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We are celebrating an exciting time to be an artist and the new features artspan has added to help make this your best year. |
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Our continued
resolution is to give artists the tools they need to show and sell their artwork to the world.
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This month we are taking a look at
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The
Artist's Reflection
Before the selfie, there was the self portrait. The great masters would often use their reflection to show off their skills, and in so doing, immortalizing their likeness for the ages.
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Plus
Artists In The Spotlight
Two talented artists bringing celebration to their artwork
Artspan Resources
What buyers want to know about your artwork.
Want to get more exposure in 2023?
Artspan on Instagram is showcasing members daily. Find out how you can be one.
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Since the mid-15th century with the availability of better and cheaper mirrors, artists more frequently depicted themselves as either the main subject or as important characters in their work.
Self-portraits were a convenient exercises because the model is always available and works for free
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“Who sees the human face correctly:
the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?”
― Pablo Picasso
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Painting by William Linmark |
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Mere Image at 47
A self-taught artist with no formal training. Diana Barwald had a passion for drawing as a child in Chacago and experimented with paint and color as a teenager. After working as a legal secretary for 40 years and moving to Salt Lake City, Utah in the 1980s, her artwork began to take on an additional breadth and scope.
Beginning in middle age, she began to more zealously pour herself into her artwork and produce more prodigiously. Now, ready to retire, she has time to both create the art and try to get more of it out into the world.
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Self Portrait
Rebecca Jane MacLachlan (b. 1978) is an American artist who received her Bachelor of Fine Art in Printmaking and Drawing from Colorado State University in 2001. During this time she also spent a year studying printmaking in Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy. After a successful career in administration and event planning, she returned to fine art in 2017 and earned a Master of Fine Art in Intaglio Printmaking and Painting from Studio Arts College International in Florence, Italy.
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Self Portrait In A Black Shirt
Landscape painters often depict the lay of the land in a broad view. With my current work, I narrow the field of vision. Taking the focus of the eye's direct gaze, I put the viewer right in the thick of it whether the subject is the raw beauty of a Pacific wave, the remoteness of an Adirondack summit, or the serenity of local fields and a small nearby pond. Calling myself a painterly realist, I keep the architecture of the landscape absolutely accurate and recognizable, but use my paint with a free hand, because for me, the thrill of painting is about the paint.
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Self Portrait
Art is life. These three words encompass exactly what art means to me. Although I have never taken formal classes nor have been trained in "classic" techniques, the passion to create gives me no other choice but to do exactly that. I create, passionately.
I consider my creations to be what I call, "African diasporic art" because it represents the perspective of experiencing the world through the lens of being culturally African yet still influenced by the perspectives and culture of the world in which I have been transplanted. The result is African art peppered with the flavor of my American experience.
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In Retrospect
This collage is an autobiographic look at the artist's career. As the logo states, it is "crafted with durable materials." All except the first place ribbon that has faded from royal blue to dusty mauve. What has it all been about? Is art nothing more than a vain and idle fancy of youth? Or is it a lifetime of self discovery and eventual acceptance? Perhaps it has been both.
The denim jeans and shirt is recycled clothing from the artist's studio. The photo and blurb is from a 1970's press release.
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Self Portrait In Rational Space
Detlef “Dego” Gotzens has been working with glass, as well as metal, wood and stone, for over 40 years but its painting that he keeps coming back to. Each informing the other his stained glass and design work seeping into the abstraction of his pictures, the colors and forms evolving out of a lifetime of restoration work in Architectural projects, in churches, parliament buildings and cultural centres.
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Nostalgia
Sanda Manuila creates oil and pastel paintings, which are stylized representational images from which exude an allegorical quality. Her visual stories depict a state of mind in which the boundaries between dream and reality have become very fluid. Her purpose is to make art that depicts the challenging path of life in these disturbing times, and that warns about the danger of the denial of climate change. By charging her work with emotional energy, Manuila engages the viewers to wonder about what they see and how they feel.
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Self Portrait
Originally from Kyrgyzstan, Dasha Shkurpela lives in New York and works in painting, drawing and sculpture. She has many versions of her self portrait spanning the decades along with her other work.
Dasha also writes non-fiction where she explores how trauma is transmitted inter-generationally when tragic events and historical crimes are obliterated from both memory and history, and how trauma continues to be alive and present in its absence
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Self Portrait
The image transforms by addition, alteration, or reduction until what is acceptable to me as a final resolution has been reached. Hopefully, the result presents an interesting configuration of forms, values, colors, and textures that produce a desirable drama, poetry, optical juxtaposition or intellectually stimulating image that moves the viewer.
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Leave Nothing To The Imagination
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When selling your artwork online, providing a potential buyer with all the information they need to have confidence in purchasing your artwork is the most important thing you can do to make that sale! |
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First and foremost, your images have to be sharp and accurate in color representation. |
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Add images of details such as, texture, brushstroke, unique techniques etc. |
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Give your potential buyers examples of how your artwork will look in their living room, bedroom, hallway or office
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Give details on your process, inspiration and execution of your artwork. Include size, medium and framing, if included.
The more you can tell the buyer the more confidence they will have to make that purchase.
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This painting is an 10" square on a deep stretched canvas. It is framed in a black wood floater frame.
This painting, Teal Blanket, is a more expressive figurative of one my models. Breaking down the surface to fragmented areas of interest and repeating the coloration in both the positive and negative areas.
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Make sure to let your customers know about
LIVE PREVIEW
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Have your artwork enabled with LIVE PREVIEW
available for all website levels.
LIVE PREVIEW allows a potential buyer the ability to see how your artwork would look in their own home using a smart phone, pad or tablet.
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Your artwork needs to be for sale, have listed dimensions and price to be eligible to view with
LIVE PREVIEW.
Check your control panel settings to make sure your artwork is taking advantage of this valuable tool.
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It's a new year and a great time to update your website with images, videos and fresh design.
Learn how
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Help clients visualize your art in their home by adding some photographs of your art in a home/office setting.
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We have made some changes to your contol panel tools. Learn how to use them here.
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Artspan resources & articles contain great tips!
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Artists In The Spotlight
Two artists bringing a sense of celebration to their work
Both of these artspan members are creating artwork that is full of color, literary references and atmosphere. Whether it's Paris, New Orleans or anywhere in between, the local flavor where ever they are focusing is abundant.
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Born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. William Z. Linmark has a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Hawai. Linmark’s passion for travel and exposure to other cultures, as well as his cosmopolitan upbringing, all play important roles in shaping his artistic vision. |
His artworks have been exhibited in the U.S. and Paris, France. He currently resides in Minneapolis and Honolulu.
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"In these series of paintings, I want to capture the essence of Parisian cafe scenes and portraits of artists and writers living in the City of Light during the early 1900's. In Cafe des Artists for instance, I seek to capture the fleeting moment of time in a cafe, rendered in myriad of rhythmic colors. In contrast with the portraits of writers where colors are more settled, allowing the sitter's expression to reveal its emotions".
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William Faulkner Enjoys New Orleans Jazz
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A fine artist by training, Grayce DeNoia Bochak attended Temple University for her BA in Art and received a MFA in Painting with concentration in illustration from Marywood University. Additional studies took her to Rome, Italy, Parsons School of Design and Alfred University. Her art experience spans 35 years, inclusive of children’s book publishing/teaching on university level. |
Celebration At The Virginian |
Skill as a watercolor artist is shown in Grayce's published books: The Gamemaster, Paper Boats, The Long Silk Strand. Her picture books were chosen to be printed as Bound to Stay Books, receiving starred reviews from both Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. |
Grayce keeps a private studio in Cape May NJ & Pirate’s Alley, French Quarter, New Orleans. Having several art group and solo showings of watercolors from Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey & Louisiana, she also creates paintings for New Orleans Faulkner Society’s Annual Big Read Gala & Auction. Her current watercolors delicately reflect fascination in the mysteries of these two popular destinations. |
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#Are You Following Artspan on Instagram?
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How does artspan get exposure for its members on Instagram and how can I benefit?
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Artists looking to showcase & share their work to the general public need to be on Instagram.
Instagram is a purely visual platform, which means it’s absolutely perfect for you! A whopping 1 billion Instagram users worldwide. 500+ million people use Instagram on a daily basis with over 40% of them logging on multiple times per day. More collectors than ever are turning to Instagram to find new art and it’s not just your average home decor buyer. Notable art collectors, curators & corporate art buyers have long ago set their sights on Instagram as an important discovery tool.
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How do I get started?
Create your username, add your artspan website link to your profile, and start uploading!
The best way to start learning is to simply start somewhere.
Take quality photos of your art head-on & make sure not to use angles that distort the image. Utilize good lighting without shadows to show the art as it’s truly meant to be seen. Take multiple photos of the same artwork, then choose the best and delete the rest!
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The average Instagram user has up to ten hashtags in their post. A hashtag, simply put, can be thought of as its own magazine, or gallery. People use them to become discoverable to users who aren’t already following them. As an example, let’s use the hashtag #Aperture. It’s a popular magazine within the photo community and therefor utilized by hundreds of thousands of photographers who want to share their work. Look at the hashtags other artists are using. Click on them to research what works best with your artwork. Is it a #fineartpainting, or is it better suited toward #abstractart_daily? Try to steer clear of generic hashtags like #art or #pretty and try to use unique hashtags that have under a million posts so that you don’t get lost in the recent hashtag gallery. Rotate your hashtags with every post so that your posts stay fresh and don’t seem like spam to other users and the Instagram algorithm.
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Where can we find you on Instagram?
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