Another Site to Showcase and Sell Prints

I've just joined The Untapped Source  (http://www.theuntappedsource.com/janicedunbar), which is a site designed to be strictly a gallery to showcase and sell art prints.

The other three inspire a lot of involvement in the social aspect of the communities which is fun and rewarding, but also very time consuming.  Activity on Fine Art America has been picking up since submitting my art to more groups and I do like the look and feel of FAA.  Even as a free member I can see much potential in it and will likely upgrade my account as my productivity increases.

'Boats in Sun Light' has been featured in three FAA groups now and was featured for the first time on Red Bubble today :) (Links to all my profiles if you want to check them out are in the side bar)

Setting prices for artwork on all four sites is done differently, so I guess depending where buyers live, the shipping costs and what type of print is being ordered, the best deals will be determined on an individual basis. I've posted links to each artwork's retail page under their image on the pages in this blog and on my website.

There are still other retailer sites that could be joined, I will investigate them as time permits, but for now I think setting up these four will have to be enough, I still need to scan some of my older artwork to include and I really want to get down to the business of creating!

Cheers! :)

Recent Activity

It has been an interesting week as I've been getting familiar with the redbubble.com arts community. Of the three sites I joined when starting this blog, it is the one that sees the most activity - at least in my experience so far.

I don't know how that translates into sales for the artists, but the atmosphere is a very supportive and inspiring community of so many talented artists from all around the globe. I've been blown away by the fantastic art and photography I've seen there. If you visit my profile at http://www.redbubble.com/people/janicedunbar, you can view my 'favorites' tab to get a glimpse of some of the amazing artwork on the site.

It is really cool to be featured and that helps a lot to get your art seen since there is so much really fine stuff being submitted all the time into the groups. Some of the groups change featured work frequently, others not as often.  Since being on the site, my drawing of Bono has been featured a total of five times now and has had the most views, 'Cereal In Spoon With Milk' and 'Tillie' have both been featured twice and I uploaded this oil painting of John Lennon on Friday which got it's first feature today in this group:  http://www.redbubble.com/groups/art-and-ink-so-free

Or link to the painting: http://www.redbubble.com/john-lennon

It has taken a lot of time setting accounts up for all three sites and I have found my focus to be mostly on Red Bubble after the initial set up on each.  As only a free member at Fine Art America and Image Kind, my submitted art gets buried under so much other artwork that unless I upgrade my accounts, it doesn't get preferred listing in the internal search engines so it is much harder to get views.  I may upgrade my accounts as I move forward, but I am still in the process of getting organized and managing what I need to take care of first in order to do so.  I'm just about ready to start creating new... yeah! :)

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

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...  : )