Hi folks, you may notice a few changes in the look of the blog over the next few days as we do some tweaking. We’re not doing much, just widening the screen size so we can add the links and the archives to a sidebar. I thought it was a bit daunting to have to go all the way to the bottom of the page before you found the archives, plus it just makes more sense to have the links with the rest of the blog. Apologies to anyone still using a small monitor, I know it’s annoying to have to scroll sideways but Steve, my designer, is keeping the actual blog text to a size that ought to still fit on your monitors without any scrolling.

Things may occasionally look a bit weird as we shift stuff around, so please bear with us. I’ll let you know when we’re done and then if it still looks strange to anyone, you can let us know.

Also, I’m going off to Leeds tomorrow and probably won’t get a chance to post until Monday. It’s my youngest brother’s wedding on Saturday, so it’s fancy new shoes and smart hat time! I’m doing a reading in the church - wish me luck!

Danish artist, Peter Callesen makes amazing sculptures from cut paper.

Peter Callesen: Impenetrable Castle (detail), 2005

I love the simple whiteness and complex, intricacy of his work. Of course, the more complicated papercut sculptures will tend to impress most viewers because of the high level of skill and craft needed to make them - I’m sure they’re his ‘crowd pleasers’. However, in many ways, I’m more impressed by the very simple ones because I think it takes more courage as an artist to exhibit very minimal work. The less you have, the more focus there is on it and the more exact it needs to be.

Peter Callesen: Snowballs (detail), 2005

I’m also rather charmed by the contrast between his incredibly precise papercut work and his loose, exuberant drawings.

Peter Callesen: Drawing from The Dying Swan series

In fact, if you look at the different sections of his site, it’s apparent that he takes very different approaches depending on the medium. However, because he’s working with a central theme of fairytales, it all seems to come together. It’s clear looking at the rest of his practice, particularly his performance work, that ideas of absurdity, futility and even tragedy also play a large part in his thinking.

Michelle wrote in the comments on the Alt Images post:

Very informative post, Kirsty. One question: is there a place to learn how to create alt tags? The article is clear about what they are, but not how to make them. For those of us who are coding-challenged (or coding-averse, more accurately!), this would be vitally valuable information! Thanks.

No problem, Michelle, I’ll have a go at explaining it.

I’ll use this image as an example:

Kirsty Hall - art, photograph of Broken Cup Handle With Shadows

It’s actually pretty simple and you don’t need to be scared of it. OK, if you look at the code on your linked image, you’ll see something like this:

initial code here=”tt-flickr” href=”big long string of code”> img class=”tt-flickr” src=”a different bit long string of code”
width=”500″ height=”305″ alt=”Broken Handle 01″ /> closing code here

Please note, I’ve replaced the actual code with the helpful words ‘big long string of code’ and ‘initial code’ and ‘closing code’, so that we can see the code instead of just getting the picture again (working out which bits to change took me quite a while, since I’m pretty code impaired myself!) The code may also be in a slightly different order depending on how you’ve linked the photo. However, the only bit you’re interested in is the bit that says, alt=”whatever” /> and that will always appear somewhere towards the end.

In this case it originally said alt=”Broken Handle 01″ />, which was just the title of the image in Flickr. Now Broken Handle 01 isn’t very informative, it doesn’t give you my name or much about the image, so I changed it to: alt=”Kirsty Hall - Photograph of Broken Cup Handle With Shadows” />

Basically, whatever you put inside the two sets of quote marks between the = sign and the /> code will be what Google and the other search engines read as the alternative text for the photo.

If any of you are more technically minded than me and are smacking yourself on the forehead and yelling ‘dammit, that’s completely wrong’, then please do get in touch and I’ll change it but I’m 99% sure that this is right.

Making that text searchable and relevant is how your work winds up in Google Images so, you should be adding your name and keywords that are appropriate to that particular work, i.e. ‘oil painting’, ‘landscape’, ’sculpture made from pins’, etc. Apparently using keywords in alt tags can boost your general Google results too, although I’m not too sure how (magic Google dust sprinkled by the Google fairies maybe?)

Don’t restrict yourself to using alt text just as a promotional technique though. You should also make sure that your text is clear and descriptive to make your site or blog more accessible to disabled internet users. Text browsers can’t detect images but can detect alt tags and will translate them into spoken text for visually impaired web users. People in countries with poor web access may also have their browsers set to text only and they’ll see little written blocks of text instead of your images. Bear this in mind when you’re writing your tags. This article has more details on the level of helpful descriptiveness you should be aiming at.

It’s a shame that Flickr seems to turn the photo title into the alt text since I can’t quite bring myself to label all my Flickr photos with my name (I think it would look way too pushy, weird and tacky). Manually changing the alt text when I post images over here seems to be the only solution right now but I will do a bit of research over on Flickr to see if there’s some wonderful way to add hidden alt text to the images without putting it in the titles.

However, if you’re uploading images directly into your Wordpress site, rather than linking from Flickr, then you can set your alt text very easily. Simply go to the section where you upload images and type the description you want in the box that says ‘Title’. I imagine that other blogging software probably has similar options but fortunately changing the code isn’t too complicated - just make sure you don’t accidentally erase those all important little quote marks.

I hope this makes things a little clearer, Michelle. Oh, and if it makes you feel any better about the subject, I’ve just this minute realised that I have 235 envelope images to change over at The Diary Project. Someone shoot me now!

EDIT: on the advise of Gyrus, I’ve changed the term ‘alt tag’ to ‘alt text’ as the later is apparently less confusing and more accurate.

Gyrus also points out the following:

Sometimes you might not get the alt text come up when you hover the mouse over an image (it doesn’t come up on Firefox, for instance). Properly, the alt attribute value is “alternative” text, i.e. to use if you can’t see the image (either it’s a text browser, images are turned off, or it’s a speech browser reading the text out). That little “tooltip” that pops up, if it’s there at all, is technically supposed to come from a “title” attribute on the img tag. The title is optional, though. Just thought I’d mention this in case anyone gets confused on Firefox with the alt text not popping up when you mouse over it.

Unsurprisingly, given the prevalence of small objects in my own work, the idea of the miniature has always fascinated me. It’s easy to fall into kitsch with it though, something that Thomas Doyle manages to avoid. Instead, his tiny worlds capture and reveal intense moments of strangeness in which we’re the ultimate voyeur.

Sometimes it’s pretty clear what’s going on, as in this piece:

Thomas Doyle: The reprisal, 2006

But in others, the narrative is far less obvious, leading to an art that speaks of fracture and dislocation.

Thomas Doyle: They draw you out, 2006

His work makes me think about that moment in a dream when the unnerving quality of an almost normal situation suddenly overwhelms you and you start to slip inexorably into a nightmare.

I’ve been working on another couple of posts about blogging for the Artists Online Series and hope to get them posted in the next day or two. However, I’m on a deadline this week so I thought I’d just post a quick image to tide you over. I need to spend the evening in the studio - I’m making some jewellery for my brother’s wedding at the weekend, it seems to be coming up alarmingly fast.

Kirsty Hall - art, photograph of Mortar and Pestle

I adore mortar and pestles (although I can never remember which is which) and often use them in my work; I’ve done various pieces where grinding things down was an integral part of the process. This one was shot in the window of the studio I rented before I decided that I worked better from home. I love the grey tones in this shot - I haven’t done anything to it, it’s just how the light was that day.

OK, enough talk of studios, it’s way past time for me to get into mine!

mini pink series, originally uploaded by redredday.

Redredday from Flickr, who blogs over at the Red Red Day blog has been posting lots of lovely things lately.

I try to do a promotional or marketing thing every day. That sounds daunting but it can be quite a small thing and it doesn’t always involve contacting people. Today I’m working on the ‘alt tags’ on my images. I kept reading about using alt tags on images when doing research for my Artists Online series but I just wasn’t quite getting it. Then this morning I read this article, which clearly explains what they are and why you should use them and it suddenly clicked.

As an experiment I went into Google Images to see how often my work appears and the answer appears to be ‘never’. Oops! Oh, I’m there a couple of times, mostly when people have linked to my curating work but images of my work - er, not so much. So I’m doing yet another of my little experiments; I’m altering the alt tags on my images in this blog, so that they include my name and descriptions of the work. And when I’ve remembered how to do it, I’ll go into the gallery pages and check all the images there too. I’ll let you know if it makes a difference to my Google results.

Kirsty Hall - art, photograph of Stained Cup

About five years ago I went through my mother’s cupboards and took a series of documentary photos of the objects I remembered from my childhood. This photo is my favourite from the series.

The cup in question is a plastic cup from my granny and grandad’s old caravan. The caravan - and my grandparents - are long gone but the stains of their endless cups of holiday tea remain.

I just discovered Brazilian artist, Andrea Ebert on Flickr.

Andrea Ebert: Apoio

I just love the simplicity of her line. You can see more of her work at her website or on her Flickr.

Il Lee

Korean-born artist, Il Lee uses simple disposable ballpoint pens to make his huge, dense organic drawings.

If you’re New York based, his work is exhibited at Queen’s Museum until the end of September.

I spotted this fantastic artist on the ReadyMade Blog.

Sorry for the quiet couple of days - my brother is getting married next weekend and I had to spend some time getting myself organised for it, plus I desperately needed some studio time. That studio/computer/life balance can be a bit tricky sometimes, can’t it. It doesn’t seem to matter where I am, there’s always a little voice in the back of my head telling me that I’m in the wrong place and I should be doing about five other things!

Right, I’ve got a big pile of stuff that I’ve been collecting, so I thought I’d put some of it together in a links post.

Sister Diane over at the Craftypod has a real blast from the past with this great photo essay about Spirograph. It’s a total nostalgia hit.

Lindsay Landis has a tutorial about taking professional photos of small items that some of you might find useful.

Architecture blog, BLDG has a fascinating article about the allure of underground cities.

A moving article about designers who are working on creative solutions to help homeless people from the very intriguing WebUrbanist blog. I particularly loved the amazing inflatable buildings that run on the waste air from buildings.

This is a ridiculous story about a 13 year old boy who was suspended for three days by an Arizona public school because he sketched a picture that resembled a gun. The drawing is reproduced in the news story and I have to say that it looks far more like a plan of a building to me than a gun. Ha, I’m betting half of us would get ourselves suspended from school too! I used to draw mushroom clouds all over my school text books, it didn’t mean I fancied a bit of nuclear war.

I enjoyed this story from The Guardian about humour in art. It mentions the work of Hyungkoo Lee, whom I hadn’t heard of before but whose work tickled me.

…………………..

I’m behind on replying to the blog comments but I will get to it in the next few days. I do read and appreciate all your comments, even if I don’t manage to respond to them straight away.

Apologies to Annie Ok for misspelling her last name - apparently it’s Ok, not OK. I’ve changed the blog post in question, Annie.

Thanks go out to the following people, who all linked to here or to the Diary Project:
Abstract Inner Visionz
Natural Logo Design Blog
Max Lieberman
NoRaHzArT
Maramcp
Lindsay Obermeyer
Lisa Mikulski
and a special thanks to Tina Mammoser, who has been repeatedly pimping me in both her blogs.

Thanks folks, I appreciate it and if I’ve accidentally missed anyone out, I apologise.

OK, better get off and have a shower and then get back into the studio…

Alyson B. Stanfield has an excellent podcast this week about the importance of assessing art venues.

Considering your exhibiting strategy is always worthwhile. The artworld judges you not only on how often you show but also where you show and who your fellow exhibitors are. Not all exhibitions are created equal - a selected group show in a well regarded gallery usually rates much higher than an open submission exhibition with a high proportion of amateur artists.

Do you have rules for showing and places you won’t consider? If you don’t have any showing rules, then it’s definitely time you sat down and did some strategic thinking about this issue.

Personally, I won’t apply to exhibitions that charge an upfront non-returnable application fee unless the show is extremely prestigious or has some other compelling factor. For example, I’d consider putting in for the Jerwood Drawing Prize even though they charge an application fee because it has national exposure, a proper catalogue and is very well regarded in the British art scene. I chose not to apply this year but if my drawing continues to evolve then I might consider it next year. I know that my chances of getting in would be low because they have a lot of applications and the standard is high but even applying would feel like a step up to me.

There are a couple of other UK juried shows that I feel that way about but they’re fairly few and far between. Usually they’d need to be in an extremely good venue that I couldn’t otherwise get into at this stage in my career or have some other major advantage.

That said, I’m completely fine with paying a small fee to take part in things like local art trails. Now, if you look at it logically, this doesn’t seem to make sense - I’ll happily bung £15 to a bunch of artists organising a local event, while I’ll scoff at a gallery charging the same amount in an application fee.

However, there are couple of good reasons for this.

Firstly, I’m just more comfortable with artist-led projects - at heart, I’m a grassroots kind of girl! I know exactly what it’s like to put together projects on a complete shoestring and believe me nobody’s getting rich doing it! Usually you’re doing well if you break even.

But it’s not just about supporting local artist-led initiatives out of the goodness of my heart - art trails often have a lot going for them. Our local art trails get fantastic visitor numbers and good coverage in the local media. Plus, they can be a great way to build up a local following; add to your mailing list; attract local visitors to future shows and make vital connections with the movers and shakers in your regional art scene. On balance, I’m more than happy to pay for that, there’s enough value in the exchange to make it worth my while.

Secondly, artist-led projects usually don’t want money from you unless you’re accepted, whereas a lot of galleries seem to think that it’s completely fine to charge you money for the privilege of them looking at your work.

I know from my curating experience that having that kind of show can be an excellent money spinner for galleries. You get the fees from all the artists who’ve applied, not just the ones who’re eventually selected. Then, because you’re showing a lot of artists you get a bigger than average crowd when the artists invite all their friends and family. In turn, large crowds give you a higher chance of generating big sales. Believe me, I can completely understand why galleries put on these kind of shows - I’m just not sure that it’s my job as an artist to subsidise them.

I’m not saying that artists should automatically rule out every exhibition that charges an application fee but you should definitely consider the following things:

• Is the venue far enough above your current level that it would boost your profile considerably?
• Is there a proper catalogue?
• Does the show have a good reputation in the art world?
• Does the show get good media coverage?
• What are the visitor numbers like?
• Does the show traditionally have an excellent sales record?
• Is there a prestigious guest list for the private view?

As with everything where money is involved: caveat emptor! Know what you’re getting into and why, understand your reasons and don’t apply to or accept shows out of sheer desperation.

Sue Favinger Smith kindly pointed me in the direction of this article by Clint Watson about the importance of not relying too much on your Google ranking. He makes some good points and the idea of diversifying is something I’ll be following up in later articles.

Sue’s blog, the excellently named Ancient Artist, is also worth reading; she writes deeply and honestly about the emotional challenges of trying to develop an art career when you’re over the age of 50.

Sue Favinger Smith: Detail of another Elements Triptych

The next section of my Artists Online Series will look at blogging.

Blogging can be a very useful promotional tool for artists. It’s not a substitute for having a good online portfolio or for doing lots of offline work on your career but it can be a useful addition. Not convinced? Here are my reasons:

Blogging Raises Your Google Profile

Since Google prefers fresh content, regular blogging tends to push your Google results higher. Other people linking to your blog posts also increases your Google profile. Make sure you’re blogging under your professional name to get the full benefit of this.

It’s not just Google that likes new information: people are also far more likely to come and visit your website if you’ve got constantly changing content. How often is someone likely to blog about your really cool art? Once or twice tops. However, if you’re regularly writing good blog posts then you don’t just get repeat visits, you may also get repeatedly linked, which means… yes, better Google results! Rinse and repeat…

Blogging Reminds People You Exist

Promotion isn’t something that you do once and then it’s done forever: it’s more like exercising - you need to do it little and often!

Blogging helps with that; if people are constantly coming back to read your blog, then they’re naturally more aware of you. You don’t even need to constantly talk about your own art; just by visiting regularly they’re getting a gentle little nudge that you and your work exist.

Blogging Improves Your Website Numbers

Being able to say to a gallery or a funding body, “well, last month I had X number of visitors to my website” puts you in a better negotiating position because it proves that your work is already popular.

Of course, online popularity won’t substitute for offline experience like exhibitions, publications and residencies but it can add to it. Last year I was told by someone in the know that if you’re filling out a funding form and it asks about prospective audience audience numbers, you should definitely include your web hits. This had never even occurred to me but apparently Arts Council England counts online viewers as bums on seats!

Blogging Connects You With People

This is one of the most important reasons to blog: I’ve met some completely amazing people through blogging and some of them have turned into offline friends.

Blogging can help you find a group of people who support your art. This can include other artists, gallery owners and curators but equally importantly it can include lots of non-artists who are willing to be advocates for your work.

Cultivating a group of people who like your work is vital for any artist. Supporters will turn up at your shows, cheer you on, blog about you, tell their friends and even sometimes buy your work. Supporters are great!

Of course, you should also be cultivating a group of supporters offline through using things like mailing lists, but finding sympathetic people who genuinely want you to succeed can often be easier online.

Blogging Gets You Out Of The Garret

Many artists work in isolation and blogging can help reduce that all pervading sense of invisibility. My own studio is in my home: this is definitely the best option for my art practice but it does mean that I don’t always get as many opportunities to connect with other artists as I’d like. When I graduated, I did feel very isolated, lonely and out on a limb. I lessened that by starting a artists’ group with my college friends but it was a lot of work - I was the chairperson, general organiser and one of the main curators for our group shows. Now I get that all important sense of connection through blogging and online social networking spaces with a lot less effort. For real world connections, I have the Spike Island Associates Programme, local private views and my part time jewellery course.

Even if you are in a studio, there aren’t always as many opportunities to connect deeply with the other artists as you might expect - they’re busy, you’re busy and you might not have that much in common anyway. But online you’re not limited to your geographical surroundings - with a little effort, you can find a peer group with whom you truly click on an artistic and intellectual level.

Blogging Breaks Down Barriers

Sure, there’s a hierarchy in the blogging world but there’s also a surprisingly level playing field. You can leave comments in the blogs of ‘far more important’ bloggers and they’ll generally reply to you on an equal basis. I’ve spoken in blog comments to published authors and more established artists in a way that I would never have dared to do in other mediums. Blogging opens the channels of communication in a way that feels comfortable to me: I feel much more equal online, I’m less intimidated by what someone’s done and just respond to what they write and how they come across. Blogging makes me braver and that has translated into my offline promotion efforts.

In the same way, blogging can make you seem more approachable and human to people who are interested in your art. Why not do the next generation of artists a big favour and help to break down the myth that artists are all crazy, ear chopping introverts or outrageously drunken drama queens! Of course, if you do happen have that kind of personality then you might as well play to the gallery because I’ve been told several times that collectors just love that sort of thing…

You Can Reach A Wider Audience

People who might not be comfortable visiting a gallery are often happy to look at your work online, especially if you initially engage them with a blog post that’s relevant to them. Through blogging you can often reach people who wouldn’t otherwise consider looking at your art and those people can sometimes end up being incredibly supportive.

Through blogging, you can also reach a global audience who might not otherwise be able to see your work. To date, The Diary Project has had visitors from 39 countries, including places like Guam, Brunei and Malaysia, while this site has had visits from 29 countries.

I’m not saying this to boast - just the opposite, in fact. My point is that I’m not important yet. I’m very much an emerging artist rather than a well-known one: I’m only five years out of college and although I’ve had a steady stream of group shows, I’ve only had one solo show. I’m certainly getting established, through lots of hard work both on and offline but I’ve not exhibited my work abroad yet and I’m probably still be a couple of years away from doing so. [Although, do feel free to offer me an international show - I'm totally OK with moving it up my agenda!]

So it’s quite incredible that people from all over the world have already had the opportunity to see what I do. This would never have happened without the internet - it simply isn’t possible from my current position in the offline art world.

Blogging Empowers you

By being active online you take a little bit of the power away from the artistic ‘gatekeepers’ and put it back in your own hands. You’re not just sitting around twiddling your thumbs waiting to be discovered - you’re out there building an audience and creating your own opportunities.

Of course, the gatekeepers aren’t ever going to be redundant - artists still need gallery owners, exhibitions, audiences, collectors and funders in the offline world. I’m not trying to denigrate the artworld or its gatekeepers but particularly in the early days it can feel as though you’re banging your head against a brick wall and getting nowhere. I’m not complaining about that either; there’s absolutely no substitute for paying your dues and we all have to knuckle down and do it. However, a little bit of encouragement online can keep you going when it feels as though no one else knows you exist. You’re still going to have to engage with the artworld offline but blogging can help to increase your confidence to deal with those interactions.

Blogging can also build confidence to take bigger and bolder steps online. I was blogging over on Livejournal for 3 1/2 years before I got my website up. Setting up a website felt huge and intimidating and quite beyond me at the time, whereas setting up a blog was quick and easy. Blogging was undoubtedly a helpful first step towards finally getting my website sorted.

Blogging Strengthens Your Voice

When you’re blogging about your own work, you have to think about your work. You have to put into words what you’re trying to do and that’s damn good experience when you need to write artists’ statements and press releases. A lot of artists hate writing about their own work and find it excruciating - blogging can help you get over that.

Blogging Can Generate New Opportunities

I know people who’ve been published or been offered exhibitions because of their blogging. It hasn’t directly happened to me yet but I have approached people I know in the online world and scored opportunities that way.

Blogging Is Cheap

Blogging costs virtually nothing compared to other forms of promotion like postcards, poster and ads but it can be very effective. Writing a good blog post won’t cost you anything except time, energy and a few pence for internet access and the electricity to run your computer but it can get distributed all around the world. Not only that but when people link to you, the information is usually replicated on their blogs plus they also usually link back to you. It’s like you sent out a single postcard and someone photocopied it and gave it to all their friends. As we all know, word of mouth can be a powerful thing. Who knows how connected some of those people might be? Who knows how large the audience on their blog is?

Blogging is Fun!

OK, obviously I’m biased on this one but I think blogging is a blast. It’s an effective promotional tool for me but it never feels like work because I enjoy it. Believe me, that’s a world of difference to how I feel about writing press releases or designing posters!

A variety of views from other artists discussing whether blogging works:
The Painter’s Keys

The Empty Easel

Art News Blog

Mandy over at Messy Canvas has written a very entertaining post about the constant mental dialogue she has with her internal critic over whether she’s an artist or not:

“I think I would love to be an artist.”
“No, no you’re not artist material.”
“Well, that may be, but I would like to be one anyway.”
“You can’t be an artist, for a number of reasons: You can’t support yourself and be an artist. You can’t possibly take time away from all of life’s responsibilities to just sit and play with art. And you can’t just go around calling yourself an artist. You must be deemed one.”
“Hmmmm, I hadn’t thought of all that.”
“Yeah, I didn’t figure.”
“Did I mention that creating makes me come alive?”
“Did I mention that creating makes you go broke and is a silly waste of time?”
“Yes, yes, you did make that point. And I suppose it’s a good one.”

Read the rest here.

Ulf Nawrot from Germany seems to be doing a post-it project. Unfortunately I can’t tell you much about it because his site doesn’t have any information apart from the images and his contact details.

Ulf Nawrot: Post It Drawing

The page of post-it drawings is utterly fab though - go have a look. While the individual drawings are fun, you definitely need to see them all together to get the full effect. It really shows how effective a repeated form can be - even though the drawings are all quite different, the yellow of the post-it’s and the repeated size, ties them all into a coherent visual whole.

Sister Diana over at the always excellent Craftypod has a very inspiring interview with Jennifer Gurecki who uses her screen-printing skills to help raise money for Dolphin, a Kenyan charity that educates African teenagers about rape and AIDS. Unfortunately, the rape of young children is a huge problem in Africa because of the widespread belief that sex with a virgin will cure the disease. Dolphin look like they’re doing fantastic work in countering this disastrous myth and providing kids with the education and self defence skills to help protect themselves. Kudos to Jennifer for the money she donates from her handprinted knicker company, Pantyline Productions. Oh, and can I just say - “saving the world through panties” - one of the best taglines ever! Let’s hear it for knicker power…

Kirsty Hall: Valle Crucis Abbey, North Wales

Ooh, nifty. My lovely web designer, Steve, has added a little Flickr plugin to Wordpress. It puts your Flickr Photosteam directly underneath the editing text box in Wordpress and to add an image to a post you just click on the photo of your choice. I can’t believe how quick and easy it was. Let’s just hope it actually works when I hit publish!

Isn’t it funny, before today I hadn’t thought that going into Flickr, picking up and resizing an image took too long, but of course, now I do! You know, I remember the days when it took web pages five minutes to load and I was happy to wait in anticipation of what wonders would appear (why yes, I am old!) and now, I make tutting noises if a page takes more than 20 seconds. Sigh, the faster things get, the more impatient we all become…

The image is from Valle Crucis Abbey, which I visited on my recent long weekend in gorgeous North Wales - just click on the image if you want to see more of my pictures of this rather spectacular ruin.

the heartful blogger has started a project called 100 Letters, that is directly inspired by The Diary Project. I’m so flattered!

She will be sending out 100 proper handwritten letters in a year and she’ll be doing a drawing on the back of each. As you can see, her drawing style is quite different from my own.

The Heartful Blogger: Envelope No 1

I wish her every success and hope she enjoys her project as much as I (mostly!) enjoy mine. And now, I really must give myself a small mental kick and go and draw my own envelope…

OK, so how do you improve your Google ranking?

The SiteWizard has an excellent article called How to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking on Google. It might be a bit technical for some artists (it certainly lost me in places!) but it’ll give you a bit of background about how Google works. Searching for ‘improving Google ranking’ will give you lots of information along these lines but the SiteWizard article was one of the clearest I found.

My own tips are a lot less technical!

Use your name

You absolutely must link your professional name with your professional online identity. No one is going to be able to find you if you hide behind a pseudonym!

If you start a new blog, use your name in both the blog title and the username. Google seems to pay a lot more attention to the title and the username than it does to your profile, which is one reason why having your own dedicated domain name is such a good idea.

Even if you host your blog or domain on a free site, which tend to rank somewhat lower than dedicated domains, changing the title to include your name can make a big difference. I was mystified when I searched for myself by name last month and discovered that The Diary Project didn’t appear on Google until about page 15. It was outranked by far less important sites, where I was mentioned only in passing, and far newer sites, like this one. I just couldn’t understand it. Eventually I worked out that although I had my name in the profile, Google wasn’t giving it much weighting. I changed the title of the blog from “The Diary Project” to “Kirsty Hall: The Diary Project” and the page ranking shot right up. It’s now on the second page if I search just for my name and the first page if I search for my name + art.

Of course, you might not want to use your professional name in all your online interactions – you don’t necessarily want a curator or potential collector to find iffy drunken photos or blog posts where you’re talking about your sex life! Remember that your reputation is all you have online and you need to protect it. Have a personal online identify by all means, but if you don’t want it to intersect with your professional identity then make sure you avoid ever linking the two. Google is remarkably smart at joining dots. I linked to my Livejournal in a professional capacity twice and it now comes up in searches of me. This isn’t disastrous since I don’t write about anything incredibly revealing over there but now I always have to bear in mind that someone searching for me in a professional capacity could find and read that more personal blog. Since I don’t want to strengthen that Google association, I deliberately don’t link to my Livejournal from here (you’re welcome to go and read it though).

Switch Things On

OK, this is an area where I’m not strong but you need to make sure that you’ve got the right things switched on in your blog or website. If you work with a web designer, make sure they’ve optimised your site for search engines through using keywords. Check your website or blog software documentation and make sure that you’re being indexed by search engines. I used this article by Biz Stone to make sure that I had the right settings activated on The Diary Project, which is hosted by Blogger. Even if you’re not on Blogger, it’s worth a read because there are some good general blogging and promotion tips.

If you are on somewhere like Blogger, definitely make sure you’ve added your site to their own listings. It really is worth it: I get a steady stream of visitors to the Diary Project because it’s in the Blogger listings. I got 55 visits from there in the last month: it’s currently my fourth largest source of visitors to the Diary Project and provides more visitors to The Diary Project than this site does.

Use Your Natural Advantages

If you’re working with an unusual technique or imagery or have a less common name, then you’re always going to be easier to find on Google simply because there’s less competition.

Unfortunately if you’re called Joe Blow and you’re an oil painter, then you’re going to have to work a lot harder to stand out. So pick out the things that are unique in your work and use them in your profile and your keywords. To find those things, imagine you’ve only seen your own work once in a group exhibition. What would stand out? If you’re not sure, ask a couple of friends what stands out for them.

Write a snappy profile

Mention the important things in your profile - your name, where you’re from (in case someone is looking for artists just in your area), the materials you use, the imagery you use and any relevant keywords that describe your work. Keep it fairly concise, don’t use too much art jargon and and try to employ the sort of terms that would be used by someone searching for work that’s similar to yours.

Be In More Than One Place

As Andrea pointed out in comments.
“It’s easier to have a strong web presence of course if you’re something of an internet whore.”

Why yes Andrea, yes it is!

One reason that I’m all over the front two pages of Google like a cheap rash, is that I’m in more than one place online. I’ve used my own name in at least five sites of my own, plus other people have written about me or linked to my sites.

Now, getting yourself in multiple places online is something that definitely takes time and effort and since it’s complex, I’ll be discussing the most effective ways to do this in later posts. In the meantime, consider upgrading your profile on any sites you’re already on if it’s appropriate to do so (see earlier point about professionalism). You could also ask any galleries that show your work if they would link to your website. However, I have been told that some commercial galleries frown on artists being online, so you might want to test the waters fairly gently on that one.

Personally, I haven’t always done this well, I used to be positively shy and retiring. For instance, I’d been curating for several years before I twigged that I ought to put my name on the posters of the shows! I genuinely felt that I was much less important than the artists and it was ‘putting myself forward too much’. So at the moment, I have very little online documentation of the five years of curating that I did, although I’m planning to put together a curating page on this website in the near future. That said, at least one or two of the shows that I curated turn up in Google when you search for me.

Considering that I didn’t get paid for any of the curating I’ve done, I should at least have been getting some major props for it! It’s safe to say that I wasn’t doing myself any favours when I was hiding behind that bushel and I regret it now. But at the time, I just wasn’t emotionally ready to be more forward. Later in the series, I’ll be talking about how to promote yourself when you’d much rather hide under the bed clothes - believe me, it’s an area where I have plenty of personal experience!

Link to yourself

If you are in more than one place (see above) then make sure that you link back to yourself in your profiles. Don’t make visitors go searching for your blog, website or Flickr account but instead make it easy for them (there’s that mantra again!) by pointing them directly towards the places you’d like them to go.

Google also looks in the text of sites, so using your name, the name of an art project or your other sites in your own blog posts can also make you pop up on Google more often. You could try doing things like labelling your photographs when you blog them (something I’ve only just started doing). I don’t know for sure that it helps but it certainly won’t hurt. Plus it also makes it clear when an image is yours rather than another artist’s - important on a blog like mine where I blog both kinds of images, sometimes in the same post.

Linking to yourself in this way also ups your Technorati numbers. Technorati works by giving you a popularity ranking; you start out low and the more sites that link to you, the higher your ranking rises. Now, obviously you shouldn’t try to artificially boost your Technorati rank by linking to yourself more often than is necessary. However, there’s nothing wrong with pointing people at your other sites if it’s relevant to what you’re talking about or when there’s new content over there. It’s not manipulative or ‘too in your face’ unless you’re either sneaky or make a big song and dance about it: instead just think of it as being helpful, both for them and, admittedly, for you. Regular visitors will just ignore the hot link but new visitors won’t be left wondering ‘hey, what’s this other thing they’re talking about?’

Start A Blog

If you don’t already have one then start a blog.

Blogging improves your Google ranking in several ways.

Firstly, it means that your site has fresh content. Google and the other search engines prefer newly updated sites: a site that’s been updated recently will tend to place higher than a static site that hasn’t been touched in a couple of months or even years.

Secondly, if you’re blogging then you’re usually linking to other people and they’re hopefully linking back to you. I’ll cover this more in more depth in the articles on blogging but suffice it to say that links are very good. The Google spiders love links - it is called the web after all - so the more little threads you have going in and out of your site, the more visible you are to those spiders.

Be Patient

You won’t appear in Google instantly so don’t be disheartened if you don’t see changes overnight. You can help yourself by doing the things I’ve mentioned but the web is a big place and those little spiders, although surprisingly fast, can sometimes take a bit of time to find you.

If you haven’t seen any change in a couple of weeks then reconsider your options. Look at your Google Analytics and Technorati results again, see if you can spot where you’re missing out. Keep testing, do more research, do more reading and try new things. Go back and search for yourself in Google again and note any changes. However, be aware that something like building up a blog takes time; you won’t instantly get hundreds of visitors unless you’re already famous - in which case, you should probably be writing this series instead of me!

The next few articles in the Artists Online series are going to be about improving your search engine visibility. I should point out that I’m not an expert on this, so I’d recommend that you do additional research.

Set a baseline

This should be your first step because simply put, if you don’t know where you currently are, you can’t know whether you’re improving or not. It can also help you spot any obvious mistakes that you’re making - I just spotted one of mine!

So, indulge your ego and go type your name into Google.

Try the following versions:
“Your name”
“Your name” + art
artist + your medium + your geographical area
artist + something unique about your work

What do you find? Are you on the first or second page? That’s good, you’re pretty visible but if there’s a lot of variation between the different search terms you might still have room for improvement. If you doesn’t appear until 20 or 30 pages into Google, then unfortunately you’re effectively invisible because only the most determined person is still hunting for you. Even 10 or 15 pages down is bad because people can be pretty lazy when searching online.

Take a note of the most and least effective ways in which you appear. Try to think of other ways someone might search for your work and test those too.

If I type “Kirsty Hall” into Google then I come up as 5 results on the first page and 10 out of the first 20 results. That’s 50%, which isn’t bad but if I type “Kirsty Hall” + art, then 19 out of the first 20 results currently refer to me. When I’m searching for an artist, I will generally add the word ‘art’ to help rule out the non-artists who share their name so clearly a curator who already knows my name has an excellent chance of finding me online.

If they don’t know your name it’s always going to be harder but it can be done if they’ve seen your work and remember something distinctive about it.

The search terms, ‘artist + pins + sculpture’ will bring this site up on the first page. However, if someone has only seen my work with string, then I’m in trouble because I don’t appear in the first ten pages of Google at all if you use the search terms, ‘artist + knots + string’. I’d just better hope they add the magic word ’sculpture’ because that shunts me right back up to the front page!

The search terms ‘artists + drawing + envelope’ bring me up as the very top result on the first page - how lovely. Unfortunately, only I would know it was me because my name isn’t mentioned in the little blurb - instead the words, “Each day in 2007 I am doing a drawing on the back of an envelope, …” appear. Now that might be enough for someone to identify the Diary Project if they’ve heard of it before, but to me it instantly says, “oops, I need to change that profile”.

Remember my ‘Make It Easy For People’ mantra from the Flickr posts? Well that applies here too. You need to make it easy for people to find you but you also need to make it easy for them to recognise you when they do find you. While someone might not remember your name well enough to type it into Google, it’s quite likely to ring bells if they see it written down.

Being found when someone knows absolutely nothing about you is always going to be the hardest thing to achieve. Despite the fact that I list where I’m from and what I do in most of my online profiles, typing ‘artist + Bristol + sculpture’ doesn’t bring me up until the 19th page of Google. Now, obviously, there’s a lot more competition when you’re using more general search terms so it’s always going to be more difficult to get top results but I clearly need to do some work in that area.

Chart Your Progress

If you already have a website or blog then sign up with Google Analytics and Technorati right now. You can see how many visitors you’re getting, which sites are referring them and which other blogs or sites are linking to you. Monitoring your numbers from the beginning means that you can see when things start to improve, which is always encouraging.

Plus being signed up to Technorati can provide a small but steady stream of visitors, in addition to highlighting who has linked to you and in which post. The incredible detail in Google Analytics can help you to work out why things have improved, as well as being endlessly fascinating in its own right. For example, I’ve just spotted that this site has suddenly had 12 visits from Etsy, which is somewhat mystifying since I’m not even on Etsy. I can only assume that someone from there has linked to me (if you’re from Etsy, please do tell me how you got here, I’d love to know).*

Every so often, type yourself into Google to see if your rankings have changed. Don’t just look at where you place, look at how often you place. What you’re aiming for is to appear in the front two or three pages, over and over again.

Right, now that you’ve worked out how things stand at the moment, it’s time to work on making things better. Don’t be disheartened if you’re pretty invisible right now, you can make improvements fairly quickly.

* EDIT: Aha, mystery solved. Thanks to Tina Mammoser for pimping me on the Etsy forums.

EDIT: Leonardo Bjork points out that putting your name in quotes can make a big difference to your Google results. Since most searchers know to do that, you should make sure you try it when you run your Google tests.

Ullabenulla is a good art blogger who always seems to find inspiring links and images. Her latest post about gloves, features this lovely piece by Kate Fletcher.

Kate Fletcher: The Glove Laid Bare

Kate describes the work, thus:

“A pair of pristine white 1950’s gloves was a very beautiful and – aspirational thing for women of that time, although they often belied the work worn hands they hid.

I have turned the gloves inside out, dyed them with Eucalyptus cordata, stitched them, embellished them, so they are presented in a more raw and honest light, accentuating the more limited mould of their origins.”

I just love this piece - the idea of ageing something, turning it inside out and revealing the hidden centre, both physically and emotionally, appeals to me so strongly.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any real information about Kate Fletcher, she has another piece of work on the same website and she seems to be based in Tasmania, Australia but that’s it. Kate, if you happen to find this blog entry and you do have a website, let me know and I’ll happily link to it.

It kind of proves my point though, doesn’t it - artists need to have more information about themselves easily available online. While I don’t mind spending ten minutes looking for information on artists, it’s much easier for me to promote you if you pop up in Google straight away. And if you don’t have a website at all, then you’re definitely missing out on a lot of potential publicity from other artist bloggers. I have to go off and do this evening’s Diary Project envelope but then I think I’ll start looking at how to improve your Google rating, since it’s something that several people have asked about.

I just randomly found Annie Ok’s work on Flickr. I find her Flickr is a slightly easier way to see her work than her official website.

Annie Ok: 11-06

I love her use of thread, although it reminds me that it’s way past time for me to get back to my own Thread Drawing series.

Kirsty Hall - Mnemonic, January 2007

Short Answer

Yes!

Long Answer

Flickr can definitely reap big rewards in promotional terms with only fairly small investments of time on your part.

I know that posting to groups works because whenever I post an envelope drawing to even a single Flickr group, I always get a spike in my Diary Project numbers. I’ve had Google Analytics running over on The Diary Project for exactly one month now (I was using a less accurate site meter before then) and in that month I’ve had 89 direct referrals from Flickr. Posting an image to a group or taking part in a group discussion also often results in someone adding me as a contact, commenting on my photos or finding their way over here.

But that’s not the end of the story…

Just this week I had a timely example of how effective Flickr can be when Jeffrey Yamaguchi from 52 Projects promoted my work without any direct contact from me. He had seen an envelope image that I’d posted to his What’s Your Project Flickr group, investigated it and then very kindly blogged about The Diary Project.

Now, I’ve been meaning to write a press release about The Diary Project and send it to various sites but I hadn’t quite got round to it yet - er, you know how it is!

52 Projects was on my list of places to send a press release to because I’d read Jeffrey’s book and thought The Diary Project might appeal to him. Now, thanks to Flickr, I don’t need to send a press release to that particular site.

It was the work of about 30 seconds to post one of my envelope images to the What’s Your Project group, it was certainly much easier than writing a press release, looking up Jeffrey’s contact info and sending an email. And frankly, it was also less intimidating: posting images to Flickr groups is brilliant for an artist who hates doing promotion because it doesn’t feel like marketing. I don’t know about anyone else but I always feel a bit embarrassed writing and sending out press releases about my own work (come to think of it, that’s probably why I’ve been procrastinating on the damn thing for so long).

The Diary Project has already had 91 visits from 52 Projects and who knows, maybe some of those visitors will choose to link to the project in their own blogs. So, if we add those two sets of numbers together, you can see that Flickr has provided 180 visits to The Diary Project in the last month with very minimal effort on my behalf. All I did was upload my Diary Project images (something I had to do anyway) and then send a couple out to groups. I don’t know how many images I posted to groups but it’s unlikely to have been many since I only do it when I remember so it’s a little erratic! My promotional investment was probably about five minutes, tops.

However, it is important to note that all the images had the relevant info on them; a concise bit of blurb about the project and a link to the project blog. Without that information, the envelopes are just more drawings amid a mass of art images: knowing the context of the project is what makes them stand out and having the link right there on the image is what encourages people to find out more.

I’ve had more unusual Flickr contacts too: Garrison over at Holiday Pad Magazine found this site earlier in the week when one of my non-art photos tagged with the word ‘holiday’ popped up on the rolling feed at the bottom of his site. He tells me it was my recent taxidermy photos that piqued his interest because he couldn’t work out why on earth they were tagged as holiday pictures.

Click on the images if you want to find out why I have taxidermy pictures in my holiday photos!

I guess you just never know what’s going to attract someone to your site…

You know, I’d been on Flickr for about 6 months before I even started using groups. The first group I joined was a knitting group and it was another couple of months before I suddenly thought, ‘hey wait, maybe there are some art groups…’

Up until that point, it had honestly never occurred to me that Flickr could be a promotional tool (I’m slow sometimes…) but using Flickr groups has revolutionised the amount of interest people take in my work, as well as massively increasing my own enjoyment of the site.

Well then, that’s a fairly thorough round-up of Flickr and why you should use it. I hope it’s been helpful and that you all come to grips with it a bit quicker than I did! I’ll probably come back to it at some point but now the series is going to be moving onto other ways for artists to use the web. I haven’t quite decided what’s up next but I’ve got several pages of notes at this point and about 20 different topics to cover, including some thoughts that have come up in the comments. My notes keep expanding too, I thought the Flickr topic would be just one post but it seems to have stretched into five.

People on Flickr tend to be an easy audience for an artist to engage with because, by definition, they’re already interested in photography and that often spills over to an interest in other visual areas. People on Flickr usually LIKE looking at other people’s photos and they’re used to doing it.

Ah, a sympathetic audience - the battle is already half won!

You can engage people even further by posting strong shots of your work - use unusual angles, take macro picks, shoot your work in interesting lighting conditions and post research photos that show what inspires your art. Flickr people have a tendency towards visual literacy and they’ll respond well to good photography. We all know that it can be hard to take good descriptive photos of your work - the sort of photos that you need for applying for exhibitions. However, I’ve found that taking more atmospheric shots, especially close-ups, is a lot easier and it tends to be those sort of shots that people on Flickr respond to because they’re more photographically interesting.

Flickr is a powerful social network and this is why I recommend it over other photo hosting services. Flickr currently has 4,000,000 users and almost a billion photos hosted on the site. That might sound daunting - with those numbers, who on earth is ever going to see your work? Well, thankfully, Flickr is set up in such a way that it’s easy to share your work and make connections with sympathetic people.

There are lots of ways to be more visible on Flickr but basically you need to reach out and participate in the community. You can do this by:

• Adding people as contacts
• Joining Flickr groups
• Commenting on individual photos
• Marking other people’s photos as favourites

If you do some or all of these things, then other people will usually start looking at your photos.

Make Contacts

Making contacts is an excellent way to start creating a little network of like-minded people on Flickr. It’s a very informal process; you don’t need to already know someone beforehand, it’s fine to add someone simply because you like their photos. Very often people will add you back but it’s not obligatory, so don’t be offended if they don’t. If someone is listed as a contact then you’ll see their photos on your front page. If they add you back, then any new work you put up will automatically appear on their page, either on their front page or their contacts page. If you’re regularly posting photos then all your contacts are getting regular little updates on your art and being reminded about your work in a very gentle and non-invasive way.

So where can you find some people that you like?

Well, it’s likely that some of your existing friends are already on Flickr, if they are, then add them as contacts. You can also send invites to friends and family who aren’t already there. That should give you a bit of a start in creating a network but if you want to find a wider range of people with similar interests to yourself, then the best way is to join some Flickr groups.

Flickr Groups

Groups are one of the fundamental building blocks of the community side of Flickr. Most groups are a combination of discussion and photos: you can post your images to a place where they’ll be seen by hundreds of other people but you can also take part in the discussions, which are a good way to meet individuals.

There are groups on just every subject under the sun and most of them are open membership so you join with the click of a button, very occasionally you’ll have to ask a moderator to join.

Consider joining some of the art groups: Artists And Their Art is my favourite because I like their discussions but there are masses of others. You might not like a lot of the work that gets posted to the general art groups, I certainly don’t, but there are interesting artists active in some of the discussions. Also, posting photos to a group isn’t like being in an exhibition, where you’re often judged by the company you keep, it’s far more like putting a promotional postcard up in a huge display. Of course, you should still use your discretion - if you hate everything that’s posted to a group and the discussions don’t appeal, then it might be better to walk on by.

Does your work use a particular technique, image, theme, style or colour? Then there’s probably already a group on Flickr that covers it and if there isn’t, you can always start one. I’m on a wide range of Flickr groups (61 to date - it’s easy to get a little bit carried away!), from the more obviously arty ones to more unusual ones like wabi sabi suki, Coiled Knotted Twisted and Keys Keyholes Locks. Obviously it’s impossible to keep up with a huge range of groups: I have a couple that I’m more involved with and just randomly dip in and out of the rest.

When posting images to groups, obey the rules; many groups limit the number of images you can post in a day and off-topic images are likely to be deleted by the mods. Even if a group has unlimited posting, don’t post huge clumps of your work to a single group all at once because it drowns out everyone else’s work. However, picking an image that you like and posting it to more than one group is completely fine. Personally I try to pick a wide variety of applicable groups for individual images so that I’m reaching a wider potential audience. I also do this so that I don’t bore people. The same people often belong to all the groups about a single subject, therefore, to make things a bit more interesting for those people, I post different images from the same series to each of the related groups.

You can find groups by using the search tool on your Flickr page, you can search for groups, people, locations or through your own or everyone else’s photos. The Flickr search engines works by searching for tags, which is why you should be using them on your own photos, otherwise you’re effectively invisible to the search tool and consequently to other users.

Comments

It’s perfectly acceptable to comment on someone’s photo even when you don’t know them. There’s no need to feel shy, just dive in. The person will see that you’ve added a comment and the comment will usually be publicly available on that photo for others to read. Adding comments usually encourages people to come over and have a look at your work.

Obviously nasty comments are very unprofessional and aren’t going to make you any friends: as my father likes to say; “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all!” Just ignore the stuff you don’t like, there’s no requirement to comment on every single thing you see (you couldn’t anyway, it would be a full time job!)

Constructive criticism might be fine, especially if you’ve already connected with the person and know that they’re open to it but the culture of commenting on Flickr is generally positive and you should bear this in mind. If you want brutally honest responses on your own work, then you’ll probably need to explicitly ask for it in the text of the photo. If you happen to get a troll who hates your work and is just being abusive in comments, you can block them. It’s never happened to me but if you’re making more controversial work then it could be an issue.

When someone has left a comment on my work, I try to drop them a quick ‘thank you’ via FlickrMail, especially if they’re a new commenter. I like the FlickrMail tool because it means that as well as taking part in the big group discussions, you can have personal side conversations with people. It helps to break up the vastness of Flickr and make it a lot less overwhelming.

Favourites

This is the Flickr tool that I use least but it can be useful. It’s basically an extension of commenting: you mark other people’s individual photos as favourites and they’re then stored on a favourites page on your own page.

Where I have found favourites to be helpful is in finding new people: I’ve often found interesting new artists by going to the page of someone whose work I like and browsing through their favourites and contacts pages.

The Culture Of Flickr

I hope it’s clear by now that Flickr doesn’t need to be a dauntingly huge place where you’re destined to be invisible but can be a place where, with a little effort, you and your work can be seen and respected.

You shouldn’t go into it cynically though - regarding the other members of Flickr as just another marketing opportunity won’t go over well. It’s rude, disrespectful and contrary to the ethos of the place. Flickr isn’t just a huge potential audience for your work; it’s a community and you’ll be a member of that community. Respect the other members and respond to them with openness and generosity.

Flickr is about sharing and being generous with your time, energy and creative thoughts can reap big rewards there. Every time you make someone into a contact, comment on or favourite one of their photos or write something interesting in a discussion, people are likely to come and see who you are - they’ll read your profile and have a quick look at your work. If you’re lucky (and you’ve made it easy for them), they might also go on to visit your other websites or act as an advocate for your work by blogging about you.

Sorry about the length of this one, there didn’t seem to be a good place to cut it in half and there was a lot to say. We’re nearly done with Flickr posts now though.

I always describe Flickr as ’simple but deep’ and that’s a good way to think about it. I’ve already explained that I like the intuitive interface, however, there’s a lot more to Flickr than ease of use. I’m still coming to grips with what you can do over there but in my experience, the more you delve into Flickr, the more there is to find.

If you just use Flickr as somewhere to store your images so that you can blog them elsewhere then you’re definitely not realising its full potential. Today I’m going to run through a few ways for artists to make the most of Flickr, all of which relate to the powerful communal aspects of the site.

OK, first let’s quickly check what you should ideally have on your own Flickr before you start engaging with the Flickr community.

The first thing, as usual, is to make sure your actual work is up to scratch. Post good, strong interesting images of your art. Work in progress shots, clearly marked as such, are also perfectly acceptable - indeed, people usually enjoy seeing those. However, if Flickr is your only online visual portfolio, you may want to keep it a bit more formal and only post finished works.

Now sort your images into collections and sets: you can sort by date, by medium, by series or by any other criteria that makes sense to you. Once you’ve got the sets and collections you want, set up your front page so that your art collections and/or sets are visible alongside your photostream. This means that anyone clicking on your profile or one of your photos will instantly be able to see that you’re an artist and exactly where your art images are. Always make it easy for people!

You also need to have explanatory text under each photo. Obviously it’s best to do this when you upload images but if you didn’t have time then it’s easy enough to do it afterwards either by clicking on individual photos or, if you’ve got a lot to do, by using the batch organize button in the Organizer feature. When writing the text don’t use too much art jargon and be reasonably concise. However, people often like to know a bit about the reality behind the art so it’s fine to tell stories or to explain why this is a favourite piece of work.

If you have an art website or blog, then make sure that you include a link in the text of every single photo as well as in your profile. Having a direct html link from individual Flickr photos makes a big difference to the numbers of visitors you’ll get to your website: Flickr is my largest source of visitors to The Diary Project blog because there’s a direct link on every single envelope image. I’m currently running a small comparative experiment on this. Last night I checked my numbers in Google Analytics, took a note of them, then added a direct link to this site on all the art images that aren’t Diary Project images. I’ll let you know in a week or two how much difference it makes.

As I mentioned yesterday, your profile should contain an artists statement and/or a mini CV; a link to any other art websites; plus a way to get in touch with you, although you don’t have to give out your full address if you’re uncomfortable with that. Do think long and hard before putting your home address or phone number online because once it’s out there, it will stay out there. I’d recommend putting a rough geographical location though, it helps to orientate people and would be helpful if someone was looking for artists in your particular area.

OK, your Flickr account should now look presentable, although if you haven’t done absolutely everything on every single photograph, don’t worry over much. My own Flickr follows most of these principles but it isn’t absolutely perfect and I don’t let it stop me taking part in the wider Flickr community. At some point I need to go through and make sure that I’m following my own advice and everything has the correct tags and explanations!

Right, on to Part 2, where I’ll explain how to get started in the community side of Flickr.

And I’ve done it! Yep, there’s a new post over on the a-n Diary Project blog so I am now officially up to date with the Diary Project.

Sure, there’s probably a dozen other things that I could do for the project, especially in terms of promotion, but now that I’ve done that blog post there’s nothing that’s urgent or lingering.

My tip of the day: make a start on something that you’ve been procrastinating about. It probably won’t take nearly as long as you think and you’ll feel fantastic when you finally get it off your to-do list and your conscience.

I’ve updated The Diary Project this morning and it’s all completely up to date, which always makes me happy.

Kirsty Hall: Diary Project envelope from 8th August 2007

I am a little cross this morning though because I can’t find my username and password for my a-n projects unedited blog. I’ve been meaning to update it for absolutely ages - it’s getting to the embarrassing point at this stage - but it kept falling off the bottom of the list. I’d finally got myself organised to sit down and do it this morning and then promptly found that I couldn’t. Grrrr… I’m going off to try various options in the hope that I can drag something up from my memory, if not, I’ll email them and try not to look like a complete idiot!*

On the plus side, I’ve just learnt how to make text change size in Wordpress, the rather fabulous open source software that runs this site. This is happy-making because I try to learn something new every single day, even if it’s just a little thing. I like getting to the end of the day and thinking ‘well hey, whatever else happened, at least I learnt something today’. Hmm, I wonder if that’s partly an artist thing? What do you think? Certainly, I think that creative people of any stripe tend to have more than average curiosity and that’s often coupled with a desire to find out how things work and learn new things. I also think that creative people are frequently fuelled by dissatisfaction - you know the feeling, ‘well, it’s kind of OK but it could be even BETTER!’ Of such constant thoughts are new things born. It always amazes me that people who aren’t artists have this romantic notion about how it must be wonderful all the time, when in reality it’s usually more like an itch that you can’t quite scratch!

*EDIT: Much to my great surprise, I did manage to guess the username/password combination so I now have absolutely no excuse if I don’t update that poor neglected little blog today!

Htein Lin
Death Row
67 x 34 Vinyl housepaint on cotton 17 May 2001 Myaungmya Jail

Other people’s struggle to create art can be truly humbling. Burmese artist Htein Lin, a political prisoner imprisoned for supporting the pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, managed to create art in absolutely dire circumstances. Three years after his release, the paintings and drawings that he managed to smuggle out of a harsh Burmese prison are being exhibited in Asia House in London.

Htein Lin
Biology of Art
18 October 1999, Mandalay Jail, mixed media on cotton shirt 21 in x 21 in

I find his story incredibly inspiring:

“The death row prisoners, though tough and not the least bit aware of art, wanted to help him. “They wanted to participate in something. They felt, ‘Before our death, we can help this artist.’ ” So the men on death row willingly gave him their sarongs that were their only form of dress and served as Mr. Htein Lin’s staple canvas.

The prisoners would then be left naked because sarongs were only issued every six months. “They would sit there naked, but they were very difficult to punish,” Mr. Htein Lin said. So the prison guards would give in and issue new sarongs, ensuring a future supply for the clandestine artist.”

Read the rest of this excellent and moving article at The New York Times.*

* You may have to register.

OK, so I’m assuming that I’ve sold you on the benefits of using Flickr. So, how do you go about it?

I’m not going to spell out how to set up an account because that’s already well covered in the Flickr FAQ and help pages. What I am going to do is give you tips for using Flickr effectively as a professional artist. Again, I’m chopping this up into manageable chunks: this post will discuss ways to optimise your own Flickr space, while the next post will look at interacting with the wider Flickr community.

Use Your Professional Name

When you’re signing up, choose an account name that’s as closely related to your professional name as possible. Of course, if you have a common name this might not be possible. The reason for this is that it makes it easier for Google to find you. It also links your Flickr account to your professional online persona.

The observant amongst you will note that my own Flickr name doesn’t follow this rule, I’m kmhlamia on Flickr rather than kirstyhall. This is because I set up my Flickr account before I was thinking about using it as a professional space and it simply never occurred to me. Since I’m already known on Flickr by that name, I don’t really want to change it, although I am considering it.

You should also use your professional name in your Flickr profile. I have done this and it means that my Flickr page comes up on the third page of Google. Since this website is my primary website, that isn’t a problem for me but if Flickr was my main online presence then I’d definitely change my username to get better Google results.

Use Your Profile

Your profile is your friend: you can use it to host a mini CV and a statement about your work. Make sure that you include contact information and if you’ve got other professional websites, link to them. Don’t make it too long - people simply won’t bother to read it - and don’t link to anything you don’t want Google to find!

Think carefully about what you say in your profile since it’s part of the professional face you’re presenting to the world and it could be read by curators, collectors and fans of your work. However, Flickr is a fairly informal space so it’s OK to be a bit more relaxed than you might be elsewhere. Go with what you’re comfortable with.

Set Things To Public

You can set individual photos to different privacy levels in Flickr but if you want people to be able to see your work then you need to set your photos to public. You should also set your photos to bloggable to encourage other people to promote your work for you. Setting your images to ‘artwork/illustration’ instead of ‘photograph’, can help people to find your work since it’s possible to search just for ‘artwork/illustration’ on Flickr. If your artwork contains imagery that could be considered ‘unsafe’, then you should read the relevant section of the Flickr FAQ carefully and set your safety level accordingly but be aware that this may limit who can see your art.

Protect But Share

While I approve of Creative Commons in general, I don’t usually recommend it to other artists. However, if it’s appropriate for your work, then Flickr offers the full range of Creative Commons options. Personally I have kept traditional copyright on all my Flickr images because it’s important for me to retain full control over my work. However, I also put a note in my profile saying that it was fine to blog my images without asking but any commercial use needed my explicit permission.

Putting any image of original artwork up on the web is always a risk. Posting lower resolution photos limits the risk of people printing out copies but you do have to keep an eye out for people nabbing your images and claiming them as their own. If you’re really worried you can put watermarks in your images before you upload them to Flickr. However, I believe the best defence against this is to become well known online and I’ll be discussing ways to build up your internet art profile in later posts.

Tag Your Photos

Tags are one of the most useful tools on Flickr and can help you in lots of ways. Firstly, they make your own life much easier. For example, perhaps you have a series of artworks about the same subject but you uploaded the photos at different times. Instead of searching for each photo individually within your photostream and maybe missing some, you can do a search using your tags. You can also search for images which don’t have any tags, just in case you forgot to tag some of those particular photos.

Tags can also make it easier for other people to find your work because they can search for tags within the whole of Flickr or just in your account. Of course, this works better if you’ve got fairly specific tags; ‘painting