Would you let Google use your art for free?

My husband brought this article to my attention today, about how Google has been asking artists to create skins for them for free. The reward to the artist, naturally, is "exposure", that insipid internet currency.

I am familiar with this sort of scenario, not with my art work, but rather with travel writing. Ever since I started my other blog several years ago, I have been asked to provide my writing to various websites in exchange for "exposure" more times than I can count. My reactions to these requests have ranged from cheerful acceptance to indignant refusal. These days I usually just ignore them entirely.

So why the varied reactions? I've found it hard to come up with a blanket policy to determine how I handle such requests. Whether or not it is in my best interest to provide my writing for free depends on several factors. For example:

• Is it for a cause I believe in? By submitting my work for free, am I helping a really cool website grow? Am I helping to promote someone or something I care about?

• How much "exposure" are we talking about? Will it actually direct traffic to my website or lead to paying gigs for me? Sites that ask you to write for free often exaggerate the number of readers they get or expect, and these days most of them doing the asking actually get less traffic than I do.

• What else is in it for me? Will it give me practice writing in a new style? Will it help me explore a new topic that interests me?

• Who will be earning money from my efforts? Am I OK with that?

Now, back to the art/Google scenario at hand. Would I jump on such an opportunity? Probably, given where I am in my art career right now. Perhaps it would leave a bad taste in my mouth that a large, profitable company was asking me to work for free, but in the end I would probably stand to gain from the scenario overall. But Google is not asking me; it is asking much more well-established artists. Artists who are well-known in their fields, who already have loads of exposure for their work. For them, Google exposure would not necessarily be a benefit. In fact, as the article mentioned, artists agreeing to work for free for a giant, profitable company such as Google could set a "dangerous precedent", one that would harm artists overall. It makes perfect sense to me that so many are turning Google down.

If Google asked you to provide artwork to them for free, would you do it?

Inspired by Kandinsky

Played around with gouache today.

Back from a travel break

My in-progress Slovenian collage, last seen here.

I've been on the road for most of the past month and a half, which is why this blog has become neglected once again. I've missed having time in my studio, but at least I have been staying creative. Every day while traveling I write and take copious photographs. I've also been keeping up with my other blog, posting travel reports and photos.

To jump start my return to drawing and painting, I've just signed up for Rowena's 100 in 100 challenge. I'm a few days behind, but I'll catch up. First I'm trying to work out exactly what these 100 things will be. Sketchbook pages, perhaps. I'd love to say paintings or collages, but that's not very realistic (most pieces take me a week to a month to complete). Or perhaps it can be anything visual, as long as I post here about it. That would be a whole lot of blogging... I'll sleep on it and let you know what I decide (and by "you" I mean the one person who still reads this blog).

A Slovenian mess

I love the beginning stages of a collage, when everything is so chaotic, various materials slapped together in disharmony. At least that's how mine usually start out.

This collage-in-progress is inspired by my recent trip to Slovenia. The background consists of pages from an old Slovenian book my friend and I bought for a euro (it's about flowers). The foreground is layers of charcoal, conte crayon, and gouache. The imagery is inspired by various photos from the trip, mainly those taken on the coast.

Like I said, I love beginning a collage. The process is infinitely enjoyable. It's making it into a finished work that I've yet to master.

I'll let you know if anything comes of this one.

Photography: on the lake at dusk

One of the things I am loving about my new SLR camera is discovering its capabilities in low-light situations. Photos that would have looked dark and uninteresting on the point-and-shoot come out beautifully with the DSLR.



I'm still kind of stabbing around in the dark when I play with the settings, but I'm getting a little better at it. I'd still like to take a photography course, but my first attempt at finding a suitable one resulted in me being a little distracted by the sexist nature of the offerings. Perhaps it's time to try again.

Work in progress (and a new computer)

I'm back! My new Mac arrived a few days ago, and I have been busy catching up on the internet, transferring files, and generally learning my way around my new computer. The transition from Windows hasn't been hard at all, especially since my Windows machine was a total whiny uncooperative bitch these past few months. Yay Mac!

Now that I'm back and wired, one of my goals is to come up with a regular schedule for posting on this long-neglected blog. Hopefully that will be up and running by next week. In the meantime, here's the painting I'm currently working on, a Venice scene in acrylics. I'm happy with it so far, although I still don't know what it's going to look like in the end. Looking forward to finding out.

Painting: Munich's Volksbad

30 x 30cm, acrylic on canvas

Last seen in this post, my Volksbad painting has been sitting stagnant for quite a while. I did a little more to it this week. I still think it's pretty... boring. It's not the kind of painting I want to produce. Can't decide if it's worth any more work or not. Back in the wait-and-see pile it goes...

Two more

I know these aren't the most brilliant things I've ever created, but they're a whole lot of fun. This second one is a re-working of the middle painting from my last post. It just didn't have enough personality before.



Now all ten little canvases are full, and I'm going to have to come up with something else to work on. I started a new cityscape today, plus I stretched another piece of watercolor paper so I can give gouache another go.

I'm also hoping to do something with this month's Creative Every Day theme, which is dreams. I had the most visually stunning dream the other night, but I don't think I could begin to do it justice if I tried to capture it. But maybe it's worth a try.

more little face paintings

I'm not sure all of them are done, but if I waited until I was 100% satisfied with things before posting them here, I'd never make any posts at all. These are all 15 x 15 cm canvases, acrylic paint.

Lessons in gouache

I've put off posting this, my first work with gouache, for what should be obvious reasons now that you've seen it. In an effort to make the edge of the buildings a little crisper, I decided to employ some masking tape. You know, as a mask. It seemed like a good idea at the time, until I went to remove the tape, taking big chunks of the paper with it.

So now what? Rather than just tossing the entire painting out, I'm trying to come up with a way of using it. Perhaps I'll collage over it, or rip it up and use the pieces in a different collage. There are elements of this painting I like, and I want to find a way to salvage them. I just haven't figured out how yet.

Tuscany paintings: good and bad

I think this painting (last seen here) is done, and I'm quite happy with the way it came out. I need to take a better photo of it, and then I think it's ready to go up on my art website.



This one I'm less happy with. Back in December I was almost ready to declare it done, but then I decided it was all wrong. I liked it a lot in its early days, but that like faded as I added in more detail and more colors. I recently changed the sky from pink to black, which was an improvement, but it's still not right. I think it needs some radical re-working, which I'm almost ready to do. Sometimes it's hard to accept that a painting needs a lot of changing when I thought it was so close to done. Time usually helps me get over that.

Little face paintings

I'm back at home in my studio for a few days between trips to Ireland*. I'm trying to make the most of this studio time, but I haven't decided on my next big project yet. I've lost steam on the two paintings series (Munich and Tuscany) I've been working on. Perhaps I just need a break, or perhaps I'm just not meant to paint in series. Or maybe I've just chosen the wrong subject matters. Whatever it is, I'm trying not to let it get in the way of my creative output, so I've shifted gears to a completely different subject: faces.

I bought ten little (15 cm square) canvases on my last trip to the art store, and I've decided to use them to play around with imaginary faces. While I've painted many portraits over the years, I rarely work without a model or photograph. With this new project I'm trying to challenge myself to create faces from only my imagination. It's freeing to not have to worry about whether the painting resembles the subject, since there is no subject. It's also fun to play around with more abstract facial features than I'm used to depicting.


* You can read about my adventures in Ireland on my other blog.

Creative retreat in Ireland

I find myself in Dublin with a little free time on my hands, and I'm using it for a couple of creative pursuits. I brought along my new gouache and some postcard-sized watercolor paper, as well as a sketchbook and various sketching utensils. But my main focus is on working through the book Perfect Digital Photography and trying to teach myself to use my new DSLR camera.



I am an impatient student, but hopefully I'll start to see my new knowledge come through in my photos soon. You can check up on my progress on my flickr stream.

Paris with the new camera

I didn't think it was possible for me to love traveling any more than I already did, but this new camera is making it even more fun. I just got home from a weekend in Paris, and I had a blast taking pictures there and getting creative with the camera. I got plenty of shots very, very wrong, but every once in a while one would come out amazingly right. Slowly but surely I'm learning my way around the settings, but clearly I still have a very long way to go.











More Paris photos on my Flickr.

I have always enjoyed taking pictures, even when I just had a point-and-shoot, but now with my DSLR I'm finally starting to see photography as a true creative outlet for myself.

Sorry for the long silence here since my last post... my computer died and is still undergoing the recovery process, making blogging (and visiting other blogs) more difficult than it should be. I'm still being creative, though. Thanks to those of you who are still around to read. :)

New toys: rhymes with squash

I had a lovely afternoon at the art store this week, stocking up on supplies and looking for something new to experiment with. Inspiration hit when I stumbled across this bargain-priced set of gouache. I've never painted with gouache before, so I couldn't resist this chance to try it out. I've heard it's sort of like watercolor, except more opaque and more pigmenty.

I also picked up some paper tape, which has been on my art supply wish list for a while now. It is perfect for stretching paper:



This way the paper doesn't buckle when it is painted on. Off to play with my new paints!

CED: sketchbook pages

I've been trying to make this post for days... unfortunately our internet access has been too spotty to handle photo uploads. Fingers crossed that this time it works...

I've been sketching, collaging, and painting up a storm in my sketchbook. In the spirit of this month's CED theme, Play, I've been trying new things and trying not to worry too much about the results.

I've also been playing around with my new camera, which has been a lot of fun. Hopefully I'll post some of my new creations here soon (in the meantime you can check out some photos in this post).

Happy Creative 2009!

I spent the past week having a blast in New York City, and now I'm home and ready for a very creative 2009. My Creative Every Day year is on its way. I got off to a slow, jetlaggy start, but today I'm feeling a little more energetic.

One of the big bits of excitement around here is our new SLR camera. This is the first camera I've had that isn't a point-and-shoot, and I'm very excited to learning what it can do. Posts of photos (and sketchbook pages) to come soon!

Tuscany in pigments and paints

A painting I have in progress: another Tuscan farmhouse scene, in a mix of acrylics and earth tone pigments. I'm struggling with where to go next. Maybe the sky will get some more color.

Happy holidays!

Gold leaf icon

 

For my last art class (experimental techniques in acrylic), the 'experimental technique' was gold leaf. Which immediately makes me think of Byzantine religious icons. At first I was trying to think up ways to incorporate the gold leaf into a cityscape like ones I've been working on recently, but in the end I decided to just play around and see what came out. After all, I took this class in order to try new things, and while I have tried new materials, my subject matter has remained pretty standard most weeks.

The result was two paintings: one abstract black and red square of which I didn't manage to get a good photo, and this icon painting. It came out looking much more religious than I intended. I do like some of the shapes I created in it, though. Not sure what I'm going to do with the painting now.

Overall I'm glad I took the art class. I had hoped for a class heavier on the critique and on the technique instruction, but I still managed to get something out of this class. At the very least it had me painting for three straight hours each week, usually finishing at least one if not two paintings in that time. Just imagine if I could impose such discipline on myself in my home studio... Also the teacher gave me some ideas for places in Munich I could contact about exhibiting my work, and a fellow student said she might know of a space, too. Good stuff.

5 things

I was tagged by the lovely and talented Leah for a meme which involves writing a post on "five things you do that help keep you mentally well". So here goes...

1. Creating things - writing, painting, drawing... it all works.
2. Moving my body - when my body's happy, my mind's happy.
3. Connecting with other people - as an introvert, I have a tendency to keep to myself, but fighting this tendency and reaching out to others on a daily basis does wonders for my well-being.
4. Experiencing new things - too much routine drives me crazy. I like to do at least a little something new every day.
5. Being - I mean this as opposed to 'doing'. Time for doing nothing is good every once in a while.

I'm supposed to end by tagging 5 others, but I'm not really sure that there are five people out there reading this blog, so I'll just say... if you're reading this and want to play along, consider yourself tagged. :)

photo: in-progress self portrait, pigment on canvas.