Submersion in the Internet....or there is so much info out there...

This past week I have been spending time submerging myself into finding good info on the internet for networking to others. This is not only with other artists, but also others in my community and state.

Wading through all the organizations and information can be overwhelming to say the least. So what have I found this week....

• Wet Canvas.com
  
• a site with an overwhelming amount of information for the artist, including reference photos, art lessons, critiques, forums and more....
• MAMU
• Minnesota Artists Meet Up group that is a fairly active group
• I joined and became the 100th member
• ArtBreak
• a place to share and sell your artwork
  
• artists from all over the world
• Sketchcrawl.com
• forums on drawing and meeting to draw all over the world
• Blurb.com
• a website where one can make their own book
• prices are relatively reasonable and there is free software to download

One other thing that my host website offers is a thing added called "simple scripts". I now can add a blog to my existing site (still need to figure out how to do the link) and also a photo site where photos are easily uploaded for viewing.

When I first setup my website www.maryanncleary.com I used a template. That actually helped speed things up and also provided a professional looking site. However, I do not know html, css, or any of the other scripts out there. So to make changes it is a slow process since I am on a learning curve. Because of that I opted to also use an alternative site through Fine Art Studio Online and my other domain name Spirit River Studio as photos are easy to upload and I can update it from anywhere. I am giving this a six month trial as the monthly fee, I feel, is high. In the meantime, I will work on adding pages to my current site.

Well, I am off to get a painting in today as well as work on my lower level for the studio...the weather is still ugly outside with lots of snow!

~M

Video of Painting the River

Please feel free to comment. This is one of my first attempts at making a video. Next time I will try to take more pics of the process.

Analytical Info or Google Analytics

Today I realized that when I redid the template for this blog, that I inadvertently lost the information that was written for tracking the statistics of this blog. Everyday I would check and everyday, there would be zero visits and no information. I finally put on a counter to see if there were indeed zero visits.

Guess what? When you change the template, make sure you also add the information that needs to be put in the html. Hopefully, there will at least be a few visitors that I know about.

Has anyone else done this? I really had no idea that there was a problem as the google analytics showed all was well.

Color Card Isolator

Today I spent the day reading one of my old art books called, "Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light and Color" by Kevin MacPherson. What an interesting book on color.

Some of the tips and techniques were very informative and I will try using them in my daily paintings. The first thing that I am going to try is a tool called the "magical color isolator". It is just a piece of white card with three holes punched into it. One side is white and the other side has three stripes on it: white, grey and black. The holes are in the middle of each of these tones.

The card is only one inch by three inches and easy to make. I plan on putting one together and trying it out. Color is relative to its surroundings and sometimes I find it difficult to figure out what the value of it is. If a person starts off wrong, the entire painting can suffer.

Almost forgot...to use the card just hold it about six inches from one eye....look at the color and tone. Paint what you see!!! This is important. Do not paint what you think the color is...that is what will screw everything up.

I plan on trying this out on my next painting for my daily painting blog.


One other thing that is also recommended is to paint the same subject in different light and with different backgrounds....I plan on trying this with on of my still life setups just to see what happens!