I am thrilled to announce the launch of my completely redesigned artist portfolio website, now including my two previous Art Blogs. On this site, you will find:
Stuff about me:
Stuff not about me:
Have a look around, and then I’d love to hear your reactions. You can comment below or fill out this very brief survey.
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Free Online Artist Portfolios: Part Five
Today I will be reviewing the 1st of six of the free online portfolio sites that I have to sign up for. So follow me through the process.
As I look at the next site on my list, FineArtAmerica, I do feel a bit daunted. This is one of those online sites where you can not only show your art, but also sell high-resolution prints of your work, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. The first thing I noticed was a map of my state and “Your current location” with my city listed (how did they know?). Further down the home page, there is an artist spotlight featuring the work of artists from my hometown. Nice.
They seem to have a lot to offer besides the ability to show your work and sell prints of it. They have good search tools for finding artwork and artists; a page of brick and mortar galleries located in my area, and more pages of galleries located successively further and further out. The list doesn’t seem quite complete or accurate, though, so I assume it’s made by people who submit their own info (some important local galleries are missing from the list, and some things that are listed as galleries are mere one-person shops). They also have a nice events calendar, so I can see that may be useful tool.
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Free Online Artist Portfolios: Part Four
I’m back, finally!
I signed up with MyArtSpace in 2006 or 2007. It’s a lovely space, with a very professional look. I’m probably more fond of MyArtSpace than I should be, because it’s really buggy. I’m only today finding out just how buggy it is! For instance, I can’t login to it through my usual browser (Firefox, probably because I have AdBlock and Flash Block turned on) — but whatever the reason is, the “submit” button is missing from the login section of the page on my browser in FF, and I can’t find an alternative location to login from, so I’m having to use an alternative browser.
Even worse than that, however, is that when I go to view my art in different browsers, it may or may not show up! First I couldn’t view my own gallery if I was logged in using Opera 9, Google Chrome, and IE 7, but I can’t view my galleries in Safari for Windows whether I’m logged in or not. That’s not good.
And let me just go ahead and get my final complaint out of the way: MyArtSpace allows artists to add music to their gallery pages. In my humble opinion, this is a bad idea. It has nothing to do with viewing art, and the last thing I want when I go to any webpage is for somebody’s else’s choice of music to start auto-playing over the music I’m already listening to, so I will click away faster than you can say “lickety-split.” Your mileage may vary, but artists — beware; just because you can add something to your web page, doesn’t mean you should. This is most true for sound and animation — unless you’re a musician or an animator, and even then, you probably want to allow viewers to turn it on; or at least turn it off, but by no means should you offer your viewers no choice — unless you want to lose potential viewers. </off soapbox>
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Free Online Artist Portfolios: Part Three
I signed up with Saatchi Online almost as soon as they started offering free online portfolios in 2006. At the time, they offered “your own page which you can update as much as you wish. You can post up to eight images…and there is no fee, we have created this to assist artists in raising their profiles.” OK! Sounds good. Where do I sign up? (here: register)
The Saatchi Online site is a very nice looking site, though I find the little boxes of links surrounding both sides of the main content column a bit overwhelming as a navigation method, and the page can be ridiculously long (see my page at right >). There are some main navigation links at the top of every page, though I am not sure if those links include everything you can find on their site. Luckily, they’ve included a very extensive site map.
They have a lot to offer; besides information on the physical Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea, they offer online chat, forums, and critiques; calls to entry, grants and funding; information on art fairs; links to art schools, dealers, galleries, and museums; a daily online magazine, blogs, and news; sections for under 17 students; and — perhaps one of the more interesting perks they offer — a “showdown,” where you can submit your work to be voted on by viewers in competition with other artists.
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Free Online Artist Portfolios: Part Two
Also known as WorldWideArts Resources, AbsoluteArts.com advertise that they are “the largest site for contemporary art, art news, art history, contemporary artist and gallery portfolios” with over 170,000 works of contemporary art. I signed up with AbsoluteArts.com in 2003. They send out a newsletter not quite once a month, reminding me occasionally that I have a portfolio there. Over the years, I think I may have gotten a response or two to the few pieces of art I’ve had online there, though nothing has ever developed from that.
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