One of my goals this year has been to focus more on my sketching and painting work and to try and develop some consistency and some continuity of themes, which in the past have totally been all over the place. That’s an exercise that’s been particularly challenging for me because in addition to a busy workload as a part of a startup company and family responsibilities in a house full of teenagers time is very scarce and creative energy often has to be subservient to the necessities of life and the thought of being able to establish some kind of routine is, I’m afraid at this point of my life, more a pipe dream than a process. But that’s not to say I’m not trying!
Part of that effort has been to try and consolidate some of my work onto some social media platforms that make it a little easier to not only show someone a piece if they ask about it, but it actually helps me with organization and consistency. If pieces are in one place, I’m not having to dig through multiple computer drives and folder and the variety of online storage subscriptions I have!
The problem I started running into was that mixing my artwork and woodworking seems really confusing, particularly for folks who are following up with me about the woodworking plans. I’d really like to do a little more promotion of them and highlight many of the awesome projects people have made from my plans.
So I’ve added an EdHartArt Facebook page to my profile and created an @EdHartArt profile on Instagram. That also helps me keep some measure of separation between my woodworking plans and customer builds and some of my own creative work.
So for anyone who cares, my plan is to use @eh3k on Instagram mainly for customer builds of woodworking plans and I’ll put my artwork on @EdHartArt. Same strategy with Facebook. I’d like to use my EdHart.me page for shoutouts to customers and use the EdHartArt for paintings & drawings.