Progress Report: May-2021

Wow I can’t believe is middle of 2021 already. While last year went by super slow, this year is moving at super sonic speed! My last status progress report was back in December 2020 and was in the early stages of formalizing my DoodlingJorge process, learning new things, and getting the many different pieces setup. Pieces like Landing Page, Blog, Catalog, Art Gallery and a few more.

In my professional life, I am a technologist helping large organizations with their digital transformation projects and adoption of new technologies. . In my early years, I was (still am) a developer, system integrator. My world has always been about constant change, continuous learnings, pressure and can be stressful at times, but I love it. I have always said that I am lucky enough that my work is also my hobby, but in the last couple of years ( especially with the pandemic ) it was too much, and I needed to change a bit.

I want to say that my art is my hobby, but in reality, at the moment – a year into it, the journey into becoming an artist is now my hobby. It is my distraction from what I do for a living. It is now my relaxation / mediation place. It may be my age, but I prefer to thank the pandemic 🙂

Before I go on, a couple of days ago, I published my social media status as of May 2021 report. Although it is low for today’s social media standards, I am super pleased with the progress. Instagram, where I post and interact the most, is rocking! I know it is a marathon, but wow in just 6 months there is significant improvement!

The one thing to note is that the likes, comments, emojis from people I do not know from all over the world have responded to an art or video posting are, well, addicting! — Wow! Very encouraging and motivational to wake up every morning to new subscribers and the hearts and likes. Check out my thank you blog posts.

Reflection Time: January to mid-March.

Not much changed on the sites, products and offerings. I just let it sit. (semi-intentionally) In fact, I did not produce a lot of art pieces either. It was time for reflection and thinking what I *really* wanted to do.

Several things were on my mind…

Need to increase my followers on Instagram and YouTube. (Sorry Twitter and Facebook not as important)
YouTube videos take a time to create. / Not a lot of followers yet
Need spend time thinking and doing more promotion
Etsy might not be the place for me — ZERO items sold so far…
Print on Demand – easy to setup and forget. – and I think that is a problem..
Too many products, too many options
Was not happy with the many sites I had.
- Landing Page: It was simple (ugly) and not in brand.
- Product Catalog was a bit hard to maintain
  - I did a custom web-app for it but needed more work done.
  - Too many other store fronts ( Etsy, RedBubble, TeeSpring, etc…)
  - Wanted to start selling direct
- Art Gallery was ugly and did not really display the art pieces as I wanted
  - It was just too many / hard to search/maintain and cross-reference.
- Blog was not really visible so no one was looking into it.
- Needed more cross-reference between all of the items.

April and May – Spring Cleaning

Yep – clean up time. So many things still in the air. Had to make some decisions, and refocus a bit . These are the things I did , and in progress to continue to work on:

No need to post daily – let each piece “simmer” in the channel. – Done
Consolidate everything into my WordPress platform – Done (puff!)
- A benefit of this was my desire of making this journey story more visible
Improved on the process from creation, cataloging, promotion and posting. – Done , improvements in queue
- Cataloging the art has been a real challenge, especially when a piece needs to be changed for a particular target product.
Focus on interacting more on Instagram – find and follow artists like me – Doing
- Find out who they are following / how they are setup / how they do it. (talk to a couple of them)
You Tube Videos are hard to make but strangely rewarding to post and be seen 🙂
- Will try to interact more in the platform as well.
Lets prepare for an actual physical small art fair — In progress
- Idea came from both myself and my wife after attending a neighborhood one.
- Let put together some items for sale and talk to people
Print on Demand is cool, but it leaves you a bit empty — In Progress
- Reduced the number of POD products offered – DONE
- I enjoyed putting together a couple of physical card packs offerings. – Doing

A new market opening up – Exciting times – NFT Journey

Over the past couple of months, I have been learning a lot about NFTs, and I have published multiple ones as tests. I think this will develop to be a huge market and opportunity for all artists, both traditional and digital, over the next few year, but right now it is a SUPER steep learning curve with *a lot* changing every single day. exciting times for sure. Check out my personal blog: jorgep NFT Learnings Journey for many posts and videos on this topic. I end-up choosing to do it there instead of cluttering this artist blog with technical stuff. Check out my always growing catalog / list of DoodlingJorge NFTs here. I have listings in several marketplaces, and still learning and experimenting a lot.