Mark E Shellshear.

It is not good just being a good singer, there are lots of good singers. It is not good just being a good actor, there are lots of good actors. It is not good just being a good Artist, there are lots of good Artists out there, you have to be different, interesting and an amazing person to get our atten tion.

Artists you have to convince strangers to buy your Art work. It does not matter what your family and friends think of your work because they care about you and will always give you praise and that’s great but they will not buy all your paintings so you will have to convince strangers to do so. It really does matter what strangers think because they are the ones who will buy your work and strangers will make you famous. Convince them through story telling your Art. When a customer is looking at your Art tell them why you painted it and what it is about, the story leads them into the painting allowing them to see it through their own eyes. Also tell the story about you Art through videos and blogs and make them interesting and engrossing. Educate your customers about why you paint and who you are as a person, explain your vision and what you are trying accomplish, inspire them with your ...

In this mornings video on the Shellshear Art Group I talked about how it takes years to build a reputation and become an established Artist and tomorrow I will talk about tangible things we can do to speed up the process, but now let’s look at things we can do within which will help us get ahead quickly. You must have must do habits. Success is not an accident it is small daily habits that bring lasting change, progress.

I read this great quote today. “Art happens to be one of the things that people don't understand the most. It's also one of the things that people want to understand the most.” Story tell your Art, explain what your intentions are. Help people to understand what you are doing even if it seem super self explanatory, take the time to tell your story of why you did what you did and what it is all about. It could make the difference of sale or no sale.

How you think when things go wrong determines how long it will be until things turn around. Watch out that we don’t fall back into bad thinking habits that allows our old negative self and our old negative thought patterns to arise, they will try and come back they don’t give up easily. Don’t blame others. Don’t blame yourself. Don’t berate yourself. Analyse what has happened and make the necessary changes both internally and externally. Determine to go forward and you must never tell yourself you are a failure, remind yourself of all your past successes and encourage yourself that you have done it before and you can do it again. Work on improving yourself and your thinking habits because we create our own reality, what we think we become.

My vision in the early days was of me being the Artist sitting in my studio creating Art and the collectors were lining up to buy it, but this was far from the case as the collectors were no where to be found. If you want collectors and strangers to buy your Art works, then you are going to have to sell your paintings to them. Artists say to me , “I do not have a gallery or dealer, so how can I sell them?” The honest answer if you want to sell is, learn to sell. I believed that someone would do it for me as if by magic but it never happened, I soon realised to late that I had to sell my own work because no one else would unless I was well known and I wasn’t. The key to selling your paintings is, learning to sell. Selling is building relationships with strangers so that they trust and love your painting and you and believe in what you stand for. Selling is being nice and friendly to people and story telling your paintings to them telling them why you painted it, what y...

What will change the game is us actually changing the game. We want people to like our Art and buy our Art but we also want people to talk about our Art. Because in talking about it they then spread the word about us and this is what we want, people talking about us and our Art. So not only will our Art need to be original and interesting, we will need to tell a story about our Art and it must capture the viewers attention and we also want them to respond to our Art work emotionally and our story opens the door for that. Think about the Art work you create, it is not finished until you have a good story to go with it, don’t rush the story make it interesting and compelling we want it strike an emotional cord so the viewer will connect to it and want to talk about it. A good story will also give the viewer something to talk about when they are showing the Art work to their friends, you have given them a way to spread the story about you. Change the experience about ...