MerryDay Goes to School : worries, distractions and what I think about Make Art That Sells Class

Life always has unforeseen interruptions. Last week I was very excited with my carefully laid-out plan for my future business. This week I spend all of my time at hospital taking care of my parents who get sick at the same time. It scares me a bit. It's inevitable fact that old age comes with sickness. My parents are quite old right now and I am already in thirty-something. A woman who decides to go back to the very first stage of building up her new career path, which will take years to accomplish. Life's getting shorter everyday and I wonder if I can make it happen at the end...

But that's only one of million things in life that I'm worried about. I'm glad that I have aged and learned enough to know you should not add worries to worries.

I have just read Noreen's post of Winston Churchill - 6 Things to Do. The very first is "Focus on what you are doing right now." and someone commented on this post with "80% of what we worry about doesn't come true."---Two statements that I need to focus :)

So, enough with my worries and distractions, I'm coming back to focus on my illustration and design work skill now.

Above is a compilation of all my assignment done in Make Art That Sells class (Click to see the larger image here). Things haven't changes in term of design and style but I think there's a lot of improvement in details and background, which I used to consider as my drawback. I generally drew my subject in kind of stand alone format---no background and not a lot of details and sometimes didn't even have a story. So doing more details and building stories and backgrounds is what I intended to improve from the very first week of the class.

This comes to my main topic for this post : what do I think about Make Art That Sells class?  It's the question I have been asked often. To answer it properly, let me start with the question of "What did I expect from this class?" first.

Before starting this class, I expected that :

• I would learn more about art business in general.

• I would learn about how to use my art in different products.

• I would get to know more people (and get people know more about me).

• I would improve my skill in illustration and design (doing more details, backgrounds and stories)

Then when the class finished, I found that :

• I think I learn more of art business, not in specific details but I have a glimpse of what art business is like and how I can learn more about it.

• I definitely learn more about how to use my art in different products and markets. Lilla had planed this course neatly by categorizing each week into different markets and she did wonderful job in giving us details of how each market worked, how to get your work into that kind of market (although this requires personal talent and hard work too) and there were tons of beautiful art samples to keep us excited and inspired.

• I'm not sure if fellow students know more about me but I certainly get to know more people and being with those who are also in creative journey really helps me focus and stay on my track. I have to say that the class student group is the best supportive art community and I am glad I'm a part of it :)

• I think my skill in design and illustration has been improved, not technically but in term of thinking and implementing more details which is exactly what I want to improve.

This post is getting long now. I think I'm going to break it into 2 posts. The next post will be about the big question "do I think this class worth the money?"

Thanks for coming. Have a merry day :)