Just a quick post this week, time crunched (agility last weekend in Spokane - we finished Suka’s Excellent Jumpers title - and travel for a commission over the next few days)…but wanted to share some terrific online art resources that I’ve discovered lately. Then again, maybe everyone already knew about these except me.
Art Scuttlebutt (www.artscuttlebutt.com) - run by the ArtCalendar folks. While it offers many of the features of the magazine, what is especially useful: a search mechanism that lets you check on shows, galleries, etc to see what other artists have experienced. I used the feature just this week when I received an out-of-the-blue gallery invitation from a NY gallery I’d never heard of. Turns out the gallery is a “pay to play” arrangement, though they don’t mention that in the email solicitation - but plenty of other ArtScuttlebutt artists had experience and advice about them.
Wet Canvas (www.wetcanvas.com) - a forum with gazillions of artists posting about their work in a huge variety of categories. Worth a browse for ideas or techniques.
Empty Easel (www.emptyeasel.com) - this gets my enthusiastic vote for one of the most useful art-oriented sites on the web. Besides how-to and review articles, it has an incredible wealth of information about selling art online. I can’t even begin to touch on the range of topics covered at EE, so I won’t. Go check it out - it’s worth it.
What other good artsites are out there?
Tags: resources
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August 29th, 2008 at 8:25 am
Here’s one that has links to lots of artists.
The painter’s keys
They will post a little info about an artist and a link to their site for free.
This especially helps if you just set up a website and are not coming up on the first page of a search (google or any other)
The other thing that helps is registering with the Open Directory project, a human-built (as opposed to computer-built: not talking about monkeys here) database used by google and others for (search) ranking purposes. The only problem with Open Directory is that it can take months to get listed after you submit your information to them. (You can’t really fault them, though. The review of each site is performed by volunteers.)
Listing with a site like the one above has a more immediate effect on ranking.
Google bases their ranking largely on the number of links to your sites and the “value” of those links. A site that has lots of links to artists will likely have “high value” to google and, therefore, if that site links to yours, it will boost the rank of your site significantly (more than a link from a nobody site would do, at any rate). In many regards, it’s like a popularity contest (even though google would undoubtedly deny it)
Of course, if you are already coming up number one on the google rank, you may disregard everything above.
August 30th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Julie, this is great. Thank you.
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:59 am
I really appreciate Robert Genn’s biweekly e-mails. He has some great insights into the practice of painting, being an artist, art history, etc. He generates a lot of thoughtful responses too.
(www.robertgenn.com is his website but painterskeys.com is the place to go to sign up.)
September 5th, 2008 at 9:48 am
I love the blog. I have it in my fav’s. The websites are great. Thanks for all you do to inspire the rest of us artists. Sandy