Selling Art on Ebay by John N Stewart

Fi gure 1 - SEL LING YOUR ART ON EBAY

SELLING YOUR ART ON EBAY…. Or any other auction for that matter……

a professional artist’s experience…. by John N. Stewart, NWS, CAC

This book is dedicated to artists everywhere!

Table of Contents INTRODUCTION

chapter 1….. CLEAN OUT THAT ATELIER

chapter 2….. THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF SELLING YOUR OWN ART

chapter 3….. EBAY AUCTION TRICKS

chapter 4….. CREATING AND SELLING LIMITED EDITION PRINTS

chapter 5….. USING PHOTOSHOP

chapter 6….. ADVANTAGES OF HAVING A WEB PAGE

chapter 7….. DEALING WITH CUSTOMERS

chapter 8….. STEP BY STEP

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Introduction

When I first discovered Ebay’s online auction , in May of 1997, my first thoughts were….what in the world is this? Millions of hits per week, easy to open an account with, not so easy to list items with, but for an auction novice it was like going to Disneyland. Yes, Ebay is definitely the Rolls Royce of Internet auctions. I’ve seen Rembrandt etchings (the real thing) go for $3500. I’ve seen Gloria Vanderbilt selling off part of her jewelry collection. Beautiful old manuscripts from the 1600’s. Everything from the sacred to the profane hitting the auction block and selling or not selling in 7 days or less. I had to try it - so I listed my first painting on the auction, a small watercolor entitled “Unbelievable”. I think it was a Maui landscape, with dramatic sweeping clouds and a girl sitting on the beach. It sold immediately and I was hooked. So, almost 12 years later, I am still hooked and thought I had better share some of my experience, which has been 98% positive with other’s who may be curious. Even though this is written with artists in mind it has useful information and should be an aid to anyone selling on an Internet auction.

Fi gure 2

an arti st's atelier

CHAPTER ONE

CLEAN OUT THAT ATELIER! Most artists that I know are collectors and don’t throw anything away. That old hi-fi tube might be able to be used in a sculpture or a construction or de-construction. The only thing that keeps us from becoming cat-ladies with newspapers stacked to the ceiling, is our fear of becoming that. I personally have things from the 50’s and have added to that persistently and conscientiously ever since. I love JUNK! My mother loved junk, her mother loved junk, all the way back to Scotland in the Middle Ages. I have a garage that defies description - it has everything from button collections, old magazines, antiques, and ‘Lady in Red’ a very strange sculpture that I did for the Venice Art Walk three years ago. She is an antique dress form that has a working TV epoxied to the neck, lights inside that flash off and on at random moments. She stands in a shopping cart and has a fan that blows her 6 foot red feather boa into the breeze. Lady is wired for sound too with hi-fi stereo headphones coming out of a tape player in her lower abdomen. (what is wrong with this picture?)

WHAT IS HIDDEN IN THAT FLATFILE? This is where the auction comes into play. We all have drawings, color sketches, paintings, sculpture, old frames, art catalogues, art books, aunt Charlottes old scrapbook, old cameras, tapestries, cuckoo clocks, etc. Don’t we? I have been collecting things in a flat file for years. The only prerequisite for something to be stored in a flat file is that it must be flat. All kinds of drawings, paintings on board, prints etc. When I first started selling art on Ebay I took photos of paintings that were framed and hanging. What I didn’t realize is that you have to package and mail that frame with the incidental painting that happens to be in it. After packing a few of those I decided that it was better to sell unframed work. The odds of your frame fitting into the decor of your favorite customer is pretty remote, anyway.

I have sold some rather large paintings from time to time and would like to interject one of my findings here. I found a neighborhood store called “Box City” (only in Los Angeles) and it lived up to its name. The mayor of ‘Box City’ introduced me to mirror boxes, which are relatively cheap and will house a 36 x 48 inch painting pretty easily. Mirror boxes come in two units - an inner box and an outer box. The inner box slides into the outer box and like an accordion slides in or out to accommodate what ever size you happen to need.

CLOSETS FULL OF TREASURE When I realized what I had in my flat file, I turned and looked at the mirrored closets which are located on the South wall of my studio and are infinitely more interesting. It’s like a 3D flat file - you can squeeze more and more into them. I found even more stuff to auction off. If it wasn’t moving, I put it on Ebay. I found old art school drawings, old computer programs, photos, projectors etc. etc. etc. By the way, don’t look too closely at the old art school drawings - it can be a humbling experience.

During one of my nicer expeditions into my closet I found some old National Geographics dating back to the 30’s, which I had forgotten that I had. It’s a never ending story. After several months of selling - I still have about the same amount of stuff. I believe in Miracles.

Fi gure 3 - La Joll a watercolor by the author.

Fi gure 4 - Eas t Weaver Creek - wat ercolor by t he author.

CHAPTER TWO

THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF SELLING YOUR OWN ART! I always considered myself as an ex-famous artist. At a party, if someone would ask what I did for a living, I would say that I was a ‘Famous Artist’. Then they would say: ‘Why haven’t I heard of you’? I would reply, ‘I didn’t say that I was that famous’. Having been on TV and radio a few times relative to my art, when someone introduces me as a famous artist, I tend to cringe. My paintings have sold for pretty large amounts over the years, but I have found that higher priced paintings in galleries tend to hang there and hang there and then again to hang there, sometimes for years. One gallery owner in Laguna Beach really told me that she could really sell my work better if I were dead. M y comment to her was, “I will only go so far , Lotti”.

Selling your own work has the following positive effects: (1) First of all you (not the gallery) can tell yourself what to paint. I love to experiment with different mediums and both realism and abstraction, constructions, collage etc. Galleries tend to pigeon hole or rubber stamp you. If I wake up one morning and feel like painting in the style of El Greco , I can do it. ( well, sort of) . If I put it on the auction there is a pretty good chance that one of the millions will see it and like it. (2) It’s fun dealing directly with the customer. There is such a variety of people out there and I can truly say that I have made many wonderful friends over the past few months. When Galleries sold my work to celebrities or in one case to a U.S. President it would sometimes be weeks before I new about it. (3) Lovin’ being your own boss. This can easily turn into a home business. If you spend an hour a day keeping up with the auction, and a few more hours packaging, going to the post office or Fed Ex, and going to the bank every couple of days with the checks that you receive. 9

I still have time to do an occasional free-lance job that comes in , or do an occasional portrait or landscape commission. I am even able, on rare occasions, to do some plein air painting. Being a boss has some drawbacks - you really have to be disciplined in doing certain things, you basically have to do everything, but then that creates a lot of variety which is better than the boredom of a nine to fiver. So forget the drawbacks! (free at last!) (4) Positive Feedback. Lastly, there is nothing as good for the ego and creative juices as getting positive feedback from satisfied buyers of your art. I have so many letters of appreciation from people (some are quite long and embarrassingly complimentary, but donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stop!).

One customer named Richard wrote genuinely poetic letters about my work. He lived in the back woods and wrote in long sentences without any punctuation, but had this incredible way of painting pictures with his colorful descriptive language. He would sometimes write two full pages of text. He and his family loved art more than anything else, and he had an formidable painting collection.

Fi gure 5 - met al s culpture by author

Fi gure 6 - an example of an image for an eBay item done in Photoshop.

CHAPTER THREE

EBAY TRICKS

(or keep your eye on the elephant under the hat)

THE BENEFITS OF HAVING PICTURES IN YOUR ADS A Polish philosopher once said: “A picture is worth a thousand rubles”, or something like that.

I found early on that a snapshot or scan of an art piece was not really an option, it was down right necessary. The best way to get art into the computer is a scanner. Since most scanners accept 8.5 by 13 inches (Max) ( I do have a method for doubling that, that I’ll talk about later) you will eventually have to use a camera for larger works. I use a digital camera for all of my photography needs. Scanning original art work at 300 dpi is the equivalent to taking a picture with a 35 mm camera. All of the information and detail is there. Your digital camera will give you a good facsimile and in a lot of cases I will take a digital shot first and then move in close for various ‘detail’ photos in my ad. This gives the potential buyer a better idea of what the real painting looks like and will stimulate the sale. I find that I tend to paint in sizes that are better for scanning directly, say 9 x 12 inches or less. 12 x 16 is also a good working size because I can do a split scan where I scan each half of the painting and then join them together in a Photoshop type of program. This is really easier to do than it sounds. In a 12 x 16 inch size, I am scanning more than half of the 16 inch side and all of the 12 inch side with each scan. So there is an overlap or an extra inch to play with. I’ll talk about that more in the Photoshop primer section of this booklet.

SCANNING RESOLUTIONS: SMALL, MEDIUM AND OH MY GOD! I usually save my original art work in three or four different resolutions. I work almost exclusively in Photoshop so I make my first scan at 360 dpi.- it pops into Photoshop and then I do whatever cleanup and cropping that is necessary and then I save it. I pick a name and add ‘big’ to the end of it. (i.e.: farmbig.jpg) I like to use *jpeg or *jpg files. They take up much less space on your hard drive. This file could be as large as 24 to 28 megabytes and will be used in the future in case I want to make a digital print or for use in a publication etc. Then I do an Image Sizing routine which changes the size and resolution. It helps to work with the rulers set to ‘on’ to keep track of the size. This new sized file will be for use in your Ebay ad. You select Image Size under the Edit menu and change the size to 7 inches (on the longest side) and change the Resolution from 360 to 72. You will see the file-size drop to about 560,000 kb or _ a megabyte. When you save this to a JPEG file using a level of 4 ,when prompted, that same file will be more like 50,000 kb, which is suitable for loading fairly quickly on Ebay. I would save that as simply ‘farm.jpg’. So now we have ‘farmbig.jpg’ and ‘farm.jpg’. My next step is to create a thumbnail sized file, so I hit Edit again and Image Size and change the 7 inch size to 1.5 inches and keep the 72 dpi resolution. I save this file as ‘farms.jpg’ adding the ‘s’ for small. This file is 5,000 kb or tinier than tiny. Now you have three useful file sizes of your farm painting which should cover any need that you might have. The thumbnail sizes come in handy for accents in your ad - I might show the little one as a teaser at the beginning of the ad and follow up with the larger one at the end. They are also great for use on your web page or website gallery.

CAMERA TRICKS

(orâ&#x20AC;ŚI HAVE A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY, BUT I KEEP FORGETTING TO LOAD THE FILM)

Built in Flash is great for shooting drawings or watercolors since they are inherently flat and don't throw glare back to the camera lens. Exterior sunlight is probably best for oils and paintings with varnished surfaces. If you are photographing a piece of sculpture, it is best to keep the background simple. I suggest draping a black, white, or gray cloth behind it. (someone out there will think that I said: black, white and gray cloth, and boy will I be in trouble.) If you can't make the background simple then you can drop the background out in Photoshop. I don't like flash for photos of sculpture....it tends to flatten them out. Experiment with your lighting and try using a couple of different light sources. Whenever possible I shoot outdoors in daylight or under the eaves of an overhang, such as a patio cover. If you are shooting an oil painting or a watercolor painting that is framed under glass, you will want to shoot it at an angle to avoid getting zapped by the flash reflection. Later on you can use the EDIT/TRANSFORM/SKEW tool in Photoshop to make it look like you are viewing it straight on. Is this starting to sound like a commercial for Adobe?

TIME SAVERS

(I’M LATE, I’M LATE, FOR A VERY IMPORTANT……)

TEMPLATES ARE US

As you probably know by now, listing an item at Ebay can take some time. When I first started I would spend 20 to 40 minutes listing an ad. Now it takes me just a few minutes to scan the art, make my 3 or 4 different resolution jpeg files, and list my ad. Ebay has a built-in template called ‘relist an item’ which is found just under Seller name on your actual ad. It magically appears when the auction is over. So if you want to relist an item that didn’t sell you simply click on ‘relist’ and a fully filled-in Ebay listing form appears. The only thing that you have to fill in is your password. I carry it one step further and use the ‘relist’ trick to put on similar items. Then I just have to change the title and put in my password and further down in the description box, I simply make the necessary changes for my new item. 90% of the information is already there. Sometimes I can ‘relist an item in less than a minute. The description box area takes, by far, the most time to fill in. I have several different styles and font coloration, so sometimes I just copy/paste the contents of the description box to a plain old text file which I have sitting in a folder on my desktop called ‘Auction’. Then, whenever I need a style, I copy/paste it into the description box. Another time-saver is to bookmark your auction list page - you’ll be glad you did.

HTML TRICKS (CAUTION: An Ebay warning says - don’t use “ quotation marks in the description box - it can louse up your HTML) The description Box allows HTML tags which work in

pairs. These cryptic little rascals always have these < > brackets around them. So, if you write a sentence like <I> The smog in LA.</I> it will look like this in the description box: The smog in LA. (<I> I stands for Italics) <B>stays mainly near the freeways</B> will look like: stays mainly near the freeways. Font sizes are controlled by tags that look like this: <font size=4></font size> 2 is very tiny, 3 is default, 4 is bigger, 5 is even larger 15

and so on. <font color=#808000>text</font color will give you a very nice gold color. (if you do a Yahoo! Search using HTML color charts as search words you will come up with several web sites that have color charts and their corresponding hex numbers) I have a few: <font color=#408080>nice blue green , #0000A0 = dark blue , #c80000 = reddish color, #aaaaaa = light gray, #8000b0 = light purple, #bazaba = bright purple, #johnste = electric blue, #conrad = magenta, #000888= nice dark blue, #f00080 = pink/red, #669900 = kelly green, #ffff00 = bright yellow, #ff33ff =magenta, #99ffff= bright turquoise, #ff6600= bright orange, #000000 = black, #ffffff = white (some that I haven’t tried: #mau-s-tng = red, #muddyw = blues, #rodney king = black/blue, #hoagy_c = deep purple, #popepaul = heavenly muave, )

<center>will center anything it appears before and </center> will put a halt to it. Whenever you want to stick a graphic file into the description box you must use <img src> I never use a follow-up tag on this one. In the description box it will look like this: <img src = http//www.wgn.net/~jonart/auction/farm.jpg> Since Ebay and other auctions usually don’t store graphics files for you, you will have to put this reference to your web site server where they are stored. So, farm.jpg, is being stored in the auction directory of your web site. In order to get your graphics file from your computer to your web site you must use a program such as WS-FTP (FTP means file transfer protocol) These programs are shareware or freeware and you probably have one already if you are looking at Ebay. You can use <img src> to show animated gif files also - I suggest that you keep your animation files to a minimum since they tend to take up a lot of memory and are slow to load. So you want to transport someone to somewhere else….then you have to use <a href></a href> or </a> Whilst in the description box if thou doest want to take some one to a different web site anywhere in the entire world, you can put in something like this: <a href=http://www.wgn.net/~jonart/artbio.html> that will take them to my art biography on my web site. Or

<a href=http://www.wgn.net/~jonart/prints.html> would take them to a specific page that I wanted them to see. So, as you can see, this is a pretty powerful command. (powerful man!!!) I TOOK A TRIP ON A PLANE AND I THOUGHT ABOUT YOU…….. (I thought you might need a musical interlude about now…….I used to play piano bar and was frequently asked to play that one….also Tony Bennet’s immortal ‘San Francisco’)

MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC This segues our way into Music. If you want to put a little music on your Ebay ad or web site you will have to use this command: <embed></embed> . Allow me to demonstrate: First you will need a midi file. Something named clairetheloone.mid. You will upload this file to your web site music directory. Then you will type the following into the description box: <embed src=http://www.wgn.net/~jonart/music/clairetheloone.mid AUTOSTART=TRUE LOOP=TRUE PANEL=0 VOLUME=40></EMBED> NOTE: If you don’t want your music to play over again use: LOOP=FALSE.

You can even have a little music control panel pop up on the page by intergecting WIDTH="110" HEIGHT="40" into the EMBED string. Looking like: <EMBED SRC=http://www.wgn.net/~jonart/music/clairetheloone.mid WIDTH="110" HEIGHT="40” AUTOSTART=TRUE LOOP=TRUE PANEL=0 VOLUME=40></EMBED> Make certain that you have permission to use any *.MID (midi files) that you have on your ads or pages. There are strict Music Cops and Copyright laws out there. (drum roll~~~~~)

Fi gure 7- "Piano K eys" wat ercolor by t he author.

CHAPTER FOUR

CREATING AND SELLING LIMITED EDITION DIGITAL PRINTS The new high tech world has made it possible to do a number of things on your desktop and here is something else to try. When I was doing my first high resolution scan and idea occurred to me: What if I were to do a digital print of this on my Epson printer? Would there be a market for this? I did and there was. The beauty of this approach is that you can keep track of the edition size without keeping a huge inventory. I listed my first print “Lighthouse” on the auction as number 1/100 or number one in an edition of 100. If you have 20 artist’s proofs that would make the total of 120 prints. The same print in a gallery might sell for $90, the gallery would typically take half. If you deduct the frame and their commissions you might end up with $20 profit. I try to start my prints low, (these are small prints - 6x8 inch image size on a 8.5 x 11 sheet) at $9.90, just under $10 so you save on the listing fee. They will typically end up at $14 to $29 which is not that far away from the net profit from The the gallery sale. The prints cost $1.50 to produce. (artist’s proofs $2.50) (Better figure from $2.50 to $3.50 per 8.5 x 11 inch print - figuring the contingencies listed below.) The buyer pays the postage: $6 , I ship everything via 2-day Priority and explain why. I’ve sold a couple hundred prints since June ’97 and it’s been a fun part of the auction. (Bear in mind that there are other hidden cost factors which may affect your profits such as equipment costs and depreciation, paper waste, experimenting, phone and faxing expense, developing ideas, trips to the paper store, post office, ad infinitum. I do go to meetings at ComputerSuperstores Anonymous. on Thursday nights….. )

TYPES OF PRINTS: DIGITAL OR ANALOGUE? I am using these terms as I see fit and anything that I say can and will be used against me: (The following is a paid announcement…..I wish)

I call an analogue print one that has been made by art created by hand : i.e. a mono-print or from a watercolor, oil painting, drawing etc. I call a digital print one that has been made in the computer on a program such as Corel Painter, Photoshop, or Adobe Illustrator etc. I have done and sold both types of prints. The term limited edition has different meanings to different artists. I can’t imagine a 1500 or 2500 edition size as being limited. The largest size 19

I do is an edition size of 350. I have done an edition size of 10. I would like to think that the smaller an edition is, the more valuable the print will become. Only time will tell. Basic Rules: (1) 300 dpi is about the lowest you would use to do a print. 360 dpi is great for Epson Stylus Pro’s. (2) 300 dpi printed at 720 dpi looks better than 300 dpi printed at 360 dpi. (3) Vector art such as CorelDraw art is resolution independent and will print at any resolution, high or low. (unless it has *.bmp files in it) (4) Always use high quality heavy paper. D’Arches and Liege make wonderful fine art ink-jet papers. Kodak makes a nice heavy high-gloss paper, if high gloss is your thing. (5) Do what you can to keep your printer working at top performance levels. (6) Keep accurate track of your print editions using a spread sheet program or a manual ledger of some sort. (7) Include a Certificate of Authenticity which includes the title, number, edition size, date, and signature of the artist. CREATING A DIGITAL PRINT At the file menu choose NEW. When the New box comes up select Inches, instead of Picas, or Pixels. I’ve found that 6 x 8 inches is a good image size for 8.5 x 11 inch paper. Change resolution to 360dpi. This will create a 17.4 MB file. Know this: a 17 meg file is going to look great as a 6 x 8 print. Then you start doing your thing, saving it frequently as you go along. I remember the first time I lost 2 hours of work from not saving. (that’ll cure you!) I have a special drive that I save all of my print files to. It makes them easier to find, especially when you have a lot of them. I have 80 or more prints and that is a lot to keep track of. It is also a lot of storage space.

USING COREL DRAW I have been using CorelDraw since version 3.0 for about 20 years now. It is great to use for large posters, say 24 x 36 inches, as it deals well with fonts and all types of graphics. My large printer is an Encad Chroma24 which prints on many different types of paper and even canvas. I have been working on several large prints using simple geometric shapes and Corel is ideal for that. I â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;m using version 11.0 now Here is an example of a print created with Corel:

USING COREL PAINTER IX or X You will have more fun with this program than any of the others. You can use the image hose which sprays repetitive photo realistic images as fast as you can imagine. There is molten metal which allows you to work with realistic metal which oozes off the end of your cursor to create all kinds of effects. There are flame, watercolor, chalk, airbrush, oil, palette knife and hundreds of other tools. Here are two examples of prints done with Painter. The second one is called “You Have Those Marty Feldman Eyes”, and his hair and the border were done with the “image hose” tool that instantly sprays any image that you select and the size of the spray is according to how much pressure you apply to your drawing tablet stylus.

Fi gure 8 -digi tal painting by author .

Fi gure 9 -"You've Got Those Mart y Feldman Eyes" by author

Fi gure 10 - "Al phabet Abstr acti on" watercol or/mixed media by t he author.

CHAPTER FIVE

USING PHOTOSHOP CS I use Photoshop more than any other program. It is a rock solid program for manipulating images. I am going to concentrate on issues that will be the most valuable for your Ebay pictures. Let’s start with scanning: I have an HP Photosmart scanner and use the HP software to scan my image. If it’s a drawing or watercolor (that fits on the scanner bed) I usually scan it at 300 or 600 dpi (dots per inch) and then I save that file to a folder on my external drive that is named: Largest Images. Then I bring it into Photoshop CS2 and, on the top menu I hit Image/Image Size and resize it to 72 dpi and 12 inches wide. This is the largest image that I use on Ebay, since anything larger would load too slowly. Editing the Image: Sometimes your image will need to be Cropped. You can do this using the tool that looks like a car’s tire jack in the upper left menu. Then I usually go to the IMAGE/ADJUSTMENT menu and fool around with AUTO LEVELS, AUTO COLOR, and whatever else I feel like doing to make the improve the image. One of thes is IMAGE/ ADJUST/ LEVELS and Photoshop will draw a Histogram. You will see three little triangles at the bottom of the Histogram (graph) If you click near these triangles they will move in the direction of your clicking point. Watch what happens as you move each arrow. It will dramatically change your values and contrast and can greatly enhance your scanned image. Another one that is fun is called CURVES, but don’t do it unless you have some extra time. COLOR ADJUSTMENTS: Sometimes the colors are a little different than we desire. There are lots of wonderful color adjustment tools in Photoshop. I tend to use them all at one time or another. Under IMAGE/ADJUST/COLOR BALANCE you will see several sliders that will change the color in real time on your image. You will 24

immediately see the difference. Under IMAGE/ADJUST/COLOR SATURATION you will be able to adjust each of the primary colors and again in real time see the changes. REPLACE COLOR is a powerful tool. This commend lets you create a mask based on specific colors and then adjust the hue, saturation, and lightness values to correct the color. The REPLACE COLOR mask is only a temporary mask and does not create a selection of the image. To adjust and replace a color: Choose IMAGE/ADJUST/REPLACE COLOR. Move your cursor over the scanned image. You will see a mask being created within the REPLACE COLOR box. It keeps changing as you move the eyedropper. When you hit the color that you want to replace then play with the sliders: HUE, SATURATION, and LIGHTNESS and watch what happens. If you want to create a working mask then try another tool called COLOR RANGE under SELECT. Move the cursor again over the scanned image and you will see selected areas appearing in the COLOR RANGE box. Only this time it is a true selection, so that you could airbrush into this selection after you click out of the COLOR RANGE box. (too much fun!) I tend to use BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST a lot it does a lot to an image. Plan to spend a whole day in FILTERS especially if you are in a creative mood. It is amazing what happens here. A ONE THOUSAND LAYERED CAKE: I use Layers a lot in Photoshop. It is a terrific tool and time-saver for trying out different effects. To understand LAYERS think of a pad of transparent paper with 12 sheets of acetate in it. Each one of those sheets of acetate would be considered to be a layer. You can draw or splatter paint on each layer without really affecting any of the others. And yet when you hold them up to a light, you will see something coming through from each layer. To see the LAYERS BOX click on WINDOWS/SHOW LAYERS. Photoshop will allow you to create as many layers as you need. In Photoshop CS2 there are several little symbols at the bottom of the Layers Box. The one on the left is ADD LAYER MASK, the one in the center is ADD LAYER, and the one on the right is TRASH. Click on ADD LAYER a couple of times and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll 25

see two new layers appear in the context box. It is also possible to create new layers by dragging or pasting selections into your image, or by converting selections into layers. You can also copy layers between two open Photoshop Images. Each layer has its own adjustments including an Opacity Bar which has zero to 100% transparency adjustment. Each layer has a little eye icon to the left of it. If you click on this you will hide this layer. Click on it again to show the layer again. You can drag through the eye column and hide several layers at the same time. There are little tiny thumbnails of the layers on each layer. These can be re-sized or turned off from the Layers palette menu by selecting PALETTE OPTIONS from that menu. You can move, copy, and change the stacking order of layers by selecting the layer that you want to move. Choose LAYER/ARRANGE, and choose an option from the submenu. Your choices are: BRING TO FRONT, BRING FORWARD (1 level), SEND BACKWARD (1level), and SEND TO BACK. You can also select and drag the layer up or down in the Layers palette. When its in the position you want just release the mouse button. When you are through working with your layered image you will want to flatten the image. From the Layers menu select FLATTEN IMAGE. This will remove all layers and merge everything that was visible into a single image that can be saved as a *.tif, *.jpg etc. FILTERS: Filters tend to take a lot of memory, so it is a good idea to try it out in a small selected area of your image. Make a duplicate image before you try this so that you wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t destroy your work. CHOOSING A FILTER EFFECT: There are 14 categories of filters: (1) Artistic Filters: natural media for more organic appearances like natural watercolor or pastels. 26

(2) Blur Filters: Great for retouching images. You can select certain areas and blur them out. Get rid of unwanted hard edges. (3) Brush Strokes filters: You will be able to give an image a fine arts look using different brush and ink stroke effects. (4) Distort Filters: For geometric distortion this can be used to create 3-d or other glassy effects. (5) Noise Filters: You can add or remove noise (specks/texture) from an image and help make a selection blend into the surrounding pixels. You can also use this to build unusual textures and for giving a more realistic look to heavily retouched areas. (6) Pixilate Filters: With this you can define a selection sharply by clumping pixels of similar color values into cells. (7) Render Filters: Create lighting effects, texture fills, control lens flare, and make Cloud patterns with this beauty. (8) Sharpen Filters: We touched on this before. Great for focusing blurry images. Contains Sharpen, Sharpen More, Sharpen Edges, and Unsharpen filters. (9) Sketch Filters: Adds more fine arts and hand-drawn effects to your image. (10) Stylize Filters: Produces bold, blatant effects by displacing the pixels and finding and exaggerating contrast in the image. (11) Texture Filters: Good for adding texture to an image. (12) Video Filters: Strictly for TV production. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to go there. (13) Other Filters: Customizable filters - lots of room for experimentation. (14) Digimarc Filters: With this you can embed a digital, invisible watermark into your image to store hidden copyright information.

Fi gure 11- "Avenue of T he Giant s" - wat ercolor by t he author.

CHAPTER SIX

ADVANTAGES OF HAVING A WEB PAGE I really believe that having an Internet art site has helped the auction. It is great to have a place to refer people directly from the Item Description page. They can go look at your real art prices and then come back feeling much better about what they are spending at Ebay. The following is an article that I wrote for the Internet about my experience putting up my site:

UP AND RUNNING ON THE INTERNET IN ONE DAY! ( well, almost one day……would you believe one week……? ) ( skip this section if you are not a geek ) My first Internet experience was on a small BBS in the San Fernando Valley here in Southern California. It was all text and pretty cryptic and bland and I recall being impressed with the vast size of it all. As an artist and illustrator I was intrigued by the possibilities of making your work visible to the entire world instantly. Also visiting the Prado, Louvre, and Smithsonian within a 15 minute slice of time. I had no idea of what a URL, HTML document or what these < <> > things were. After reading some of the endless articles dealing with the WEB in Byte, PC, and a myriad of other magazines I slowly began my WWW education. Then America on Line included (trumpets like Ben Hur) Internet Access and I ventured out cautiously stepping from URL to URL not wanting to fall into Great Internet Void. After a while I was bouncing around like a pachinko ball with hours whizzing by like minutes and enjoying every moment of it. Then I got my AOL bill and noticed that it had suddenly tripled. My wife quickly made me aware of this with all of the subtlety of a rubber mallet. I think that wives view the Internet and computers in general as the "other" woman. Undaunted, I began looking around for better ways to get on the Net. I was looking in an issue of Micro-Times and an ad popped out at me. It said: "UNLIMITED HOURS ON THE NET $12 per month!!!" I called 29

immediately and there was a deafening screeching avalanche of bits of information bombarding my ear drums. Being of average intelligence I quickly realized that this was not a human voice. Then I saw printed next to the phone number in small letters: sign in as guest. I brought up terminal in Windows and re-dialed the number and signed in as guest. The connection broke - I tried again - three times. Breaking through I was treated to a large paragraph of what this "shall be nameless" service offered. I was then asked if I would like to join and with total abandon, I did. I was then told that I needed to download several programs (there was a list of 20 or so). I had no clue of what to download and there were no descriptions of what the heck they were. Second thoughts. Remembering I had just given them my Bank-1 Visa numbers and expiration date. Remembered seeing another phone number in the "large paragraph". Couldn't get back. Re-logged but couldn't get back to "large paragraph". Several tries later found "large para-graph". (I Recall feeling like Clark after finding Livingston.) I found the number and talked to a real person, a very nice young lady who told me that I needed to download a Trumpet Windsock, a Eudora and a Netscape and then I would be in business. So I did. I remembered having seen a windsock at the airport across the street from our house in Glendale, as a kid but that was about all I knew about it. I was sure that a Eudora was a medieval type of musical instrument and a Netscape was a painting of Fisherman's Wharf. (sorry about that one, but I am an artist) What they don't tell you is that each of these programs is Share-ware and if you don't register them, for a small fee, could possibly self-destruct in 30 days. They also required configurations en masse, which I must relate, they were willing to fax or mail to you. If you go this route be ready for lots of tech-support calls. During this trial I had been working at Walt Disney Imagineering, "The Happiest Place on Earth" and wasn't able to spend a lot of time during the day talking to teckies. After several un-returned phone calls, unfulfilled promises and wrong information I decided to cancel already.

I saw another ad in Micro-Times: "Unlimited Time on the Net - $19.95 per month - with 5 megabytes of your own Web Pages thrown in." "Call ____world at xxx-xxxxx now". I called. I signed. I conquered. They sent me a disk, I installed it. I looked at the Windows Icons (there were 6 or so) I saw the vaguely familiar names: Trumpet Windsock, Eudora, FTP, Netscape, and a couple others and I shuddered. I called and they walked me through what I needed and to my surprise everything worked. I WAS ON THE INTERNET! (double twisting back flip). It was the Christmas Season and visions of URL pages raced through my head. I had 5 megabytes of Internet Real Estate to play with. What now? I started looking at URLs. Big ones, small ones, creative ones, boring ones. I noticed that Netscape had a sub-directory called CACHE and with X-Tree for Windows I started viewing these strangely named files (like: mOod4a1j.htm) and discovered that these were HTML pages, written in HTML language. Having written a lot of programs in Basic and Qbasic I wasn't adverse to learning a new language, but I wanted to learn it today! Through Yahoo's search engine (http://www.yahoo.com)I looked up HTML and struck gold. I found a great URL at this address:(http://union .ncsa.uiuc.edu:80/HyperNews/get/www/html/lang.html). Don't you love Internet addresses? Why couldn't it be GO HTM? At any rate it turned out to be a wonderful site containing simple to complex HTML articles at many levels with descriptions and tutorials. What more could you want? Being particularly lazy that day I decided to steal a URL. I put on black pants, a black sweat shirt and black stocking cap and started casing URL's. (I decided not to stretch the nylons over my head this time.) I found several really great looking URLs walked over roof-tops to X-TREE (feeling like Cary Grant)logged C:\Netscape\CACHE and took a peek. It was all there - I recognized the names, places, descriptions - it was too good to be true. I started playing around with substituting their title with my title. What if I do this or that or the other thing? Then something happened...in the middle of my theft I started to get interested in HTML, went back to the magic HTML site (there are many, by the way) and started printing out pages. After a couple of evenings of this I had accumulated about 50 or so pages of text.

INSTANT HTML (LITE): Use a text editor like Notepad. You use Tags. Tags are insideof <these guys>. Tags usually work in pairs. One before what you want to do and one after. The last tag command has a / in front of it like:</a>. <html>is always the first tag at the top of the page. </html>is the last thing on the page. <title>put your title here </title>This title appears at the very top of the Netscape window. Next is your Headline:<h1>through <h6>in this case the smaller number makes the largest font so <h1>is humongous and <h6>is tiny. They are used like this: <h1>put your headline here </h1>and possibly <h3>put your smaller line here </h3><p> <p>Think paragraph. It is used after you write something and you want it to be a separate paragraph. <br>works in a similar way. <hr>cuts a line right across the page. <hr size=#> carves a box/line in the width of # across the page. <hr size=6 width=10%> width=10% puts the box/line across 10% of the page. Width=100% would put it all the way across. Basic Text Formatting: <font size=#># meaning a number from 1 ( smallest) and 6 (largest). <b>makes it bold. Usage: <b><b>your text</b></b>- <i>makes it italic. Usage: <i><i> your text italicized </i></i> - <u>makes it underlined. Usage: <u><u>your text underlined</u></u><tt>creates a typewriter font. Usage: <tt><tt> your text </tt>. So as you can see, if a guy like me can do it - anyone can. Just use whatever stubbornness and tenacity that you have and EIGTBAR. (Everything is Going To Be All Right)

Fi gure 12 - Act or John Calvin i n "Harvest Home"

CHAPTER SEVEN

DEALING WITH PEOPLE I remember hearing since I was a little kid the axiom that ‘The Customer is Always Right’. That kind of stuck with me and I think there is a lot of truth to it. (even if they’re wrong) I’ve dealt with so many wonderful people on the auction and web site that it makes me forget the 2% that are stinkers. I find that people respond to a loving attitude and if you respect them it comes back magnified. It’s the old Golden Rule idea - sounds corny, but it works!

MANNA, FROM HEAVEN When I run across a particularly wonderful customer, I will frequently stick in an extra print, with their order, at no extra charge. Sometimes they totally suprise me with a gift, like one customer, who found out that I used to play jazz piano sent me a couple of really neat CD’s, and she had excellent taste. (yeehh!)

One mistake that I made early on was to be a little too trusting. I shipped a couple of things too soon. So now I ship after the check has cleared and everything works out better. If a print gets damaged in transit, I don’t even think twice about it - I ship a new print. It makes for happy transactions. Every once in a while you might get a bidder from another country. Just make certain that they pay with an International Money Order in US funds and you won’t have any problems. On one occasion I had a customer in India who needed a Pro-Forma Invoice. (look it up on Yahoo!) It got a little hairy, but I adapted one off the Internet and it worked out OK. Finally, it is a good idea to have a referral to your web pages. It happens from time to time that someone will visit your site from your auction item description page and will see a painting that they can’t live without. I have made a few sales that way and the synergy between site and ads seems to stimulate some interest.

Fi gure 13 - "Mechanica" - w ater color by the aut hor.

CHAPTER EIGHT

STEP BY STEP ( Or The Short Form )

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

Pick something to list on Ebay: Take a digital picture of it. Play with it in Photoshop (or your favorite image editor) Open an account on Ebay with a credit or debit card. Click on Ebay’s sell button on the top right of their website. Pick a Category to sell in. (eBay keeps track of your categories, for use next time.) Follow eBay’s instructions to create your listing. At any point in making your listing you can hit the preview button that is below your Description box, and see what your listing will look like. Hit the Submit Listing button and your auction is “Live”.

Some Notes: Over the years I’ve found that starting with the lowest beginning bid that you can will attract more buyers. Buyers become more interested in items with bids on them. “Reserve” prices tend to turn buyers off. One of the most valuable things that you can have on eBay is your own 100% positive feedback. Ebay will try to get you to sign up for Featured, Featured Plus, Gallery Plus, and a myriad of other things. Be careful – These can drive up your costs quickly. I use some of these when I am listing more costly items and they can help your exposure to bidders.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JOHN N. STEWART

John was born in San Bernardino, California in 1940. His family moved to Glendale, California when he was 1 year old. He spent his teens growing up in an old duplex which housed living quarters on one side and a art and ceramic studio on the other. He was exposed to many forms of art here since artists from all over the world taught classes here. He learned to throw pottery on the wheel, paint china, create ceramic tile murals, and welded sculpture along with more traditional drawing and painting techniques. Because his father (a frustrated sculptor ) built ceramic kilns and potters wheels John was able to meet many artists including sculptor Peter Voulkos, Roger Derricarer, Hilda Gentry and many others. He took the Famous Artist's correspondence course in his teens but lost interest after seven or eight lessons. He was awarded a scholarship to Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles in the late fifties and early sixties and later attended Art Center for a brief period of time. He had begun painting murals and art projects for various restaurants, hospitals etc. while still in High School. One project that stands out was a mural project for the Joseph Bean estate in La Canada. It began as a ceramic tile mural in the entry way and a year later had escalated to painted murals through out the house.

John had his first art show on La Cienega at the age of 21 and since then has participated in scores of others. He had a special exhibition at Lakeland College in Ohio in 1978. Other recent show participations include the Space Gallery, the Morseburg Gallery, The Watercolors Etc. Gallery in Tucson, Arizona, and a special show at The Red Bluff Art Gallery. . His work has been shown and collected in many states and in several European countries. He is a signature member of the National Watercolor Society, artist member of the prestigious California Art Club, and Motion Picture Scenic and Title Artists. John is currently listed in Who's Who of the Entertainment Industry, Who's Who in California, Personalities of the West and Who's Who in America. John is semi-retired and active in the arts in Northern California. For fun he paints out of doors, writes performs music, and enjoys photography and computers. His art can be seen at: http://www.jstewart.com and http://adrawingperday.blogspot.com

Fi gure 14 - "T he Vi sitor" oi l on canvas by the author .

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