Something a bit different today - my very first blog tour. Alyson B. Stanfield, author of I’d Rather Be in the Studio! The Artist’s No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion is here to promote her book. I recommend visiting the other stops on the blog tour, I read them all last week and it was fascinating to see everyone else’s questions.

Read on to find out how you can win a free copy of her book, but first here’s our short interview:

KH: Firstly, I’d like to congratulate you on the book, Alyson, I think it’s amazing and an incredibly valuable resource for artists. I’ve already started working my way through the exercises, I’m currently rewriting my old artists’ statement using your guidelines and although it’s not finished yet, I already feel that the new statement is going to be much more accessible and powerful.

AS: Kirsty, I’m so glad to hear that! I’m glad that you found value in the book right away–that you could pick it up and use it immediately.

KH: I did have one small problem with the book though – it was really tough to come up with a question for the blog tour because every time I thought of one, I’d turn the page and find you’d answered it already! It was as though you were anticipating my needs before I even knew I had them.

AS: I’m psychic that way.

KH: I know you’re a big fan of blogging for artists, as am I. However, I’ve noticed that much of the art world doesn’t seem to have caught up with us on this; I feel that I’m far better known online than offline. So my question is, how can an artist translate blogging success into offline art world success?

AS: Oh, wow! You are spot on with this question, Kirsty.

First, let’s define “the art world.” I’m going to assume that you mean the traditional art world that is defined by high-end galleries and museums. Is that correct? (I tend to believe that there are many different art worlds that are somewhat oblivious to one another.)

Second, remember that blogging is only one tool in your marketing arsenal. It has to be part of an overall self-promotion plan in which everything works together to help you succeed. Again, I return to your original question, which is a search for “offline art world success.” And I have to reiterate what I wrote in the book: You must define success for yourself (pages 9-12). Knowing what “offline art success” means to you will help you clarify your path.

The best advice I can give you (an artist in the “online art world”) is to keep it up. The more people who know you, the better off you are. It doesn’t matter if the people are in a virtual or real space. It only matters that you are known and that you keep your name in front of people.

At the same time, most art needs to be appreciated in a real space. And most people need to see the art in a real space in order to fully value its complexities. That means getting your art out there and on exhibit as much as possible. Keep showing, keep showing, keep showing. Use your online contacts to set up shows in new venues or to trade venues with artists in other locations. Differentiate yourself from other artists (and other artist-bloggers) as much as possible.

Kirsty, I loved the energy behind The Diary Project. I think this was a stellar example of how to bring the virtual world into a real space. Artists who create online projects such as these should also come up with some sort of marketing plans to go with them. These might include mailings (snail mail as well as email), updates to patrons and potential galleries, being a guest blogger on other sites, creating articles about the experience, issuing press releases, and so forth.

Getting your art appreciated in the real world might also mean developing strategic alliances with others (pages 190-193). In The Diary Project, I can see possible strategic alliances with a stationery (envelope) supplier, stamp collectors, or even with the post office. I can’t tell you that this will meet your definition of success, but I can tell you that these people exist in a real space and are involved in the real as well as the virtual world.

Bottom line: an online presence can’t be seen as separate from your overall goals. Take a serious look at how the blogging fits in with your definition of success and what you need to do to supplement and to build on your Internet fame.

KH: Thanks for your detailed answer, Alyson, that’s really helpful to me and I hope it’ll be helpful to my readers as well. Guess it’s time to do the first step in your book and define just what I mean by success.

Thanks for visiting Up All Night Again, Alyson and best of luck with the book.

And now onto the all-important freebie! Visit this site, read the instructions, and enter. Your odds are good as Alyson is giving away a free copy on most of the blog tour stops. You can increase your odds by visiting the other blog tour stops and entering on those sites as well. I highly recommend that you do this as the book is great, with masses of helpful information and lots of well placed nudges for even the most reluctant artist (and let’s face it, when it comes to promoting ourselves, most of us need all the help we can get). In short, it’s a very helpful addition to any artist’s library. Although I got my copy for free, I would have gladly paid for it; I found it much more useful than the other books I’ve read on this subject.

I’m delighted to announce that several of my drawings are now available for sale at The Shiny Squirrel.

The drawings were inspired by The Diary Project drawings but they’re done on nice paper instead of envelopes! They come mounted but not framed to keep postage costs down and so that you can choose your own frame. The drawing with the blue ovals is particularly beautiful in real life - it’s my personal favourite from this set. You can’t see it clearly from the photograph but the blue background of the ovals are covered in tiny circles of white ink.

OK, enough sales talk, I need to put some clothes on, dry my hair and then get on the Manley ferry to go and visit the Art Gallery Of New South Wales and the botanical gardens, which are conveniently located next door to each other.

So apparently getting a lower wisdom tooth out is a really good way to lose an entire week. I had an upper wisdom tooth removed in December and while it was sore for a few days it wasn’t too bad, so I was expecting the lower one to be similar.

Wrong, very, very wrong!

I was well and truly knocked for six by this one. The tooth was only partly erupted so it was a much more difficult extraction, which resulted in stitches and a great deal of bruising and swelling. Then the next day, I had a bad reaction to codeine - it turns out that opiate-based drugs are not my friend because they make me panic, pace relentlessly and cry uncontrollably. I didn’t need to go to hospital or anything but I could definitely have done without it.

Unfortunately, it’s been over a week since I had the tooth out and I’m still in quite a bit of pain - it’s extremely likely that I’ve had a condition called Dry Socket where the jaw gets inflamed, I’ve certainly had all the symptoms. I think it is getting better because the pain is definitely a lot more bearable than a couple of days ago but if it’s not right by Monday, I’ll go and get it checked at the clinic. In retrospect, I should have gone back to the Dental Hospital in the middle of the week and I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t: I think I was just on so many painkillers that my mind was foggy and doing anything at all felt almost impossible.

Still, in between heroic doses of non-opiate painkillers, I managed to finish updating The Diary Project. Yep, all 365 envelopes have finally been scanned, uploaded and blogged - now I just have to work out why the set over on Flickr is mysteriously missing 6 envelopes. Oh and there’s also the small matter of organising an exhibition for the project but I’m not even starting on that until I get back from Australia.

Speaking of Australia, here’s my schedule:

Evening of 28th February - Arrive in Sydney
28th - 2nd March - Staying in Manley and exploring Sydney
2nd - 7th March - Kiama
8th/9th March - wedding
10th - 20th - in Sydney, Manley and Blue Mountain area, possibly fitting in a quick visit to Melbourne if I have the energy
Evening of 20th March - fly home

If you’re a reader who lives in any of those areas and you want to meet up for tea, cake and art chat, email or comment and we’ll arrange something.

I have other stuff to blog about but right now I need to go and take more painkillers and sleep. In the meantime, here’s a photograph that I took on my one of my very few trips out of the house this week…

Kirsty Hall: Trees reflected in a bus stop during a clear winter sunset

Kirsty Hall: Drawings in progress, Feb 2008

Starting a drawing can be scary. Drawing on crappy paper (that’s a technical term!) can be one way to overcome the fear of the blank page.

When I was first learning to draw, my dad would bring home piles of A3 computer paper from his office for me. It was the large thin folded stuff with perforations down the side. Apparently it sometimes used to spool through the printers and couldn’t be re-used - at least that’s what he told me!

It was great paper to draw on because there was never any fear of wasting expensive cartridge paper: it was already waste, so it didn’t matter if I ruined it. I used to sit in front of the TV drawing actors, newsreaders and the like. Documentaries and interviews were the best because they featured a lot of fairly stationary head shots. For a teenager living out in the country with no access to life classes, it was a surprisingly effective way to practice portraiture and speed drawing.

Drawing the envelopes for The Diary Project was similar - if I messed up an envelope it didn’t matter and I felt no guilt about tossing it in the recycling. In fact, I sometimes used to draw on the front and back of a couple of envelopes just to loosen up or to test out new techniques or materials. Now my envelopes are all finished and I want to take what I’ve learnt into making drawings on ‘real’ paper with the idea of making a series of drawings that could be sold. Yet even after a year of daily drawing, it’s still surprisingly intimidating to sit down in my studio and look at those empty sheets of good paper. Maybe I just need to take a stack of envelopes upstairs to comfort myself with…

We’re only one day in, but so far I’m liking February much more than January!

Firstly, I finished the tax form yesterday and got it handed in several hours before the deadline. You won’t believe how much better I feel. I swear on Andy Warhol’s wig that I will never, ever leave my tax form to the last minute ever again. Of course, I say a version of this every year - feel free to remind me of this when I’m panicking next January!

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Secondly my son seems to be on the mend. Progress is very slow and he’s still not back at school but we had a good meeting with his Head of Year yesterday and the school are very sympathetic and supportive, which helps so much. Thanks to Sister Diane, Katherine, Cally, Missmilki and Sherrie Roberts who all left kind comments and well wishes on the last post.

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Thirdly, I had a great post day. I absolutely love getting post and I often suspect that the real reason I did the Diary Project was so that I’d get regular and exciting post for a year. Today I got the following things:

1) My tickets for Australia - yep, I am definitely going, I leave on the 27th Feb and get back on the 21st March. I’m starting to get just a little bit bouncy about it.

2) My partner’s last birthday present - this is fortunate, since his birthday is tomorrow. It took its own sweet time getting here from America and I was getting worried that it had been lost, so that was a relief.

3) The new Rowan knitting magazine - there’s a surprising number of fabulous designs in this one and I can’t wait to cast on something new and exciting. I particularly like Eeire, Astral, Auria and Gabrielle: I am such a girly-girl sometimes.

4) The new Cabinet magazine. If you haven’t seen this magazine before, then I highly recommend it - it’s a quarterly that features some of the most interesting writing on art, culture and weird stuff that I’ve read. This issue’s theme is ‘Bones’, which makes me an extremely happy camper because I love dead things with a rather disturbing passion. At heart I’m just a grown up goth girl.

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Fourthly, it was a stunningly beautiful day so I took a slew of photos while the sun was streaming through our library windows. I was literally dancing because I was so in love with the way the light was coming through the lens. It felt more like art than anything I’ve done since the Diary Project finished and I suspect that I’ll be filled with new art energy soon.

Kirsty Hall: Bright Yarn, February Morning

Kirsty Hall: Sort Of Dutch

Kirsty Hall: Dead Tulip

Welcome to the Cheat’s Guide To Blogging - find an old piece of writing, edit slightly, add pictures and serve!

I was just looking up some writing from my degree course for an unrelated reason and found this piece from 1999 that I thought was worth posting

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Abstract art has always had a very different role than representational art. Representational art is very much tied to how well the representation works. Is it “a likeness”: by its faithful representation of nature does it somehow capture the soul of the person, animal or place depicted? We usually judge representational art on how well it convinces us of the reality of the image.

Our response to representational art is also determined by sentimental factors. Is it a portrait of someone we love or a place that is special to us? Can we sense a little piece of the person’s soul as we gaze into their unseeing eyes? Do we even like cats or eagles or horses? These things affect how a piece of representational art is perceived by the person who looks at it. Something that may seem kitsch, unappealing or simply bad to one person will be cherished by another because of whom or what it represents.

Kirsty Hall: Diary Project Envelope from 5th February 2007

Abstract art is somewhat different. There is less to hold onto. It is a Rorschach blot, a screen onto which the viewer can project their own desires and hidden thoughts. Abstract art opens up the unconscious mind, it forces people to think about what they are seeing.

Many people resist this. After all, it is hard to know what to say when faced with something that doesn’t fall into simple categories like “dog” or “cat” or “child”. We are so deeply used to seeing in symbols and categories that images which do not fall into pre-conceived patterns can be hard to look at. Literally not knowing what we are looking at can make it hard to see at all. Yet it can also challenge our brain to new leaps into the unknown. It can open up places in our mind where poetry might begin. It can inspire us, scare us or anger us.

Kirsty Hall: Diary Project Envelope from 12th December 2007

Historically, abstract art and representational art are often pitted against each other. Personally I don’t see them as being in conflict. I think that people make art and look at art for many different reasons and I think that art needs to be broad enough to encompass many different viewpoints and many different ideas.

Many of the problems that people have with contemporary art stem from the fact that they are afraid of it. I think that people are often afraid of looking stupid if they don’t understand art.

But art shouldn’t be a test.

Hey, half the time I don’t understand art and I’ve looked at a lot of it! I’ve also read extensively on the subject and it’s my opinion that most people who write about art don’t understand how artists think and work. So don’t look at those words first, just look at the piece and think about how it makes you feel. You might not know as much about art as an art historian or critic but how a piece of art makes you feel is every bit as relevant, worthy and important.

Happy 2008, I hope you all had a good holiday season if you celebrate and that you’re approaching this new year filled with creative energy and enthusiasm.

I don’t know if I am yet. I posted the last envelope last night and spent some time bouncing around being very happy because I had successfully completed the year without a single missed envelope.

However, today I’m feeling a little bereft. I enjoyed the ritual of marking every day and it’s hard to let go of that. How will I know that 2008 existed if I don’t mark it in some way? My mind is racing with ’substitute projects’. Should I commit to art journalling every day? Should I take my new Moleskine notebook and divide the pages into sections so I can fill it with a year’s worth of drawings and single poetic sentences? Should I put a wallchart in my studio and mark off every day that I spend some time in there? Should I take a photograph everyday? Should I take a daily art walk where I collect objects? Should I, should I, should I, should I?

Aaaaaarggggggghhhhhhh!

I was very clear before the end of the year that I needed to allow myself some recovery time after the active phase of The Diary Project and I know that’s still true. However, my muse apparently abhors a vacuum and so I’m having to forcibly rein myself in and let my brain know that I’m not going to jump straight into doing something new. That it’s OK to let go for a little while and I’m not going to drown if I don’t have the rubber ring of a daily practice: I can just spend a little time floating and thinking and that’s OK too because it’s still being creative. And it’s definitely needed, I can feel that it’s needed but even though I know that, it’s still the hardest part of the creative process for me. Being a bit of a control freak, I don’t do well with letting go even when I know that I need to.

Generally I like this time of year, I enjoy looking back over what I’ve done the year before and setting goals for the year to come. However, I think it’s going to take me a couple of days to do that this year because I need to process how I feel about the end of the first phase of The Diary Project and honestly assess what it is that I need and want from the coming year. I’ve spent today telling myself, “it’s better to set the right goals a couple of days ‘late’, rather than rushing in and committing to things that are wrong for you just because you have this superstitious attachment to the 1st January.”

Well, I’m off to lie down in bed with a cup of herbal tea, a hot water bottle and my art journal to see if I can calm the maelstrom in my brain. I hope you all have the space and time for a little reflection too.

I’ve been dying to tell you about this since last month and I’m glad that now I can…

I’m delighted to announce that the last Craftypod of 2007 is an interview with me. It’s pretty interesting, if I say so myself, and Sister Diane did a fantastic job in editing our long conversation so that I sound reasonably coherent!

Many thanks to Sister Diane for her great editing, her insightful questions and for being kind enough to ask me in the first place; I very much enjoyed being interviewed by her and what a great way to round off my year of drawing.

Kirsty Hall: Diary Project Envelope from 10th December 2007

In the early hours of yesterday morning I finished a mammoth update of The Diary Project blog because I thought it would look really shoddy to Craftypod listeners if the blog was still stuck in November - it’s helpful to have a bit of a kick every now and then. Apparently I’d had a long enough break from writing about drawing and I was able to do it again without banging my head on my desk. I’m nearly up to date now, I just have a week’s worth of envelopes to write up and then I’ll be all caught up. It’s so nice to be ending the year without that hanging over me.

Wow, I can’t believe that I only have 3 days of the project left to go, it’s a very strange feeling and I’m still processing it: it feels quite unreal.

Sometimes correspondences in your work surprise you. me-jade recently added these two photos of mine as ‘favourites’ on Flickr.

Kirsty Hall: Diary Project envelope from the 26th July 2007

Kirsty Hall: Parse, January 2007

Although I wasn’t conscious of it when I was drawing the envelope, when I saw the two images next to each other, I was struck by how very similar the shapes are.

I’ve been concentrating on updating The Diary Project blog this week: I’m woefully behind on it and it’s getting embarrassing. I’ve been updating the blog in small chunks because that’s all I can manage right now - writing the little musings is getting to be almost impossible. I’ve pretty much run out of things to say about my work: I didn’t know this was possible but apparently it is!

I did an update on Sunday and another one this morning plus I’m about halfway through scanning more than a month’s worth of envelopes. I scanned to the end of October yesterday and felt very pleased with myself before realising that hey, we’re already half way through November.

Here’s my favourite drawing from the latest update:

Kirsty Hall: Diary Project envelope from the 21st October 2007

Hopefully I’ll get another chunk done tomorrow - although frankly, if I never have to write another word about my damn drawings, it’ll be way too soon! In the meantime, I’m off to scan envelopes, which is time consuming but thankfully a lot less mentally taxing and I can catch up on podcasts while I’m doing it.

Wow, I didn’t mean to be away for so long - sorry about that. Despite my policy of trying to post most days, the last two weeks have been completely hopeless. Last week I had the cold from hell, on top of an existing illness and it just knocked me flat. I’m still sneezing explosively but at least I’ve got my voice back and I’m thankful that I’m no longer violently coughing quite so frequently. Ah well, at least it’s taught me is that I need to store a backlog of extra posts to use when I’m not well - so I guess it was useful for something!

Needless to say, not much art has been happening around here lately - I’ve been managing to do my daily envelope for The Diary Project and that’s been about it. However, in between doses of cough medicine and Lemsip, I have been getting plenty of knitting and reading done - so here, for your delectation and delight, is a book review.

Following Katherine’s positive review of The Drawing Book by Dr. Sarah Simblet, I ordered a copy from the local library (don’t you just love interlibrary loans!) and it’s been my late night reading for the past week or so.

I can safely say that The Drawing Book will definitely be going on my Christmas wish list because it’s absolutely chock full of good stuff, including one of the clearest explanations of traditional perspective that I’ve read.

The book is split into short, well written chapters on a variety of subjects including landscape drawing portraiture, nature drawing and even abstract drawing. I particularly liked that drawing from the imagination wasn’t ignored - so many drawing instruction books focus solely on realism, which often puts me off since that’s not my primary interest. Simblet introduces each topic with relevant drawings, both her own and other artists, before going on to detail a drawing exercise that the reader can attempt. However, even if you don’t try any of the exercises - and I haven’t yet - you’ll still get a lot out of this book.

I was particularly struck by the way she looks at drawing with a fresh eye and how she’s able to communicate that to the reader. The book is full of a wide range of great drawings and she has included some more unusual artists alongside the usual subjects such as Picasso, Goya and Rembrandt. The range of drawings is pleasingly global and stretches from neolithic cave painting right through to contemporary artists who are taking drawing in new directions. It was actually a little odd that I’d met three of the people whose work she showed but since she used to teach at my college and they also had links there, I guess it’s not so very strange - the British art scene is staggeringly small at times!

The information about materials is also very solid. Apart from focusing on the usual things like paper, pencils, ink and charcoal - which all have handy, nicely illustrated, double page spreads scattered throughout the book - Simblet also highlights some more unusual drawing materials like silverpoint, which I’ve never considered using before and am now very keen to try. Her explanations of drawing materials are straightforward and easy to understand without being overly simplistic. Indeed, the same can be said for all the language throughout the book, which makes it pleasingly accessible - frankly, this is an absolute blessing since far too many art books are heavy-going to say the least.

I’d say this book would be good both for relative beginners and more experienced artists who are looking to expand or develop their drawing skills. Older children who are keen on art might also benefit from this book, not least because of the potted tour of art history. That said, I don’t think it’s a book that I’d give to a complete beginner because I think they might find it a bit daunting. But if you’ve been drawing for a little while and have got past the absolute basics, then I’d definitely recommend it - I’ve been drawing for years and I still learnt loads. Plus, it’s beautifully laid out with high production values, reasonably priced, well edited and best of all, it doesn’t make drawing seem boring!

I’ve been in a creative slump lately because I’ve been unwell. I just haven’t had the energy to do much of anything, let alone making art - although of course, I’m still doing my daily envelopes for The Diary Project. But overall, I’ve just been feeling totally blah about my work - it happens and I know it’ll pass but it’s still not a fun place to be in.

One of the few things that has been creatively exciting me lately is Camilla Engman’s Organized Collection group on Flickr.

So my art practice for the last few weeks has mostly involved collecting little object on the days when I’ve been able to get out and about and just taking simple photos of them on walls or paving stones. It’s small and it’s simple but at least it makes me feel as if I’m still doing something.

Kirsty Hall, found rubber bands, October 2007

Kirsty Hall, found rubber bands, October 2007

One of the things I noticed when I first started joining Flickr groups was how it made me see the world in different ways and how I stretched my photography a little bit because of it. I’d take different photos than usual because I’d think “hey, that would be a good shot for such-and-such a group”. If you’re feeling the need for a bit of a creative stretch, particularly in relation to your photography, then I’d recommend it.

And having said all that, I’m now going to take myself and my camera outside to the garden to see what I can find, before I need to go for yet another rest.

The Diary Project suffered its first real casualty recently when this envelope came back so mauled that the Royal Mail put it in a special ‘oh dear, we’re incredibly sorry’ plastic bag. Amazingly, the contents are still inside.

Kirsty Hall: Diary Project envelope from the 10th September 2007

Kirsty Hall: plastic bag from the Royal Mail

I was totally thrilled, it’s the most exciting thing that’s happened so far!

The project blog is currently up to date until the 16th September and should be updated again over the weekend, although we have house guests this weekend so it might not happen until Monday. I’ve been a bit behind with it lately but I’m attempting to get back onto a regular schedule with updates. If I leave it too long it gets completely overwhelming.

I got an interesting email from someone a couple of weeks ago asking me why I post the letters to myself and not to another person. I won’t post their original letter because they haven’t responded to my request to do so but here’s an extract from my reply:

Why do I post the letters? Well, I like the sense of risk involved - the envelopes might get lost in the post or damaged. I’m a bit of a control freak so posting the letters is an interesting way for me to let go a bit. My work has always involved a certain amount of ‘letting nature take its course’ - in the past I’ve often made sculptures that rot, decay or slowly change. I like to open myself up to chaos a little because it challenges me and the posting does that. Plus, I’ve always been interested in the idea of journeys and I love the fact that the envelopes take these little journeys without me.

I wanted to send the envelopes to myself rather than someone else because I wanted to have them all to exhibit at the end of the year. Also, there’s just something very absurd about sending letters to yourself for a year and that aspect of the project makes me laugh. And on a completely mundane level, I absolutely love getting post and because of this project, I get a year’s worth of letters, which just delights me. I get a little bit excited every time a letter comes home safely.

Oh, and I think that posting the letters also stops me cheating. It’s a firm deadline - I absolutely have to get the letter in the postbox by midnight or I’ve failed for that day. It’s good to have that sense of ‘I must get this done’. I know that no one but me would know if I did the letter after midnight but somehow having to go out and post them keeps me honest about the project. I don’t know why, but somehow it works as an external control.

I did a massive update over on The Diary Project at the weekend. It’s been getting harder and harder to find something to say about every individual drawing, so it sometimes it takes me a while to get the scans up there. I’ve got another six that I uploaded onto Flickr over the weekend that I need to write bits of blurb for.

It’s definitely getting harder to come up with new drawings too, I keep worrying that I’m repeating myself too much but fortunately I hit on a couple of new drawing techniques last night, so that should keep me inspired this week.

I’m going to try to get round to that second Diary Project update later today but right now, I’m heading over to Spike Island to sit in the Associate Space and do some research. I’ve been meaning to get over there and do some reading for ages, they’ve got a small but interesting-looking selection of art books. The thing I miss most about college is the lack of access to decent art books and magazines. I don’t have much of a budget for them (they’re so expensive) so I miss the college library like crazy. The local council library doesn’t have a particularly great art selection and although I can and do order stuff in, I miss the serendipity of random browsing. The little local college where I do my silversmithing course has an art library but it’s so small and after several years of studying there, I’ve read most of the interesting stuff. I’m looking forward to starting back there on Wednesday though because there’s bound to be a few new books and magazines that came in over the summer.

My book consumption slumped drastically over the summer. For some reason I just wasn’t feeling like reading (it happens occasionally, even to this confirmed bookworm!), so I could use a bit of a boost in that area.

Katherine, over at Making A Mark (an art blog you should all be reading - she has masses of great information), has a very informative article about using labels in Blogger. Despite hosting The Diary Project for 8 months over on Blogger, I’d honestly never noticed the little labels box before Katherine pointed it out. I’m a bit rubbish at using tags - I always forget them over in Livejournal and I only use them in Flickr because they make them so very obvious - but I can certainly see how useful they are: not only can they improve your visibility but they can also make it a lot easier for you to search for older posts that you might want to link back to.

So I’ve just mass edited the Diary Project posts to include the labels ‘Diary Project’, envelope, drawing and art. Not very helpful in terms of separating them out but it might improve the project’s visibility in Google and on Technorati. I’ll go and look at the posts individually when I have the time to see if there are more individual categories that I could add. If you subscribe to the Diary Project and it republishes all the posts because of this, then I apologise.

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…

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!

A huge thanks to Alyson B. Stanfield over at the ArtBizBlog for linking to my previous post about the importance of artists getting online. As a result I had nearly 200 new visitors over the weekend - previous to this I was hugely excited if I got more than 20 visitors in a day, so to get 131 visitors on Saturday and a further 62 on Sunday was a bit mind-blowing.

I was away over the weekend celebrating my 13th anniversary with my honey - I literally finished the post on Saturday morning, emailed Alyson to let her know about it and then promptly left. I had no internet access over the weekend so it was very exciting to log on this evening to discover that lots of people had read the article and that it was being linked in various places. Lots of you also left interesting comments and I’ll be answering them all when I’ve had a chance to unpack and recover from all the driving.

If you’ve made it here from Alyson’s blog then I extend a warm welcome and I hope you’ll be back in the future: I’m planning a lot more articles about how artists can best utilise the web. Since I’m an artist and a curator, the articles will be looking at things from both sides of the fence.

In the meantime, please feel free to investigate The Diary Project - I’m doing a drawing every day for the entirety of 2007 and blogging them. The drawings are done on the back of envelopes, then I put something secret inside and post the envelope back to myself. Since the rule is that the day’s envelope has to be posted before midnight, I’d better stop blogging now and get on with today’s drawing!

Because you can never have too many skulls!

Skull-A-Day is making and posting a skull every day for a year. There are some wonderfully images and creative uses of a wide range of materials.

I just love the idea of reinventing a very simple, iconic image every single day for a year - it kind of makes the Diary Project seem easy! I think I’d go bananas if I was restricted to one image for an entire year but maybe being restricted to an envelope and whatever you can fit inside it would feel too restrictive to other people. Everyone’s art boundaries are different and I can definitely see the joy in being able to explore so many different materials whilst having the focus of repeating a single image.

I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on this project - they only started in June so they’ve got quite a way to go but they’ve certainly got off to a roaring start. Oh, and if you want to participate they also post skull images sent in by readers.

DP 211, originally uploaded by kmhlamia.

I’ve just finished a mammoth Diary Project update and it’s all up to date again. This is my favourite envelope out of the 9 I’ve just scanned.

For those of you who haven’t checked out the rest of my site and seen the ‘work in progress’ section, The Diary Project is a year long art project where I’m drawing on the back of an envelope every single day for 2007. The envelope is then filled with something secret and posted back to myself before my daily midnight deadline. Hopefully next year, I’ll get an exhibition where all the envelopes can be shown altogether and people will be able to open them and investigate the contents. It’s like a very, very slow form of blogging! If you happen to know a gallery who might be interested in showing the work, please let me know: I need to start organising that part soon and any useful suggestions or contacts would be very welcome.

I got a box of Moo cards made about a month ago to help promote The Diary Project and they’re the cutest things ever. They’re smaller than ordinary business cards, about half as deep but they’re really high quality - they’ve got a nice heavy feel and a good glossiness to them. But the best thing is that you can get up to 100 different designs per box of 100 cards, which lends itself to all sorts of creative ideas. I got 25 different Diary Project drawings printed up, with the Diary Project info on the back and they look completely stunning. I’ve been carrying them around in my handbag and handing them out to people and they’ve been pretty popular - artists, in particular, are usually instantly enamoured with the idea.

All fired up with Moo enthusiasm, I signed up for Where In The World Is Moo?

I was third in the list of 100 people for the second journey. Basically it’s a sort of mail art project, you add your Moo card to the box and then mail it on to the next person on the list. The box arrived last week from the States with two very cute cards in it and I finally sent it on its way this afternoon. It’s heading over to Northern Ireland next and after that, who knows? Well, the organiser obviously, but the rest of us don’t.

I put this Diary Project Moo card in the box:

I believe there’s still time to take part in Where In The World Is Moo?: all you need is your own Moo card and the ability to get to the post office, the rest of it is just doing a little bit of documentation and even that is pretty simple. It’s a fun, easy project and I recommend it.