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I read lots of different blogs, not just art based ones. Lately - probably because of starting this blog and writing the Artists Online Series - I've been reading a lot of blogs about blogging and business. Even though they're often describing a different world to mine, I still find it interesting because I do a lot of this stuff too.

I'm always quite aware that artists are professionals. Sure, we often don't get treated as though we are ("ooh, it must be lovely to be doing something creative all the time, I wish I could quit my job and sit around painting/writing/making pots all day") but anyone who's trying to establish themselves as an artist knows that it's lots of hard work. We do a bunch of stuff that most people probably don't think is very 'arty': answering email, talking with suppliers, checking proofs, designing flyers, writing press releases, sorting out our tax returns, writing proposals and invoicing people - the list is endless and guess what, it looks a whole lot like everyone else's workday! The reality of being a professional artist is about a million miles away from most people's romantic view of it, including, unfortunately, the vast majority of art students to whom daily life as an artist often comes as quite an unpleasant shock.

So I was very amused by this article by Fiaz Khan of NextBigLeap, that describes what it's actually like to work for yourself. I was reading it and to my amusement suddenly noticed that I was constantly nodding my head in agreement. I think this should be mandatory reading in art colleges!

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OK, so you've got your blog started - you've set the table and put the kettle on and now you just need some visitors. So how do you go about enticing people to your site?

Obviously you need to have great content but even if you've got the best blog in the world, people won't know you're there if you're doing the online equivalent of hiding in the kitchen at parties! You're going to have to get out there and meet some people. Here's a few ways to do that...

Link, link, link

The first thing that any article on this subject will tell you is 'link'. There's a very simple reason for this - it works. At least a third of my visitors to both this site and The Diary Project arrive here via other bloggers who've linked to me in their posts or on their sidebars.

Linking is, quite simply, the foundation stone of the blogging world. Sure, you can blog successfully without ever linking to anyone else but you'd better have another promotional strategy worked out. I don't use links much over at The Diary Project because of the type of blog it is, consequently I have to work a lot harder at promoting it. This site, where I link to a lot of other artists, has snowballed for me in a way that the Diary Project just hasn't yet (although I keep hoping it will).

Linking just works. And it's easy: find someone whose work you like, nab one of their images *unless they prohibit that*, host the image on your site so you're not stealing bandwidth, write a little bit about their work and what you like about it and voilà, almost instant blog content with the added advantage that you might have drawn the artist or blogger in question back to your site.

Be generous with your linking, link to people you like or who've done or said something that interests you. It's OK to link to people that you'd like to be noticed by but don't make those the only people you link to. Be genuine and think about linking in terms of good karma, not in terms of what it might bring you. And don't expect to be linked back - you might be, but it's not automatic and it doesn't mean anything if you're not, so don't get huffy about it.

Tell People You Know

You've already got a ready made audience in your existing friends and family - send them all an email to let them know you've got a new blog. You should also change your email signature so that you're automatically letting people know about your blog every time you send an email. If you've got a mailing list, let them know too. Do you have profiles on other sites, especially networking ones? Go round and update them to include your new blog address.

Watch Your Numbers

Get Google Analytics or a similar programme installed on your blog and keep an eye on your numbers. It's helpful to know your baseline and encouraging to see the numbers gradually rise. Plus you can usually spot when you've been linked somewhere. If you are linked, nip over to the person's site, check it out and leave a comment or email to say thanks. Obviously, if you get really huge, it might not be possible to say thanks to absolutely everyone (you've got to leave some time for the studio!) but give it your best shot, especially in the beginning.

NB: If you have already linked to me and I haven't thanked you either by email or in your blog comments, then it almost certainly means that Technorati has missed the link so I don't know about it.

Make Some Cards

A couple of months ago I bought a box of 100 Moo cards to advertise the Diary Project and I've gone through two thirds of the box already. I carry them in my handbag and give them out to people who seem like they might be interested - you know, bus drivers, random people on the street, small children in pushchairs! OK, I'm kidding, I only give them to people I'm already talking to but I do know that people often do visit the project after taking a card because they often email me to tell me they have.

You don't have to get Moo cards made (although they are fab) but you should already be carrying some sort of visual card to hand out to people you meet, so you might as well have your blog address on it too.

Leave Comments

Leaving comments on other people's blogs is a good way to meet people, make connections and get readers back to your own site. If you leave a comment on here, I'll invariably go and check your site out because hey, I'm nosy! I'm not alone in this, it's common blogging behaviour. I don't end up regularly reading everyone's blog but I have discovered some great new sites this way.

Most blogs have a fairly open comments policy and it's usually easy to leave comments, although some sites do moderate to avoid spam so your comment might not appear instantly.

Leave your name and URL so that people can find you. Oh, and definitely make sure that you get your own address right - I'd accidentally been leaving the slash off the end of this blog address in other people's comments for about a month before someone kindly pointed out that hey, they couldn't actually get to my site that way. Boy, did I feel stupid! I can't believe that I could make such an elementary mistake despite being on the net for about 12 years, but I did...

Link To Yourself

If you have more than one site, make sure you link to your other sites in your sidebar or profile. All your sites should link up to each other - it sounds obvious but it's a step that many of us forget about. Looking at my numbers, I can see that both this site and The Diary Project get about 15% of their visitors from my other sites.

Remember my mantra of Make It Easy For People, well it applies here too. If you've got a cool project on the go, a nice little blog or a great new site, don't make people go hunting for them: the information should be right there, out in the open and very easy to spot. When I added a 'My Other Sites' section to the sidebar of The Diary Project, my visitors to this site from over there absolutely rocketed. This site was already mentioned and linked to in the profile, which was right at the top of the sidebar but for some reason having that extra 'My Other Sites' section made a huge difference. Sometimes you've just got to make things really obvious.

You should use this approach in your blog writing too - link to your sites or projects when you mention them in posts. It's not shameless self promotion, it's making it easy for people to investigate this neat thing you're talking about. Treat yourself with the same consideration that you would give to other artists or sites that you were talking about. If you find it uncomfortable to link to your own stuff, then ask yourself, "if this was someone else, would I put a link here?" - you'll probably find that nine times out of ten, the answer is yes.

The excellent Empty Easel has this to say about general linking and this to say about internal linking.

Submit Your Site

This is something to do with the bigger sites rather than individual blogs. Most of the big hubs on the web have a submissions page where you can enter your details. Work out where your work fits and then submit to those sites. This is something I do regularly with The Diary Project - since I don't use links much in the project blog, I have to raise interest in other ways.

A couple of weeks ago I submitted the Diary Project to Craftzine and when they blogged it (thanks Craftzine!), I got a big increase in numbers and visits from that site have continued to steadily climb.

You can also submit your stuff to individual blogs but that's a technique you should use only sparingly because it can be a bit spammy. I know many of you discovered this blog through Alyson Stanfield who kindly blogged about my Why Artists Should Be Online article. I had emailed Alyson directly to tell her about the article because I thought she'd be interested and fortunately she was. However, I already knew her slightly through commenting on her blog and because she'd linked to a previous article of mine, so it wasn't a complete 'cold call'. This is yet another good reason to build up your blogging relationships through commenting - it makes approaching possible allies a lot less daunting.

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I should also point out that there's absolutely no obligation to try to improve your visitor numbers - if you're happy with a very personal blog that has a small intimate readership (or even none at all!), that's completely fine. It's a valid way to blog and one that I've used for many years over at Livejournal. Just don't expect it to be a particularly effective way to promote your art career.

Get more help
If you'd like more information about building your online presence, check out the free resources section.

I am also available for online consulting if you need one-on-one help.


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I love Abigail Percy's jewellery and regularly read her blog.



Geranium Outline Earrings..., originally uploaded by Abigail Percy.

Her latest blog post has some simply gorgeous photographs from a little shop she discovered during a recent visit to Paris.



Paris ~ shop..., originally uploaded by Abigail Percy.

It's been years since I last went to Paris and now I have yet another reason to want to go - I love shops like this.

You should check out her Flickr too, the sympathetic way she photographs her jewellery is well worth noting.

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My partner sent me this story about an attempt to make a record breaking amount of porridge. It made me laugh because a couple of years ago, I made some art using porridge and did an accompanying 'Porridge Performance' where I made big pans of porridge for people at the private view.

The piece in question was called My Glorious Cultural Heritage. It was a chest of drawers, filled with various items that related to my Scottishness.

Kirsty Hall - art, sculpture, My Glorious Cultural Heritage
Kirsty Hall - My Glorious Cultural Heritage, Feb 2004

Here's the text from the exhibition it was in:

When I was a child my dad told me that Scottish shepherds used to make porridge and pour it into a ‘porridge drawer’. The porridge would set hard and during the week slices would be gradually be cut off and eaten cold. I remembered this late one night and became obsessed with finding out what a drawer full of porridge would actually look like. Now we all know!

Without understanding the culture we come from, we have no anchor for our imaginations. Recently I have become increasingly fascinated with my own conflicted relationship with my homeland. William McGonagall, Calvinism, a strong work ethic, a dour practical morality, Robert Burns, Celtic romanticism, tartan, shortbread and a harsh Border wind: these are some of the stories that have shaped me.

Kirsty Hall - art, sculpture, My Glorious Cultural Heritage
Kirsty Hall - My Glorious Cultural Heritage, detail

The drawers were collaged with Scottish literature and contained shortbread, a book of Robert Burns poetry, a Bible, a bottle of whisky and of course, the infamous porridge.

Kirsty Hall, art, sculpture, My Glorious Cultural Heritage
Kirsty Hall - My Glorious Cultural Heritage, detail

The 'Jacobite' text was made from shortbread and was probably my favourite drawer.

This remains one of the odder pieces I've made - I'm still not too sure how it relates to the rest of my work, although collaging the drawers was certainly obsessive. I find it a bit literal now and feel my work has moved on quite a bit from this. I think if I was ever to show it again, I'd take all the drawers out of the chest and just show them and I'd probably alter it quite a lot (I have absolutely no compunction about revisiting and remaking work).

And here's the porridge making, which I enjoyed immensely and would happily do again.

Kirsty Hall - art, Porridge Performance

I had masses of little bowls filled with various nuts, dried fruits, chocolate chips and spices, plus honey, maple syrup, sugar, rice milk and cream so people got their bowl of porridge and then added the things they wanted. It was wildly popular because it was a freezing cold night and many people came back for seconds and thirds so they could try out different combinations. It was a lot of fun and definitely helped the private view go with a bang. Actually, that night remains one of the best private views I've ever done because we had me doing porridge plus a fantastic performance piece by my friend Elly and then a live band later on. People ended up staying for hours and it was a real event. I always think it's worth having things like this at private views, it makes them more memorable and exciting for people.

There are more images of this piece over on Flickr, click on any of the images in this post to get over there.

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Ohh, I just discovered the Daily Poetics blog because they'd linked to The Diary Project. What a find! I love the clean pale aesthetics of the site and the high quality of the work they're linking to and the use of quotes as post titles - there's lots to fill up your eyes and mind with.

I particularly loved this wallpaper piece from Tracy Kendall.

Tracy Kendal - Fly On The Wall
Tracy Kendal - Fly On The Wall

Unzippable wallpaper - I love it! Her other handmade wallpapers are gorgeous as well. This is wallpaper very much as an installed artpiece, something I've noticed quite a bit of lately. Although of course, this is an old tradition, originally all wallpapers were handpainted or handprinted and it wasn't unusual for them to be individually designed for rich clients.

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This article about copyright has been causing some controversy over on WhipUp. Some of the comments got a little heated. The original poster is talking specifically about designer quilts but it's an issue that I think all artists need to consider.

At what point does inspiration or homage becoming derivative copying? How much can you really control your work once it's out in the public domain? Who owns ideas? How much copyright protection do you need or want? There are no easy answers to these questions and every artist needs to find their own peace with the issue but in an increasingly global and instant world, it's not an issue that artists can ignore.

Copyright is something artists have a responsibility to educate themselves about. Do you know what the laws are in your country? Do you understand how to protect yourself if your work is shown abroad? Do you want to protect yourself using traditional copyright laws or are you more interested in things like Creative Commons? Or are you and your art operating beyond copyright altogether?

I don't have any easy answers or advice for people on this one - I'm not even 100% sure what I think about the issue - but I wanted to flag it for discussion.

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Little People - A Tiny Street Art Project is a blog documenting an art project by artist, Slinkachu. I love the subtitle of the blog, it so elegantly and succinctly sums up the project: "Little handpainted people, left in London to fend for themselves".

Slinkachu - 20 Inches Under The Sea
Slinkachu - 20 Inches Under The Sea

I've mentioned my love of miniatures before on this blog and this art hits all my buttons - miniatures - check, slightly disturbing - check, dedicated obsessiveness - check.

I adore the fact that most people will pass these little tableaux by, totally unaware of the tiny dramas taking place beneath their feet. It reminds me of The Borrowers, a series of books that I passionately adored as a child: I was always captivated by the idea that other lives could be going on around us, almost completely hidden from view.

I particularly enjoy the random element of this project - the way the tiny people are obviously painstakingly made but then just abandoned to their fate. It reminds me of the way my brothers used to set up elaborate battle scenes with their plastic soldiers in our garden that would leave my Dad cursing when a forgotten one invariably wound up mangled in the lawnmower!

As someone always prone to anthropomorphising everything, I was usually pretty nice to my dolls (although my Sindy was always slutting it up with the Action Men in a jeep!) but I've heard surprising amounts of rather disturbing stories of doll torture. I'm always amused by people who think that childhood is a time for bunnies, pastels and sweetness and light - I always wonder if they've ever met any actual children! Of course there's an innocence and sweetness to childhood, but there's a darkness there as well and that darkness often seeps out in the way children mistreat their 'little pretend people' with casual or even gleeful cruelty.

Slinkachu - Cash Machine
Slinkachu - Cash Machine

Slinkachu - Spare Some Change
Slinkachu - Spare Some Change

There's clearly plenty of social commentary going on in this art too - this isn't a cheerful world of little teapots and tiny plates of food but an urban world of litter, violence, random encounters with prostitutes, clueless tourists and homelessness. It reminds me of another of my favourite blogs - Overheard In New York is a blog that hilariously documents the more surreal aspects of living in a large city as revealed through randomly overheard conversations.

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We will now have a small kitten interlude. Here's the newest member of our family, we picked her up tonight.

Kirsty Hall - Chiana aged 10 weeks old, photo of kitten

We've named her Chiana (yes, I am a geek, why do you ask!) and I am madly in love. She's sleeping right now so I can sneak off to use the internet but I can see that getting studio time is going to be a struggle for the next few days!

She's 10 weeks old and a Bengal cross on her Dad's side (hence the beautiful markings) and an absolute little sweetie. She's a confident wee thing - she walked right into the cat box of her own accord, didn't cry in the car and when we got in, she came straight out of the cat carrier and promptly made herself right at home. We've spent the evening bonding, she's just been curled up on my lap asleep. Predictably, I have utterly lost my heart to her - so if I'm not around as much as usual in the next day or two, you'll know that I've been sucked into a Kitten Wormhole.

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The latest podcast over at Craftypod is about crafty overload, but it applies equally to any kind of creative overwhelm. As someone who suffers from 'too-many-ideas-and-starting-too-much-and-not-getting-enough-finished' and the resultant 'oh-shit-oh-shit-my-head-is-going-to-explode' on a regular basis, I was laughing and nodding all the way through. Total comedy of recognition, right down to using compulsive list-making as a solution!

One of my latest tricks for staying in control is to keep a card index of blank cards on my desk to write down my art ideas. That way, instead of things being written in lots of different notebooks, various scraps of paper or just jumbling around in my head, all my art ideas should theoretically end up in the same place - a nice, safe red box that I can close the damn lid on!* Of course, I have years of bits of paper and sketchbooks to go through to unearth all those lurking ideas that are still nibbling away at the edge of my consciousness, giving me insomnia and constant feelings of being overwhelmed but I'm sure that the theory is sound...

What are your tricks and tips for avoiding feeling overwhelmed?

* It's only just occurred to me how amusing it is that the box is red. Actually, it was the only colour left in the shop but the symbolism does seem apt since it's clearly dangerous in there.

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Kirsty Hall - art, mail art, Diary Project 242

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.