General Chat for July 2010

Alan, Love the set up and you lucked out with the color of the walls. No distracting colors and great lighting.

Hi all;
Thanks for the comments. Judy, I enjoyed hearing of your first shows and how you gained exposure. I heard today that we have sold two of the Brookfield paintings so far, so that is very encouraging to us!

that is really exciting. Congrats. Judy

Congratulations!

That's really great!! Especially since you sold them in such a short time.
Dayle

That's wonderful!

Will be awol for the next few weeks. But i am packing all my painting materials and plan to immerse myself in art at the cottage. And I promise that I will try some plein aire

Have a great summer, Dale! Looking forward to seeing your paintings when you get back. I hope you enjoy the plein-air painting.

A couple of weeks at a cottage with nothing to do but paint and no distractions from the outside world sounds ideal! I'm looking forward to seeing your paintings when you get back.

I'm jealous! Have a great time and great painting! Hope your ribs are all better.
Dayle

Dale,

I hope you have a wonderful, relaxing time there and you paint your little heart out...coming home refreshed and with many pieces of art you are pleased with. Enjoy your Plein Aire painting also -- I can't wait to see them. Also I hope your ribs feel better and they continue to heal well.

ENJOY!

Sounds like fun. See you in a few weeks with lots of new paintings.

Judy

Dale, I hope you have a great time! I'm looking forward to seeing your paintings.

As an update on the Brookfield exhibit, we've sold four of the twelve paintings so far! It appears that people are already shopping for Christmas gifts.

The paintings that are selling first are those of specific properties, mostly farms. Maybe interest will pick up for the paintings of the various homes and more general views of the community. but we'll see.

I'll post a followup at the conclusion of the exhibit, around August 1st.



Hmm, trying to insert a signature line, but it is not visible. Anyway, bear with me as I try a few things, but in the meantime, we have a new blog:

http://helenalanspinney.wordpress.com/

That's great. Are you hanging new ones to replace the ones as they sell?

Did you go into Profile and click on Signature in the horizontal menu bar?

I'll look at you blog later today.

Judy

Hi Judy;
We have left the twelve paintings on display, and staff have placed a little red "sold" dot on the card beneath each of the four sold paintings. This community is about 2.5 hours drive from our house, so we will just let the exhibition run its course, and go to Brookfield to pick up the unsold paintings.
(.. sign autographs, pose for photos, ha ha. Actually more like: do a little housekeeping on the area so it is left in good shape when we leave.. )
We didn't replace the sold with any other paintings, but that is an
excellent idea for the future when we are showing a more general
selection of paintings.

The blog is at a first step, and I have a bit more work to do there to be happier with how it navigates. Right now, I think visitors might miss the secondary pages, they are not really easy to find yet. Please let me know here what you think. ( I have not allowed comments on the site yet, and still deciding how to safely post our email and how much to reveal as far as: phone number and address?)


I had added the information to the profile; signature area, but realized I had typed it in the "edit signature" area also. So I have deleted that second signature, we'll see if that might help. Can't think of anything else I am missing there...

Great to hear that the exhibit is going so well Alan. Regarding your signature... make sure that under Profile>Preferences that "Always attach my signature" has yes selected.

Thanks Janet! Helen and I are getting a charge out of our first public show. And thanks Judy and Janet for help with the signature settings. Let's try this again... here goes...

I checked out the blog and it looks great. Maybe it could use a little color in the backgrounds of the side columns. I see that you use (at) for the email. That does help stop automatic spammers. I have mixed emotions about the phone number being listed.

One thing I really liked was that pictures could not be copied. I right clicked and chose "Copy Image" but nothing happened. This is good. I've been working on ways to prevent copying and I have found the way. Now I just have to edit pages to put that into effect.

Your signature worked fine.

Judy

Hi Judy;

Thanks for the comments. I am starting to find my way around the Wordpress ("WP")blogging software. I started with one WP template, then switched to another that allowed easier page navigation for visitors.

I consulted with a programmer who I work with to develop websites for our clients, and he showed me a few plug-ins for WP that prevent images from (easily) being copied from a site. However, those plugins are not available with the free WP blog I am currently using. I would need to purchase a domain name and host my own site before I can use plugins.

So, we made a compromise there, using a free site but no image blocking, but I feel now is the time to take advantage of the momentum of having a little show, to make our work visible on a blog.

We weighed out the pros and cons of posting our phone number, and decided that today, someone could just find that information somewhere online anyway, through one phone listing or another.

We may reconsider.
What do other members think? Let me know...

Hi Alan - glad that your show is going so well!

I didn't have my phone number on my website the first two years, but reconsidered. I want people to be able to contact me if they want to buy my art so now I have it on my website and my cards that I hand out at the shows and events that I take part in. I haven't had a problem with it so far.

Alan,

I was not able to copy pictures on your site so it must be working even on the free one unless you changed.

Judy

There's really no good way to prevent copying/stealing photos. If all else fails, one can take a screen shot. I think the watermarks will put some people off, but if someone who is proficient in Photoshop (or similar) wants your pic, the watermark won't stop them. What you can do is make sure your photos are lo res. and just large enough to view so they'll be worthless for printing or enlarging.



Nice blog site!

Thank you I will have to check out the blog site....I agree with you Callie.

Would love to write more but got to head home, great information -- as always thank you all for your imput it is always helpful....I am riding my bike home from work and it is almost 8PM, hopefully I am not too tired after a long day. YOu all take care

Hi Callie;

Thanks for the comments!
We're having fun tinkering around with the blog. It's all new to us.We will soon upload a
lot more work, but have to decide how we want to show it. By subject, by
size, do Helen and I create separate pages for each of us? Lots to think
about.

I do a lot of advanced work with Photoshop, and yep, a person who wants
to, will do screen grabs, or use clone tools to eliminate a watermark. A
person can even copy a whole web site
and keep all the jpegs.

Personally, (and ironically of course) I do find watermarks irritating. So in the future, as you mention, I think we'll simply post the paintings at a size and resolution that allows someone to view them, but not much more. The site is intended to show the work and make people curious, but the real experience is to stand in front of the paintings and view their real colours and textures.