Check out these great new artist website by our newest members! [...]

Today's Post is by artist, Deber Klein, Regular contributing writer for FineArtViews.  Find out how you can be a guest author. Some people have tried to downplay the meaning of Thanksgiving by reminding us that it was a holiday conjured up by Franklin D. Roosevelt in order to boost holiday gift sales, thereby boosting a hurting economy. You know what? I know that's true, but I don't care. I love Thanksgiving. I think I should stress that with more enthusiasm. I LOVE Thanksgiving!!! I have this wonderful old photo of my Grandmama Masters standing in front of what appears to be a mouth-watering, Thanksgiving [...]

Today's Post is by Lori Woodward Simons, Regular contributing writer for FineArtViews.  Find out how you can be a guest author. Be Thankful For The Skills You Already Possess   My friend and mentor, Nancy Guzik, has often encouraged me with this phrase: Be thankful for what you already can do. Sometimes we artists get so hung up on what we can't do that we become thankless self-loathers. One of my favorite blogs by Clint Watson is called, “Living Recursively”. From a software programmer's point of view, he talks about how new information is built upon previous information. What [...]

Today's guest author is artist, Elayne Kuehler.  This article has been edited and published with the author's permission. Find out how you can become a guest author. Even though we artists pour our life blood into our artwork and strive constantly to improve the quality of our work, often public response may not live up to what we hope for. We produce wonderful work, put a frame around it and hang it up for the world to see and then wait. We often have to wait a long time before we're rewarded for a job well done. Being paid for our art [...]

Today's Post is by Deber Klein, Regular contributing writer for FineArtViews.  Find out how you can be a guest author. One of the many wise things my mama always said was, "Never go through a woman's purse. It's like going through her underwear drawer." I know. It used to sort of gross me out too. But she was right. A woman's purse is personal. Like her pantie drawer is personal. Likewise, an artist's studio is "personal". Especially if she works in a dungeon-like setting kept apart from the rest of the world and is on a mad art [...]

Check out the great new artist websites by our newest FineArtStudioOnline members. [...]

Today's Post is by Lori Woodward Simons, Regular contributing writer for FineArtViews.  Find out how you can be a guest author. One of Chris Issac's recordings on his Baha Sessions album, contains the following line: "Pretty girls don't cry, they know exactly what they want". It's common human experience that beautiful people seem to get all the attention. My sister had to do very little to get attention from the opposite sex, while I, on the other hand, hardly got any. That's because my sister was beautiful, and I was just so-so. However today, she's getting just plain old, while I'm older too. The difference between her and [...]

Everybody loves free services.  Free is good right? Consider this:  there's an old adage that says, "You get what you pay for . . . ." Free Services are Great . . . . Until they Disappear Recently we ran across a post at Barney Davey's Art Print Issues blog about the death of Blog Rush.   Some bloggers (like Barney) liked Blog Rush and were dismayed to see it go under.  But the death of Blog Rush underscores an important point that artists need to consider when they choose online services to rely upon . . . [...]

Today's Post is by Lori Woodward Simons, Regular contributing writer for FineArtViews.  A special shout-out to our good friend, Mark Saenger, for making us aware of this situation. Dear Artists, There is illegal activity going on right under our noses -- in which we have sometimes unknowingly taken part. I write today's blog not only to make artists aware that there are pirates in the industry, but also to rally support for the artists' whose work I love. Lately, there's been a rash of artist instructional DVD sales on Ebay. The sad part is that these DVDs [...]

Today's guest author is artist, Linda Mikulich.  This article has been edited and published with the author's permission. Seeing the world in an artistic way has been with me throughout my life; For me, painting seems as natural as breathing. My artistic senses go back to my earliest childhood memories. I really can't remember how young I was, but let's say it was early enough that I couldn't see the top of the kitchen counter -- the bottom of the car window was only at eye level. In my adult life, I've come to relish the time [...]

I've completely removed Google Adsense from this blog and from the sister newsletter site, FineArtViews.com. I had tried Adsense beginning two years ago because I wanted to learn more about it, and see if I could, in good conscience, recommend it as a way for artists to supplement their income.  Much like my current experiment with Twitter. I've concluded that I can't recommend Adsense for the vast majority of artists and I've decided to drop it for several reasons. The biggest fundamental problem I have with Adsense is that by design it sends people away from your website [...]

Check out these great artist websites by our newest members! [...]

While positive thinking may improve confidence levels, confidence without action rarely results in sustainable growth. If your work is selling just as well now as it did before the stock market went crazy, why mess up a good thing? Stay the course that is working for you. However, if sales are slowing or coming to a grinding halt, don't sit around wishing and hoping for improvement... rather, think of ways to tweak your business strategy. [...]

even if it's a small pond.  Don't be a small fish in a bunch of big ponds. If you're not sure what my point here is, I'll turn it over to Seth. Seth writes: "If you have a presence on twitter, squidoo, blogs, facebook, myspace, linkedin and 20 other sites, the chances of finding critical mass at any of them is close to zero. But if you dominate, if you're the goto person, the king of your hill, magical things happen. One follower in each of twenty places is worthless. Twenty connected followers in one place is a tribe. It's [...]