May you and your art enjoy the best of times in 2016 wherever you live around the world.
Next I have a celebration.......
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| New Year fireworks in London 1st January 2016 |
Making A Mark went 'public' at the beginning of 2006. That's a decade ago!
10 years and 3,027 published posts later this blog has had more than 3.4 million unique visitors. Since Blogger started counting it's had c.8.5 million pageviews.
BTW that's an average of just over 300 blog posts a year!
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| Where nearly 50,000 visitors to Making A Mark came from in December 2015 |
I've always written the blog for me and it's changed as I have changed.
There again I've always been one who likes sharing information that I think others will also find interesting and/or useful - and consequently that accounts for the amount of digging around and finding things out that has happened on this blog in the last 10 years!
10 of the most popular posts in the last 10 years
One of the reasons why my blog remains popular is that a lot of the blog posts I write remain relevant past their publication date - and my archives are very well visited!
Here's a selection of some of the most popular posts over the last 10 years with an emphasis on those which continue to have relevance to today.
10 Tips for How to Sketch People (2008) - the sketch at the top of this post will be appearing in Lynne Chapman's upcoming book on drawing people.
How to sign an art print (2011) - it's short but distils down the important rules
Change in Facebook Pages Rules will affect artists marketing their art (2014) - this is about the imminent major change on Facebook which would affect those using it to promote their art.
How Pinterest removed all my pinned images in minutes (#1) (2012) One of my major 'techie' blog posts. (Part 1) is about how to find out if your images have been pinned to Pinterest from your website or blog - and (part 2) how to get them removed.
Colour Schemes: Split Complementaries, Triads and Tetrads (2008) - this was part of my major project on Colour which I still need to resurrect in terms of the website I developed as a result.
Van Gogh: Drawing media and techniques (2007) - one from the days when I did projects about specific artists. I remember I loved writing this post - mainly because of the reading around and the looking at the drawings he did.
Which are the best books about oil painting? (2011) - this is a type of blog post I've loved to do in the past. It enables the "wisdom of crowds" to generate good content for people who read this blog. In this instance most of the value comes in the comments from those offering their recommendations as to the best book about oil painting - for artists of all abilities.
How to make labels for an art exhibition (2012) - sometimes posts are popular because nobody else has ever written about a topic! This one was written after I did the labels for the first London Urban Sketchers exhibition - and I confess it was partly so I'd remember what I had to do the next time!
20 tips for entering art competitions (2010) - I've always liked sitting down and distilling down all the stuff I've learned over time into a number of tips!
5 guidelines for beginning to use soft pastels (2009) - This was a similar basic tips post but this time relating to soft pastels
Plus the Art Competitions Page is always very popular - this is Major UK Art Competitions 2016
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I may reflect on what has changed for me in the last 10 years in a future post. Right now I have to go and cook our New Year Dinner!
I'll finish with the sketch I did ten years ago tonight - of my lovely Cosmo catnapping with his 'Dad'.
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| Cosmo catnapping #5 - 1 January 2006 |
Dear Katherine,
ReplyDeleteYou should know, must know, what a rich and generous gift you share with us here, Making a Mark, and associated publications.
I am a mature student of a Fine Arts Programme, and find myself consistently recommending my peers and tutors to explore and research your resources, especially in matters of establishing themselves, adopting best professional Practices.
You go beyond, exhaustively researching and polling, to trawl for the most current innovations and discoveries, to present a wise and discriminating eye, to challenge us all to raise our game, to really critique and reflect on our work against best measures.
If there is any one thing I might not be quite as enthusiastic about, it is that your blogs are so rich, and highly functional, that I just find my own stumbling efforts, lack of discipline, are so pathetically weak by comparison, that it's hard to find motivation to improve them whe there is such a gulf! But seriously, again you've made it easy for us, done the leg work with really clear recommendations on hosts, styles, content, etc., and I will resurrect my blog very soon.
Thank you Katherine for another year of inspiration!
Phil
Congratulations Katherine and thanks so much for your blog. Please don't stop! :-)
ReplyDeleteA very Happy 2016 to you too, and thank you for all the hard work you do.
ReplyDeleteI echo the above comments and add my congratulations - ten years is a significant milestone. I am so impressed by the consistently high standard of the posts covering such a wide range of topics.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much. All the best for 2016.
Amazing! Many congratulations Katherine, we all really appreciate it. So much useful information. Please keep it up and happy new year to you. Penny
ReplyDeleteCongratulations that is a real accomplishment, thank you for the wonder resource.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations. I've been reading Marking a Mark for 9 years now, wow Thank you for all your your work and help. Happy new year. Yes, plese keep it up. EdieB
ReplyDeleteYes! Congratulations for the always informative Making-A-Mark and beyond. All your site are exhaustive in the work you put into them! Thank you Katherine!
ReplyDeleteWhat an accomplishment - so proud of you and grateful, too, for the resource you have created!! Well done - :) Kim
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