WAY Competition Deadline Extended

The David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation (DSWF) has extended the entry deadline for its Wildlife Artist of the Year competition to Feb 1, 2008 so there's still time to enter!

It's open to all artists worldwide, professional or amateur. The winner will receive a £10,000 prize. The runner up will receive £1,000 and the winner of each category will receive £500. The categories are as follows:

Endangered Wildlife - any wild animal or plant that is threatened or endangered nationally or internationally
Wild Places - any scene or landscape showing the natural environment at its most beautiful or dramatic
Wildlife in Action - any wild animal jumping, fighting, flying or any other interesting behavior
Wildlife in 3D - sculpture using any medium
Abstract - let your imagination go wild!

For more information visit the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation (DSWF) or the Wildlife Artist of the Year website.

Encourage or Discourage Young Artists?

In every issue of Wildlife Art magazine there is an article about a successful or up-and-coming wildlife artist which talks about how they got where they are today. Sadly, nearly every one of them I read about seems to have been discouraged from pursuing art at some point in their lives. No matter how talented and enthusiastic the young artist was there was always someone, often an art teacher, counselor, or parent, who strongly discouraged any notion the child may have had about being an artist when s/he grew up. Why is this?

I myself, despite having a father who was very artistic, was strongly discouraged by both parents from even thinking about becoming an artist. It was so thoroughly knocked from my brain as a child that after years of struggling in college to decide on a major I never even considered art an option. Now I look back and so often wonder why.

I just don't understand why every non-artist (and many artists) are so quick to tell you that doing art for a living is "impossible" and a sure path to homelessness and despair.

Yes, I understand it is often a difficult road, but there are many paths in life that are difficult. Being a doctor, for example, is actually quite difficult. Medical school is extremely difficult, takes many, many years, costs a fortune, and leaves the graduate stressed and in an enormous amount of debt. Then, of course, s/he has to survive internship, also quite difficult. But do parents discourage their child from dreaming of being a doctor? No! What "good" parent wouldn't prefer their child pursue a career as a doctor instead of an artist? Very few, I'd imagine.

Why? I'm not sure. But I'd imagine it's because they believe all doctors are rich, and all artists are poor. Yeah, maybe, on average there are more doctors earning good salaries than artists. But I have known doctors who struggle financially, and there are many artists who are doing quite well.

But it's more than about money. For some reason in this country having your child grow up to be a doctor is something to brag about. Having your child grow up to be an artist is something to be ashamed of and deny.

I finally graduated from college with a degree in Business Administration. Six months after graduation I decided there was no way this was the life for me. I quit my job and started painting full time. One day my father asked me what he was supposed to tell people I do for a living now. I told him to tell them I'm an artist. He visibly cringed and replied that he couldn't possibly do that. He'd have to make up something up because it would be too embarrassing to tell people his daughter was an artist.

But it wasn't just my father. My mother also discouraged me, not because she was embarrassed by the idea of having a daughter as an artist but because she really believed, for some reason, that no one buys art. How could I possibly make a living when no one would ever buy one of my paintings?

And, of course, there were art teachers. It seems every art teacher in school believed that all artists were either starving or teaching, so unless I wanted to teach, I shouldn't bother to pursue art.

Yet, every issue of Wildlife Art magazine has stories of artists who have managed to "make it" to some degree in the art world. And this is just wildlife art. I'm sure there are many more landscape, still life, and portrait artists, among others, who are doing OK for themselves in the art world. So every time I read the story of some artist who made it despite discouragements I have to wonder how different things would have been had they listened. And then I wonder how many more artists there are out there who actually did listen to the discouragements and are now working in some dead-end job they hate, the world deprived of their works, they deprived of their dreams.

So if you are a teacher, counselor, parent, or just a concerned friend, and you know someone with dreams of becoming an artist, please do not discourage them. Let them try and find out for themselves one way or another. You may think you are saving them from disappointment but you may actually be destroying a dream that could have come true and now, because of you, never will.

Art Book Recommendation: Brushwork Essentials

This is a great book by an amazing artist whose work I really admire, Brushwork Essentials by Mark Christopher Weber. Not only is this book full of beautiful images of his work, it also offers sound instruction on brushwork techniques. He covers a lot of stuff, from brush anatomy to painting light and shadow. He focuses on oil paints but his instructions should apply equally well to acrylics. This is a must-have for beginners but more advanced painters could still learn a few things. And even if you learned nothing new from it I'd recommend it just to have so many nice samples of his artwork to study and admire.



If you haven't already done so please visit his website to view samples of his extraordinary work.

Upcoming Art shows - Nov 2007

Shows to see:

Nov 9-11
Waterfowl Festival
Easton, MD
www.waterfowlfestival.org
410-822-4567

Nov 9-21
Women Artists of the West 38th Annual Invitational
Hilligoss Galleries, Studio of Long Grove
360 Historical Lane
Long Grove, IL
www.hilligossgalleries.com
847-634-4244

Nov 10-11
Pepper Tree Art Show
3617 Roblar Ave
Santa Ynez, CA
www.peppertreeartshow.com
805-688-6205

Nov 16-18
Wildlife Art Festival the 25th Anniversary
2024 Orange Tree Lane
Redlands, CA 92374, USA
www.sbcounty.gov/museum/
909-307-2669

November 17-18
Eastern Pennsylvania Wildlife Art Show
Town Hall
New Hope, PA

Nov 17-18
Twelfth Annual Plantation Wildlife Arts Festival
Thomasville Cultural Center
US Highway 319
Jackson Street
Thomasville, GA
www.pwaf.org
229-226-0588


Shows to enter:

Nov 30 deadline
Endangered Species Juried Art Competition
Wildling Art Museum
www.wildlingmuseum.org
802-688-1082

Endangered Species in Art: Brown Pelican

The brown pelican is currently with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service as an endangered species, as it has been for quite some time. Here are some paintings of this magnificant bird for you to enjoy. Hopefully art and photos will not be the only way this bird will be seen in the future.

Turning to Preen
Subject: Brown Pelican
Dimensions (inches): 20 x 15
Medium: Acrylic
by
Anne Peyton

Soft Landing (2000)
Subject: Brown Pelican
Medium: Pastel on sanded paper
by
Judy M. Hohl

Brown Pelican
Subject: Brown Pelican
Dimensions (inches): (framed 10"x14")
by
Paul Makuchal

Uncommon Wildlife Art Subjects: Hyena

This second post in my uncommon wildlife art subjects series is about the hyena. The hyena, the homeliest of "dogs" with its laughing bark, awkward gait, and reputation for scavenging is not, in fact, a member of the dog family. It is in its own family, Hyaenidae, which is oddly more closely related to the mongoose and meerkat than the dog. While not the most attractive member of the animal world it is, nevertheless, a fascinating one.

First of all, despite their reputation for being slobbering, filthy scavangers, some species of hyena are actually very efficient hunters. They are also highly intelligent, equal in intelligence to some ape species.

Another particularly unusual and interesting fact about the hyena is the presense of a psuedo-penis on the female hyenas. Read more about this and other interesting facts on Wikipedia.

So maybe you'll think about these animals in a new way as you enjoy some hyena paintings by some wonderful wildlife artists.


Here Comes Trouble
Subject: Spotted Hyena
Joni Johnson-Godsy


Hyena Cub
Angela Drysdale



Lazy Hyena
Nico Bulder

Protecting Your Images Online

A few people have asked me if I'm worried about having my images online. Am I? Not really.

Artists new to the online art world are sometimes a little hesitant to put their images out there, fearing unauthorized use and distribution of their artwork. But there is so much opportunity for positive exposure on the internet that it would be a shame not to take advantage of it because of this concern.

There are several things you can do to help protect your images from unauthorized use. Watermarking is the probably one of the oldest and most common forms of protecting images. It won't stop people from downloading your image but it will make it unusable for printing or trying to take credit for the work. People are also less likely to want to download it when there's an obvious watermark on it. Here is an example of a typical watermark:

Not very pretty, though, is it?

There are other things you can do that won't ruin the appearance of your image. In order to download an image off a website people generally have to right-click on it to bring up the save image menu option. There is a javascript you can add to your site that will prevent people from right-clicking on your image and pop up a notice warning them that your images are copyright protected. This only discourages the less Web-savvy thieves out there, however, since it's really not hard to find the image URL by viewing the source and downloading it directly. They could also simply take a screen capture and crop and save the image that way.

Another option is to "shrink wrap" your image which is a way of putting a fake transparent image over the real image so when someone tries to download your image they think they're getting the real thing when, in fact, they are getting the transparent image. You can find out how to do this here on About.com.

Personally, I don't do any of these things, really. People distributing my art all over the web just means more exposure for me. The trick is to make sure my name and web address stay with my image so the free publicity does me some good so I add my name name and web address into my images directly. I guess you could call that a form of watermarking but it doesn't obscure the image the way the typical watermark does. Here's how mine looks:

You might argue that if someone wants to steal your artwork they could simply crop the name and address off the bottom. Well, yeah, they could. But I think the vast majority of people who download and distribute your images do so simply because they like it and want to share it with friends. I don't think they're trying to take the credit away from you and are unlikely to go to the trouble to crop the image. Names and links to the sources of images are usually just lost out of carelessness and lack of web page editing skills.

To discourage those who might actually want to steal credit for your work, or print it out, I suggest simply keeping your images low resolution and low dpi. Keep the dimensions smaller than 500 pixels and keep the dpi below 96. You can also add a 10-20% jpg compression which will further degrade the image. On your computer screen these adjustments won't affect the image much and it will still look decent on your web page. If your image is, say, 400 pixels wide at 72 dpi then when someone tries to print it out on their computer printer it will only be about 5 inches wide and won't look too great. Should they try to force it to fill the page in an attempt to get an 8"x10" print it will look downright horrid at that resolution and dpi. Maybe they'll be satisfied hanging that crappy postcard sized print on their wall but they certainly won't get away with trying to sell them as fine art prints to anyone but a blind person.