'Boats In Sun Light' featured on Fine Art America!

This is an oil painting which was a gift for my father because he loves boats and all things nautical :) and has been chosen to feature in a group on Fine Art America called 'Fine Art in Oil, Acrylic or Stone'

 Link to the group: http://fineartamerica.com/groups/fine-art-in-oil-and-acrylic-and-stone.html

Link to the painting: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/boats-in-sun-light-janice-dunbar.html

'Cereal In Spoon With Milk' featured on Fine Art America

This painting has been featured in a group on Fine Art America called 'Acrylic Paintings'.

 Link to the group here: http://fineartamerica.com/groups/acrylic-paintings.html

To the Painting here: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/cereal-in-spoon-with-milk-janice-dunbar.html

Thank you!

Second feature for 'Bono' and 'Silhouette Glow' chosen to be a group's avatar!

My drawing of Bono has been featured again in another group on Red Bubble called Photo Realistic Artwork and Silhouette Glow has been chosen to be this week's avatar for a group called Beautiful BC!

:)

Woo hoo! another feature placement!

This time it is a photograph I took from a beach on Mayne Island titled 'Silhouette Glow' which was submitted into the Redbubble group 'Color and Light'

http://www.redbubble.com/groups/natural-color-and-light

Or link directly to the image: http://www.redbubble.com/silhouette-glow

'Bono' is featured in a group and it's not U2!

It is very validating and exciting for me that my pencil drawing of Bono has been placed this week in the 'featured artwork' of a Redbubble art group!  I have no idea how long it will be there, but while it is, anyone visiting the home page of the group will see it.

That is pretty significant because otherwise the art gets mixed in with hundreds, if not thousands of other work submitted into the group from it's members.  I am very honored to have my drawing selected for the feature page, especially so soon after joining red bubble.

Here is the link: http://www.redbubble.com/groups/art-at-its-best

Or link directly to the image: http://www.redbubble.com/bono 

I'm thinking the next art I work on might be another pencil drawing of a famous person. I haven't decided who yet, so if anyone has any suggestions, let me know k? thanks ;)

Alright then!

It's finally coming together... I've joined three online artist communities in the past week!  Each one has different ways of setting up artist profiles, pricing structure and even how to navigate around the galleries as a member.  Lots of time has been spent just getting to know the sites and researching other art to see what was standard with pricing, because I really had no idea.

So far the best part has been discovering these great communities of creativity.  There is so much support amongst the artists and some truly beautiful and amazing art being produced to feel inspired and motivated by.

After setting up those three profiles and uploading what I had ready, I decided to redo my portfolio to include a link directly to the feature page for each individual artwork I've listed.  It was hours of work, but it is so much cooler than just linking to my profile or gallery page and there are fun ways to customize the look of the prints.

The previews are excellent on some, even the greeting cards look very cool.  I enjoy changing the frames and matte colors to see how that changes the look and feel of the art, (I probably lost a few hours experimenting with that over the past week at the various sites).  In the end I usually prefer the prints on canvas or board anyway - lol.

After uploading my revised website, I thought I'd take a short break and looked at Facebook.  It was then that I remembered the 'like' button.  I realized I needed a FB artist page if I truly want to keep this whole endeavor synced from the start.  (Twitter will have wait though, not much of a tweeter).

So instead of taking a break I created an artist FB page, got the code for the like button, posted it here and on my website, went back to FB, added a few photos, short bio, and then came over here to write about it and no one knows it exists yet, so I guess that's the next step...  : )

Welcome to my Artist Blog!

After some time away from drawing and painting, distracted by technology and other pursuits, this past Christmas I painted a portrait of my sister's dog 'Tillie' as a gift for her and her husband.

 
It was such a good feeling to paint again, I had forgotten how much I enjoy it and it awoke in me the desire to get back to the basics of art with a pencil and a paint brush again. 

I began researching online artist communities and considering which ones I might want to join to see if I could sell 'prints on demand' and original artwork, when I realized I needed to get a little more organized and start at the beginning. So I've spent the past few weeks scanning older photos of my artwork, preparing them for the web and designing my online portfolio http://www.onlinebydesign.ca as the first step in this process and the second step has been setting up this blog.

I'm sure it will go through a lot of changes over the next few weeks and months as I decide upon the look and feel I want for it.  Now that both my site and blog are online however, I will begin signing up for the various artist community sites and places to sell art online that have caught my attention and will post links to those when they are ready to share.

My goal in starting this blog is to encourage new inspiration and motivation to continue to grow in me as an artist and to keep learning and doing!