by Henk ter Heide on Saturday March 5, 2011
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by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday October 7, 2008
Describing why I started the Art showcase Blog Carnival.
Anyone who has ever started a blog knows that it is very hard to find your audience. You tell your friends. You link to your site from your social bookmarking site. You try to digg yourself.
But with all your efforts you may be lucky if you can get a steady audience of a few dozen people.
For the last year I’ve been featuring a series of artists. But by the nature of the way you find information on the Web, most of those artist were well established. Working for years with their own following and a large number of paintings/drawing/sculptures.
I’ve been thinking that it would be nice to show the work of a few artist who, just like me, have only just started on their journey. Artist who are still learning their craft.
Artist who are juggling a day job with their need to show the world the images and feelings they have in their head and heart.
For that reason I’m starting the Art showcase Blog Carnival.
If you draw, paint or sculpture and you write a blog and you would want to extend your audience, posting an article at Art showcase will be just the thing for you.
Other art Blog Carnivals might demand work of a certain quality, but since you’ve just started you can’t give that. Some Carnivals may seek work of young but promising artist but nobody can say about himself/herself that he/she is promising and to be honest neither can I.
I’m interested in your growth as an artist: Growth in your drawing, painting or sculpting skills. The process by which you find subjects, the way you work with them and learn from them.
You can submit two kinds of articles:
- Articles in which you show your work either with or without comments. Preferably two articles so you can show where you was a while ago and where you are now. (Enter the second link under “remark”.)
- Articles in which you talk about your creative process. (For instance articles about: Where you find your inspiration.With what kind of subjects you work. How you develop your skill. etc.)
When you find that I’ve listed your work in the Art Showcase you might feel tempted to link to my site. To show your appreciation and/or to show your friends that you finally got some recognition.
Don’t! Google frowns upon two way links because spammers use them a lot to sell their V*something. (Angering Google will hurt your ability to gain an audience.)
I would, however, appreciate it if you would bookmark this article at any social bookmarking service you use. By doing so you will not only show your appreciation (which is nice), but you will also be helping other starting artist to find the Art Showcase (which is even nicer!).
If you don’t use any social bookmarking service, might I strongly advise you to start doing so. Not only is it a lot of fun to show people links to what ever subject that interests you, but it will also help you to promote your blog.
This being the Internet you’ll find that nobody is interested in a list containing only links to your articles. But there are a lot of people who are interested in the same kind of things that interest you. While looking through your list of interesting websites/articles they will also find your blog.
If you feel that your blog falls in the category of sites that would benefit from a listing in the Art Showcase blog carnival, head over to the entry form and submit your work.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Friday July 13, 2007
At long last we now can watch Discovery channel in Gouda. For years the local cable company held on to the principle that as long as there was one old lady who didn’t want to watch anything but the Dutch channels, cable should be as cheap as possible. So we had the Dutch channels and several home shopping channels but nothing that could raise either the fee or your interest.
One of my favorite shows on Discovery channel is the one about the Orange County Choppers shop. I like to see how those people make the most complicated and beautiful bikes.
In one of there shows they made a tribute chopper for David Mann (Wikipedia). For that bike they had an artist do a rendering of flames on the frame.
I thought doing a drawing of flames would be a nice opportunity do have another go with the pencil on pencil blending method.
Flames
In real life it’s quite a nice drawing but sadly the scanner isn’t able to pick up all the colors. The flamy part is actually three colors. Flowing from dark purple in the middle to orange/yellow at the edge.
I’ll have to come back on this drawing.
Drawing hack
In kindergarten we’ve all learned that it is something of a deadly sin to color outside of the lines. But when you adhere to that rule you might get something like the orange in my drawing Apples and pears. Not very real, is it.
If you look closely at “Flames” you could see that there are a few green patches on the edge between yellow and blue.
If your hands are steady enough to color right up to the line, by all means do. But when you’re presented with the option to either color outside of the lines or or leave some white. Draw outside of the lines. Nobody will see the mixture of colors when you do, but leave a bit of white and it will stick out like a sore thumb
Featured on See me draw
On Wagonized you’ll find drawings by France Belleville. His drawings, both with pencil and with pen, are about people, ladies (cars 
), dogs and every day items.
Today I have a second link for you. After writing about Wagonized I remembered that I had planned to give you this link to David Mann’s art.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.