Drakenhart Studios

Art Blogs: A Definition

An art blog is simply a website or blog-site wherein you share your artwork with people in a journal-post style fashion. Generally the idea behind an art blog is a place where one can post about one’s own artwork and the various topics related to it. An Art Blog in not a “general” blog, in the sense wherein one posts about their normal life, rants, gripes or the like not normally associated with artwork.

You post art-related content, speak about art-related topics, share your ideas, hopes, dreams, WIPs (works in progress), ask for critiques, post about specials, sales, special commissions, ask for help from other artists and more.

The comment section of your art blog allows for conversations about the topics your share, as much as it does just general comments, so there is the chance of interaction, communication, and sharing of ideas.

Should I Get One?

It really depends on the amount of time an artist puts into it, how thick their “skin” when it comes to negative comments, and how well they interact socially. Remember that online, public sites are accessible to just about anyone. So getting into a petty argument on one’s artblog, regardless of how the artist’s feels, is a bad idea.

If you feel you have to defend your artwork, have a tendency to write inflammatory posts, or “argue” instead of having “professional debates” maybe an art blog isn’t for you. Only you know you best.

On the other hand, if you are a social butterfly and are capable of handling negative comments without “fighting” with your commentators, then an art blog may be something you want to look into. In some cases, though not as wide spread as one might think, some artists forgo the typical “gallery”-style website and only maintain an art blog.

Benefits of an Art Blog

Art blogs let users, visitors, and potential clients see the artist for the person and the professional they are in a “fresh” way.

Similar to (but not the same as) being at an art gallery opening so folks can speak with one directly, art blogs give users a chance to communicate with the artist and ask questions about the art.

Art blogs offer the artist a way of talking about their artwork even as they post samples of it. This is a much different style of posting art then it is when one uploads it to a gallery-style site. An artist leaves their comments in the description, but from what I’ve seen this is sometimes totally over looked. A an observation, I’ve noted that descriptions which flow around the artwork, or have the artwork as part of the discussion, seem to be read more often.

Blogs in general generate a lot of traffic on their own. The content is fresh, new, and constantly updated! Art blogs have a special bonus of visually appeal as they add artwork to the mix of text. Win-win.

Art Blog Posting

Just a few tips when posting to your art blog.

Focus:
Don’t loose focus and start posting non-related stuff to your art blog. Keep as much personal, non-art-related, posts out of your art blog as is humanly possible. Generally I mean posts that talk about what your cat fluffy did yesterday that you found funny. If Fluffy inspired you to draw a small cartoon of him/her then by all means add it to your blog.

The idea is to keep it as art-centric as possible, and to keep away from the “generic blog” feel.

Enhancements:
Videos are very popular right now. You may want to make a video tutorial, or show a work in progress. This can be incorporated into your art blog without loosing it’s focus. One can either upload Video (or podcasts, or both) to one’s artblog and talk about what the video is about.

Photography of inspirational sites, people, places, and things (keep in mind trademarks and copyright issues when posting photos of certain things) can be posted as well. This may be an inspiration to others. Just be sure you have a policy in regards to the photographs you take then post, and to the copyright issues for posting such on your art blog.

In fact a Photo-blog is a form of art blog in and of it’s own!

Policies:
Make sure your policies, copyright, trademark, and such information is easily accessible and openly public. In many cases mistakes are made that cause untold headaches for you and others when this isn’t made painfully obvious to your visitors!

Overview

An art blog is a way of sharing your art in a unique, non-traditional manner that requires a little bit of fore-thought. If done well it adds content to the net that is compelling, fresh, and new.

Keep in mind that art blogs are public, and may require a few stiff but professional reminders as to your rights as an artist.

Enjoy it but don’t abuse it.

Above have fun with it!

I’m working on a friend’s website at the moment, so things have slowed in getting my new design up and running. Rather then let the site site and suffer, I’ve temp-skinned it with a theme that is at the very least goos looking and very functional.

Please bear with me as I work. Thank you!

WordPress got wise, real wise. They’ve started to populate their new domain, WordPress.tv, with videos. This tickles me in ways I can barely begin to describe.

First: I’m a person who is very much supportive of people using the proper ending to their domains. The endings were created to help differentiate between content types. This way people would know from first glance just what the company is, does, and it’s intents.

• .com –> Commercial Business (Drakenhart Studios.com is being held by a friend currently. Lost contact.)
• .net –> Network (We are in our own way a network. Rather then just offer you our business end and sales pitch, we offer a form of community and continued service. Links to places that benefit our clients and viewers, and connections to our clients’ sites for people to check out!)
• .org –> Organization, like the World Wild Life Fund or the Red Corss, etc.
  
• .tv –> Television of other form of video media. (Thus WordPress.tv offering a site Full of helpful, online walkthroughs and tutorials. Bonus!)
• .biz –> General Business
• .us –> General Web Site located in the United States
• .info –> Informational site, often like a wikipedia and the like.
• .me –> No joke, this is a website that is about you.
• .mobi –> Mobile phones. Yep.

And so forth…

Why else? Video Tutorials rock in my book! Reading a manual and jumping back and forth between pages, versus  actually seeing what is being describe are two very different ways of learning. “Visual” people learn best by watching or interacting. “Abstract” people learn best from reading or looking at diagrams. I am a visual leaner rather then an abstract-text learner. So watching the videos as they -show- me what to do is exceedingly more helpful then slogging through pages after pages of Codex – of which some of it is not up to date!

Down side / Up side: It is not a “community” per say. Only certain people are allowed to post videos, unlike YouTube. This means a greater quality. This also means slower wait times as they put up more and more specific tutorials. They have to put the basics up first!

Go check it out!

Welcome and thanks for stopping by to check out my site. Secondly I’m glad to see you are intrested in this little side service of Drakenhart Studios. We try only to promote services and resources we think are greatly beneficical to our viewers and clients. To do so we offer personal reviews, check out the product, site, or service, and act as a filter for the junk so that our viewers and clients don’t waste their time or money.

We prefer honesty and forthright opinions in our reviews, and do not like to sugar coat our dislike of something if a product or service isn’t what it claims. But we do strive to be professional about our reviews as much as possible to keep away from unwanted slander. In some cases the site mascot may insert her more vibrant opinions, but this if for comedic value only.

The reviews themselves, if beneficial, can act as a form of advertisement. In some cases if we like a product, service, or site well enough we might choose to join their affiliate program. This is a bonus, for all concerned, and shows we truly do enjoy what has been offered!

Quality is key, and we only join and thus promote affiliate services we believe in and feel will help our clients and viewers! If the product, service, or site is not of a quality, that damages our reputation first and secondly will eventually reduce the in-flow of any affiliate monies. Neither is then beneficial to us, and it does not actually help our viewers and clients! What good is that?  The money is a bonus that helps us to earn more profit, yes. But they are not how-ever our primary service. (See Articles on running a business and why this is actually important!)

Our intent is to do honest business -as- we do our business, and thus to serve our clients’ and viewers best interests.

If someone feels they have a product, service, web site, or such that would truely and honestly help our viewers, clients, and others you may ask for a review. Be aware though that there is a difference between a polite request and spam. We do not tolerate spam, nor harrassing emails requesting reviews for products we have previously politely declined.

We only review services, sites, or products that offer our viewers and client’s useful help, information, or such – As it is related to our site’s content! Thank you for understanding.

In the Beginning….

This has been a rather educational experience and then some. Suffice to say everyone is trying to sell something, and often they are trying to sell you convenience wrapped up in a pretty little package. Not here. My services are by far much different, though I too can offer you that same convenience by doing much of this work for you for a fee.

Instead I would rather share with you the information and sites I’ve discovered that helped me. Yet as I do this I hope I do not “shoot myself in the foot” in the process of sharing what I’ve learned. I am a Web Designer after all.

So with a little bit of extra work, a lot of searching, and carefully selecting my keywords in the search engines, I’ve dug up quite a bit of information. This is my Journey into Word Press to CMS conversion.

Wait. What?

CMS? For the non-tech-talk savvy, a CMS is short hand for “Content Management System” among other acronyms. What “Content Management System” means, to put it simply, is the back-end code that makes publishing web pages easier. It does the work of the monotonous tasks that normally must be done by hand. It does all of the of coding each page, for every page, in a site. All you have to do is create content!

It takes most of the repeated tasks, like coding the header and footer that are the same for every page, and does it for you while yet making sure it looks the same for every page.  Well that’s a “Cliff Notes ™” version of the idea. For a clearer and more specific definition, here is a Wikipedia Article on CMS for your perusal.

General Overview

So the idea here is that we are using WordPress to facilitate website building by changing the Blog software a bit.  To some this may be “cheating”, but to others it is a form of efficiency and speed. To be sure, one should always give credit where credit is due. So here is a cheerful ‘hats off’ to the various creative minds that have put in the work and effort to make WordPress what it is today!