Business Side of Art

Colored Pencil Bouquet

Posted on by Yelena Shabrova
Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth Polycolor pencils, freshly packed at I’ve Been Framed

Excuse me while I gloat real quick over here. These are 287 lightly used Koh-I-Noor Hardtmuth Polycolor pencils I’ve got today from the ever awesome I’ve Been Framed store in East Portland (https://www.ivebeenframedpdx.com/, @ivebnframed), lovingly packed and adorned with a ribbon. Prairie, the store owner, is this wonderful, and the tin was free because reasons. It’s literally a colored pencil bouquet. The cost per pencil is a small fraction of a brand new one practically anywhere, so it’s a birthday and a Christmas rolled into one and such an awesome hoard that I still cant’ believe my luck.

It started at a very reasonable $1/pencil public announcement, then I found out nobody has snatched the whole lot yet which is unbelievable as I am always late to the party, then because I was taking everything the price became a joke. I tried to give the store more money. They declined on the grounds of me being a loyal customer. Go figure. Deep down I feel like I’ve committed a daylight robbery, but my grabby hands are so very happy!

    Pinterest: an Opportunity for Creators – or a Threat?

    Posted on by Yelena Shabrova

    Mark McGuinness posted a great article on the Pinterest for artists issue, Pinterest: an Opportunity for Creators – or a Threat?. A lot of good points there, but do not stop with the article itself or with links to posts in other art marketing blogs about Pinterest. There is a lengthy and insightful discussion in the comments very well worth reading (I could not help but add my $0.02 too).

    To me, the amount of attention that Pinterest is getting is amazing. How comes that images of artworks have been shared everywhere for a long while now, from Facebook to Tumblr, often without artist’s consent, and nobody made a big deal out of it? Or did opponents of image sharing only now caught up to the new reality? Is it really such a big deal? Pins are small, unfit for reproduction, even on a very amateurish level. Plagiarism concerns? Artists risk that every time they put their creation on display. Traffic stealing? Now that was probably the most unusual claim I’ve heard, complete with the total lack of supporting facts. Puzzling…

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      Google’s calling for free art

      Posted on by Yelena Shabrova

      In an interesting move, Google now asks notable artists to provide them with free art for its new browser, Chrome.

      The best part is that Google solicits this type of work from notable artists like Joe Ciardiello and Melinda Beck. If it was general crowdsourcing, I could understand it somewhat – emerging illustrators or hobbyists don’t mind to work for exposure only, just go look at those contest places all over the web. It’s still means using and abusing people to me, even though those people don’t seem to mind. But to approach someone who worked for the likes of ESPN and Rolling Stone and ask for a freebie is an insult. Those artists had plenty of exposure already and were well paid for their work. It’s not as if Google could not do the same.

      So maybe crowdsourcing does have a nasty effect on the rest of creative community: if so many artists have no problem with working for free, the rest are expected to cave in and do the same, accepting it as a new norm.

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