Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Painting and Blogging

copyright Hannah Phelps
Cat O' Nine Tails-WIP (no pun intended)
11" x 14"; oil on canvas

It is unbelievably nice outside today, so why am I inside blogging? The biggest reason is that I really want this blog to be a fun site for people to visit and read and maybe learn a thing or two about painting, printmaking, the places and things I feature in my art, me and those things combined. In order to do improve my blog and make it the best it can be, I enrolled in a 4-week "Blog Triage" online class with art marketing expert, Alyson Stanfield (http://artbizblog.com) and expert blogger, Cynthia Morris (http://originalimpulseblog.com and http://journeyjuju.com). My fellow "patients" (students) and I will have several assignments each week over the month of April, so you can watch this blog transform!

Our first assignment is to define our ideal readers. I hope the following describes you (but if it doesn't, you are certainly welcome to visit my blog early and often) :

The people who will enjoy this blog the most are those who enjoy the representational landscapes that I paint and post most often. They look forward to seeing the tiny image on Facebook or getting an image of a painting in their inbox because it is a little bit of the natural world on their computer screen. These folks are curious about how my art is created and enjoy a short explanation of my process now and then. Lovers of the outdoors and/or dogs themselves, my readers like brief stories about the scenes depicted in the work or an adventure I had while creating the piece. They want to see my art in person and like knowing where my work will be on display.

By the way, I couldn't help myself -I played outside before I did my blog homework. The image above is one result. "WIP" stands for Work in Progress, so I hope to work on this painting more and may be post the final result another time!

6 comments:

Alyson B. Stanfield said...

Hannah: Why are people attracted to landscapes? Is it a memory? Is it an idealized view? Is it color?

Lynn Thibodeau said...

Well I certainly would like to see the finished product. It's amazing, Hannah. It looks like a photograph. Love it!

Hannah Phelps said...

Thanks for the thought-provoking questions, Alyson. I will consider this and blog about that for homework part II!

Thanks, Lynn! Now I have to answer to someone if I don't finish the painting!

merci33 said...

Hi Hannah
I'm learning so much already! Simply by stopping in and reading your post I'm beginning to see things that I can change and improve...
I love the painting in process and look forward to seeing it unfold.

Erica Sontheimer said...

I love reading how all your interests are evolving and overlapping, feeding each other.

Hannah Phelps said...

Thank you, Iona and Erica.
These comments are giving me another possible use of my blog-accountability. It didn't occur to me that if I say something is a work in progress, readers would expect me to actually finish it.

I hope that the different things I am doing "feed" each other instead of devour each other. I think that is the trick