Wordpress & Artists: Final Thoughts

After the latest redesign of my website using Wordpress' content management capabilities, I've let my thoughts percolate for awhile on my final impression of its effectiveness and usefulness for artists. So far, my impressions haven't changed much from the original Pros & Cons listing that I did previously. Here are a few thoughts that might help you come to a decision of whether you want to use it or not.

The Trouble With Wordpress...

...is that it's definitely not for beginners, as far as online management of content. You must know how to install a database, backup a database, and upload files. If you have a Geek on call that can help you with all this, than all the better! I learned how to do this all myself and it's technically not that hard once you get the hang of it. Get yourself a good FTP program (I use Filezilla) and play around in your website's control panel until you're familiar with it. I killed my own website a few times before I finally learned how to make a backup properly. Luckily, Wordpress is insanely easy to get running again! I restored my site to basic functionality from scratch in just a day after nuking it.

Taking Risks with Plugins & Upgrades

Another issue of concern for me is that plugins are always being upgraded and sometimes they might be borked in the upgrading. There is a dialog menu that pops up before you download and install a plugin that tells you whether or not it has been tested with your version of Wordpress. Pay attention to this because it could spell disaster if you haven't backed up your site recently! Plugins and upgrades to the core of Wordpress are a calculated risk in my opinion. I'd much rather deal with that than going back to my old way of doing things (Photoshop, html, and building everything by hand). The Wordpress community also seems very tightly knit and there's always an ear out for troubleshooting, if you post your concerns on a plugin's webpage.

Code Makes My Brain Hurt

I did end up grating my brain a little over certain CSS programming that was required to make my website look the way I want, but generally I found that for everything I wanted to tweak, there was an online tutorial showing me how to do it. Be careful with following tutorials, however, as sometimes they might be for older versions! (I found this out the hard way when I nuked my site following a database backup tutorial). Pay attention to the date of the tutorial and try to find the most recent ones.

Easy to Use Gallery Functionality

Updating my galleries has never been easier with the NextGEN Wordpress plugin (you just upload, tag descriptions, and go!). It's saved me so much time with my website's upkeep, particularly where galleries are involved, and also provides a sleek looking slideshow integrated with its interface. This is definitely one of the strongest reasons I've decided to bank on Wordpress for my needs as an artist.

E-Commerce Capabilities

I've managed to get a shop running with the e-commerce plugin by Instinct (will review this in a later post). It's not the prettiest shop, but it is free (unless you want to pay to upgrade to a prettier interface with additional payment gateways). I had some bugs during setup, but have managed to get it working to allow me to accept Paypal. As an admin, you can also print packing slips and keep track of orders all in one place. Another randomly useful feature is the ability to make a product link offsite if you have it listed elsewhere. For example, I have many of my products set up so that they link to their Etsy listings instead when you click them.

It's not perfect, but it will serve my purposes till I can afford the premium plugin at $200 for a commercial license for a multiple person business. It's only $40 if you have a single employee. Considering how much I've paid in the past to upkeep an Amazon Webstore ($60 a month) or an eBay shop (approx. $20 a month), this one-time fee is a small price to pay.

All in All...

If you can handle the learning curve and don't self-destruct at the thought of a little coding, than I recommend Wordpress. It's not perfect, but it's certainly functional and easy to manage right out of the proverbial box.

Tutorial - How to Make Storage Envelopes for Your Art

There have been so many little tasks on my platter lately, from website building to registration for conventions! I've had to shift modes to figure out just how I'll be transporting my art safely to those art fairs and conventions that are a little farther away from home than I've ever ventured for an event. Watercolor paintings in Georgia/Alabama heat and humidity for hours? Lightly bubble-wrapped frames reinforced with masking tape clanking together in my back seat? Nightmare waiting to happen!

Whilst surfing through the discussions over at Art Fair Insiders, I heard mention of a product called a Gallery Pouch, which is like SUPERPOWERED bubble wrap envelopes that keep your art safe. One thing led to another and I found myself experimenting with how to Do It Yourself by making my own pouches out of things you should easily be able to find at your local hardware store.

This time, I finally hauled out the camcorder to record my efforts! Enjoy and feel free to ask questions!

Oh and should you join up over at Art Fair Insiders, tell them that AngelaRSasser sent you in the referral field!

EDIT: I should also note that I have weather tested these envelopes by leaving them in a car parked in the sun from dawn till dusk and they showed no signs of melting tape or other adverse effects. Time will tell how well they stand up to weathering usage, but I am optimistic about their survivability thus far.

Tutorial - How to Make Storage Envelopes for Your Art - Part 1

Tutorial - How to Make Storage Envelopes for Your Art - Part 2

Websites & Artists Part 4 - Describing Art Online?

After getting my website live last week, an interesting thought occurred to me. When we're showcasing our art online, is it really necessary to describe that work in detail in a little text clump next to the image? Is it really necessary to talk about your inspirations, how the work came to be, etc? Does anyone really care?

I posed the question to my Facebook/Twitter/social networking groups and received some interesting feedback:

Nobody Cares...
...or rather nobody has the time to read these days. This camp believes the image says it all and that those browsing your art are really only interested in the final product. Basic information, such as medium, the program you used, the size of the image, and the purpose of creation (for a commission, for a company, etc) seem acceptable by the 'keep it simple' philosophy. From the standpoint of the artist, this is also an efficient approach if you don't have the time to sit and write descriptions about your process, or merely have nothing you're inspired to say about your pieces. Many websites for illustrators, concept artists, and industry-focused fields seem to be done in this fashion.

The More, the Better!
This attitude seems more prevalent in the fine artist crowd who believe that process is an important part of the expression. I would argue that it is also more prevalent on the sites of artists who sell a majority of their work to the general public. While Art Directors and the like have little time to read long heart-felt descriptions of a work's creation and inspirational impetus, the general public appreciates learning why that work is 'special' and worthwhile. It all links up to 'implied value', in this case, or how much worth an uninformed individual places on your work from presentation alone when they have no previous knowledge of you or your work.

Things to Think About
From the standpoint of a website designer with search engine optimization in mind, remember that meta-tags are not the most prevalent form of how search engines find a site. Nowadays, search engines like Google index the content, or text, of your pages in order to glean the most relevant results, though meta-descriptions on pages still seem relevant, if you have time to fill that field in for each page you design (meta-description being what shows on the results of any search engine's results page).

But neither should you fake a description! Personally, I think it's not worth it to ramble on about something if you really don't care about it. You only waste your own time and leave fans with a false impression of your priorities as an artist (and the more astute fans amongst us with doubts about your sincerity).

Personally..., I've invested myself as a writer and an artist, meaning there's a bit of poetry or a story behind most (but not all) of the pieces that I do. My site has barebone descriptions right now, but I hope to find a way to include text in a collapsible box so the most ADD amongst us can either skip the fluff or click a plus box to reveal a brief bit of prose.

In the end, I think an artist should consider what their site is going to do for them, who their audience is, and just how much time they have to manage writing long descriptions. Do what works for you and what you feel comfortable with.

How do you showcase your art online? Do you write long or short descriptions? What value do you see in either method?

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Websites & Artists Series
Part 1 - Considering Your Audience
Part 2 - What's in a Domain Name?
Part 3 - Search Engine Optimization
Part 4 - Describing Art Online

Wordpress & Artists: A First Impression

Have any of you ever wished you had your own personal Geek on call to fix your website? (I know I do!)

An important part of my business as a fantasy artist is my website where I can keep in touch with my fans and friends. From there, people are guided to information about me, sections of my stores on Amazon and Etsy, my social media profiles, and to all manner of odds and ends. Maintaining my website, however, is never an easy task for me with my archaic method of using html tables and images.

It takes weeks at a time to alter the navigation, update the galleries, or add new content. My info is scattered across a forum, 3rd party sites, and various sections with broad organization that requires a lot of click-throughs. In short, my website is a bloody mess to update because I have to do everything by hand.

I build the thumbnails, large and small, every time I want to update my gallery. I build my menu navigation from scratch in Photoshop. When I want to add news, I have to do it by typing in text on the news page and then having to redo all the RSS coding for that page. I dream constantly of a CMS (Content Management System, a type of database powered program that is useful for designing websites) built especially for artists that bares in mind our need for easy gallery updating, dynamic content, and a smooth customizable look.

It may not be specifically for artists, but I've recently stumbled upon Wordpress, a free CMS I've been investigating lately to solve my website woes. Last week, I finished a 24 hour trainer book (in about 3 days at my absorption rate) which really opened my eyes to how much having a php/css powered website can help me manage my website better!

I've only just started playing with it and here are my first impressions:

The Pros	The Cons
Super easy to create image galleries by default (or with handy dandy plugins like NexGEN)	A moderate learning curve.
Ability to import blogs and comments, including Blogger, and most major blogging services.	Some CSS code knowledge required (but none I couldn't find tutorials for online so far)
Tons of plugins, including ones for forums, easy form builders, social media integration, automatic metatagging, and shopping carts!	Updates to Wordpress may cause some plugins or themes to go wonky.
Visual interface that's fairly self-explanatory
Tons of free themes that you can customize for your own look.
Ability to make individual posts or pages private or password protected (IE. Good for giving special subscribers sneak peeks, perhaps?)
Multiple admins and co-admin users allowed (IE. Handy if you have have a studio with multiple people)
Ability to integrate your forum, blog, and website together so people won't have to register a username at all of them separately.
Page editor allows html or rich-text editing (super handy for seeing how your pages look and giving ultimate control over your code)

So far, it seems like Wordpress is going to do everything that I want it to do to help me keep my website updated! Expect a full report once I've had more time to play with all its bells and whistles.

Book Review: The Art of Shadowscapes Tarot - Major Arcana

It's been a really busy holiday season so I must apologize for the barrage of holiday sales and things of that nature. To celebrate my return to entries with a little more substance to them, I wanted to talk about the book I finished reading while I was waiting at the airport during my latest travels.

I had the pleasure of pre-ordering the book The Art of Shadowscapes Tarot: Major Arcana, the first in a series of books planned by artist Stephanie Pui-Mun Law presenting the major and minor arcana from her lavishly illustrated set of Tarot cards (with the full deck due out this coming Spring). I have been plotting to do my own deck ever since I started studying divination a few years ago. Stephanie's book was just the shot in the arm I needed to get inspired again for what will likely be my next involved project!

But back to this gorgeous compilation. As the title suggests, this tome encapsulates all 23 major arcana paintings from Stephanie's tarot deck reproduced in full color. Each section is adorned with fascinating ink drawings in the borders that draw the eye in with their intricate detail. Every time I look at them, I find some new detail I missed before.

However, the icing on the cake of this delicious treat of a book is the way it's jammed packed with preliminary sketches and tidbits of folklore discussing the symbolism utilized for the final pieces. One of the more interesting aspects of the book is seeing the process behind the finished images and how decisions were made to change the figures. Stephanie goes on to discuss how those changes affect the symbolism and presence of the compositions, something which is helpful especially to other artists learning how to make their own decisions when orchestrating a drawing.

But don't take my word for it, take a peek into this sumptuous feast of art for yourself!




All in all, a worthy addition to any artist's, or art lover's, collection! You can buy Stephanie's book here. For $15 more, you can purchase the book with an original sketch, which I can attest is well worth it! My version came with a lovely ink drawing of a masked crow woman.

It is a Shadowscapes exclusive book which you cannot find in stores and must buy directly from the artist. It won't disappoint!

The Evolution of an Artist's Alley Table Part 1

(My display has since leveled up! See the new display.)

After the last couple of conventions, it seems my artist's alley table is growing and evolving into something grand! I am always seeking ways to improve and welcome any suggestions you might have.

It started out at an Anime Weekend Atlanta of years ago where I just tossed unmatted and unbagged prints on the table and sold them for $5-$10 with a banner hung out front. Then we had the Dragon Con display this year with an elevated banner and slightly more offerings of necklaces and matted prints.

Now, we have the Anime Weekend Atlanta display where we pulled out a few more stops to make our display the best it could be. Here's a run-down of what we did.




The Elements of an Artist's Alley Table
1. One Sleep Deprived Artist - Complete with circles under the eyes and friendly smile. Customers like to see the artist at the table so they can talk to you personally and maybe watch you while you're working on a project. People like to be close to that creative flow and are generally curious about 'the life'. ($100,000,000 or 100 steak dinners)

2. Professionaly Printed Vinyl Banner - Printed at my local sign shop by my wonderful brother over at Graphic Signs Atlanta. I chose vinyl because it can take abuse and weather the elements. It's guaranteed to last longer than a paper sign. (FREE, generally $6 per square foot)

3. Backdrop Display - This is actually a piece of photography equipment called a backdrop kit. The poles break down and it comes with a handy carrying case to store it all in. It is relatively lightweight. I generally use this set for my stock photography needs. Bought from eBay. ($85)

4. Jewelry Stand - My dad made this wood stand ages ago and I stole it from my parents' bedroom. You can buy cute tree style stands from eBay for pretty low prices. Having a stand for necklaces helps draw in the crowd with more visibility for your shinies. (FREE, generally $25 for a nice one, less for a wire one)

5. Small Prints - I like to have these out for folks who don't have a large budget for buying the larger pieces. At only $5 a pop, they're a colorful way to help fill up empty space on the table and provide a low end price option.

6. 3 Tiered Magazine Display - Purchased from displays2go.com. Instead of magazines, I put in matted prints. People enjoyed rifling through it, but I want to invest in one with deeper compartments with more room for people to flip through. ($30)

7. Greeting Card Rotating Rack - Purchased from displays2go.com. I used this to display matted 4x6 prints and unmatted 5x7s which fit snuggly in the slots. It's amazing how a rack like this can give your work a more professional feel. This is pretty lightweight for transport, if a bit bulky. ($35)

8. Canvas Bin - Purchased at Big Lots. I used this to display more large prints to rifle through for those who wanted something a little more beefy than the 5x7's. ($15)

9. Cube Grid Walls - Another item that was donated to me. These grid walls were a lifesaver for making my display project upwards more. They stack easily when broken down and give you plenty of space to play with as far as hanging art. I had only 6 cubes, but imagine what you could do with more! (FREE, generally $16 for 6 cube set)




What am I missing?
Display Portfolio - I didn't have it out in this photo, but I had a portfolio of my best work laying out on the table housed in an Itoya notebook with a custom printed spine. ($8)





All in All...

I feel the weakness of this display setup is that it is slightly bulky, but the ability to project upwards I feel is a necessary one for my tastes. I've also been told carrying primarily more expensive items forces people to buy those instead and that a lighter setup is easier to do. My experiences have shown this does not work for my particular set of items and audience, though this lighter setup with more expensive items may work at conventions where customers are more willing to pay for top dollar items. At smaller cons, customers seem to like an option for smaller budgets.

The next big step in my display campaign is to figure out what I need for a large 10 x 10 foot space, the standard floor plot for art fair space. I sense canvas panels, tents, and god knows what else in my future!

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Feel free to drop 'em here!

Product Review: Mustek Express A3 1200 Pro

There comes a time in every artist's life when they want to toss their scanner out the window because it's such a pain to scan large paintings into the standard format 8.5x11 Inch scanners. The pieces don't fit together right, the exposure between passes are too different, and it's such a time waster to have to sit and stitch them together in Photoshop. The problem becomes compounded when we go shopping for a large format scanner that can process anything larger and we find that such scanners cost in upwards of $2000!

In my journey to find a solution that wouldn't cost me selling my kidney on the black market, I found a humble scanner called the Mustek Express A3 Pro USB Scanner with a scanning area of 11.7x16.5 Inches (29.7x42.0 Centimeters) at the equally humble price of $150. I bought one from Newegg, which had a comparable price and 30 day money back guarantee. So with little ado (and my love of lists), I present the Pros & Cons of the Mustek Express A3 1200 Pro USB scanner.

The Pros	The Cons
The large format is a dream. All that lovely scanning space! (11.7x16.5 Inches total)	The scanner is all you get. There are no quick buttons for you quick button fiends out there.
Seems to pick up a decent amount of detail and is particularly effective at picking up color luminosity.	Subtle tones are somewhat lost in the scanning. But you can pop those out again with post-processing.
Compatible with Photoshop import options (which is the only thing I use)	Like most new scanners, this one is finicky about anything that is not pressed flat against the glass. Anything raised from it will be out of focus.
Scans up to 9600 DPI
Very affordable price tag at around $150
Cover is removable with no lip around the glass, which is handy for scanning oversized pieces.

Image Quality
I currently use an Epson Workforce 500 as my main scanner and will continue to do so unless I need to scan larger format work. Though the Mustek is decent, it does not pick up the more subtle details that my Epson does. I have also been told by my publisher that the Epson is about as close to print quality as can be.




The Skinny
The Mustek is by no means a bad scanner, but it does have its minor shortcomings. However, for the low price, it's a pretty sweet deal if you're in search of an affordable deal on a large format scanner with decent scanning quality.

EDIT: It's also come to my attention the company is no longer making updated drivers for this device! In essence, it can only be used with Windows XP machines, for now.

EDIT 2: They finally came out with a new driver for this one!  You can find it here.