News Blog

Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery is pleased to announce that its February 2012 art exhibition is now posted on their website and is ready to view online. The basis for this month's art exhibition was "All Women" (women only artists) and contained an open subject theme.

An art competition was held in January 2012 which determined and judged the art for this exhibition. The gallery received submissions from 21different countries from around the world and they also received entries from 39 different states. Overall, there were 1,219 entries that were judged for this art competition. Due to the volume of entries, the gallery decided to create 4 media categories and make awards for each, along with an Overall Category which were selected from the 4 media categories.

Congratulations to the artists who have been designated as this month's category winners, along with the winning Special Recognition artists. The gallery commends all of the winning artists for their artistic skill and their creativity, as this online art exhibition is indicative of their creativity.

To proceed to the gallery's "All Women" online juried art exhibition go to this link: http://www.lightspacetime.com/all-women-art-exhibition-february-2012

Each month Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery conducts themed online art competitions for 2D artists. All participating winners of each competition have their artwork exposed and promoted online through the online gallery to thousands of visitors each month. If you know of a talented 2D artist who may benefit from the exposure and the publicity that the gallery can provide to them, please forward this press release to them.

What a winter! After one devastating snowstorm over Holloween weekend, there has been virtually no snow. It has awakened an interest in dried grasses and bare woods which I explored in a series a few years ago called "December without snow". I have three of the new ones up in a new gallery called "Naked Winter" now,with more to come. When the light is muted, there is a tremendous richness of subtle color in the naked meadows and woods, a throbbing warmth made of many related colors. I love it.

On Friday,February 3,2012,I will take part in a Statewide "Juried" Art Competition, held at the Peoria Art Gallery in Peoria, AZ. City Hall. This competition is held in conjunction with the West Valley Art Museum, and will feature artists and photographers from the state of Az.

It is an honor to be part of such a prestigious "Juried" competition. Both of these organizations have shared their passsion for art through their permanent collections, exhibitions and educational programs.

The Peoria City Hall Art Gallery is located at 8401 West Monroe Street, Peoria, AZ. and is currently exhibiting one of West Valley Art Museum's permanent collections called " From The East: Cultural Diversity in Arizona"

This exhibit contains selections from the Museums Ethnic Dress Collection, related Artifacts and Paintings. The gallery is open for viewing Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday 10 am-4pm, and Thursday 12 Noon until 6 pm. or by appointment.

Have you ever thought about the number of visitors, or lack thereof, that come directly to your art blog from the search engines? And if so, did you ever stop to consider the importance of those visitors for your art business?

When a person uses a search engine (like Google, or Bing) to look for a specific type of art, you WANT to be the artist they find. Even better, if they are able to discover your art blog within the first two pages of the search engines results, their guard will be down and they will be more inclined to buy.

Why is that? Because they found you naturally. . . without someone, or some type of advertisement, trying to push you on them. Of course, it could also simply be because they were in the mood to buy and they saw that you had exactly what they were looking for before the got to another artist’s website!

Below are 7 simple steps for getting the search engines to take notice of your art blog.

1. Stay on topic

The search engines like it when they can easily figure out what your blog is about, so stick to the topic at hand—your art.

Talk about why you create, where you create, and how you create. Talk about your clients and why they purchased your art. Talk about your sales venues: galleries, art fairs, online markets. And if you want to share something personal, find a way to relate it to your art business.

2. Create strong blog post titles

The title of your blog post is the first things visitors see when searching the web, so don’t focus on writing something cute or witty. Instead, create titles that are clear and concise and tell readers exactly what the post will be about about.

Remember to put keywords relating to your topic in the title of your post, too. . . those keywords will help search engines understand what the page is about, and improve the chances that people will see your blog post titles in the first place.

3. Write keyword optimized posts

Sticking to a single topic for each blog post makes it easier for the search engines to figure out what your post is about.

If you can be even more specific, and use a single keyword, or keyword phrase, multiple times in your title or text, you’ll have a much stronger chance of getting on the first page of the search engine results. The trick is to make your blog posts easily-readable for humans, too.

One popular rule of thumb is to use your keyword, or keyword phrase, at least once every 200 words. There are other considerations too, however. (Learn more about keyword targeting here.)

4. Optimize your video pages

Set up a channel on YouTube.com, then optimize that channel by writing text that talks about your art and links back to your art blog in the description area.

5. Optimize your social networks

It’s not enough to join social networks and forums, you need to tell the community where to find you (your website) and when you do, you also tell the search engines. . . thus giving your art blog a little more credibility.

6. Ping the search engines

Beyond writing search engine friendly content, it’s also a good idea to let the search engines know you exist. The more links you put online through guest posting, forum posts, and social media the better, but there’s another method, too:

You can sign up for a pinging service, a service that automatically notifies the search engines that you’ve written a new post. One such place is Ping-O-Matic. Another is Weblogs.com.

7. Submit your art blog to directories

Human edited directories, like Dmoz (at www.dmoz.org), may not bring your art blog a lot of visitors, but the search engines still love them. That’s because these kinds of directories are still curated by a real live person, who visits your website and makes sure your description of the site is accurate.

If everything checks out, they add your website to the right directory list, and this sends a clear signal that your art blog is on the up-and-up.

No matter what your goals are for your art blog, the simplest and easiest way to get more visitors is to learn a little bit about search engine optimization, and then apply that knowledge to your blog posts, your guest posts, and your social networks. You’ll be glad you did!

A $5 bunch of Sunflowers on a bleak winter day, inspired this sequence of bright sunflower paintings. I painted them in all sorts of projections in all sorts of mediums almost to obsession!

Our friend's dog, Cider, was peeking under a fence trying to get our attention. She brought her stuffed moose with her to up the cuteness factor. Although it didn't get her admission into our picnic, it did get her a candid portrait in Pastels which her owners did snap up. Cider is a Labradoodle with a riot of curly hair. She was a lot of fun to paint! This was one spontaneous painting!

Greetings! I hope this post finds you doing well! I am hosting a show at the Chester library during the month of February. The reception will be this Saturday from 3 until 4:30 in the Maud Hurt Meeting Room at the library. I hope those of you who live in the Richmond/Chesterfield area can stop by and say hi!

When Mark Blackbourn says his work is hard to categorize, he really means it. Although primarily an acrylic painter, he dabbles in four artistic styles and continually tries to break the trends he notices developing in his artwork.

“I’m influenced by the impressionist painters most and love the work of Paul Cezanne in particular,” Mark says. “I create detailed accurate portraits, but also messy abstractions. I’m hoping one day I can work out how to categorize myself because every time someone asks me ‘What do you paint?’ I fall apart in a mumbling mess.”

Weeping Jalaxism, below, is just one of Mark’s beautiful abstract paintings, featuring a fusion of vivid colors and watery shapes which bring to mind vibrant underwater coral teeming with life.

The visual appearance of bursting bubbles and flowing, iridescent paint seen throughout this painting were created in part by Mark’s unique medium—liquid detergent mixed with sunflower oil.

This next piece entitled South Downs Cows, is a bit more traditional, with a pastoral setting and several bovine subjects quietly grazing away the day.

Traditional though it may be, I love the atmosphere seen in the air—slightly hazy as the moisture and heat rise off the ground—as well as the dark silhouettes of the cows standing out stark and strong against the distant hills.

And even the green grass has personality, with multi-colored patches and hillocks dotting the foreground, just to make sure that your eyes are never bored.

Last but not least, take a look at this floral sculpture, one of Mark’s more “outside the box” projects.

Made of cardstock, acrylic paint, glue, and dirt, this bright orange flower feels both modern and classic, blending traditional colors with non-traditional materials. It’s a fitting companion piece to Mark’s intricately crafted corrugated cardboard seashell, which can be found here.

If you have a few minutes today, I highly recommend visiting Mark’s website to browse through the rest of his unique and incredibly diverse creations.

Changing the name you have used to promote and sell your art isn’t something to undertake lightly, but with a few key considerations, it can not only refresh your enthusiasm but open up potential new markets as well.

For 10 years I’d used a creative business name, which customers came to know, along with a vague idea of what I did. But by the time the web came along, opening up more opportunities to market myself, my business brand had become so obscure that even I wasn’t sure exactly what I offered—and if I didn’t know, there was little chance potential customers would know, either.

So, after weighing the pros and cons, I finally made the tough decision to change my business name, beginning with a great deal of reading and then even more time deliberating over my desk full of potential names and variations.

Much is available in the way of opinion and advice on the internet, but here are the items that I consider most pertinent from an artist/creator point of view:

1. If you’re leaning towards choosing your own name as your business name, make sure to consider the type of art you create, and how that could affect your family just by association. Consider your 17 year old, or your 5 year old—local galleries may well have an appreciation of your Reclining Nude In Shade, but do your daughter’s Facebook friends want to run into it on the web?

2. Is your art targeted towards a particular audience which may be more receptive to an artist of the same gender? The dreamy, English rose femininity of artist “Sara Moon” (who is, in reality, a male Persian artist named Bijan) is just one good example of gender-aware naming. In the literary world, “J K Rowling” is another example, where initials were apparently used so as to not deter boys who may have been less interested in a wizard book written by a female.

3. Would choosing a pseudonym, or a creative name, allow you greater artistic expression, allowing you to market yourself more freely without the constraints of personal judgement at work or in your current social circle?

Perhaps you are not ready for your co-workers to know that you paint. . . simply by using a pseudonym you would be able to keep total separation between your professional social media profiles and your personal ones.

4. Does your art require a certain image or coolness to attract a particular audience? Graffiti-style decal art will probably fare better with a slick “street” name than something more traditional like “Michael Jones Imagery.” Similarly, a business name like “Happening Portraits” would be a tough sell for high-end clientele, even if your surname IS actually “Happening.”

5. Are there any words you could place within your business name to help people instantly connect with what you do, and to maximise SEO? For example, I added “illustration” to my name despite having a lengthy surname and the word “illustration” being lengthy too. I felt “images” and “imagery” were perhaps more associated with photography; “art” seemed too fine-art based for a coloured pencilist; and shortening illustration to something like “illos” was a bit gimmicky for my taste.

If you’re stuck, open a thesaurus and you’ll find all manner of inspiration. Try to steer clear of gimmicks or current catchphrases—think in the long term and think how big your business could grow. You may be forever branded with something that seemed good at the time, so for the same reason don’t choose something that’s too “now.”

6. Does your art rely on a certain location, and can you use that to your advantage? If you are successful in painting local landscapes then you may want a locally related name. If you paint the grasslands of Africa, perhaps a better choice would be something more globally appealing.

For instance, I knew a non-UK art agent who adopted a more British-sounding company name to suit his stable of established, traditional British artists and their traditional and discerning clientele. (If i works why not, right?)

Personally, changing my own business name was a good decision, despite initial reservations which held me back for some time. Coming up with a newly-defined brand for my art business gave me a chance to strip down the various aspects of my services and redefine what I was offering. The name change also enabled me to adopt a specific tagline in order to connect with potential customers in new markets.

Obviously re-assessing and re-focusing your business offerings can be done without changing the name you operate under, and in many cases that is a better choice.

But if it comes time to change your name, the most important thing is to not rush in. . . carefully consider the points mentioned above, along with your own situation, and from that I’m confident that the right name will appear.

Two colorful blue and gold macaws just sitting on a tree branch. What could they be talking about? Without frame

Photographed at Red Butte Garden in Salt Lake City, Utah.

rona-black.artistwebsites.com.

great stock1

In today’s video, Gloria Page takes us through the (fairly simple) process of carving out your own art stamps. Here, she demonstrates how to make photo corner stamps. Take a look:

NOTE: You can get Gloria’s full-length art stamping DVD at Creative Catalyst.

Two colorful blue and gold macaws just sitting on a tree branch. What could they be talking about? Without frame

Well I did it!!! I finished the chalk drawing in 6 hours. we had from 8am-6pm to complete it, I was finished by 3pm, which gave me plenty of time after to talk with the people who came to see the event. Hundreds of people took photos of the drawing and I was interviewed twice by 2 different local stations. Many of our friends came to see it and some hung out with my husband and me all day. I want to thank my husband John again for all his support and I want to thank our friends for their support and let them know they are all loved very much. I really enjoyed doing this. I am definitely doing it again next year.

I have been neglectful of my art sites. I need to be more aggressive in the display and promotion of my work. The companies are there for us to promote, we pay for them but if we don't
use them, we fail as artists.
Stay strong keep the faith, hope and joy for the arts.

Monday in Video Tutorials - Tomorrow, art stamping expert Gloria Page will demonstrate how to carve out your own “photo corner” stamps for use in collage, paper arts, scrapbooking and more.

Tuesday in General Art Advice - No matter how agonizing it is to re-brand (or rename) your art business, sometimes that’s the right choice to make. On Tuesday, Karen Middleton will share 6 important points to consider before making the switch.

Wednesday in Featured Artists - Hailing from Brighton, England, Mark Blackbourn does it all—portraits, landscapes, abstracts and photography. Check out a few of his paintings this Wednesday, send us your own artwork to be featured next time.

Thursday in Art Marketing Tips - Finish out the week with 7 tips from Alyice Edrich on how to get your blog noticed by search engines. If you’re struggling to get visitors to your blog, this article is a great place to start.

Last week’s articles on EmptyEasel:

9 Small Adjustments for Better Paintings

5 Reasons Why 2012 is the Year to Put your Art Online

Lynne French: Ethereal Tissue and Watercolor Paintings

An Interview With Chris Scheidler Pagano

What’s Wrong with this Picture? Learning the Value of a Good Critique

Is there something you’d like to share on EE? Send it in!

EmptyEasel is proud to publish reader-submitted articles nearly every week. Please submit your own article here or learn why you might want to.

Being an artist can be tough, because everybody has an opinion about your work. Even art school can be cruel. You have to develop a tough skin if you want to be an artist!

That being said, there is an important distinction between a valuable piece of criticism and an opinion.

What is that distinction? Mainly, the person who makes the comment. If you value that person, then their comment means something more to you. If you don’t, then it probably won’t hurt as much, and their critique becomes just an opinion.

The bottom line is there are really no hard and fast rules in art by which we can measure its worth. Art is personal and subjective. And everyone has an opinion.

Because of that, I think it’s very valuable to surround yourself with people whose opinions and critiques are constructive and delivered in the right way.

I have friends whom I respect as artists who have credibility with me because I know their work and trust their eye. These artists have raised my art to a higher level. They give their opinion only when asked. And we support one another and have a safe place to do what we do, without judgement.

Yet even if you have that great support group, there will always be self-appointed critics who feel the need to let you know what you lack. I am always amazed when fellow artists or others give me unsolicited advice or criticism. (If you’re one who does that, you had better be Picasso yourself or you are only making enemies, in my opinion.)

My point is, it really doesn’t matter if the advice, criticism, opinion or whatever you call it is legitimate. . . it only really matters if it is from someone you respect. Someone you want to learn from.

Artists are often labeled as sensitive people. But the truth is, when you put your art out there you are essentially asking the world to look at what you do and to judge it. And that takes guts.

I don’t paint to put my paintings in a drawer. It would sound very mature and “together” of me to say that no matter what, other people’s opinions of my work do not bother me. But that wouldn’t be the truth and I don’t really believe artists who say that myself. We put ourselves out there, every time we show our work.

My paintings all carry a part of me, so the things people say about them FEEL like personal comments. If they love my art, I’m happy. If they hate my art, I have to decide if I value their assessment. If I do, my ego could easily be bruised.

But what I’ve learned from entering many juried shows, from being in critique groups, and from my art classes is that these situations can lend objectivity to my work and teach me valuable things. . . and ultimately, I need to use those situations to find other people who can reliably help me and keep growing as an artist.

If you find that criticism bothers you, and it’s to the point where it is keeping you from showing yoru art, maybe it’s time for a perspective change. Realize that if your paintings have no flaws, then you have nowhere to go. Embrace opinions. Look for people you trust to critique your work, and try to shrug off everything else.

Critiques will always happen. That’s a fact. But it’s how you deal with them that shapes you as an artist.

Read more articles from Michelle at michellemorrisart.blogspot.com.

As a child, Chris Scheidler Pagano loved to draw get-well cards for family and neighbors, and was often encouraged by her grandparents to spend hours drawing. By 11 she was taking painting lesson, and hasn’t stopped painting since.

Chris has earned her living as an artist for over 34 years, mainly by exhibiting in art shows and craft festivals throughout the Mid-Atlantic region of the US. She has won several art competitions and best-of-show awards, held solo gallery shows, and has also had her work published.

Alyice: You’ve been creating art for all of your adult life, and most of your childhood, what is it about art that keeps you going? How does creating art make you feel?

Chris: Creating art makes me feel wonderfully alive, happy, engaged, important, and challenged.

Every day is a thrill because I get up knowing I can draw or paint or do something related to my art business. That is my work, my purpose in life.

Being an artist is a blessing. I have been blessed to be able to earn a living doing something I love. Sharing these gifts with the world, to be a blessing to others, is a great task in life, don’t you think?

Alyice: You work with both acrylics and oil paints. Can you tell us why you switch between those two mediums?

Chris: I started my professional career painting in oil. I love oils the best because of their opaqueness, their rich colors (acrylics seem plastic in comparison) and the fact that they do not dry so fast; allowing me to blend and smooth. They also allow me to better blend colors in a large area—like the sky, water and large animal bodies.

I switched to acrylics for a lot of my work when the show schedule demanded constant new (and completely dry!) work. I could not paint exclusively in oils and fill my art booth with paintings because the new paintings simply did not dry fast enough.

In some of my paintings, I incorporate both oils and acrylics in the same piece. I use oils to paint the backgrounds and large areas and acrylics to paint the figures (i.e. the wildlife) and detailed portions of the foreground.

Alyice: What is the most challenging part about working with oils?

Chris: The most challenging part of painting with oils is having the patience to work with the buttery consistency when doing detailed work and the drying time. It can be frustrating when I want to continue working on a piece but can’t because it is too wet to work on.

Alyice: What is the best part about working with acrylics?

Chris: The best part about working with acrylics is the very opposite of the challenging part of working with oils. Acrylics dry fast, so I can continue working on a piece until I come to a natural stopping point.

Alyice: What do you wish you knew about painting before you got started?

Chris: I wish I had known what a toll certain elements of painting for a living would take on my body—my vision is shot from painting extremely small, detailed work; my fingers and hand gets numb from holding the brush; and my back is shot from lifting heavy objects like my booth and display to loading and unloading to carrying, setting up and tearing down the displays, 25 to 30 times a year for 30+ years.

You would not think being an artist is such a strenuous job, but anyone who does art shows for a living will tell you otherwise!

Alyice: You often refurbish old furniture by painting your unique wildlife scenes directly onto the furniture, how did you get started in this?

Chris: I got started in this venue by first creating pieces for my own home. They created a lot of interest. . . prompting my family, friends, and customers to encourage me to sell these “functional art pieces” at art shows.

Alyice: How do you protect your art when it’s on such useable pieces?

Chris: I put several coats of high grade lacquer on the finished piece to seal and protect it.

The lacquer will protect and preserve the piece from normal wear and tear. However, care should be given to each piece as these pieces will not withstand any sort of abuse, like a dog chewing it or a child slamming or throwing it against a wall. Also, cigarette ashes will mar the surface and water will damage the surface if left unattended for a long period of time. But with common sense, these pieces will last a long, long time.

Alyice: What is your creative process like?

Chris: All my paintings start with an idea. The most important aspect of a painting is that the artwork is based on an original idea. An original idea is one conceived by the artist through something they have seen, experienced, felt, or imagined.

The ideas for my realistic paintings come from something I have seen and observed like walking in the woods and noting the way the sunlight plays through the trees, or chancing upon a fox tracking across an open snowy field, or a great blue heron flying over a marsh that I spotted while driving, or watching a cardinal in my backyard while sipping my morning coffee, or observing the play of sunlight and shadows on homes and buildings as I walk through town to get the mail.

The ideas for my whimsical portrayals, however, come from an inner “what if. . .”

Once I have an idea down, I do small studies before starting a large project.

This starts with a simple pencil sketch and progresses into a small but semi-detailed color drawing and then ends when I translate the idea onto a large surface.

This works well, for me, because I can solve many of the initial painting problems on paper before I start the actual work. It also is very important when doing custom work where you need the okay from the buyer before starting on the painting.

Alyice: How has your style changed over the years?

Chris: My style started out realistic, got a bit impressionistic during my college years and afterward I had a period where I worked exclusively in palette knife.

When I started doing wildlife shows for a living, my style turned more realistic. Over the years it evolved to include impressionistic backgrounds and whimsical illustrations—all prompted first by what I enjoyed doing and secondly, by how well it paid the bills.

I have always tried to maintain a balance between what I enjoy doing and what sold.

Today, I paint in three different styles: realistic wildlife; moody, impressionistic landscapes; and whimsical, illustrative portrayals of animals.

My style of painting is realistic, impressionistic and/or illustrative in nature, depending on the subject matter. All my paintings, regardless of style, are composed of long, graceful lines and bold, rich colors.

The subject matter has been animals for almost all of my art career, with some landscapes and seascapes thrown in here and there.

Alyice: How have you grown as an artist?

Chris: I’ve grown as an artist by constantly trying to improve myself, keeping tabs on the current trends in art, and by learning new things. And I strive to make each painting I do as good as I possibly can.

Alyice: What do you believe is a key element for creating visually appealing art?

Chris: It should convey the artist’s feelings—their love of the subject matter, their passion in creating it. Art is emotion and when the artist can communicate their passion so that the viewer is so moved, then that piece is a good painting.

Alyice: How do you come up with a profitable pricing structure for your pieces?

Chris: With great difficulty.

It has been very hard in this bleak economy to come up with a workable solution to pricing my paintings. I need to make a living so I price the paintings accordingly; yet I cannot afford to carry the same paintings around show after show. . . I need to sell them.

I need to refresh my booth with new work so it does not look “stale,” therefore I price them to sell.

Coming up with a compromise—one where I CAN actually make a decent living, and one where the paintings are priced so as to generate a moderately quick turnover is very tricky. The value of art is sadly determined by what people are willing to pay for it. Unfortunately, in this era of Wal-Mart-driven, discount pricing, cheap imported goods, and bargain basement online auctions, that value is greatly diminished.

Learn more about Chris Scheidler Pagano and her artwork at her website, WalnutStreetStudio.com, or her Etsy page.

I'm really happy! I am a member of the Oak Valley Art Society, at our January meeting I was chosen Artist of the Month for my painting named Strolling. I am also a member of Central California Art Association & Mistlin Gallery and will be showing some of my painting in the Almond Blossom Show from February 14 - March 15 in Modesto Ca.