Jump Start Your Art Career

I'm very excited to announce the first of my online classes. This is a topic near and dear to my heart and I'm thrilled to share the knowledge I've gained over the last 20 years as a professional fine artist, author and teacher.

Jump Start your Art Career

What do you want to get out of your art career? Do you want to exhibit more often? Sell more art? Teach workshops? Get published? Create a polished, professional online presence? This practical, hands-on class will guide you through an individualized course of study to attain these aspirations and more. Start by defining and setting your specific goals, create your brand, come up with a marketing plan and put it into action, all with step-by-step guidance from an industry expert.

Learn how to -
     create a brand that will help you stand out from the crowd
     outline a marketing plan to help you reach your goals
     put together a professional portfolio
     find, research and approach art galleries
     start an etsy store and promote it
     build up a mailing list and use it effectively
     analyze the success of your marketing plan
     get published - start small and think big


With interactive lessons, homework, brainstorming, critiques and more you will be well on your way to realizing your art career goals.

6 online lessons beginning Monday April 5          $60.00


the workshop includes pdf handouts, worksheets, resources and references plus a forum for sharing questions, answers and progress all in a supportive, encouraging and empowering environment.

A surface design tote for the American Cancer Society

Tote Tuesday is a fundraiser held to benefit the American Cancer Society dreamed up by the incomparable and indefatiguable Virginia Spiegel. I'm so pleased to be able to help out again, this time by donating a tote for the auction. I've included a copy of my new book, Surface Design Essentials, 5 bottles of Liquitex soft-body acrylic paints, 3 bottles of Liquitex acrylic ink, 3 different Liquitex acrylic mediums - fabric, matte gel and, my favorite, iridescent - 6 Derwent Inktense water-soluble ink pencils and a small piece of art made with these yummy colors. With this tote full of goodies, you can dive right in and start creating!

For all the details about this auction that will be held next Tuesday, February 23, head over to Virginia's blog. There are lots of fun totes up for bidding and it's for such a good cause!

Loteria - first 20

Lotería Collage Project

This is what the first 20 lotería blocks look like next to each other. Progress is being made and things are happening!

This weekend, among other things, I've been working on my first offering of online classes. Stay tuned for the full descriptions and sign-up information. There will be a project class, a process class and a class focused on how to jump start your art career. Whee!

El Pajaro

Lotería Collage Project

20 El Pajaro (the bird)

It feels good to get back into this project. The first 20 of the total 54 are done. I've collected 10 frames from various trips to Ikea and will start matting and framing some of these little blocks.

An update on La Garza from yesterday: I had not heat set the ink on the letters I had erroneously stamped and this morning I tried blotting them with a damp paper towel. Wouldn't you know, they came off, completely and totally! Project save.  I stamped some innocuous flower shapes where the letters were, as the space still needed something.

19 La Garza (the heron) revised

Workshop in the Hudson Valley

I hope you can join me for a workshop at the beautiful Hudson River Valley Art Workshops in March in Greenville, New York.

I'll be teaching Layers of Meaning, a workshop where you'll make a series of small art quilts incorporating a variety of techniques.

The official description:

Working within a theme, Jane Davila guides you to create a series of small art quilts. Develop your theme using techniques such as direct and indirect inkjet photo transfers, block printing and found object printing. Explore the concept of personal imagery by creating your own motifs to incorporate into your work. Layer your compositions with collage and printing, use quilting as the element of line, and end with a wide assortment of very unusual edge-finishing techniques.

Jane will be bringing an Epson Durabright all-in-one printer with her so that you will be learning and practicing the image transfer techniques hands-on with your own photos. She will also be bringing a number of interesting supplies that are for the use of the students, so it's a great opportunity to experiment with things you may not be familiar with without having to invest in those supplies before you're sure if you like them.

And... they have chocolate! Amazing, handmade chocolate. Really, what else do we need?

La Garza

Lotería Collage Project



19 La Garza (the heron)

I was all excited to get back to my loteria project and I laid out this block and stitched and stamped away and stepped back happily only to realize that La Garza means the heron in English, not Flamingo, like I stamped along the lower edge. So here's my conundrum: do I re-do the block because, although a flamingo is a type heron (I think), the translation of the Spanish word is not technically correct or do I leave it alone and risk looking silly? Oof.