Why Postcards? The Untold Story
You’ve often heard the phrase, “out of sight, out of mind.” Texas artist Larry G. Lemons took this to heart and has done just the opposite, that is “in sight, in mind” and it has opened up career and financial opportunities that heretofore had been somewhat elusive to his emerging art career.
Blazed the Trail with a Pony
After 27 years in the portrait photography business, Lemons yearned for a new direction along the creative path of life. In the year 2000 he and his wife sold their very profitable portrait studio in order for Larry to pursue a second career as an artist specializing in Texas and Southwestern themed subjects. A number of opportunities eventually opened up that saw Larry chosen as one of the few Texas artists invited to participate in the “Trail of Painted Ponies” charity art project.
Texas Highways Magazine Licensed
A couple of his more colorful “Texas Wild Thangs” images were licensed by the prestigious Texas Highways magazine for use in their first ever full color image T-shirt line from their gift shop. Being chosen official artist for a few regional art shows and the opportunity to have a solo exhibition of original oil paintings at the nationally acclaimed Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, Georgia, have also given greater exposure to his colorful art.
No stranger to self promotion, a marketing skill developed through years of study and practice as a photography studio owner, Lemons, always looking for new and creative ways to get his art before potential collectors discovered the “daily painters” on line group upon meeting noted artist Thaw Malin III at an arts and crafts festival in Texas.
Postcards Begin A New Journey
Thaw was generous enough to share the concept of painting a small painting each day and e-mailing it out to a subscriber list and offering it for sale at a very reasonable opening bid through Ebay. Intrigued by the idea, but with too many irons in the fire at the time, Lemons put it in the back of his mind for some months. Another visit to Malin’s newly located Texas studio brought the idea up again. This time, Malin gave Lemons a 6” x 8” canvas panel and told him that now he had no excuse not to try it.
Lemons agreed to try to paint at least one small painting each week and e-mail it out to his e-mail address list. Upon this commitment, he ordered 40 more small canvas panels in order to have an adequate supply for a few months. He reasoned that, with this small investment either the idea would work, or he would at least get in a lot more practice painting.
An initial e-mail blast to notify his address list that this project to be called “Postcards from Texas” was coming down the pike met with a very positive result, with only a few asking not to be included in the mailing. Two weeks later the first painting was completed, digitally photographed in outdoor shade, cropped and color corrected in Photoshop, sized, saved to the desktop, and dragged into the first e-mail.
The Plot Thickens: A Run in with AOL
Immediately after the first mailing an unexpected occurrence happened. Though the e-mails reached their destination to around 375 addresses and the painting sold within 30 minutes after it was sent, his internet server shut his account down. Numerous phone calls later, he discovered that he had now become a spammer. Not wishing to be labeled as such, since he was only contacting those who wished to be contacted, he resolved the problem by grouping his e-mail addresses into groups of not more than 50 in a group.
The Hapy Ending
Now, by sending the e-mail “postcard” to himself, then a little copying and pasting to create a mailing for each group as a blind copy, his art arrives on a weekly basis to over 500 folks who look forward to seeing each new weekly painting. Numerous subscribers have contacted him to say how they look forward to each Monday morning to see what new painting he has completed for the previous week. About 2/3 of the paintings done since the inception of the “postcards” have been sold in addition to added print sales from larger paintings and at least one large commission have added to the overall success of the marketing program. The artist emphasized that the images are not included as an attachment, but are dragged into the body of the e-mail to increase the “wow factor” as they are seen immediately upon opening.
On Schedule
Larry tries to complete the small painting in time to send it out on Sunday afternoon or evening so it will be in the subscriber’s e-mail box no later than Monday morning. On one particular occasion the painting was not completed until well after dark on Sunday night, so using the natural outdoor light to photograph it by was impossible. Scanning the small painting seemed like a logical choice except that the painting was still wet.
Using a little Texas ingenuity, Lemons laid four quarters down on the scanner bed where they just touched the corners of the painting but kept it from touching the scanner glass, he found that the image scanned with sufficient quality to proceed with the e-mail. A little touch-up with the clone tool in Photoshop where the quarters had been made the electronic image perfectly useable. Now this scanning method is common practice for almost every image produced.
L G Lemons “Postcards from Texas” art are now “in sight, in mind” to hundreds of subscribers all over the country as his e-mail subscriber list grows weekly. Recipients are encouraged to forward the images to friends and family who have an opportunity to subscribe themselves, increasing sales opportunities with each click of the mouse.