Have you checked your web stats lately for your visitors’ connection speed? Since January 2010 I have noticed a gradual increase in dial up users. Verified dial ups now comprise 30-40% of my visitors, in contrast to 10-20% just one year ago. This is a significant movement toward cheaper, slower internet connections.

This is a smart choice in a dreadful economy, and to assist my dial up visitors I promise to clear my website of unnecessary graphics that slow their effort to view my paintings.

Artists, our websites are graphic-heavy by nature.  Stay attuned to how your viewers use your website and tweak it accordingly.

What makes a compelling self-marketing portrait for your website and brochure?  Do you want a face shot? Do you like the “artist in action” look? Or, would you like a blend of both? Plan on taking 50-100 photos (thank goodness for digital cameras!). It will take that many images to find a few that work really well, unless you are photogenic, which I am not.

1. Begin by collecting marketing photos of other artists—photos that interest you. Cut them out of old art magazines, artist brochures, art workshop ads, print them from artist websites, or scan them from book fly jackets. Stick them in a notebook and make notes of what you like about the photo. After a few of these you will begin to notice consistencies in your choices. (For example, I don’t like lower legs and feet in the picture and discovered cropping is not the only way of getting rid of them!) I also discovered that French easels with huge canvases are more dramatic than pochade boxes with small panels. If you are a plein air painter try both if you have the materials.

2. Have a patient spouse or friend do the photography, or have a “photo jam” with a couple other artists.  Try to get the camera in the hands of someone who has a sense of style and observation, and review with them what you want and don't want.  Show your photographer the pictures you have collected of other artists.

3. Relax, but don’t slouch. Use good painting posture and hold the brush properly.

4. Photograph in more than one background or setting.

5. Select time of day and weather. Late afternoon is popular with photographers because of the warm light. In my climate, sunny weather is glary, so I like the even light of overcast days for outdoor self-portraits. Don’t bother on windy days, unless you make the wind part of the visual story.

6. Plan on taking lots of photos in a few different settings, poses and expressions. My best expressions were when my husband was “fiddling with the camera settings”—I didn’t know he was taking pictures, so I put my hand on the top of the easel, my chin on my hand and gave him a bemused smile while I waited. Totally unposed, these were the best.

7. Generally speaking, wear neutral colors just as you would when painting en plein air. If you are a flower garden painter, however, you might want to brighten it up a little so you don’t get lost in all the color. One favorite in my notebook shows a smiling woman, one third of her face hidden behind her French easel and canvas. She is wearing a neutral shirt, but has on a broad-brimmed floppy floral fabric hat. She is surrounded by a blooming garden. This beautifully composed photograph shows an artist in her element.

8. My favorite photos show artists standing while painting. However, not all painters can stand for long periods, so sometimes it is appropriate for your portrait to show you seated. In that case, avoid letting the aluminum and bright plastic colors of your chair dominate your portrait.

9. Photograph at different angles: Facing the camera and various degrees of side view, and ¾ back view featuring your painted canvas and the matching subject.

10. Compose. Unless you have good photo editing skills, do extra work composing en situ.

11. Pay attention to your distant background: If you are a gritty “blighted landscape” painter, yonder dumpster may serve you well. But if you don’t want it in your portrait, avoid it.

12. Remove your own clutter from the scene, such as beverage containers, stool, bags, paper towel roll (some painters use toilet paper—what is a viewer supposed to interpret from a roll of toilet paper on an easel?)  If the portrait is about you as an artist, keep the paraphernalia simple. If it is about how you equip yourself to paint in the field, show it all.

13. Avoid trendy clothes unless you replace your marketing image frequently.

14. Hat is optional: Try different ones, and none.

15. Have the photographer stand far enough away to allow plenty of space around you, the model. Without the photographer right in your face, you stay more relaxed, your nose won’t be too big, and there is ample cropping space.

16. A formal face shot shows your potential collectors what you look like, but little about the artist you are. If you want a face shot, google portrait photography for lots of tips about making an interesting portrait.

17. From each photo shoot, try to accumulate several good PR photos that can be used for newspaper articles, holiday cards, and promotion in addition to your website and brochure.

18. Edit those photos freely. For those of you who are not technically savvy, cropping is pretty easy to learn and is often the only thing that needs to be done to an image. Do your editing on a copy: Always save your original unedited image until you are absolutely sure you don’t need it any more. Then keep it a little longer.

That’s it! Have fun out there, and feel free to add your suggestions.

««««« Scott Christensen’s DVD, “Three Landscape Studies,” is for anyone interested in plein air painting, using plein air sketches to work up a studio painting, and painting with a limited palette of 3 primary colors.  He explains his process in a way that is interesting and easy to understand. The filming is also excellent, frequently using a split screen so the viewer can observe Scott selecting and mixing paint as well as watch his painting technique. 

Scott uses three primaries, red, lemon yellow, ultramarine blue, titanium white and black. The harmonious range he achieves from these few colors is extensive. He uses color tonally with subdued results, and explains how to maximize the punch of an accent color in a tonal painting.

Years ago I experimented with three primaries and detested the results. After watching “Three Landscape Studies” I selected three primaries from my paint collection (only the red differed from Scott’s palette), and made some puddle color charts, labeling each addition of color. The results surprised me with their delicacy and range of color.

Four years ago I began having difficulty mixing color from my old familiar palette. I changed the bulbs in my studio lights and got a new pair of glasses, but nothing helped. My world was beginning to look depressingly dingy. I was diagnosed with cataracts. Cataracts are famous for making vision fuzzy, but their worst characteristic for a colorist is that they are yellow to brown. The ophthalmologist warned that color perception would be affected. It was. This may sound familiar to baby-boomer painters.

Scott’s “primaries only” palette may compensate for damaged color perception by limiting the potential for unbalanced hues. I am setting myself a challenge to do more puddle charts and to paint only with this trio of colors for the next few months. I’ll post the resulting paintings and my thoughts about the learning curve.

Although not new, “Three Landscape Studies” is worth viewing. I rented it from www.SmartFlix.com for $10, a handy way to view a DVD before deciding to add it to your permanent library.  Visit Scott Christensen’s paintings at www.christensenstudio.com

Symbolism can dramatically enrich your work if you know how to use it. It can also invade your work unconsciously, sometimes contributing to the painting, or sometimes undermining it. As you critique your paintings in progress, include a search for inappropriate use of symbols.

For example, I had only been painting a couple years, and was working on a large landscape in a workshop. As the painting developed, so did a prominent pubic shape right in the middle of the subject mountain. I was so embarrassed I didn’t want to be seen painting anywhere near that shape! But it had to be altered without damaging the believable contours of the mountain, the quicker the better. It was a self-taught lesson I never forgot.

Other shapes and relationships have caused me trouble from time to time: Utility poles that look like crosses, boulders that look like Volkswagens (maybe I wanted one in my youth.) And barriers: Barriers frequently impose themselves in my paintings, forcing me to break them for the viewer and for myself. Occasionally I leave barriers in place when they work for the painting.

Symbols came to humans before language. They developed in various forms: Religious, cultural and personal. A few are universal, such as the circle. Some become tainted by history, such as the swastika, an ancient widespread symbol of the whirlwind and the four cardinal directions.

Some artists develop a code of personal symbols and definitions. How you explain these to your collectors is a personal issue. I align myself with Native Americans who believe that revealing too much too often diminishes the power of the symbol. Other artists believe the story would be lost without explaining the symbolism. Know where you stand.

I’ve deviated a little from my original point. But I guess I wanted to stress that symbols and shapes in your paintings contain incredible power for the people who view your work.  When you find inadvertent symbols and shapes that distract from the meaning of your work, adjust them out of existence.

What happens when a woman artist changes her name? Does a name change affect a woman’s art career, her ability to get gallery representation, or her income as an artist?

Early in my career the owner of a gallery to which I applied said she did not like to represent women artists because their production was frequently uneven and they changed their names with marriage(s). She added that these conditions made women artists difficult to promote.

Recently, a Dutch study linked name change with significantly lower lifetime income and fewer job offers. The study went further, dealing with societal perceptions toward women who change names. Basically, if you want to be liked, change your surname to your partner’s, but if you want a better career, never change your name. This is a tough choice, and I’m not being sarcastic.

As an artist, your name is your brand. Change it at your peril (hyphenating your name constitutes change, according to the Dutch study.) Search engines will lose you unless you do cross-referencing for the rest of you career, people will not remember your new name, old promotional material that is out there among your collectors, or potential collectors, becomes useless. When you change your name you will lose some of your collector base. And there is one more niggling issue: Name change indicates a change in your marital status, and that is nobody’s business. It is not something that should enter your patron’s mind.

You can maintain two names, your professional name and your married name, but that can be financially and socially confusing.  When you (re)marry, you can use your maiden name as your middle name (example: Yvonne MaidenName MarriedName,) possibly a comfortable option. Or, if you established your reputation under a married name, make it Yvonne #1MarriedName CurrentMarriedName.  FirstName keeps you findable by search engines, reduces confusion for other people and agencies, and allows you to go through your professional life with no visible name change. 

There are no easy answers, especially if your surname is from a marriage with which you would rather disassociate. Ask yourself, “What would Thomas Kincaid do?” Can you imagine that Master of Light and Self-Promotion changing his name to Thomas Wilson and maintaining his high profile? How would you recognize an invitation to a Judy Chicago exhibition if it was marketed under any other name?

What are your thoughts on the cost of marital name change and the woman artist?  If you have gone through name changes, how has it affected your career?

Reference (The Dutch report in its entirety):
www.stapel.socialpsychology.nl/downloads/Noordewier-et-al-BASP.pdf

Vacation took us to beautiful Newport Back Bay in southern California.  Popular with plein air painters, there is not an ugly view anywhere in the Back Bay.  I set up early with an overcast sky and generally dark moody colors in the pickle grass.  Not far into the underpainting the clouds began to disipate, spotlighting the mustard on the hills right above the water, creating a fantastic focal area.  Before long, all the clouds were gone and sun bathed everything in bright colors.  I lost my sense of direction and the painting became muddy.  Had I created a frisbee?

Back home in the studio, I reconsidered the painting.  It had good bones, but had lost the original mood.  Furthermore, the brushwork was dreadful near the bottom of the painting where the pochade box makes it difficult to get a good angle with the brush.  I usually advise against reworking a plein air painting because the spirit of the painting gets lost in the process.  In this case, the spirit had already been lost, but I had a vivid memory of what it should be.  This is the result of the reworked painting.

California Art Club warned members of yet another art scammer named "John Bathgate."  He buys paintings with bad certified checks for more than the amount of the paintings.  You ship the painting and the refund, and then you find out his certified check is not honored by your bank.

Selling through PayPal probably eliminates most of this nonsense.  But if you are handling the transaction directly, without meeting your collector, do your own little background check:

1.  Google the buyer's name, with any other information you have.  Often times, you will find a bit of history on that person, reassurance that your buyer is real.

2.  Return the check, request that a new check for the exact amount be issued, and do not ship the art until the check clears.

3.  Google "art scam", to see if the buyer's name turns up as a known scammer.

4.  Check your stats.  If you can match your buyers information against the pages visited, and you see that all he looked up was your contact information and one painting, be suspicious.  Most legitimate buyers will tour most of your website--they want to know you are legit!

Who would have thought art history would engage readers of The Palette Keeper, my monthly e-newsletter? The vocal positive response surprised me, and is a lesson in casting a wider net for topics of interest to readers.

I wanted to write one brief article about reading American paintings. It can’t be done. So last March I wrote about the Freake family paintings, the earliest surviving portraits from the colonial era.  The April Palette Keeper compared and contrasted the extravagant display of wealth of one citizen with John Hancock’s more politically correct conservative attire just prior to the Revolutionary War. I will continue the art history theme until my readers say, “Stop! Please stop” or until I tire of it. Meanwhile, it is a provocative topic: What prompts a society to display or hide wealth? What can a painting say about the artist, the model, and conditions during their lives?  How can a viewer read a painting to get the most information out of it?

If you blog or publish a newsletter article give your readers a valuable experience. Look off the beaten track for rich topics. Whether your ancestors came here on the Mayflower, African slave ships, or Cambodian rescue boats, or all of them, there are stories in your history that define you as an artist. Look at your art. Look at your family history. Look at your heritage as far back as you can go, and listen to the echoes that are there. Then write about it. Your readers and collectors will treasure the experience.

Every once in a while artists will ask what I look for when judging a show. I like that. It gives me a chance to teach artists to consider their work as a whole package. I feel disadvantaged, however, because oils are my specialty and other mediums and art forms are not. As a result, I’m a much harsher judge when it comes to oil painting.

When judging unfamiliar art forms such as weaving, I look for uniformity of weave, unless variation is a contributing factor in the design. In woodworking, I look for fine finish and smooth curves, unless ruggedness is critical to the sculpture. Also in woodworking, I look for how the grain of the wood is incorporated into the planning of the piece. Traditional quilting asks for fine small hand stitching, a plus over machine stitching. In contemporary quilting, I am tolerant of a wider range of stitch types. Watercolor is perhaps toughest for me to judge, and here I simply look for how well the painter supports the subject and mood with the paint.

In oil painting, brushwork and application of paint are important to me. Oil painting by its very nature is luminous, and I want to see that. Oil paint that is watered down with turp or clogged with sand had better have a reason to be so, and that reason must be more obvious than that the artist is cheap.    Required reading for all oil painters should be Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit.

In all work I look at the total presentation—how well the artist’s use of materials supports the underlying concept of the work. Do the color and composition get the message across? Do I recognize copied (or nearly so) work in an original category?  Does the work adhere to the rules of the competition? Generally, I try to give latitude in the choice of frame, but if several works are of equal quality, presentation becomes the determining factor. Sloppy presentation is always a negative, and includes dirty mats and glass, poorly cut mats, paintings that are loose in frames, dusty old Mediterranean frames from the 1970’s. Kitsch is a major turn-off.

I suspend my personal preferences as much as possible. They are not relevant when judging a show. Every time I judge a show I am humbled, and wish I knew more about art. I would like to leave comments on many of the entries as to why they won an award—or why they didn’t. Without that, what is learned?

Phil and Jennie at Jack’s Fine Art gave me the nicest bunch of compliments today. He is grateful for the general uniformity of my frames (most of my frames are the same style with a few exceptions.) Phil also appreciates my consistency in measuring where I place eyelets and wire, which makes hanging faster and replacement of sold paintings a cinch.

In my framing tool box is a chart that specifies by frame size how far down from the top of the frame to install the eyelets. I stretch the wire moderately tight. If I deliver a bunch of 18x24” paintings the Gallery only has to measure one painting, and all the rest will hang at exactly the same level.

Phil also thanked me for never bringing in wet paintings (artists do that???). On previous deliveries Jennie was pleased with my typed inventory of new paintings. If I annoy them, it is probably because I chat too much when I take in paintings—they are nice people, knowledgeable about art and the community, but they do framing in addition to the gallery and are busy. Still, I enjoy our lively conversations about politics, the abysmal economy and our hopes for the future.

Develop the best possible relationship with your galleries: Be consistent and thoughtful in how you present your art to them. And enjoy it when they pat you on the back.