New Features and A Contest Win for 'John Lennon'!

It is very affirming and inspiring to have any of my art featured, so I was especially thrilled to find BOTH of my flower pencil drawings featured together on the front page of this group Quality Art and Photography on Red Bubble!  Pencil Dahlia has been featured 4 times in the past two days and Pencil Rose has been featured twice, so I must be doing something right with those color pencils lol!

On Fine Art America I received a comment on my John Lennon painting congratulating me for a contest win.  Lol, I don't think I would have even known if not for reading it there!

The contest was called "Musician Art".  Here is the link to the leader page where you can view the placements of all the art that was submitted (some wonderful stuff!) My painting tied with two others for the top three placements.

Both RB and FAA have several challenges or contests where you can submit artwork that fits with a particular theme created by the group or host.  When any of my art fits the criteria I'll usually enter it.  On RB it is easy to keep track of them all because they appear in the default feed, but on FAA, the only way (that I've found so far) is to go to the contest and look at the tab for your own submission.  Maybe it was in a feed somewhere and I missed it, I don't know for sure, but I was completely surprised and delighted!

RB has been very active in the past couple of weeks, 'Bono' got another feature on May 29, 'Two Tulips' got it's first May 15, 'Boats In Sunlight' received four more, including a permanent feature page here: The Alphabet Marathon on May 19.

Two of my photos have been featured; 'View From Mayne Island' got it's first on May 22 and 'Poppy Close Up' on May 26 and 27th.  It also came in second place in a RB contest redbubble.com/poppies-and-orchids-challenge.

I think that about covers it for now...  back to the drawing board!

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!