Ever Consider A Blog? (Part 3)

March 19th, 2008 Daryle Dickens

Okay, back to talking about blogs. One of the biggest fears an artist has when considering a blog is having enough content. How often will you post? What will you write about? Or, I hate to write, and I am not completely comfortable with computers and the internet.

Before all these fears swimming around in your head get you locked up and unable to begin your blog journey know that you can start and not tell anybody. I had the same fears when I started this blog. So I quietly posted. I did not send out a mass email to my newsletter list or tell all my friends to go check out my blog. Nope I just took the time to learn my way around blogging and writing for a blog. I highly recommend a slow start. This takes a lot of pressure off of your blogging endeavor. And allows you to build some content before announcing to the world that you have a blog.

But what to write?

Since your blogging as an artist think about how you tell people about your art now. Are you one to tell friends when you have a new idea your excited about? Or when you start a new piece? Maybe your the type who calls other artists seeking to solve a problem you’ve run into on a piece. Then again maybe your hush until the work is done and you unveil the finalized work to your waiting fans. How you talk about your art is how you should blog about your art.

There are artists who keep the world updated through their whole process. Sharing pictures and even video of the journey. This often generates a lot of comments and gets potential buyers involved in the artists creative process. The more common approach is to blog about finished work. Simply posting a picture of the finished piece with a few details and a price.

What ever approach you take create a blogging goal that you can keep. For example, "I am going to post once a week." And then schedule that once a week post. Make it part of your weekly routine. I have the goal of 5 posts a week with Art Palaver. 1 every weekday. I don’t allows make that goal but I am getting better.

Are you ready to start a blog? If not what is stopping you? Leave a comment I’d like to hear about it.

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Ever Consider A Blog? (Part 2.5)

February 15th, 2008 admin

Since we have been talking about artist blogs I thought I would share some examples I found on the Google. I don’t know any of the artist nor have I followed their blog, they are just random finds with a little searching. It can been good to see how other artists are using blogs. Look for things you like and things you don’t like.

1. 3191 A Year of Evenings

2. Ian Jones Photo Blog

3. Marie Fox Studio

4. Arttones

5. Alaskan Artist Blog

6. Belinda Del Pesco

7. Lisa Call

8. Diane Clancy

9. Painting a Day by Jeff Hayes

10. Bad Kitty Art Studio

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Ever Consider Having Your Own Blog? (Part Two)

February 11th, 2008 admin

In Part One I talked about how a blog can help people find you and your art. And maybe you have been thinking about creating a blog but do not know how or where to start. And you may also be worried about having enough content, or enough discipline to keep updating it. Well let us tackle one thing at a time.

How do you begin to create a blog?

First you must decided what blog service to go with. There are several free options out there that are well tested and easy to use. I recommend starting with a free blog to see how blogging suits you. If you like it you can always upgrade it later. Let us look at some of the more popular options. (In no particular order.)

Blogger. This is Google’s blog service and can be handy if you already have a Google account.

Wordpress. Wordpress is probably one of the more popular blog services out there. The free version has lots of features and a deep community of users backing it up. Also it is easy to upgrade if your blog really starts to take off.

LiveJournal. To be honest I do not know much about LiveJournel, just that it is a popular choice.

I have experience with Blogger and Wordpress. Both worked well for me. I’d recommend Blogger if you want to keep it simple or if your not sure about this whole blogging thing yet. And I’d recommend Wordpress if you want some more options or you think you will want to upgrade your blog. By upgrade I mean have your own unique domain name and the ability to customize it fully to your liking.

I started this blog using Wordpress hosted by Wordpress for free. My original address was www.zaf622.wordpress.com. I now host it on my own server so that I can have a unique URL, www.ArtPalaver.com. Starting with the free simple version was nice though because it gave me a taste for blogging. I was able to kick the tires and see if I liked it.

If your interested in adding a blog to your self promotion tool kit just click on one of the links above and sign up. Each site makes getting started pretty simple. But you don’t like to write, or you fear not keeping the blog current, or a blog will just add one more thing to your long to-do list. Stay tuned fearless reader, we will talk about that in Part Three.

this post sponsored by Beet Street.

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Art Palaver’s First Sponsor

February 7th, 2008 admin

Beet Street has agreed to sponsor Art Palaver. This is very exciting for me. I can imagine it might be how a painter feels after selling their first piece. Sponsorship will help Art Palaver grow and improve and I hope to gain more sponsors. But as I do that I will not allow the blog to become cluttered or allow sponsorship to influence content.  (In case you were worried.)

this post sponsored by Beet Street

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Where do you hang your art?

August 8th, 2007 admin

Local photographer Cole Thompson’s recent newsletter contained an interesting article. It was written by Robert Genn. After reading it I thought it was worth passing along:

Dear Artist,

Did you ever wonder about the difference between a piece of art in someone’s basement and a piece of art in the National Gallery ? Did you ever wonder just exactly what constitutes “good” art?

Readers may be familiar with the recent experiment done by the Washington Post . The brilliant violinist Joshua Bell , fresh from a performance at the Library of Congress with the Boston Symphony, busked for free during the morning rush at a Washington Metro station. Of the thousand-odd passersby, only a few stopped, or even paused, to listen. Small change fell infrequently into his open violin case–the very case that holds his $3 million 1710 Strad. Most were oblivious to some of the most beautiful and difficult music ever written for his instrument. Interviewed after leaving the building, it seems few commuters even noticed the guy in the baseball cap standing by the frequently swinging doors. Thinking back, Bell believes some thought his efforts offensive. The nearby skin mags, shoeshine lady and lotto ticket machine got more attention.

Bell, when playing in more conventional venues, is a guy who makes about a thousand dollars a minute. Much has been written of his Metro debut. My take is that the Metro is now and will forever remain an inappropriate place to hold a concert. Any concert. Quality art deserves and needs a proper frame to be fully recognized as quality art. In art, perception and context are all-important. “Art pity” is not a significant generator of fans.

Many visual artists who read this will never see their work in the National Gallery. While there’s a complex mix of machinations that needs to happen in order to be there, we can often make the choice to be in better venues. Quality mags beat scandal sheets. Commercial galleries beat barber shops. We can be selective about our galleries, too. The unfortunate truth is that it’s better to be on Lord Bluffington’s walls than on Joe Blogg’s on the other side of the tracks. People who pay big bucks to put their bottoms in the front row are just a wee bit more likely to be enthusiastic. It’s human nature.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: “I was oddly grateful when somebody threw a dollar instead of change.” (Joshua Bell)

The rest of the article can be found here.

And while your clicking you should check out Cole’s site here. He does amazing work with black and white photography. You can read ZAF622’s interview with him here.

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