Tag Archives: the watercolor gallery

Please leave your name after the post. Beep.

December 5th, 2011

I run into this problem every single day. Every. Single. Day. Brent Simmons simply reminded me that I need to yell a little more about it. He asks:

“Take a look at your weblog. How easy is it to find your name?”

You’d be very surprised how hard it is to find someone’s name in order to give proper attribution. And, unlike Brent, I think it is totally on purpose in some cases.

While curating The Watercolor Gallery I’ve seen countless Flickr and Tumblr accounts that simply do not list the name of the artist or their location — two bits of information I prefer to include when featuring a painting. Some would argue that these artists prefer the anonymity. Let me be clear; an anonymous artist is likely a poor one. (read: not selling a lot of art)

Some branding experts would want you to paste your name all over your work — even going so far as placing a watermark on any images that might be credited to you. I think that is unreasonable and more than likely not worth the trouble. Post your work on whatever service you so choose, just make sure to fill in your profile information to include your name, where you live (there are a lot of John Smiths on this planet) and perhaps a way to contact you (an email will suffice). This way people have no excuse if they don’t give you proper credit.

Please leave your name after the post. Beep.

Interviews with watercolor artists

October 27th, 2011

Now would be a great time to catch up on the artist interview series I’ve been doing for over a year on The Watercolor Gallery.

Here is a full list of the interviews I’ve conducted to date. I’m nearing the end of the first batch of interviews. The next batch will be much different.

Tumblr, audience, and engagement

March 1st, 2011

The success of The Watercolor Gallery thus far has been extremely gratifying. I really enjoy the effort it takes (and believe me it is an effort) to find art to feature, to dig for the details of a painting or an artist online, and to describe what inspires me about it. And so far that effort has really paid dividends for me and my art.

Since the few enormous inflection points a few months ago (such as being featured on Tumblr’s official Tumblr Tuesday) growth of the gallery’s audience has ceased. A few more Tumblr followers trickle in each week, a few more people “Like” the gallery on Facebook, and follow @h2ocolor on Twitter – but it appears that the same number of people that come in also walk back out of the door. This could easily be because, like Twitter, a huge number of accounts on Tumblr are spam or bots or junk accounts and they will, inevitably go inactive or be deleted. But I can’t be sure of that so I’ll just have to assume that a Tumblr follow is about as loyal a connection as reused, wet tape.

I try not to focus too much on statistics but also engagement. For me the best way to know if people are finding the gallery useful or enjoyable is how they interact and use the information on the site. For the most part, every single painting that gets featured on the gallery gets some sort of attention from the audience on Tumblr. Tumblr allows people to quickly “like” or to “reblog” a post to their own blogs. The viral nature of these two features make growing a new site fairly quick and easy. But it also creates, what would seem to be, a false sense of the level of engagement from the community.

It is so easy to like and reblog posts that anything above and beyond those two interactions is seemingly difficult to get from the Tumblr audience. Perhaps they are spoiled (and I mean this in a nice way) and they don’t need to do any more than that. If it takes more than a few seconds to decide what they are going do with a post they simply will move onto the next one. And believe me, there is a ‘next one’ waiting.

Tumblr’s staggering growth is fairly well known at this point. The amount of content flooding into the system, especially for those that follow dozens or hundreds of Tumblr-powered sites, must be completely overwhelming. A quick reload of one’s Tumblr Dashboard would probably reveal 10 new posts every few minutes or even seconds. Scrolling through that list and quickly clicking like or reblog has probably become a habit for many Tumblr addicts. As an example of this; for about three months straight a single Tumblr account was liking every single one of The Watercolor Gallery’s posts almost immediately after the post was published. My guess is that this person was wholly addicted to Tumblr’s Dashboard and sat on the site for the better part of the day clicking “like” on anything that rushed passed their nose. I can’t know for sure, but the patterns that I’ve seen – like the one described, certainly lend themselves to the idea that the Tumblr audience is chocked full of happy clickers.

A good example of this is the Artist Interview series on the site. By far the hardest posts to craft are the interviews of these artists. These posts are also the least liked and reblogged. I’d also wager that 90% of the people that follow the gallery on Tumblr don’t even read the interviews. Far more traffic comes from the artist linking to the interview and Google than it does from the Tumblr Dashboard. Obviously, one can’t be sure of what is read and not read on the Dashboard – since there are no stats for that – but if someone took the time to read the entire interview I’d have to assume they’d take the time to click “like”. I don’t think it is that the interviews aren’t good or that they aren’t valuable. As a watercolorist myself I find them extremely valuable and I’m sure that most other watercolorists would too (if not simply interesting or entertaining). I think the Tumblr audience simply skips the interviews on their Dashboard and move onto the next photo/video/easily-digestable post.

If I would have started with a WordPress-powered blog it is doubtful The Watercolor Gallery would have seen the amazingly quick growth that it did. However, would the growth have continued? Would the engagement with the community been greater? I don’t know. I don’t regret my decision to use Tumblr to power the gallery and it is a decision that I’m going to stick with for the foreseeable future. I just hope to put in some effort into growing the gallery’s audience even more and gaining a loyal, active audience that will appreciate everything the gallery offers.

The Watercolor Gallery finds an audience.

October 27th, 2010

I was going to wait until The Watercolor Gallery hit 150 or even 200 pieces in its archive before I gave another update but several key things are going on and I want them documented. For context see the announcement post, the 30 pieces update, the tools of The Watercolor Gallery, and the post celebrating 100 pieces in the gallery.

Today I’m going to focus on audience. I haven’t really talked much about audience since I began. To be honest, I wasn’t really focused on it. I was tracking it but I wasn’t worried about where the audience would come from or actively trying to grow the audience on my own. I didn’t buy any ads, share any links, or do anything special whatsoever. I simply focused on making a gallery that I would like to visit. In fact, the only update I gave regarding audience was back in August when I said:

“I have many, many ideas for The Watercolor Gallery and I’ll be working on them as the site gets more and more of an audience. Right now, after only a week, the audience seems to be near 50 people per day. I’m extremely happy with this.”

Well, the Watercolor Gallery has found an audience. Since that update there have been several surges in both traffic and people ‘following’ the gallery on Tumblr and Twitter. The two most notable surges amounted to thousands of new people being ‘members’ of the gallery. And if I was happy with 50 people per day I’m very happy for thousands. The two main surges resulted from a painting going ‘Tumblr-viral’ and, yesterday, The Watercolor Gallery being featured on Tumblr Tuesday.

By the way, having a single post go Tumblr-rival seemingly has more legs than being featured on Tumblr Tuesday. However, being featured is only 24 hours old so I’ll withhold firm judgement until the dust settles.

I have reason to be happy with The Watercolor Gallery gaining so much momentum in such a short period of time. As I said in August, I have plans for the gallery that would be utterly fruitless without a fairly large audience. So far I’ve added two new series to the gallery in addition to the paintings.

The artist interview series has been a smashing success. It isn’t easy, and took a bit of work from me to get rolling but so far the interviews that have been published are just great and the upcoming interviews (of which I have 12 in the can right now) are just outstanding. Watercolor artists are part of a global community and this fact shines through these interviews. So far I’ve published interviews with artists in Bangkok, Thailand, Waxahachie, Texas, Scarborough, England, Los Angeles, California and Jerome, Arizona. These interviews have not been the most popular (in terms of “likes” or “reblogs” on Tumblr) posts on the gallery but – I think – they add a certain professional nature to the gallery as a whole. The Watercolor Gallery isn’t just a Tumblog that reblogs every watercolor painting that passes by my desk. It is a serious look at how artists can be inspired by looking at and learning from other artists, their paintings and their workspaces.

Which leads us to the Artspaces series. In a word, this series has been a flop. I’ve gotten absolutely zero submissions since I began this series on the gallery. Zero. The artspaces that you see on the site have been gathered by me personally. I’ve searched for them, asked for permission from their respective owners to publish them, written the posts and published them. But I’m not giving up. I believe we have a lot to learn from the workspaces of every artist. I believe every artist should want to have their artspace published on The Watercolor Gallery – for two main reasons. First, I think it is an easy way to be seen on the gallery (whether or not the artist specializes in watercolor). With the audience growing every day it now means something to be featured on the gallery. Second, I think it is a fun series and who doesn’t like to have fun? I might be wrong about the Artspaces series but I’m going to give it a little while to catch on before I make that decision.

I believe the Tumblr community is one of less interaction then online communities of the past. They’d rather simply click a “like” button on a photo then read an entire post, submit a photo to your site or compete in a contest. At least, that is the way that it appears. I plan on overcoming this challenge by, hopefully, providing something valuable to everyone that joins the gallery. I hope The Watercolor Gallery becomes a notable moment in an artist’s journey when they are featured there and for it to be another tool for artists all over the world to be inspired by others.

The future of The Watercolor Gallery looks very bright. Some of the things I thought I would have to wait months to be able to try I believe I can do sooner thanks to these boosts in audience. I’m looking forward to working even harder on making The Watercolor Gallery a truly special place for watercolor artists and those they inspire to gather together and enjoy each other’s work and company. I’m extremely happy that so many people have thought it worthy of their “follow”.

The Watercolor Gallery hits 30 works of art

August 27th, 2010

After a little over a week of posting over on The Watercolor Gallery I thought I’d write down a short and sweet update. You know, for posterity.

Lets just say I’m enjoying myself. I’ve wanted to put together a site like this for longer than I can remember. Tumblr has made this incredibly easy. So far The Watercolor Gallery’s archive is sporting over 30 works of art dating from 1868 to 2010. I’m learning how to keep on a schedule, to build up a queue for times when I’m not near the computer, and also finding my slightly critical but more or less positive voice for the blog.

I have many, many ideas for The Watercolor Gallery and I’ll be working on them as the site gets more and more of an audience. Right now, after only a week, the audience seems to be near 50 people per day. I’m extremely happy with this.

The first idea is to have weekly feature threads which I’m starting this week. This week’s feature thread is Scrolls from China. Each day The Watercolor Gallery will feature a work from their archive in hopes to bring some attention to orphans in need in China. (The posts for the entire week are already in the queue and scheduled thanks to Tumblr.)

Other ideas that I have will require a slightly larger audience. Also, a slightly more global audience. As it stands, as far as I can tell from the few statistics I’ve been able to gather, most of the visitors to the gallery have been from the United States.

If you enjoy watercolor in anyway please consider following on Tumblr or subscribing to the gallery’s feed.