A Real Day in My Life as a Full Time Artist

Hi, I'm Ashley and this is a day in my life as a full-time artist. If you're new here, I live in Bryson City in the Great Smoky Mountains and almost seven years ago my husband and I partnered with the Perkins Builder Brothers to save an old abandoned house and storefront right on Main Street. Today one of those buildings is my art studio and gallery where I spend most of my days painting alongside my two dogs, Wookie and Max. Bryson City is such a charming small town and sits right outside the National Park. We also have a Great Smoky Mountains Railroad excursion train running through town and it's usually getting ready to depart for the day as I make my way to work. Before heading to the studio, I first stop by our little post office to drop off a few Etsy orders. Once at the studio, I unpacked my things and the first thing I did was restock a few items in the store. Then I needed to package two new large prints. One was a recent horse painting that I finished and the other was a large bear painting. After packaging them, I added both into my inventory system so that I can keep track of sales. I know I've shown this before but I still use a very simple handwritten system and these two prints became my 275th and 276th product that I've created from my own artwork. I had also just finished this commission for a client and after letting it dry for 24 hours, it was finally ready to varnish. I really love how the tiny details in the horses turned out, especially with all the layered fall leaves in the background. I thoroughly mixed up my varnish and applied a coat before also varnishing two other finished pieces. One of those other pieces was this abstract Smoky Mountains landscape that I just finished and the other one is the owl painting that I was working on in my last Day of the Life video. Once those were set aside to dry, I moved on to trimming smaller prints of the horse and bear paintings from earlier. I usually start with about 50 prints of a painting. Once they are printed, I trim them all at once but I only package a portion right away. It's much easier to store prints unwrapped and it saves me from using backer boards and sleeves before I know which designs will sell best. The store stayed steady throughout the day with customers coming in here and there and between visitors, I was able to add a coat of varnish to the paintings from earlier. I was listening to an audiobook about the recovery of the Columbia Space Shuttle, which I highly recommend, and I also started some small tiny paintings but then I started to get really hungry. Max and Wookie had been quiet all morning so I figured they were ready for a break and I took them for a little walk down to the town square. I love how picturesque this town is and moments like this always make me want to paint more local scenes. For lunch, I grabbed a salad from the food truck nearby and finally had a chance to sit down for a little bit. Of course, the dogs kept begging for some too and since Max has lost his sight in the past few years, I try to keep things very predictable for him but he does struggle a little to find his way around. Every time he gets a drink and tries to make his way back to his bed, he somehow almost ends up in Wookie's bed instead and Wookie's expressions crack me up every time. After lunch, I spent some time working on the tiny sunflower paintings. These are just four by four inch originals with my name and gallery location stamped on the back. I really love offering a wide range of price points in my shop because I want art to feel accessible to everyone. I did at some point put all of my new prints out and I always end up rearranging part of the store because my shelves are completely full. Older or slower selling prints usually get moved into display boxes with other similar themed prints to make room. Sometimes I'll wish that I had more display space but honestly the size of my store is very manageable and I don't want anything else to take away from my creative time. By early afternoon, the commission with the two horses was fully dry and ready to be framed in a rustic frame that the client had chosen. I was really happy with how it all turned out. I also framed the abstract landscape that had dried earlier and I used ready-made float frames that come in several colors and I'll link some of the ones that I use in the description but they're really easy to use. I use small pieces of cardboard as spacers to keep the canvas centered evenly before securing everything from the back with screws. After that, I spent a little while working on a larger horse painting that's still in progress. Just trying to push it a bit farther along before the end of the day. I saw a quote the other day that really resonated with me. The best thing you can do is become an outsider to your industry. I've built my little business with practices that work just for me, not the art industry as a whole and it's really easy to try and compare yourself to other artists but sometimes it's very freeing to just find your own way. The store slowed down later in the afternoon and all week I had been staring at my front windows thinking about how badly they needed to be cleaned so I decided to finally tackle them. First I had to move a bunch of things out of the way and the large carts in my front windows came from a local sawmill that closed a few years ago and they're so heavy that they basically never move so I just have to work around them. I cleaned the windows, vacuumed, and tidied up the entire cart area and of course halfway through the second window the store suddenly got busy again so I had to pause for customers for a while. Once the customers left I was finally able to finish up the second window. My snake plants and the windows had also gotten huge and desperately needed to be separated and repotted. I thought it would be a good idea to take the dogs home first and then come back. We're currently in a pretty bad drought here in North Carolina Mountains but everything is still incredibly green and I always love the drive home with the view of the town, the mountains, and the clouds rolling through. After dropping the dogs off at home I changed clothes and headed back to the studio to repot the plants and clean the outside windows. I don't know what it is about my storefront windows but they must be the perfect environment for snake plants because they grow about three to four feet tall no matter what I do. Once everything was divided and replanted I arranged the plants back in the windows and headed outside to finish washing the glass. I love having clean windows and I also finally removed some old lettering that had been on the windows forever and honestly I still haven't decided what I want to do to replace it with but I really love this final shot because you can see the clouds reflecting and rolling across the windows. And that was another day in my life as an artist and I hope you enjoyed coming along with me and if you'd like to see more videos like this please like, subscribe, and leave a comment. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time!