This isn’t exactly a resource, but I think it is important to keep your work environment inspiring. Smashing Magazine has a great collection of inspiring desktop backgrounds for your mac (or pc, if you haven’t seen the light yet.) Hopefully you’ll find one you like, or get inspiration to create a new one yourself.
Looking for great photo tips? If not, sorry today’s post won’t mean much to you. But, if you are, you need to check out Photojojo.com. There you can signup for a newsletter of great tips and tricks to make your life as a photographer easier. The great thing about the tips is they are usually concise and to the point and ever so often they point to a great tutorial. Oh and the really cool thing, you don’t have to signup to see the old newsletters.
An open source digital collage project by Dave Rau and Josh Bertrand. All of the original source imagery and Photoshop file are available for download for artists to use and remix as they see fix. Artists can then send the imagery back to Josh and Dave, who will post some of their favorites. I dig this idea!
artist & website: Red Labor - http://www.redlabor.com/
Now you can have art on your website everyday. Simply click the “Get Widget” button to get started.
Note: Some websites will require you to scroll down in the widget to complete. Basically lookout for a small scroll bar on the right of the widgetbox add tool.
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Thumbtack Press looks like a great marketplace for artists to sell their work. Artists submit their work and if it…
“…is deemed ‘Thumbtack’ worthy we will be requesting a print-ready file from you, click here to see acceptable specs. From here we post your work on the monthly tackboard of new art and make it available for sale. If your work sells, we print, package, and ship to the patron and send you a generous cut.”
Sounds cool and the artist receives 50% of the purchase price. Sounds like a pretty good deal with little risk and a decent reward. Anyway, I thought this might be a good resource for our artists.
I just finished the first of many themes that will be available for use on todayinart.com. todayinart.com - Dark is a simple theme that is, well dark. I know that some folks would rather not place work on white, so now you have black. I will continue developing these and listening for feedback. The next one in queue will be a neutral gray of some type.
If you have a theme or idea that you want to use please let me know and I will do my best to accommodate.
To see an example of theme go to the example blog, example.todayinart.com.
A collection of Leonard da Vinci’s drawings are available for download at a fairly decent resolution. The drawings are available on drawingsofleonardo.org/ in .zip format for Windows users and .tar for Linux and Mac users. Its wonderful to see the drawings of such a master freely available for download.
Now every artist loves to create and in doing so can accumulate a collection of pieces that he or she may want to unload. Now, I do not want get into the whole “art for art sake” vs “marketing your work to make a living” argument. This bit of advice is for those interested in selling their work, prints, etc. The rest of you please feel free to roll your eyes at me and scroll to the next post.
ETSY is an online store for artists and crafts people and features some really nice tools that allow sellers to create and manage a marketplace online. They do take a cut of the seller’s listings and sales, but the features that ETSY offers are well worth it, unless you are a high end or high volume seller.
One of the features that I enjoy is the geolocator. This tool allows buyers to search for products by location, allowing them to support their local art community online. ETSY has its fair share of junk, but it does feature some really nice work. So, if you are looking for a nice tool to sell your work online with, this may be your answer.