Have a lovely week. As promised last Friday, we will post three times this week. I was not able to concentrate fully because my foot fracture was disturbingly painful. This is an example of how a little health difficulty affects our brains, particularly our capacity to focus. Stress works the same in us. When leaders are stressed, they are unable to think properly, and in consequence, they lead us to wrong problem solving, because they have not considered the DBR to define the problem well. If the problem is not correctly defined, little we can do to solve it correctly. Anyway, let´s begin.

Visual Art Origins. Since the cavern era, even before we learned to speak dialects or languages, or before we discovered to write; human beings have done the effort to produce, create, imitate, enhance or complement with pigments over a surface. Regardless of humans started to paint with their fingers or a rustic brush, people were producers of history in a visual format; and what was remarkable for the communication to others in terms of beauty, awe, legacy, or even lessons. How they did it? by using a liquid mixture  (solid pigment in a liquid vehicle) not just to adorn all the spaces in which they inhabit, but to represent and depict vividly sort of a concept-thought-perception of a representation of something that was real or imagined. And this representation was made on a tangible surface. Over time, the action to paint was directly related to keeping history alive, then it was used to make representations of portraits using paints that could last hundreds of years or eternity. Later with the advent of photography, still visual art was never at risk of disappearance. Art continued to be treasured and valuable, because it meant a difficult process of realization that needed not just to be reimbursed to those who elaborated it, but also because every piece of art was considered an appreciative long-term investment that belonged beyond to the lifetime of the artist. Given its nature, excellent paintings were considered always as a rare limited asset – and hypothetically each oeuvre (if famous and well-executed) would gain more worth when years passed by.

Regardless of the medium of the paintings (if water-soluble, oil, acrylic, graphite drawings, inks, or mixed mediums); the nature of every piece of art required as a mandatory rule of thumb to be hand-made, using the hands-fingers over a real surface (walls, cotton canvas, fabrics, wood, leather, paper, etc).

What is an oeuvre of visual art? Paintings to be considered art creations require:

• to be done using our hands from the conception phase, drawing, and pouring paints
• to use real pigments with a liquid or sec medium over a remaining surface
• to be originated creatively from our imagination or with the purpose to imitate/represent a reality that is physically tangible in a personal authorship style that is unique by the artist.
• to be hard of realization, requiring multiple hours of study, work and dedication
• to be the owner of the copyright material

Only when these four things all together knitted in between exist, then is that we are talking about art paintings in the original sense of visual art. Otherwise, it can´t be considered art. That is why printed paintings on any surface carried out using digital screens with the aid of a mouse/digital pen are considered as well-designed or executed prints for advertisement or merchandising, but never as a premium visual painting art. Why? Not because it is printed, but because it was not executed by hand on the surface that will be offered as a final product to clients. Even the limited edition prints signed by the artist are considered as merchandise or commodity advertisement.

Landing into our artist problem. Irrespectively of the uses of the concept of visual art defined as painting -under the terms demarcated above-, let´s say if employed for wall decorations in houses or offices or street murals, or for preserving a snapshot composition of our relevant human history, or for keeping them to be distinguished in museums; our problem today is how to sell art from someone who is a fine art emerging watercolorist in the context of our current digital confusion? How to use the DBR approach to solve this problem that requires urgent progress for the artist that wishes to make a living by selling his or her oeuvres of art? How can “watercolor art” sell to make revenues of at least US$68,400 dollars/year per adult of the household as a minimum? _{(Note: In 2020, $68,400.00 was the median annual household income in the United States).} In a house of two adults who are working as artists, we wish to offer a proposal on how can both duplicate that income per year for their household (for an income of US140,000 minimum). But we wish to focus on one individual artist for drafting our DBR process.

How does the artist will compete to sell his or her art in the middle of fierce offer competition, digital substitutes, and a reduced number of buyers that still value art as a long-term investment?

Why do we use DBR to solve the artist problem? The DBR is a process that seems to be a learning opportunity for the artist problem. We verified that this method holds the 5 characteristics that apply perfectly to our design-research issue. The DBR a pragmatic, grounded, interactive-iterative and flexible, integrative and contextual.

Drafting how to use the DBR Method for the Artist problem. Because of time limitations, I will sketch how to use the DBR method with only one iteration. We will provide some hints and tips on how to do it, but we won´t be able to provide all the iterative details, which need to be proved and evidenced by doing the research, which takes a lot of time. Probably a couple of years in the case that our company is selected for consulting guidance. So many of my ideas are simply hypothetical. Nevertheless, we will land into showing you how to use it. Today is the turn of the first step: FOCUS. Read the following slide. Do not forget this is a draft ONLY. It requires a lot of work to arrive at the appropriate conclusions. The business model canvas (and its value proposition) must wait until the whole DBR is effectuated, discerned, and finished.

How great thou art? When we start to see our life as an art, then it is impossible to create technologies that substitute our core nature of art producers. That is why God has to be in the center of our existence. Only then we will begin to fix all the mess in which we live because of the NAIQIs _{(Nanotechnologies, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Supremacy, and the Internet)}. In our next publication we will continue with steps 2, 3, and 4: UNDERSTAND, DEFINE AND CONCEIVE. Enjoy your day and thank you for reading to me.

Disclaimer: Illustrations in Watercolor are painted by Eleonora Escalante. Other types of illustrations or videos (which are not mine) are used for educational purposes ONLY. Nevertheless, the majority of the pictures, images, or videos shown on this blog are not mine. I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated.

Published by eleonoraescalantestrategy

Corporate Strategy Artist, San Salvador, El Salvador View all posts by eleonoraescalantestrategy