Plein Air Podcast

Plein Air Podcast 225: Jill Stefani Wagner

In this episode of the Plein Air Podcast, Eric Rhoads interviews Jill Stefani Wagner. In the interview, they discuss the world of plein air painting for beginners and experienced artists.

What plein air events are like, and the benefits of attending them
Using oil vs pastel en plein air
Mistakes that beginners can avoid
Jill’s favorite country to visit for plein air painting
How owning and operating an advertising agency has served her as a painter
Things you can do to become a better artist
And marketing your art, including nderstanding your audience and knowing your buyers (“Sometimes artists feel like ‘I don’t want to be in an industry,’ but you are in an industry. And there are certain steps that are important to improve your chances.”

Bonus! In this week’s Art Marketing Minute, Eric Rhoads, author of Make More Money Selling Your Art, shares thoughts on what to do with your older paintings; and a method for selling your art right off the easel. Have a question about how to sell your art? Ask Eric at artmarketing.com/questions.

Listen to the Plein Air Podcast with Eric Rhoads and Jill Stefani Wagner here:

Related Links:
– Jill Stefani Wagner online: https://www.jillwagnerart.com/
– Plein Air Convention & Expo: https://pleinairconvention.com/
– Eric Rhoads on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ericrhoads/
– Eric Rhoads on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eric.rhoads
– Plein Air Today newsletter: https://www.outdoorpainter.com/plein-air-today-newsletter/
– Submit Art Marketing Questions: artmarketing.com/questions

FULL TRANSCRIPT of this Plein Air Podcast
DISCLAIMER: The following is the output of a transcription from an audio recording of the Plein Air Podcast. Although the transcription is mostly correct, in some cases it is slightly inaccurate due to the recording and/or software transcription.

Announcer 0:19
This is the Plein Air Podcast with Eric Rhoads, publisher and founder of Plein Air Magazine. In the Plein Air Podcast we cover the world of outdoor painting called plein air. The French coined the term which means open air or outdoors. The French pronounce it plenn air. Others say plein air. No matter how you say it. There is a huge movement of artists around the world who are going outdoors to paint and this show is about that movement. Now, here’s your host, author, publisher and painter, Eric Rhoads.

Eric Rhoads 1:01
Welcome to the Plein Air Podcast, everybody. It’s been a while. I kinda it’s just been crazy. I’ve been able to get the podcast done for some reason I think summer just got in the way. No excuses for not gonna get done. But we’re back. Now we have some incredible interviews scheduled including a terrific one today with Jill Stephanie Wagner and you’re not going to want to miss her. You probably already know all about her. But if you don’t, this is a great opportunity to learn about a premium plein air painter in a fabulous artist and a lot of ways. So we hope that you will embrace the whole plein air lifestyle, and that’s what this program is all about. It has been a really terrific summer I’ve been out in our lake home most of the summer in the Adirondacks and have been painting a lot this summer couldn’t do it last summer because of circumstances. But this summer, for instance, we launched the redesign of plein air magazine, it’s took us about a year to get that done. I was very excited when I got mine in the mail. And it really came out nice. We’re really proud of it if you’re not a subscriber hope you will be. Then in June, my Adirondack publishers Invitational event with about 100 artists, we had a really terrific time. There we are around a campfire. Oops, I’m not supposed to do that. And then, so we but we, you know, we had campfires, we painted outdoors, we put all of our paintings out every night. We sat around and segment a lot of guitars this year. And we just had a great time. It’s a lot of fun to just to get together in a community of artists and paint. It’s sometimes we go out and paint by ourselves. But most of us paint the same place every day. And it is a ball. So anyway, that’s one of the things that happened. And then I had oh, what else do I have? I had four artists in for a little, just a little private time there. We did some boat rides, we did some painting, we had dinner together. And we just talked about art. We had a whole lot of fun. The guest I had were TM Nicholas, John MacDonald, Judd Brown, and George Van Hook. So it was a lot of fun. We just painted for about four days. And then I went back to Austin, Texas, and I hosted plein air pastel live, where we had a huge number of people worldwide on pesto live. So it was a lot of fun. So and then I painted a fair amount to I had a lot of painting from my boat, I got this little wooden boat and I paint in. And it’s a lot of fun because I can get into a little tight spaces, throw my anchor out and do a little painting and it’s just a lot of fun. I also I’m trying this summer to paint bigger, I decided not to paint little paintings anymore. And I did a big one like a 40 inch painting and I was a commission and I have to deliver it by boat. So it was kind of crazy to kind of get that big painting delivered by boat, but we managed to get it done anyway. All right. So what else is going on mid September, I’m going to be taking a group of painters to New Zealand, and that’s going to be fun. And then we have fall color week, which is sold out. But we’ll have 100 painters in Maine and it’s going to be a lot of fun. We get together and we paint every day kind of like the Adirondacks except their small color and usually a little breezy or a little cooler but not always. And this year in Maine is just going to be spectacular. There’s so much to paint so many subject matters, and we are thrilled to do it. While we’re also thrilled that this podcast is now on audio and video and it has over 1.7 million downloads just hard to imagine you know when I first started the plein air podcast somebody said well, you know why bother? I mean, there’s not that many plein air painters wrong. Anyway, we’re being heard in over 90 countries and or people have picked up and listened from 90 countries. and it has been rated number one in each spots top 15 painting podcasts list. We’re really happy about that. Today’s interview. When we’re done we have the art marketing minute and I always like to touch on some art marketing which I teach at the plein air convention. Now, a couple of things a little housekeeping First off, the plein air convention is coming up if you’re looking to connect with the plein air community become part of it or learn more about it. We have the best people teaching that we gather we’re going to have about 1000 to 1200 outdoor painters gathered at the plein air Convention and Expo in Denver. this coming May you’re gonna learn techniques from five stages we gather with friends we we have a big expo hall with a lot of materials. We paint together, it’s in Colorado, May 21 through 25 with a pre convention workshop with Laurie, Laurie Putnam, I almost said the wrong name. And it’s going to be a lot of fun. There’s also going to be an online streaming package if you can’t attend. We have eight instructors so far, including the Great CW Mundi, Alvero Castanget, one of the great watercolor artists of our time, Daniel Sprick, Susie Baker, and of course our guests today, Jill Wagner’s gonna be there and many, many more so you can learn more about it the pleinairconvention.com. Also coming up in November, there are lots of styles of art that are, you know, that are realistic, you know, there are for instance, there’s photorealistic. There’s academic realistic, there’s impressionistic, which is realistic, anything that you can tell what it is, is realistic. If you can’t tell what it is then that goes into a whole different area. And so we’re going to be teaching on realism live almost all the styles of realism. So from tight academic, to loose, impressionistic. It’s November 10 through 12 online, we have all mediums, oil, watercolor, pastel, etc. We have lots of subjects like figure portrait, still life, landscape, floral, and more. It’s the 10th through 12th of November with a beginner’s Dan the ninth you can watch online. Some of the faculty I’m not going to mention them all here, but Juliette Aristides is going to be there. Clyde Aspevig, who is probably I think it’s safe to say is the finest landscape painter in the world. And very, very rare to get him to do something like this. And so we’re very lucky. Michelle Dunaway, Lisa Egeli. Rose Frantzen, Chuck Morris, Daniel Graves, Alex Kelly, Michael Mettler, Ted Mueller, Carol Peebles, John Budicin, and Tony Pro, Sarah Sedwick, Leona and Alexander Shanks from the great Studio Incamminati that I mentioned Daniel Graves from Arts Academy Terry Strickland, Dustin Van Wechel, who is a great wildlife artist, Glenn Vilppu, Todd Casey and many, many more to be announced. And so we’re really excited about that Learn more at realism live I probably am sure I forgot a lot of people. And last but not least, I just want to mention you know, at the top of the show, I mentioned that the plein air magazine has a new design. And you know, we have subscribers who are collectors and subscribers who are artists and the people who follow the plein air movement who liked to go to watch to buy. They subscribe the people who are participating subscribe. It’s rooted in deep history of each by monthly issue Chronicles, master artists or techniques demonstrations plein air events to collectors who follow Him, historic artists and more. And we have a brand new redesign. And if you get the digital edition, you get 30% more content. So you should subscribe if you haven’t done that. While I don’t want to say you should. I would love for you to. And I think you’ll get a lot out of it. Anyway, visit plein air magazine.com Okay, now it’s time to get through. We’ve got through all of our business. It’s time to get to our guest, Jill Stephanie Wagner. Jill, welcome to the plein air podcast.

Jill Stefani Wagner 9:11
Hi, Eric and Happy belated birthday.

Eric Rhoads 9:14
Oh, thank you and we have we have a lot going on. It’s been crazy. I would imagine your summers been equally crazy. You mentioned off camera that you were doing a lot of plein air events.

Jill Stefani Wagner 9:27
Yeah, every year I say I’m gonna slow down and do less of them. But I I love doing plein air festivals. So I think I did five already. And I’ve got two more planned and some events that aren’t really festivals but I go and paint with people and it was it’s what makes my heart sing. I love it.

Eric Rhoads 9:52
Well, what events did you do this year? What event is new?

Jill Stefani Wagner 9:57
I did paint with Kiva in Florida. uh and also lighthouse in Florida. I did Door County for the first time. I took July off but Door County and then paint Grand Traverse. And I’ll be going down to Ohio for the Ohio plein air society’s event and then going to Dubuque in October for brush strokes.

Eric Rhoads 10:26
So there are a lot of people who are listening to this who are kind of new to the whole plein air world and what’s going on? Would you explain for their benefit what a typical plein air event is like?

Jill Stefani Wagner 10:41
Sure, most of the plein air events you have to apply to. And maybe there’s 100 or 200 artists who apply. And usually around 35, maybe 40 artists are accepted. And when the date comes to go, you go to the location where you’re hosted by a very nice family. This is for the higher level ones, a lot of the smaller local ones don’t have hosts. But you learn about the rules for that event, because every single event has different rules. And you’re given the parameters of where you can paint and where you should paint they often have you show up at certain locations. And you just paint with your friends all weekend, a week sorry. Usually nonstop I’m, I’m out of my bed and out on the scene about seven o’clock every morning and sometimes Nocturnes up till 1011 One o’clock in the morning, and then you go to bed and you just do it all over again for about five or six days. There’s often little events on the side like auctions or small work shows. But there’s always a gala at the end, where people pay to come and see all the paintings there are people who live in that community and are really interested in having paintings of their own compound, their hills, that vineyards, the lakes. And they come in by. And often there’s a public viewing after that. And sometimes online viewing. And then we all packed up, go home and go see each other at another event.

Eric Rhoads 12:25
Well, I think it’s interesting to see what that that whole experience is like because you know, if you show up at a plein air event, and of course when we started plein air magazine, there were very, very few, maybe two or three. Now 20 years later, there’s three or four 350 of them you know, every time Scotland every small towns got one has changed considerably. But that’s a tremendous amount of work to get ready to go to one of these. That’s a lot of a lot of stress. Talking to me a little bit about the preparation as we..

Jill Stefani Wagner 13:03
Usually takes me about two weeks or so to get ready and I’m super lucky because I have a wonderful studio assistant and friend Tia… And she helps get me pepped up and organized and I work in both pastel and oil. So that necessitates either putting glass in frames or taking glass out of frames, depending on which medium I’m painting in. And I have a list that I’ve already typed up for either medium and I don’t have to keep remembering every time what I what I forget. So I get that all packed up. And Tia helps me pick up the car and I head off

Eric Rhoads 13:55
You have to buy frames or make frames for for the event you have to have enough panels and most events stamp the panels on the back right that you painted

Jill Stefani Wagner 14:08
every every plein air festival will stamp on the back to prove that you painted this it during the festival and that some other time. So yeah, I always bring way too many when I go in for stamping I’ve got 35-40 panels. They look at me like I’m a crazy woman but you never know what size you want what format so you have to bring everything it’s like kind of bringing all your clothes when you go on a two day trip.

Eric Rhoads 14:34
Well if you can take your car you’re in good shape, but you know once in a while somebody is flying to an event like this and it’s a lot of work to to pack all that stuff up.

Jill Stefani Wagner 14:45
I only go as far as I can drive in my SUV studio. So you know 10 hours from my house unless I’m going to pace and then I fly to PACE.

Eric Rhoads 14:56
PACE being the plein air convention and actually yeah, so Jill, you mentioned that you paint in pastel and in oil at plein air events. What is the process of deciding what you’re going to use is there a time when you’re more likely to use oil at a time, you’re more likely to use pastel?

Jill Stefani Wagner 15:18
Well, for events that I’ve already been to and painted in pastel, I usually come back and paint a pastel. I’m really starting to paint more in oil, plein air. So my next two events, I’m definitely going to be painting an oil. You know, they, they each have their drawbacks you you have what paint you have to deal with. When you turn in oil paintings, but pastel, you have to have glass under them. So there’s, there’s issues about both of them. But for me, I’m moving more and more toward working in oil for plein air.

Eric Rhoads 15:59
And in the studio, you’re working primarily in what

Jill Stefani Wagner 16:04
both, I go back and forth. Before I get mad at one and move to the other. I’m doing a series of large paintings of river stones, which are like four feet by two or three feet. And those are all in oil. But I previously did a series in pastel of those about 10 years ago.

Eric Rhoads 16:28
I have fallen in love with Bethel light, I have to admit, I think I can say this publicly that I never, I always loved and appreciated pastel, but I never gave it consideration for myself. Because you know, it’s hard enough to learn one medium, let alone. But when we were forced into pandemic to come up with something to replace the plein air convention, we launched pastel live and watercolor live, and others. And so I felt obligated that if I was going to ask other people to attend, I needed to not only attend to but I needed to learn those mediums. And I’ve just absolutely fallen in love with them, both of them. But what I love about pastel is that, you know first off there’s there’s an immediacy to it, right. So sometimes if I haven’t painted for a while I go out to my studio and my, my paints are all dry, and I have to put new paint so whereas with pastel, I can just grab, pull up a panel, grab a pastel stick and start start painting, which I love that you would,

Jill Stefani Wagner 17:34
that’s kind of why I started in it, I would I was working still and I couldn’t lay out a whole bunch of oil paints and then come back three weeks later and pick up but with pastel, you could you could come back five minutes later and five years later, without any break in your continuum.

Eric Rhoads 17:50
And I also fell in love with you know the effects I could get with pastel I couldn’t get with oil and and the brilliancy of color. I mean, because of the pure pigmentation and nothing in between. I found that to be very helpful.

Jill Stefani Wagner 18:05
It’s an amazing medium and no, you apply it very similar to oil, usually first dark and then build to the lights, which is the same way you do and in oil painting.

Eric Rhoads 18:16
I’m curious you know the people in the watercolor world oftentimes will say that they feel like almost like second class citizens and and you know, I know artists who say that something like watercolor ism masters medium because it’s not as easy to learn and master in some ways to get really, really good at it. Yet. Some of them say, well, the galleries don’t appreciate it as much or won’t carry it. Has that been the case with pastel as well?

Jill Stefani Wagner 18:50
Well, I think for years, both watercolor and pastel were thought of as less than because they were on paper. You know, just like prints I thought of less than campus paintings. But with a lot of the new improvements with both watercolor and pastel. Some of those things should fall away like watercolors now don’t even a lot of them at least in a plein air circuit don’t put glass over their paintings. They either wax them or put layers of varnish. And with pastel we most of us don’t use mats anymore mats were a detriment because no matter what you do a little tiny bit of that dust is going to fall off the painting, and it would get on the mats. And not only that, once we we use museum glass and a plein air frame most of time you can’t tell that they’re not oil paintings. So they the perceived value go has gone up. And pastel and watercolor are very prevalent now in the plein air festivals that I’ve been at.

Eric Rhoads 19:55
Very much so yeah. Well I think that’s encouragement for people who are willing to are wanting to try it and learn about it because a lot of those second class citizen feelings have gone away. And, you know, we’ve really worked hard. And I know IAPS has worked hard to try and make sure that that pastel is more accepted. And, and I think it’s working.

Jill Stefani Wagner 20:20
Yeah, I think so too slowly but surely.

Eric Rhoads 20:24
So how long have you done this plein air painting thing?

Jill Stefani Wagner 20:28
Well, I owned an advertising agency that I saw 11 years ago. And I had tried some plein air painting back in those times. But I didn’t know a whole bunch about it, until I went on a trip to Wisconsin to visit a friend. And I didn’t know about plein air festivals, but I ran into Door County plein air festival when I was up there. And I saw all these amazing artists painting everywhere, and people following them and galas and auctions and being outside and with your friends. And it changed my life, I decided that’s what I wanted to do. By going to that Door County event. And unbelievably this year, I got invited, I never thought I’d get invited, it was going to be on my bucket list for the rest of my life. But I got invited and I went and it was amazing. It was like a culmination of a dream. So it’s been it’s been 10 years pretty much exactly for me since I started.

Eric Rhoads 21:41
So what would you give advice to people who are considering, you know, either going outdoors and painting for the first time or considering, you know, trying to figure it out so that they can turn it into a career or a lifestyle? What what are the things that you did, that you made lots of mistakes with and in hindsight, if you’re not knowing what you know, now you can prevent others from having to go through all that.

Jill Stefani Wagner 22:10
I went to art school. But at the time I went there was no traditional instruction for painting, it was pretty much throwing paint at canvases or painting what you feel or happenings. And I felt like I had a real dearth of information. So one of the things I did was to try going out painting immediately by myself. And it, it was difficult, I had to figure out it every step on my own, make 15 mistakes and then find the right way to do it. But I started taking workshops, and every workshop would give me five or six new ideas on how I could make this process easier. And what are the best ways to start a painting? You know, how do I take all this stuff with me? It’s so worth it to learn from somebody who has done that. Because it cuts your time to the time that you waste just doing things that do not work. So I’d say that first of all, and then um, I think everybody knows Kevin Macpherson’s quote, you have to paint 500 plein air paintings before you even understand what plein air is. And to go out there once and go Oh, this isn’t for me I can’t do this is ridiculous. Just like you know, heart surgeon doesn’t try cutting into somebody who’s just not a heart surgeon tries to cut in somebody’s heart and can’t do it. You have to you have to pay your dues, you have to do the process you have to learn learn, learn and make a lot of really crummy paintings and be willing to see them as studies that furthering your abilities and the paintings that you will create in the future.

Eric Rhoads 24:01
We have these these silly ideas in our head about you know, that we should be able to just sit down and draw perfectly and paint perfectly. And those ideas come from I don’t know where because it’s not true in any other profession.

Jill Stefani Wagner 24:22
Right, it’ll become a burden to say all the time it must be so nice to be talented. And I said you know it’s 10,000 hours just like it is for anybody who gets better at anything any career any any job or passion that you have. And it’s basically a the the feeling that you can’t do without it. You have to paint you have this passion and you’re willing to make all these crummy paintings because you know that it will move you toward a

Eric Rhoads 24:55
you did probably paintings.

Jill Stefani Wagner 24:56
Oh my god I do I have a pile of paintings on my account. They’re over there, that I brought back from festivals are done on my own. Some of them I try and resuscitate most of them, I have to paint over, so that nobody will ever find, because there’s no fixing them. But I learned from each one I learned what not to do, probably more than I learned. But,

Eric Rhoads 25:17
you know, there’s a fear, I went to an art to an artist studio in San Francisco one time when I was relatively new at this. And I was fascinated by being in his studio and I said, Can I look through all these paintings that are here on the shelf? He says, Well, those are all rejects. So I’d really didn’t look at him. I said, Well, can I at least look at him? And he said, Well, you can look at him. And, and to me, they were all really good. Because my I was on trained at the time. And he said, you know, my biggest fear is I’m going to drop dead, and somebody’s gonna see that they’re gonna put them up for sale and ruin my reputation.

Jill Stefani Wagner 25:57
Exactly. And what we think is good changes constantly. So I have kept some of my older versions that I was really pleased with at the time to remind me where I was. But I’m, I’m fearful of the same thing. I’d rather get rid of them or paint over them, or in pastels case, wash over them and rework them.

Eric Rhoads 26:20
what does that mean? Wash over the wash?

Jill Stefani Wagner 26:23
you can you can wash down the pastel. That’s it first, you brush it all off outside with a mask on, and then rinse them if it’s on board. Rinse more of it off, and then you have an undertone, you know, like a grayish color or? I have no idea. Yeah, to reuse the paper. Because a pastel on board cost a little bit more than pastel paper. I’m luckily sponsored by pastel Paper Company. So they, they give me lots of wonderful paper.

Eric Rhoads 26:58
You would have mentioned who they are since you.

Jill Stefani Wagner 27:01
U-Art pastel paper. They’re one of the providers in the pastel industry. And they are wonderful.

Eric Rhoads 27:10
Awesome. Okay, so do you do you ever take trips just on your own, go to exotic places or interesting places just to paint you? Is that part of your, your journey? Or do you kind of stick close to home? What’s that look like?

Jill Stefani Wagner 27:30
Well, I paint the Midwest a lot. But the place I love to go to most is Italy. I’m half Italian, and I’ve been there 12 times. But when the pandemic hit, haven’t been back for a while I was in Spain right before then with one of my girlfriends who was a teacher. And we painted there for two weeks. But we used to go to Umbria and pee at La Romita and teach and two weeks just roaming the countryside anywhere we wanted to go. And as I’ve gotten older, I keep thinking I should go to other places. I mean, I’ve been to a lot of countries but I really don’t want to go anywhere but Italy anymore. It’s it’s I think it’s a biological thing when I get there, I feel like I’m home in some kind of weird way that I can explain.

Eric Rhoads 28:25
you’re like in tune with the with the vibe.

Jill Stefani Wagner 28:28
Yeah, it’s where my family came from my grandparents came from there. And all my extended family was Italian and it just feels right. So yes, that’s being a little myopic, but it flips my switch.

Eric Rhoads 28:45
Well, I think that’s fine. That’s a good good, good thing. I mean, nothing wrong with going to Italy, I wouldn’t mind go there 12 times I think it’s one of my favorite moments is I went over to to the Florence Academy to speak at their opening party and I want to be there for three nights. And I had all day free for three days. And I rented a car and I just went out throughout Tuscany and painted. Glorious. I didn’t have anybody to tell me not to do it. I didn’t have anybody to tell me to be home at a certain time.

Jill Stefani Wagner 29:21
Well, that’s Tuscany is my favorite place. But my family was from Northern Tuscany. And I’ve stayed with a bunch of different auto all farms in that area. And it’s just gorgeous. In a way.

Eric Rhoads 29:35
I want to probe a little bit about your past. Because I think I think there are lessons to be learned from this you you made your living in the advertising world you owned and operated an advertising agency. Tell me how that has served you as a painter.

Jill Stefani Wagner 30:00
Well, first of all, it made it possible for me to later become a painter. It brought in a really good income. But I think even more than that, it taught me to be what I call buttoned up. I, my agency was mid sized agency, we worked with big national clients and local clients as well. But we had to be on top of our game, there was no saying, Oh, I forgot or, you know, not show up with the proper materials or not get the job done in time. But just that wasn’t an option. If we wanted to stay in business. And the more employees I hired, the more important that became. So that professionalism, carried me or went with me, when I became a professional artist, I immediately set up a database. For every painting I created with all the information you could want about each painting, where is it now who bought it? What size is it? What what medium, you know, probably 50 different things about each painting. Because I know how important it was to be organized. And I had no idea at the time that I would be printing as many paintings as I do. And it’s been a lifesaver I have, at my fingers, easy access to where every painting is how much it cost, all that kind of stuff, the minute somebody calls about something. And I also learned that my partners in advertising were as important as so my printers, my writers, my illustrators, they were part of our team, even if they weren’t in my studio. And I would never say, Screw it, I would never, ever do anything to hurt my relationship with them, just as I would never do that to my clients.

Eric Rhoads 32:01
you mentioned that I’ll just, I’ll just mention it instance or two. There there are, and I won’t get into names, because I wouldn’t do that to anybody. But there are people who are developing reputations as painters at events, and those reputations are either positive or negative. And there are people who are so buttoned up and so professional, that they get asked back they they, you know, they’re a delight to work with they, you know, they never missed the deadline. So they do everything you’re supposed to do. And then there are people who try to game the system, who never do get asked back, you know, people who I’ve heard, I’ve heard stories of people who, you know, take a picture, go to their hotel room and paint the painting from a picture in their hotel room. I’ve heard stories of people who it happens a lot.

Jill Stefani Wagner 32:58
Because I’m a good girl. It happens a lot.

Eric Rhoads 33:01
Yeah, I don’t see anything wrong with touching up a painting. Because I mean, there you know, there are purists out there who say, Look, you know, a plein air painting has to be completed 100% outdoors I was with some people who visited me this summer, some painters and they’re like, Oh, I see a couple of things that I need to do to make it a better painting. And so, they’d work on it a little bit, and edit it made it a better painting. So I don’t see the issue with that.

Jill Stefani Wagner 33:30
Well, if you’re in a plein air festival that says you may not use photography to to paint your painting, then that’s the rule. And then I adhere to that, otherwise I at home and in events that do allow you to touch up, I definitely do that. But my feeling is you only have one reputation. And once you lose it, it’s gone forever. So I try and live within the rules of whatever industry I’m in and I’m happy I got out of advertising on my reputation because that can be a really nasty industry to be in but I I found on the whole that I had not met any jerks on the plein air festival route and they’ve been very I think it’s self selecting in a way people who want to be outdoors and want to be with their friends and you know, just enjoy what they’re doing or tend not to be cranky, ugly.

Eric Rhoads 34:41
People, they love what they’re doing. Well, and I think what’s happened too is that you know, because events have been going on for a few years now. What tends to happen first off the the all the artists talk to each other all the organizers talk to each other and if somebody violates the rules You know, word travels fast, and all of a sudden those people disappear from the circuit. So, you know, there’s a few that get get in there once in a while, but it’s just no need to break rules. I mean, half of the challenge and half of the fun is being able to, to live up to those rules and, and to, you know, say, Hey, I’m not going to use a photograph. So, like, it’s good. So you had, I’m gonna go back to your advertising background for just a second, you had national clients meeting big brands that were nationally known that were advertising on national media, television, radio, whatever. You learned a lot about marketing, and what works and what doesn’t work. What are your thoughts from a standpoint of an artist? What you know, as you know, I teach marketing to artists, and I’m always curious to hear what other people have to say, what if you had to say, look, here, there are two or three things that you just have to master that will help you become a better artist, what do you think those two or three things would be?

Jill Stefani Wagner 36:11
Within advertising?

Eric Rhoads 36:13
Well, within marketing yourself as an artist, what you’ve learned in advertising

Jill Stefani Wagner 36:21
Well, these days is a bit different from when I was in advertising, but social media, it most artists don’t want to deal with it. But I think it’s something that that we all have to deal with. On some level, you don’t have to be on that step. But we, as artists are more responsible for building our own brand. now than we were before social media, because the galleries expects us to do it that the competition’s expect us to do it. The people buy from me want to see my work online. So even though that’s difficult, I think that’s a really important thing. I still believe in advertising, whether it’s print, or online. And I would, I would caution artists to know that there’s two kinds of advertising still, one of them is product advertising, when you’re trying to sell a specific thing, whether it’s a workshop, or a car, or a painting, or Milk Duds. That’s product advertising. So your goal and that is to sell what you’re putting in that ad. But the other type of advertising is image advertising. And that’s really made to build your brand. You might show some of your product, you might mention it and talk great things about it. But your main goal is not to sell so much as it is to lift your presence in the industry that you’re selling. So I consider what I do when I place ads in Fine Art connoisseur or plein air magazine, or online, or some other magazines is image building advertising. I’m not specifically trying to sell that painting I put on there. And sometimes that paintings already sold. I want people including people who want to buy my work gallery owners, people who are running exhibitions, those people who are running festivals, plein air festivals, to see me and to know that I have pride in my work, and that this is my business I’m not doing as a part time gig. So I’m, I used to tell my clients, you should be putting 20 to 30% of your revenue in advertising. And I now with social media, which is less expensive. I probably do. 20 probably 20%.

Eric Rhoads 38:59
I think the other thing that we should caution people about is that social media say that again,

Jill Stefani Wagner 39:10
you can’t just put one ad in. You have reoccurring?

Eric Rhoads 39:15
think the idea is a campaign. Right? Campaign, and especially for image advertising. But when was social media, which is a very powerful and very wonderful tool. Like all media, it’s a tool. And you buy media based on who is your audience who you’re trying to reach, what kind of messaging that audience needs to hear. And the tendency with social media is to make it a catch all just throw everything in there without a strategy. And every artist who is using social media needs to have some kind of strategy, you know, what is it I’m trying to accomplish? Who is that I’m trying to reach? What are the benefits of something like a let’s say a Facebook group, let’s, let’s say in LinkedIn group of art collectors, that’s a lot narrower, for instance, than just saying, Okay, I’m going to put all my ads on LinkedIn. If you put it in a narrow group of art collectors, then that’s better. But if you could find a narrow group of plein air art collectors, that would be better in that particular case, or he may be even regionally plus plein air. And that’s where, you know, having the ability to find audiences that are already clumped together, whether it’s on social media, whether it’s in, in print, whether it’s online, the idea is that these people have curated content to create certain audiences in that audience, that is an opportunity for you to go after.

Jill Stefani Wagner 40:47
And you have to know who your target market is. A lot of artists don’t think about that. But what’s the age group? What’s the, you know, male, female? What kind?

Eric Rhoads 40:59
How do you find that out, and in the case of your paintings,

Jill Stefani Wagner 41:03
well, I can see on Instagram, who’s coming to my site by those different denominators. But I also know who buys my paintings. And, you know, I know that from as being an advertiser for all these years that women make 89% of all buying purchases, whether it’s in our house, a dog, or painting, women have a lot of sale, a lot of strength in making that final decision. And it’s been true with a lot of my work, although I I’d say probably 35, male 65 female, and workshops are very female oriented. So those are different.

Eric Rhoads 41:58
To go deeper than that, to you know, you, you have, if you look at, let’s say, you mentioned that you can look at the statistics of who visits your page on Instagram, you know, what if all the people visiting your page were 12 year old males, because they think you’re hot? They’re not gonna buy anything, you know, so knowing your buyer profile is really important. And, you know, do you keep track, you know, when you sell a painting, or when a gallery sells a painting, to you have some kind of a way that you mark that down? You know, this was a 50 year old female in the Midwest, you know, because then you can, you know, if you get that kind of data, then you can kind of target that kind of data.

Jill Stefani Wagner 42:43
I do not have that for my galleries, mostly because they don’t like to give you any of that. And I don’t write it down for my own purchases. I just that. Yeah, that that I have, from seeing who’s buying my work in person, or online. So I prep that probably is something I should do, but you know what I do?

Jill Stefani Wagner 43:15
So probably something I won’t do, but coming from the background I’m I come from I already have a feel for that.

Eric Rhoads 43:24
Okay, so you talked about it, I want to continue this dialogue about things that you think artists should do. So understanding who your audience is, or who your buyer is. Because there’s a big difference between a buyer and an audience.

Jill Stefani Wagner 43:39
They might be in that audience, or a subset of an audience.

Eric Rhoads 43:44
What else do you think are, you know, two or three key essentials that every artist should consider doing as part of their ongoing effort to sell paintings?

Jill Stefani Wagner 43:56
I think artists should enter national shows. And I think you should start at the local level work up to the state, the regional, and the National. But I think winning awards or being accepted in national shows is a big thing. You know, like the pastel Society of America, they get 3000 4000 entries and only 180 Get in, that says something and it builds your way to becoming either a signature or master member in whatever medium or subject matter you want to be known for. So I think that’s really important. And people say that cost money I sent in and I don’t get in. I said, you know, I didn’t get in the first 15 times I applied to the pastel Society of America and I just kept doing it because you have to somehow break through and you learn what those competitions are expecting by actually applying and then seeing who got in. So I think that’s very helpful.

Eric Rhoads 45:00
You have to look at that marketing cost.

Jill Stefani Wagner 45:03
Yeah, it is. It’s part of the I totally consider that part of my marketing.

Eric Rhoads 45:07
Well, it also isn’t that planting seeds have been you have your will people know that sometimes the result of advertising is an immediate, you know, I’ll get a call from somebody says, I bought one out and I didn’t get any phone calls, or I didn’t sell my baby. And you know, that people have sometimes they have skewed expectations. I mean, it takes there’s a process for somebody to learn who you are.

Jill Stefani Wagner 45:35
that is so true, because it took me forever to get a PSA. And then I became a signature member than a master. And all of a sudden, I got a call from the plein air convention. And they asked me to come teach, and I’m like, Oh my God, why are you picking me? I mean, how did you even know about me? And they said that they saw that I was a master in the pastel Society of America. So that opened up the whole world of doing things with your company, from to videos to pesto alive to this is gonna be my fifth plein air convention, so many articles that I’ve had in Europe. And it was because I kept going for the pastel Society of America to get that designation.

Eric Rhoads 46:21
Well, then from our, from our perspective, just on the other side of that, you know, we have we, we get people who contact us all the time, you know, they want to be, they want to be on the plein air convention, they want to be on one of our pastel live or plein air live broadcasts they want to be they want us to use them for a video. And the questions that we ask, and you know, you feel always feel a little bad having to ask these questions. But you know, ultimately, you have to find out if somebody is marketable, right? So we knew you were marketable just by the titles that you had received. And because your name your brand, became known, but you know, sometimes you hear from somebody, and you know, you want to be nice to him, of course. But you want to say, well, listen, you know, how many people are following you on Instagram and Facebook? And and how many workshops? Are you selling out? And what accolades what awards? Have you got? And you know, because we have to, you know, if we’re putting somebody’s name out there, the purpose is to hopefully draw an audience right to to have somebody go, oh, Jill’s gonna be at the plein air convention. I have to go through that.

Jill Stefani Wagner 47:39
that’s true. Even at a lower level, I have, you know, students and people that I teach who asked me they want they say, I want to get on the circuit, the plein air circuit. And I say, how many paintings Do you paint in a week? And they say, Why paint one painting a month. And I said, Why paint five paintings a day or three paintings a day at these font or conventions and, you know, they come to my workshops, and they can’t make it past noon, because it gets tired. And that’s all okay. But you can expect a different result from not putting, you know, the work that you can expect to, you know, have Eastern call you when you do one painting a month. And not everybody doesn’t have to be a professional artist, how the artist is wonderful painters because you love it is wonderful. But there’s distinctions between those two categories. It’s hard work, that’s what the distinction is, is.

Eric Rhoads 48:42
It kind of goes back to that first point you made and that is, you know, you’re, being buttoned down as you say having your act together and showing up. And one thing feeds another you know, you mentioned you know, plein air Easton, you know, plein air Easton will look and see if somebody has been featured in plein air magazine or plein air magazine, we’ll look and see if somebody has been at plein air Easton or plein air Door County.

Jill Stefani Wagner 49:12
And so artists sometimes feel like I don’t want to be in an industry, but you are in an industry. And there’s certain steps that are important to improve your chances.

Eric Rhoads 49:26
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Jill, I want to make sure that we give you a little coverage for some of the things that you’re doing. You have a workshop coming up this fall in Toledo, Ohio, is that right?

Jill Stefani Wagner 49:38
Yep. I usually only do one or two sometimes three workshops a year so that I can concentrate on painting but I’m doing a pastel workshop there. September 9 and 10th. I think I think it’s, it may be sold out. There may be one or two places left But yeah, I love teaching. I really enjoy it. I just get a kick out of it.

Eric Rhoads 50:06
It’s how do we follow you? We’re you’re on Instagram and Facebook at one.

Jill Stefani Wagner 50:13
@jillwagnerart is Instagram. jillwagnerart.com is my website and Jill s. Wagner. Jill dot s that Wagner? is Facebook.

Eric Rhoads 50:28
Alright. Well, we’ve had a lot of fun having you on the podcast. And you know, you’re so smart. And we’ve learned a lot from you. I think what I’m gonna do is retire and let you take over our Marketing Bootcamp

Jill Stefani Wagner 50:39
walked away from that place, and I never looked back. I thought it was gonna be difficult. But I still do marketing. It’s just my own marketing.

Eric Rhoads 50:42
Yeah, I’ve been there done that. I’ve walked away from a couple of things myself that I never looked back and feel pretty good about.

Jill Stefani Wagner 51:03
You know, I would tell everybody do what scares you most.

Eric Rhoads 51:06
Oh what great advice.

Jill Stefani Wagner 51:10
Every step of the way through my life. I was scared to death. You know, I can’t go to big University of Michigan and, oh, I can’t work in advertising. I can’t have my own agency. There’s no way I can do that. You know, everything was I was absolutely terrified. I say no, no, not gonna happen. And then I slowly worked myself into well, maybe and okay, I can do that.

Eric Rhoads 51:33
Can you say? If you can’t say I understand, but can you say who your biggest national client was?

Jill Stefani Wagner 51:43
Well, I had I worked for Denny’s. I worked for GM. I didn’t do their whole accounts, they they would give us jobs. I almost every part of the University of Michigan. From the health center to all the separate departments, the law school, we did a lot of high tech.

Eric Rhoads 52:06
Pro, you get the guts to say you know what, I’m good enough to go call Jim.

Jill Stefani Wagner 52:15
Let me tell you a story. I had a friend who was an engineer at hydromatic, which made transmissions and he they needed to have an ad for transmission. They just history magazine. And they needed a whole campaign. And he called me in and I was sitting in front of this was in the late 80s. In front of all these men who couldn’t believe that I owned a woman owned agency could possibly do a transmission digest stuff you don’t even know about transmission. I said I I learned about all my products. But I know about marketing. I don’t know about you know, heart surgery either. But we can still advertise it. So we ended up getting the job. And I asked to take my team through the mile long factory in GE at GM and ask questions about everything. How would the transmission made, who’s it’s going to all this kind of stuff. And all the way down that mile. This is in the early 80s. Women didn’t have their own advertising agencies, the cat calls from the guys and the line were so obscene i and we were in long skirts. We were not did not look like we Madonna is out there. And that one of those men who accompany us executives ever told guys to shut up that we worked out a whole male of that. So it was difficult. Being a woman owned agency at that time, just perceived our perceived value, just like watercolor and pastels was not as high as males. And they didn’t think anything of treating you poorly. So I heard about it. The good part about it was we created the highest rated ad campaign and transmission digest history, which started in 1898. Because I was so mad

Eric Rhoads 54:31
You gotta prove these guys wrong.

Jill Stefani Wagner 54:33
Yeah, exactly. And then we had that for like three or four years.

Eric Rhoads 54:38
Well, we’ve been engaging in the in the art world even since I’ve been doing it for the last 20 and that is that, you know, it’s been a very male dominated society, but that’s really changing a lot. And we’re now getting to the point where you know, part of becoming a master has nothing to do with gender. It has to do with Time, you know, like you said, the 10,000 hours. Now what’s happening is there’s been enough people who have been doing this for long enough that we’re starting to see levels of mastery in all genders. And that’s a big deal.

Jill Stefani Wagner 55:15
It’s amazing. I think women are still on the back end of that just because they’ve usually been the caregivers for the years.

Eric Rhoads 55:23
The time to develop.

Jill Stefani Wagner 55:25
and I tell people that I started late, you know, I’ve only been painting for 10 years really? You can do it.

Eric Rhoads 55:36
Well, you’re an inspiration, Jill, and thank you so much for being on the plein air podcast. We’re really happy to have you here. And you know, you’re so good at this, we could probably carry on for another couple of hours. I tend to run mouth. No, you don’t run the mouth at all you if you do. It’s very valuable information. So thank you so much for being on and we’ll remind everybody to go to Jill’s website, check out her all of her workshops, and of course see her at the plein air convention and, and pastel live next year and so on. And it’s really terrific. Thank you so much. Oh, we also should mention that Jill has a brand new pastel painting video from streamline pink tube. And it’s called pastel painting from photos as five step process, because if you’re gonna paint from photos, you want to make it look real. And Jill has figured out how to master that and how to teach that to you. So this is a fabulous video. And you can get that at Painttube.tv pastel painting from photos, a five step process. Jill, thank you so much. We will see you at the plein air convention. Now. All right. Now what we’re gonna do is move on to the art marketing minute.

Announcer 56:54
This is the Marketing Minute with Eric Rhoads, author of the number one Amazon bestseller “Make More Money Selling Your Art: Proven Techniques to Turn Your Passion Into Profit.”

Eric Rhoads 57:06
We try and answer your art marketing questions you can send them to me, [email protected]. And of course, you can go to artmarketing.com where we have a blog there with lots of art marketing answers. And we also have, you know, books and all kinds of other things. So Amandine, my producer is going to ask the first question, Amandine has a French accent and she’s always thinking nobody can understand her, but we understand you perfectly.

Amandine 57:34
You’re too sweet Eric. So the first question is from Sandra. I started teaching myself to paint with watercolor nine years ago, two years ago, I started with oils. And right now I prefer them. I have sold very few of my paintings. And because I’m still very much in the learning phase, my paintings are always evolving. I now have over 200 paintings clogging my space in my energy. How should I present my older available work on my website? Or should I just build a big bonfire?

Eric Rhoads 58:10
Well, okay, what a great question. Thank you, Sandra S. Sandra. We all have a boxes of paintings that nobody should ever see. We, we have a learning process and we’re going to make mistakes. And there are people out there who will look at a painting that you’ve done that you now look at and say gee, this painting isn’t very good, but they’ll look at it and think it’s pretty good. And so there there is possibly a market the question is, do you knowingly What’s your signature on something and put put it into the market? If it is not living up to your current standards? Now, everybody has to answer that question differently. I can’t answer it for yourself for you. I can answer it for myself. And that is I don’t want anything out there. That that represents me badly. Now there are paintings that I’ve done in the past as a matter of fact, I I visited my gallery one time one of the three galleries I’m in and and I was being given a tour by this this person who was a gallery assistant. And she took me upstairs and she’s pointing out some of my work on the walls. And I was I noticed this one painting I had done 10 years earlier. And I cringed when I saw it because I had improved so much. And I was about to say something like take it off the wall and burn it. And she said this is my favorite painting in the gallery and I’m making payments on it to own it. And so I really learned a good lesson there’s keep my mouth shut but I would I think you know if you have paintings that are cluttering and you want to get them out of your life Pick, pick a few that represent your your stages of growth and keep them in never throw away. The rest of them. You know, don’t add them to a charity or a charity auction or give them to somebody or you know, you may just decide that you want to do a bonfire. And many people do that. Because you want to make sure that your signature is representing what you know what you believe, is your best work. Now I even I changed from year to year, right? So one year later, when I come up to my place of the lake, and I look at all the paintings I did a year ago, I cringe sometimes, but you know, they’re easily fixable, because it’s not that big of a difference. And so I’ll fix them, and then I’ll sign up and send them off to the gallery, and then everything is cool. So I think you know, the most important thing to remember is you asked about your website, edit what you put on your website, don’t put everything on there, you know, imagine if you were going to let’s see, you know, sharper image.com or something like that, and they had a bunch of substandard stuff on there, it’s going to impact their image. But if they only have the good stuff on there, then it’s going to have a positive impact. So edit, pick, pick the best stuff, put it on your website, and don’t put everything on all at once. You know, you don’t want to overwhelm people, I also encourage you to have some of your better paintings on there that have sold it with some red dots, because that provides what’s called social proof. That means social proof means other people liked it and bought it. That’s why it’s so effective. If you go into an art show, and you start seeing some red dots, it says, Oh, I’ve got to hurry up and get this done. Because other people are buying. You also have friends who would appreciate your painting. So that’s what I would recommend. What’s our next question?

Amandine 1:01:39
Next question is from Loretta Sampson. Do you travel and paint along the way and sell your art as you go? Is there a process to selling art as you travel, I will be taking a long road trip glamping along the way, and plan to paint the scenery as I go. The painting and travel is the easy part marketing as we go is hard. I would love some free advice. Thank you.

Eric Rhoads 1:02:03
Well, just remember that when you get free advice you get what you pay for, right? I have a lot of artists, friends, who are what I would consider to be street artists and they will go on a trip. And their intention is to feed themselves along the way by selling art along the way. I have lots of other friends who go to exotic places to paint and their intention is not to sell the art. It’s just to get good studies, good, good experiences, and then bring them back and make other paintings out of them. You know what, I don’t even sell my studies typically. Because I like to hang on to them because they’re good references, because I don’t like to paint from photos all the time. And so I would, you know, I you have to decide what’s right for you. There is a method, a method that has worked fairly well. I was standing in a band for Lake Louise and I was painting by this waterfall with Richard Lindenberg and this guy came up to me, and he started asking me questions like, How long did that take you to paint? And, and you know, my typical answer as well, two hours and 20 years, right? So 20 years of learning how to do it in two hours. And then he asked me, you know, how much would I sell the painting for? And I just my sense was, this guy was not going to spend any money. So I just said, you know, I’m I’m typically, you know, not trying to sell paintings off the easel, you know, a package and send it to a gallery later. And, you know, he I said, but if you’re, you know, if you’re interested, make me an offer? And he says, Well, I would, I would give you 50 bucks for that. And, you know, to him, I mean, I’m sure he meant well. And 50 bucks was probably a lot of money to him. And I declined because I I wanted to keep it. But what I do now, which is very effective is is oftentimes the people who they come up to you when you’re painting, they’ll say Do you sell your paintings, that’s what’s called a buying signal. And it’s not necessarily a buying signal that they have money or not. But sometimes you can tell based on the level of questions they ask or you know them saying they have a lot of other paintings, that kind of thing. But I usually say this, I say it kind of in this order. You know, I’m a professional, I make part of my living as a professional artist, and my paintings sell for what some people think is a lot of money, other people don’t think so. Now, that’s now I’ve established that I’m a professional, and that my paintings sell for a fair amount of money that I say now my plan is to finish this painting here in the next 20 minutes or two hours or whatever. I’m gonna then take it back, touch it up, frame it and send it off to my art gallery who represents me, or I’ll say one of the three art galleries that represents me and that says, Okay, I’m in a gallery, I’m credible and making my living, then I’ll say, this painting in my gallery, with their markup, and with the cost of a frame, this painting would probably sell for $4,000, for instance, or 2000, whatever the number is, and then I say, if I, if I decide I’m going to sell it from the easel wallets, when after I finish it, then I would charge what the gallery would pay me, which is, you know, let’s say it’s $1,000. Since I don’t have a frame with me, I, that knocks off a couple, you know, 1500 more bucks or whatever it which means I’ll sell it for $900. And, you know, that may be too much, I understand that. But that’s what I need to have, if you’re interested, come back within the next XYZ time, and most people will kind of go away at that point, because they don’t want to spend the money. Now, if you sense that there’s, there’s interest, I’ll say something like this, if you think you might be interested later, before I go get back to me, before I go, I’ll be here for at least another hour. If somebody else does by first, let’s take a picture of it with your camera. And our what I oftentimes will do say let’s take a picture of you and me with it with my camera. And then I will say I’ll text it to you what’s your phone number, and they’ll text it and I’ll put their name in it. Now I’ve got their name. And I can follow up, you know, a few days later and say, Hey, Charlie, we got out by the waterfall and do you have any interest in this painting, here’s a picture of it. And then I oftentimes say, you know, if you’re interested, I, you know, accept cash. If you don’t have cash, I have a way I can take credit cards even out here. But there’s no obligation. I’ve sold many, many, many paintings from the easel by following that process. But most people are onlookers and most people aren’t used to paying the kind of prices they would pay in a gallery. And we’ll say they’ll they’ll spend 50 bucks on it. And once in a while, if I said somebody just loves it so much. And they and I just said so they don’t have the money. Sometimes I’ll just give it to him. And sometimes I’ll say, hey, I’ll take 50 bucks for it. And I would normally sell this for 1000 bucks. But I like you and I know you like it. And I’d love for you to have it. And that’s just because I want to be generous with people sometimes. But that’s a choice that you have to make. Anyway, traveling and painting can go well together. But most important is just don’t put yourself under pressure to sell at less that’s critical to pay for your trip. If you want to do that, then you’re gonna have to do that. But you’ll have to be a little bit more aggressive to do that. Anyway, that’s today’s art marketing minute.

Announcer 1:07:37
This has been the marketing minute with Eric Rhoads. You can learn more at artmarketing.com

Eric Rhoads 1:07:45
Remind you guys that we’re going to meet at the plein air convention in Colorado in May. And if you can’t do it, there is an online version. But of course, that’s only the mainstage and you want to get all the stages. There’s four or five stages. There’s an expo hall we’re painting outdoors together, it’s a blast, just go to plein air convention.com. Also, join me in November for realism live lots of the world’s top artists teaching various forms of realism and Impressionism and just go to realism live.com. Last but not least, the brand new redesigned plein air magazine is out and you would love it, I think. And you know, there’s a lot of people that are listening to this who aren’t yet subscribers and you you really would love it. It’ll really feed that you know that plein air desire. And the if you’re out of the country out of us, plein air magazine, digital edition has actually 30% more content, more images and so on. And that way you get it delivered. Most people actually buy the print magazine so they can keep it flip it hold it in their hands. And they also have the digital so they get the extra content. But they also that way they always have it on their iPad, so that they can, you know, look at it on an airplane or at a car trip or something like that. Anyway. Anyway, that’s about all we got for today. If you’ve not seen my blog, where I talk about my thoughts about life and other things, not so much about art, check it out. It’s called Sunday coffee, and you can find it at Coffee with eric.com every Sunday. Also, I’m on the air daily on Facebook and YouTube. My show is called Art School live where hundreds of artists do demonstrations and talks. I’m on noon Eastern every weekday and you can go to YouTube and subscribe by searching art school alive or Eric Rhoads or even streamline art. Hit that button and subscribe and hit that little bell button too. And that notifies you when we go live and please follow me on Instagram at Eric Rhoads and Facebook at Eric Rhoads. I’m Eric Rhoads figure that out. Publisher founder of plein air magazine. Thank you again for your time today and thanks again to Jill Stephanie Wagner what a rock star she is. We’re really thrilled to have her on the program today. Remember, it’s a big world out there called painting. We’ll see you. Bye bye.

Announcer:
This has been the plein air podcast with PleinAir Magazine’s Eric Rhoads. You can help spread the word about plein air painting by sharing this podcast with your friends. And you can leave a review or subscribe on iTunes. So it comes to you every week. And you can even reach Eric by email [email protected]. Be sure to pick up our free ebook 240 plein air painting tips by some of America’s top painters. It’s free at pleinairtips.com. Tune in next week for more great interviews. Thanks for listening.