Shared memories - and a breakthrough!

The Lemon Tree House - now available as a fine art print
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I've noticed that quite a few of the people who are responding to my post about collecting art (see Do you collect art? Are you an 'art collector'? ) are indicating that they like to collect original art if they can afford it - but also collect fine art prints if they can't.

I make fine art prints of my work available through my my site at Imagekind - which means I organise the uploads and leave Imagekind to sort out the production and despatch on a 'print on demand' basis. Yesterday I created a new Gardens Gallery which now includes a new fine art print - The Lemon Tree House.

Is this work available as a print? I wanted to highlight this fact partly because it came about because somebody wrote to me and asked if it was available as a giclee print. As a result I found the digital file, uploaded it to Imagekind and it is now available to purchase in a range of sizes and in a choice of finishes.

Memories There's a bit of a story behind this work. I went on a painting holiday to the island of Chios in Greece in early May in 1995 and was based in the village of Volissos - which is supposed to be the birthplace of Homer.

I'd been working in pastels for a while but was enormously busy at ("real") work and travelling all around the UK and consequently I hadn't been able to get into a rhythm of painting in pastels. I guess I just needed to have some dedicated time - and this holiday was it!

My new fine art print is of a particular pastel which was done on my big breakthrough day. In the morning I sat working away at the side of the road leading out of Chios - looking over the sea to Turkey. I think I was passed by two cars, a bicycle and a donkey! I managed to complete a pastel of a bank of spring flowers in the morning (same size - 19.5" x 25.5") - which you can see in this blog post Getting started with soft pastels.

Then in the afternoon, and after a very nice Greek salad lunch, I decided I'd have a go at the Lemon Tree House as I'd already noticed that the afternoon light produced really interesting shadows on the white walls - and I felt like I was 'on a roll' - so why not! This time the road was even quieter, the early May sun was even hotter and the pastel just flowed onto the paper and it was completed in just under 3 hours.

It was really quite amazing as it was in theory incredibly difficult to do - mainly because the supposed straight lines weren't straight at all - nothing was in that ancient hillside village! Plus of course the light and the shadows were changing all the time as I worked. It was one of those curious times when you look at the painting at the end and ask yourself "Did I do that?" - and can't quite believe that you actually did!

I told this story to my client yesterday - and this was her response

This is a wonderful story!! I knew there was something magical about it. I do a lot of traveling myself and when I saw the Lemon Tree House, it reminded me of all those lovely, quaint houses you pass in a quick second as you're driving by the road through nameless villages but a certain something about them imprints their charm indelibly on your mind. The minute I saw your print, it took me right back to those fleeting images that linger bittersweetly in your heart. The ones where you wonder who lives there and what their day is like and wishing you could know them -- the ones that evoke that longing, fleeting feeling that you want to walk through the gate and know those people and be part of their lives but you can't because you're flying past them so quickly and your life is in another world.

I guess the really nice thing about being an artist who works plein air is that you do stop - and stand and stare - and then start sketching or drawing or painting what you see. I can remember this house and that still, hot afternoon in a remote village on a Greek island as if it were yesterday. That's why I work from life and why I work plein air as much as I can.

Would you like a fine art print too? If anybody spots a work on my website which they'd like to buy as a fine art print do let me know and I'll let you know if that's possible. If it is, I can upload an image and then you can check out the options offered by Imagekind and the prices. It's no bother for me and the only issue that ever arises is whether I can locate the top quality image quickly!

You can see more of drawings of houses around the world and their gardens in the Houses and Gardens gallery on my portfolio website.

Links:

• Katherine Tyrrell at Imagekind - http://makingamark.imagekind.com
  
• My portfolio website Pastels and Pencils - Houses and Gardens Gallery
  

Imagekind: an update and a new Catnapping gallery

Introducing the first image in the Catnapping Gallery
(http://makingamark.imagekind.com/Catnapping)
(click the image to see a larger version of the screenshot/ click here to see the real thing)

The major changes in my Imagekind account in the last 24 hours with are that:

• I have signed up for a Platinum Account which gives me unlimited images in umlimited galleries and unlimited bandwidth
• I've now got four flowers in the flowers gallery (check the change in the banner in the right hand column)
  
• plus I've published a second Gallery for the "Catnapping" drawings series.

I've also decided to start providing feedback on the Imagekind site in stages as there's a lot o good points being raised and a lot to comment on!

The new Catnapping Gallery

I've realised that I have a number of drawings which I will never extract from sketchbooks but which could look great as a print. The other benefit of selling prints is that I don't have to scratch my head and try and remember whether or not I was using pigment based archival ink in the pen and ink drawings!

The first gallery of monochrome drawings - the catnapping series - has been created and can either be accessed if you put 'catnapping' into the search facility at the top of the site. or you can find it here http://makingamark.imagekind.com/Catnapping.

For all catlovers I've also got a separate Feline Art Gallery (for colour images) waiting in the wings and will introduce it when I write about the SOFA exhibition in September. It will include any images which are included as originals in the show.

I'll also be reviewing drawings of other subjects to see whether I can generate a good enough scan for a print.

Upgrading

There are a number of options. The free account offers one gallery, up to 24 images, storage facilities of a maximum of 200 MB plus and 200 MB bandwidth per month. That's great if you only have a small number of images or you just want to test the service.

However after a day, although I'd identified a few irritations by and large I was sold on the concept and the service and was itching to get on and try loading a sample of images - and I wanted more than one gallery for these.

I looked at the prices and, if you crunch the numbers and have the cash available, there's no question that the upfront payment of an annual fee offers best value for money. So last night I signed up for the annual Platinum option which gives me unlimited facilities in relation to images, galleries and bandwidth. The choice is pay an annual fee upfront of $94.99 for the Platinum option (which = $7.91 per month) or spend $7.99 per month for the Pro option or $11.99 per month for the Platinum.

Scanning and scans

I'm scanning smaller works @300dpi and saving as a tiff file. This giving me files of about 20+ megabytes. Using PS Elements I'm also making sure I save the SRGB file information with each image. The colour looks fine on my screen and has needed absolutely minimal tweaking. This is in the context of my scanner having the following resolution settings:

• Scanner resolution digital: Up to 9600 x 9600 dpi
• Scanner resolution optical: 2400 x 4800 dpi

The imagekind website - intuitive navigation and signposting

The site is easy to navigate and intuitive up to a point. Generally it's very well written. However people have commented about options not being available when they are and I don't think it's as clear as it could be in relation accessing certain information. In addition, the actual choices available - while excellent - can get quite bewildering. I came to the conclusion that are some gaps and omissions - for example I only learned about what the tiny '+' icon on images of paper, mats and frames did late last night - as I was setting up my 4th image! (For those who haven't a clue about what I'm wittering about - read on!)

Two welcome additions would be:

• a very basic step by step set of instructions walking you through the whole process which can be printed off (one for buyers; one for creators and one for sellers) and
  
• a checklist at the end to make sure you've done or considered every option you have.

What is available

The following are aspects of the service which people commented on or asked about. It does seem to me that the site is well set up for artists as well as photographers who can often dominate similar services.

I can confirm:

• you can choose whether to set your mark-up (ie fee/'profit') on the base price of each image by a specific number of dollars or a percentage of base price (I'm opting for the latter)
• this page describes the 'creative options' available - in brief. To access the detail you need to upload
  
• for the custom framing (customers will click the custom frame button in the above screen) you can have a choice of:
• as many sizes as your image allows (minimum size 800 pixels) upto a maximum of 6
• 8 different papers for different purposes and with different prices. You can get detailed information about each one by clicking the little '+' sign in the bottom left hand corner. Some are particuarly suitable for paintings in oil, acrylic or pastel which have a texture.
  
• there are 20 categories of frames and in excess of 500 individual frames listed (some appear in more than one category). For each of them you get images and text of the detail of each frame by clicking on the '+' in the bottom left hand corner
  
• a collage frane (for more than one image) - I've not looked at this yet but do have some sets which might suit this
• you have a choice of 3 acrylic and 3 glass glazing options. One of the acrylic options offers UV protection.
• all your customers can choose the papers, mats, frames and glazing that they want and they can afford. the process keeps people informed as they make their choices as to the impact on prices.
  

Updating and RSS Feed

The updating within the site doesn't seem to work too quickly. For example, I created the new catnapping gallery some 5-6 hours ago and uploaded one image and am still waiting to see it appear on the "recently listed" screen.

A big plus point is that each gallery that I create has an individual feed - that comes through straight away. This can automatically update subscribers/fans of your work whenever you publish.

I seem to be doing a lot of saving, going back in tweaking, saving, having another look at the moment and I don't know that will work its way through to the feed. I've subscribed to my own feed (something I always do so that I know if something is wrong) so we'll see what happens. It would be good to have an e-mail option because I know a lot of people read their feeds via e-mails rather than a feedreader.

This feature has implications for how you allocate your images between galleries. For example, I don't think all my fans of the catnapping drawings will also like my flower drawings - hence I have two different galleries.

What improvements I'd like to see

Most of this is a subject for a future post - but I do have one niggle.

Member art covers orginals which are paintings and drawings in traditional media, photographs and digital art. You can view Member Art by subject (limited choice) and genre (limited choice). What you can't do is just see images of paintings and drawings using traditional media. I think there should be an option to do this very early in the process.

International Shipping....and tax!

I'm going to deal with what I've found out so far in the next post.

If you want to make sure you read this and don't have a subscription can I suggest you go either to the top right (just under the map) or scroll right down the bottom of this page and subscribe to this blog via your regular feedreader or by e-mail.

Links:

• my website: Catnapping Gallery
• imagekind: my Catnapping Gallery
  

"Making A Mark" sets up a gallery at Imagekind!

The problem with being somebody who enjoys research is that you can do too much! I've been looking for a site for some time which will do a comprehensive fine art giclee 'print on demand' service for my work, produce a good quality product, offer framing (and ideally print to canvas) options for those who want it, provide a good service and not make huge inroads on my time. Plus it was essential that the service also offered shipping to customers (because I'm really, really awful (really!) at putting things in envelopes!) and good quality control arrangements in relation to any service malfunction.

I'd more or less narrowed it down, with some reservations, to art.com/art.co.uk when the huge upheaval surrounding that enterprise started up - so I had to start looking around again as I'm not at all happy with their new offering to artists. Which is why you've been seeing references to print sites and online galleries in the "Who's made a mark this week" posts on Sunday.

That was also the point at which I realised that Dan over at Empty Easel was also investigating all the different on-line gallery sites (and has his blog posts archived under "selling art online"). He seemed enthusiastic about the Imagekind! offering so I decided to take a peek - and liked what I saw. It's not perfect, there are things I'd like to be different but it looks very promising. I've worked before with companies which are still in the early years of operation and I have found that they are often the ones who respond best to customer feedback - so I'm optimistic things will improve as they compete for market share.

This post is by way of announcing I'm going to give Imagekind! a try.

I've started with the free option and I'm not going in for any razzamattaz right now. I may have a 'grand opening' later if I decide to upgrade and have got a number of images ready for publication. Right now the focus is on testing out the service - to see how good the product is, how fast and how well the delivery service works - both in the USA and internationally, how much I like the site (or not) and whether all the existing functionality works well.

So far I'm impressed with the ease of setting up an account, the scope for description and tagging each work and the presentation of the gallery. I'm also extremely impressed with the options for doing custom mats and framing - and spent hours last night trying them all out! I'm puzzled by some of the search results but don't know whether that's a result of me being new to the site or not. However putting my name in the search box this morning brought up my work. The next thing to do is get a few more images scanned and uploaded for the 'test drive' period.

So - I've got things to test out and I'd like you to help me out. Here's what I propose:

• I must find out how the site works from a potential customer's perspective. I really value your views and, whether or not you want to buy a print, I'd really like to know what you think about :
• the site generally,
• the search process
• my profile presentation,
  
• the gallery format,
  
• the information provided for individual works and
  
• the process for ordering a print - and there's no need to click that final button unless you want to!
• my current print prices: Petite (10" x 8") $14.99; Small (13.8" x 11") $19.40; Medium (20" x 16") $25.99.
  
• It would be great if anybody would like to explore the options for custom framing or printing to canvas.
  
• In return for getting feedback I'm going to keep the price of prints on the images I load and publish lower than I expect to set when I "open for business" proper. I'm not sure how long this will be - but let's say I want to be open for business proper no later than 1st September. It may be earlier.
  
• I will also do a more formal review(s) on this blog of Imagekind! as a 'print on demand' site when I've had feedback about "how was it for you?" as well as much more experience myself in using the site and setting things up.
  

...and look - I've got a "fan" already! This only went up very late last night and it was such a nice surprise this morning to see Martin's face looking out at me! Martin Stankewitz of Edition Handdruck is an old cyberchum of mine who is a very fine draughtsman who lives in Germany.

As a fine art printer himself, I know he's very particular about the sorts of internet sites he will do business with. He has got lots of his sketchbook drawings, pastels, monotype prints of images of the architecture and landscape of Provence and trees available as giclee prints in four galleries. This gives both me and you a much better sense of what my site could look like in the near future. Plus I'm looking forward to getting lots of tips from him too!

So - if anybody fancies taking my new gallery for a test drive please feel free and do let me know what you think by leaving a comment below. At the moment there is only one image showing up - "Potential" - it seemed appropriate! ;) I have lots more scanning for print quality to do! I'll aim to get a few more images posted in the next few days.


You can get to the gallery any time by clicking on the new icon in the right hand gallery (just below the subscription icons). My current thinking is that I will also have an icon for a gallery image as well - and then change that each time I produce new work.

Links:

• Katherine Tyrrell at Imagekind!
• Edition Handdruck at Imagekind!
• Imagekind!