Case-Notes from the Artsy Asylum

Susan Take a Trip Through the Past

Run, the Illustration Friday topic for today reminded me of an assignment that has always been popular with my students. Well, not popular when I assign it, but among pieces that draw raves at student exhibits.

Yes - it's true - I make them draw their shoes. Or their grandmother's shoes. Or my son's shoes; an ever changing array of Converse High Tops that had been retired to the "draw these" box in the studio.

Always a kid full of energy; when his shoes were worn out they had tons of character. Yellow, turquoise, bright orange - you name it, we had some student's drawing of them, and those all important "negative spaces" where the shoe material used to be. 

So the "run" assignment remembers art classes, funny and talented students, and the clothing choices of my funkily stylish son.

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Inside Secrets of How You Interact on the Internet

You may have heard of the Pew Internet & American Life Project but you may not realize that Pew wants to know what YOU do online. Happily you can be as anonymous as you like.

If you want to share how you view, write, and read online you can chime in. They are looking for information not only from the 7% who blog hoping to profit from it, but the much larger fifty plus % of blog users who have come to rely on them to express ourselves, document personal experiences, and share with others.

They created an Online version of the survey featured in the "Bloggers" report so you can see the questions in context and can comment on some specific aspects of blogging. Contribute, read, and get the inside secrets on how people interect in blogs and otherwise online.

Helpful Info: Not only does Pew do research, they also maintain a huge list of links. The information ranges from the general statistics that you'd expect to more details about Internet traffic, search engine stats, hardware, statistic clearinghouses, market research, federal information, e-commerce and legal issues.

The Research/Advocacy Orgs section links to pertinent foundations and associations. Great resources - if only I had time to wade through it. The amount of information on the internet is so overwhelming it can make a person want to go back to pasting bits of paper on stuff. 

Like artistamps maybe? See how smoothly I glided over to that topic? :^)

How Desire Trumps Talent Across the Boards

Desire and dedication trumps talent. The person who winds up excelling is generally the one who wants to get better, not the one with the natural gifts for writing, science, bowling, drawing - or whatever.

There is an insightful piece at Creating Passionate Users about succeeding - and this intriques me because it's a topic I talk about often with students. My experience is that a student who wants to do well with what I'm teaching - and who will practice and then practice some more - will have more success than a  student who is simply saturated with talent.

Kathy Sierra wrote

"Apparently God-given talent, natural "gifts", and genetic predispositions just aren't all they're cracked up to be. Or at least not in the way most of us always imagined. . . . In theory, again, anyone willing to do what's required to keep getting better WILL get better. Maybe the "naturally talented artist" was simply the one who practiced a hell of a lot more. Or rather, a hell of a lot more deliberately"

As manino at Mercurial puts it

"if we were willing to put in more hours . . .  we could become good. Great. Potentially brilliant. (The) dedication to mastery drives the potential expert to focus on the most subtle aspects of performance, and to never be satisfied."

My experience is the same and I've seen it happen over and over. It doesn't have to be drudgery but it will be repetitive. In short,

• If you want to draw well, draw every day. Then look at what you've drawn. Examine it carefully. What could you do differently to improve it?
• If you want to write well, write every day. Then rewrite. And write again.
• If you want to network well, start making connections.

If you want to play golf well, practice. Play whenever you can. Just don't tell your spouse it was my idea.

 

Get Rid of Your Connections for Good

Featuring an old blog post that still rings true . . .

Unfortunately, a lot is lost when blogs disappear. And most people don't know that this can happen until their blog - or the blog belonging to someone they know - goes missing.

It's not simply that our entries are gone. Those are easy enough to put on another blog site if we've backed them up. But all of the incoming links from other bloggers to our posts are suddenly no good.

Now granted, for the "biggies" of the web, this phenomenon of blogger/blogspot sites turning up missing may be unimportant. But for the rest of us it really does make a huge difference in our visibility. Our Google and technorati rank suffer huge hits when freebie blogs go >poof<

In her comment about blogs hosted on free platforms Manekineko brings up a great point about backing up your data. But the bigger picture is that our entries are not everything. While content is still king, connections are what make the bloggosphere more than just lists of websites - and the very vibrant network that it is.

I'm the poster child for how connections provide benefit. In the past year since I moved my blog to an improved platform Google actually points people towards the Case Notes from the Artsy Asylum blog and though it's not in the Technorati top hundred but it's not on the bottom rung of the 50 million other bloggers that technorati is following either.

It's only thanks to those links passing around the blogs that Case Notes has gradually climbed. That means more visits to the Gallery; more people see my work; more consulting jobs come in; more cards being sent.

So there's a lot to think about when building a blog. And it's not just Shelly at websource.com who thinks freebies are no bargain.

The Blogsquad builds client blogs on Typepad and have reservations about freebies. And what these folks have to say on the topic is just scratching the surface.

• BlogBloke asks Is it time to leave blogger?
• Kim Priestap says "I moved . . . to my current typepad site  . . . my blogger site was hijacked."
• Joining his voice with multiple others like Steve Rubel Philipp Lenssen describes Blogspot as More Spam than anything else
• Tadpole  has experience as well and has "been forced to ban all comments that contain links to blogspot blogs"

Lots to think about.

How to Avoid Being a Disappearing Blogger

Imagine that you get up one morning and want to check your blog to see if you got any comments overnight.

But instead of loading the page you get some sort of error message. Your blog, hosted on a free platform has disappeared. See this true life example of writer Martyn Clayton's blog

All those well written articles are gone and with them the comments assembled with time and hard work . . .

Poof! 

Connections between your blog and related posts in a variety of other blogs: evaporated. The position you'd finally achieved when you googled your keywords or the name of your blog: worthless. Why? Because when someone clicks on your links you're not there. There go the potential clients and customers.

10 Eassential Ways to Improve Your Profile as a Blogger

1.) Ping multiple search engines every time you post so that they know you've updated your blog.

If you haven't heard of pingoat where you can ping  technorati, weblogs.com, newsgator, blo.gs, feedburner, yahoo, feedster, blogdigger, pubsub, blogrolling and more with one click, I'd suggest adding it to your vocabulary - and toolbar - today.

2.) Providing links to content that others can share will make you stand out in their mind.

Create a Slide Show or youtube video. Write one of those always popular "List" posts. Take part in a Group project like Darren Rowse's popular writing projects or Benjamin Yoskovitz 's "Where Is Basil?"

People love to send emails with links saying "have you seen this?" Let your link be among those available for them to share.

What Threw the Roadblock in My Thursday Inspiration

Last Thursday those creative folks at Inspire me Thursday had a surprise for us. It was essentially "Do Your Own Thing" day.

I've been having some trouble with arthritis in my hands, so this project started with wondering about how the progressive nature of arthritis would limit the scope of my work in the future, and how people who are self-employed might better prepare for unanticipated roadblocks in our paths.

With burgeoning technology, the potential for creative solutions for those of us who work for ourselves is increasing. To protect my hands for example I use a program called shortkeys which allows me to enter a short string of characters to produce a longer text block.

A timer on my laptop reminds me to take a break and tracks the activity level on the computer throughout the day.

A speech recognition program is in my future and although I most likely will not be working with clay or doing detailed hand printmaking, alternatives like photo-transfer pieces, collage and other mixed-media work seem like viable options.

In the end, this Thursday reminded me of the importance of resting joints that are acting up and it also provided the incentive to do some preparation for the future. It was only later that I got around to creating a postmark for the smallest of my art pieces, the Artistamps of Ephemeria.

You can look through projects I've done for other Inspire Me Thursday and Illustration Friday here in the blog, or visit the Inspire Me Thursday website for more ideas and inspiration.

Your Secret Resource for Blog Success

Some of us are figuring out that we don't have to pay for ads, put ten reciprocal blogrolls on our sites, or join thirty Yahoo groups anymore in order to get our ideas and our work seen.

Unbelievably, even artists, writers and other people like us who run one person businesses can reach out to the world. And it's the thousands of readers all across the web who are actually in charge of who gets publicity!

Play Time: Illustration Friday Artwork

The latest Illustration Friday theme is: Play. I'm having a little issue with arthritis in my hands so I'm quite a few days behind in all my hand-work but it's here at last.

In the UK Telegraph Andrew Gimson writes   "The Americans are more old-fashioned than us, and what is equally admirable, they are not ashamed of being old-fashioned."

It's true. And here I think I'm having a flashback to 1950

For a larger view click on the image at right.

This blog also contains other art from my participation in Illustration Friday. Enjoy browsing.

And you can catch up on what a wide variety of designers, painters, illustrators and others have created for this theme by going to Illustration Friday

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Lady Jane pointed me in the direction of my inspiration
 

 

Blog Snobs Don't Leave Comments

In a comment to Blog Snobbery 101. a very droll post from Ara Pehlivanian talking about making yourself look important by not allowing comments among other things, Sarven Capadisli writes:

"On the other side of the coin, there is snobbery by not leaving a comment."

And Sarven goes on to jokingly claim that if you comment you will encourage the blog author and having multiple comments will make the author look "cooler" implying that your aim might be to appear distant and uninvolved.