
But every time I get at a point where I want to draw something that is a little more challenging then everything I had done up to that point and I’m struck by self confidence problems and stop drawing.
Then after a few months/years I feel creative again and buy a sketch pad and start over again.
That’s why I have this blog.
To feel the pressure of people waiting for my next drawing to force myself to look passed problems. Problems with self confidence or any other type.
This is a drawing I did some years ago. I found it in one of the sketch pads. Although I’m sure I had some kind of idea about it when I drew it, I don’t remember what it was.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Saturday May 19, 2007
As you maybe know the famous Dutch painter van Gogh never sold a painting in his live. Apparently people didn’t like his paintings. Or maybe he didn’t know how to approach his public. Anyway he painted his whole live creating piles and piles of paintings and nobody cared.
He must have really loved what he was doing.
A few days ago my PC died on me. An ongoing problem with the memory causes some problems. Sometimes my PC just won’t start.
Sunset on crooked sea
So I pulled the memory chips and swap them and pulled them again and swap them again. Gave it up, did something else for a while and suddenly my PC worked again. At least that’s what happened the last two times it occurred.
I’ve been wondering if swapping the memory chips had any result at all.
This time I thought I just leave it and do something else for a while. Just wait for the miracle that makes my PC work again.
I was right in the middle of a picture I was drawing and I thought I’d just finish it.
But I didn’t. I coudn’t. If my PC would never operate again, I wouldn’t have a way to publish my picture. If I didn’t have a way to publish my pictures it would be like giving a speech to an empty room.
It never occurred to me but drawing is my way of communicating.
Talking is a weapon to defend yourself in a talking world. If you don’t talk people tend to think that you don’t think, that they don’t have to pay any attention to you. But it isn’t communication.
When I look someone in the eye I make contact. When I show him a picture I tell him something.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
