The Flynn effect is the year-on-year rise of IQ test scores. It was named after the New Zealand political scientist James R. Flynn. The average rate of rise is around three IQ points per decade, although it varies greatly in many parts of the world. Various explanations for the effect include improved nutrition, smaller families, stable families, better education, greater social and environmental complexity, free thinking, passion, ambition, increased size of the cranial vault, better gene pools and racial interbreeding.Is it possible that some of these same factors may be improving creative intelligence as well? If some of us are getting [...]

My friend, founder of RayMar Art, John Dietrich passed away Tuesday.John was a wonderful guy who always made my day brighter when I spoke with him.  I will miss him.If you knew John and/or wish to express your condolences for his family, please visit the following guestbook site:Goodbye to JohnAlso, if you are a painter, I encourage to try the art panels made by the company John founded:http://www.raymarart.com [...]

Many of you may be familiar with the artist, Akaine, but her story was just brought to my attention this week.Akaine a gifted child prodigy is an artist, poet and musician.  She began drawing at the age of four, depiciting images that she claims came to her directly from God.  Her parents, former atheists, have been so changed by her work that they have come to faith.Here is the CNN Story that someone send me about her:http://tinyurl.com/yxewotIf you're interested, you may visit her web site directly and come to your own conclusions about Akaine:http://www.artakiane.com In any case, the little girl is obviously [...]

Michael Masterson, in his newsletter "Early to Rise", sites his belief that competence is achieved, on average, with 1,000 hours of experience in the activity in question.  Perhaps a bit less if you are extremely gifted or fortunate enough to study with an excellent instructor.  He goes on to say that the expert level requires 5,000 hours and, finally, the virtuoso level requires 25,000-35,000 hours of experience (and then, only if you are truly gifted).http://www.earlytorise.com/archive/z_archive/061400.htmTo gain competence, for an artist, obviously requires that you spend most of your time actually creating art.Alyson Stanfield visited this subject in the Art Biz Blog [...]

We pause today to reflect upon the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.  I admit, like most Americans, I don't know very much about the man.  My knowledge is limited mostly to the last few lines of his passionately delivered "I have a dream" speech.  No, I only know the icon of MLK.The civil rights movement happened before I was old enough to understand it.  My knowledge has come from textbooks, soundbites and wikipedia.  However, I think knowing the icon alone is enough. After all, I don't really know any of the people behind the holidays we celebrate.  We can only [...]

This issue comes up fairly often because of artists' desire to protect their copyrighted images.  Sites that disable the right-click function can SEEM, on the surface, to prevent people from downloading images and saving them to their hard drive.  Of course, for anyone who really wants the images, it is a piece of cake to get around the right-click disablers.  Just go into your temporary internet files folder, find the image you want, copy it, paste it, rename it and voila!  you've got the image.  Or how about this method?  Hit the PrintScreen button (upper right on most keyboards), open an [...]

(Author's Note - This article was originally sent via email in April 2005. I post it here with a few updates because I think the ideas are worth re-visiting and because we have many new members who have not seen this article.)This article about marketing art is a bit different. I'm not going to talk about specific steps to take to show your artwork, tell you how to write, or even talk about galleries (although these things are important). Today I'm going to talk about marketing from the perspective of "improving your product." If you have a great product, the market [...]

. . . the record we find most intriguing is in the art market. Overall, the Mei-Moses art index rose a record 22%. In the summer, a Gustav Klimt sold for a record $135 million. No one had ever paid that much for a painting. And then, a few months later in the year, along came someone with more money to spend. He laid out $140 million for a Jackson Pollack.And here, we have to sit down and compose ourselves, our pulse races so. The buyer chose to remain anonymous. What a shame. Anyone who would spend $140 million on a dreadful [...]

A client wrote me to ask, "how do I get the e-mail addresses of those who look at my website?"In short: you can't....unless the visitor voluntarily provides the email address.When a visitor comes to your website, they may choose to be completely anonymous.  After all, don't YOU want to be anonymous on some sites that you visit?  To get the email address of the visitor, you must entice them to voluntarily provide the email address.This is why I suggest that EVERY artist have a "Join Email List" link on his/her page.  All FASO sites come with this capability built-in.Sincerely,Clint WatsonSoftware Craftsman [...]