Just Abstract Art blog

Please click the photo to view the auction.

More heart paintings comming soon!

Thanks for visiting

Claire

On of my favourite flowers is the ox eye daisy. They are flowering everywhere at the moment, we have them growing in the long grass on the banks in our garden. The butterflies and bees love them and they look really cheery, huge yellow middles and, in the sunshine, almost velvety, sparkly white petals. They look to me like they are smiling!

I enjoy painting these flowers and have just listed one of my recent paintings on eBay.
Click here or the photo to take a look.

My latest painting listed on eBay is a ballerina abstract. These have proved to be quite popular in galleries so I thought I would paint one especially for eBay. This painting was painted over a textured background, this was created by hand, with the ballet dancer ‘drawn’ in to the texture. Once dry the background colours were added and finally all the splatters and flowing paint was drawn on to the canvas.

More eBay perils - you would think that painting for a living and handling the majority of sales your self would lead to a hassle free working life - with no stresses or strains, bitchyness or backstabbing - well not so….

As I mentioned in my previous post my eBay ’stalker’ is back. Well not so much a stalker but a copycat artist who has been an annoyance for, well, years now.

Copycat artists are all to common on eBay. Something that many new artists starting to sell don’t realise. Often they are quite high volume eBay sellers who copy paintings by printing them from the ebay image and selling them as prints, sometimes they can be ‘artists’ who literally copy paintings, often, it seems, painting several in one day. Sometimes it can be more personal….

Almost ever since I have sold my paintings on eBay I have been plagued by another eBay user - way back in 2002 this artist used to copy all my ideas - I would paint something, list it on eBay and then a week or so later I would see my painting ‘ripped’ off by this other artist, copying just enough to have used my ideas but not enough to be a real copy. They do say that imitation is the highest form of flattery! The copying has continued on and off ever since - even down to stopping listing on eBay back in June 2006 - just after I stopped listing due to needing to take life a bit slower with a problem pregnancy. This person must have me on their favourite sellers - quite an honour - as soon after I recently started listing, what happens? This person starts painting and listing again too!! (yes I have a search set up to find their auctions). I expect they have already seen my new ballet dancer and no doubt ballet dancers will be featuring in their auctions soon………

I have only been listing again (after a break of about 18 months) on eBay for a couple of weeks or so and even though I have made no direct sales on eBay I have had a couple more commissions than usual over the past weeks. I have also had a couple of listings removed by eBay (for ridiculous reasons) and my eBay ’stalker’ has also returned. (more about that later)

Why did eBay remove my listings? I have never before had a listing removed and seeing as I have been selling on eBay since 2001 I feel I know most of the rules an regulations - but since returning to eBay I have had two auctions ‘pulled’. The first was a £400 commission that did have a bid - apparently I had a link to my website in my auction - reading the text I know that I did not. I wrote to eBay and received an apology - but it did not get the bidder back. The second auction in a matter of weeks to be pulled was today for ‘circumnavigation of eBay fees’ by having overpriced postage and packaging. I know that eBay are supposed to be making some changes but I cannot see how offering postage for FREE is over priced!! Maybe they want sellers to pay the buyer for having bought items on eBay.

Each of these auctions will have been ‘reported’ to eBay by another user. i.e someone who is so bored and have such uninteresting lives that they search eBay listings and report sellers for breeches of eBay policies (I suspect my stalker reported me). Much of the time artists are reported by other artists who regard them as competition. This is a real shame mainly because you would think that artists would want to spend their spare time creating and painting rather than maliciously reporting others to eBay and also because the more art that is listed on eBay, the more buyers it will attract…..

The worrying thing is that my listing was ended. I can understand that an eBay employee with 100’s of listings to look through will get bored and probably not even look at the listing to check if there is  problem - especially if it is flagged up for overpriced postage (who would complain about a listing with this reason if it was not the case) - but they SHOULD check. They should also check the person who has reported the listing and their motivation for it,  if sellers maliciously report other sellers to reduce the competition they should just be banned from listing themselves.

Any way  I am off  now to see if I can list an item with a negative postage cost maybe if the buyer pays me for postage eBay will be happy.

Some of my paintings are available on eBay again. I stopped listing on eBay in 2006 to concentrate on my website and the commissions from there. I was expecting a baby so did not want to have too much of a work load (wrapping several 3 x 4 foot paintings a week to survive the postal system is quite hard work).

Now my website is up and running and the commissions are rolling in. My baby is now a year old and I have been able to find time to paint a couple of paintings for eBay so have begun listing again. I have heard that it has changed quite a bit but I thought I would give it a go again so my shop is open again so lets see what happens!

eBay has changed a bit since I stopped listing so my paintings are a little cheaper in my auctions than on my website. They will only be listed once at auction then go in to either my eBay or website shop at full price so if you like a painting please place your bid.