Part Five of a Ten-Part Series on Free Online Artist Portfolios: FineArtAmerica.

Today I will be reviewing the 1st of six of the free online portfolio sites that I have to sign up for.  So follow me through the process.

As I look at the next site on my list, FineArtAmerica, I do feel a bit daunted.  This is one of those online sites where you can not only show your art, but also sell high-resolution prints of your work, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. The first thing I noticed was a map of my state and “Your current location” with my city listed (how did they know?).  Further down the home page, there is an artist spotlight featuring the work of artists from my hometown.  Nice.

They seem to have a lot to offer besides the ability to show your work and sell prints of it.  They have good search tools for finding artwork and artists; a page of brick and mortar galleries located in my area, and more pages of galleries located successively further and further out.  The list doesn’t seem quite complete or accurate, though, so I assume it’s made by people who submit their own info (some important local galleries are missing from the list, and some things that are listed as galleries are mere one-person shops).  They also have a nice events calendar, so I can see that may be useful tool.

They have jobs listings, community links, news, and a tour of their site, which I highly recommend, as it more extensive and more interesting than what I can cover here.  My first impression is that even though the site looks packed with information, art and options, it’s well designed and well-thought out, so I’m intrigued.

They offer two levels of artist portfolios; a free one which does NOT include the print-on-demand feature; or for $30.00 a year, the level with print-on-demand, which actually looks like a great deal, if one is ready for that.  I’m going with the free one for now.

OK, so the Terms of  Use are acceptable; perhaps even better than average.  Adding my artist info was easy, except that I seemed to run out of room for my full bio, statement, and resume upon initial sign-up; though after I was given a password and logged back in, I was able to add the remainder of my info.

Uploading the first piece of art plus info was also easy, and each art piece has it’s own webpage (it’s own link), with places to: recommend, post a comment, add to favorites, submit to Stumble Upon, and share on Facebook. The viewer can also “Add This Artwork to Your Favorites Collection,” and “Add This Artist to Your Watch List.”

Besides including the usual (art, title, medium, dimensions, and price), you can add a description and tags.  Dominant colors and a URL link to the piece are auto-generated.  Very nice.  They also add little boxes onto your piece (on rollover) that the viewer can click to see a small portion of your painting at full-resolution (with a ghosted watermark).  This is a great feature that I will very much appreciate if and when I decide to offer prints for sale.  At present, the resolution  of my online images is too low to print from or to see any more detail.

Like most online portfolio sites, the first piece of artwork shown is the last piece added, but the cool thing is, you can change the position in which they are shown.  Oh, yah!  Plus, they allow you to show up to 100 pieces!  Pretty generous.

You can also add upcoming events to their calendar, view events by location, date, etc., view how many people have looked at your comments, and read comments they’ve left  for you.  While I was uploading my art, almost all of it got viewed by quite a few people , and I already received a nice comment.

Now this may be the coolest thing of all: you can set up your own mailing list right online through them, and mail HTML newsletters to everyone on your list; the newsletters will come through your email address, and you can see who opened them.  I think I will try it out.

FineArtAmerica was designed by artists for artists, and it shows.  They have quickly moved to the top of my list of free online portfolios.  I’m truly wowed!  I suggest you run, don’t walk, over to FineArtAmerica and set up your portfolio.

***It’s been several days since I signed up with FineArtAmerica.  I still love it.  On day2, I was a featured artist on the home page for the Austin area; a number of people have commented on my works there, and I have commented on a number of other artists’ works.  It’s a very friendly community.

Next: Check back next week as I sign up for and review Artist-Listing.

Part Four of a Ten-Part Series on Free Online Artist Portfolios: MyArtSpace.

My Profile Page

I’m back, finally!

I signed up with MyArtSpace in 2006 or 2007.  It’s a lovely space, with a very professional look.  I’m probably more fond of MyArtSpace than I should be, because it’s really buggy.  I’m only today finding out just how buggy it is!  For instance, I can’t login to it through my usual browser (Firefox, probably because I have AdBlock and Flash Block turned on) — but whatever the reason is, the “submit” button is missing from the login section of the page on my browser in FF, and I can’t find an alternative location to login from, so I’m having to use an alternative browser.

Even worse than that, however, is that when I go to view my art in different browsers, it may or may not show up!  First I couldn’t view my own gallery if I was logged in using Opera 9, Google Chrome, and IE 7, but I can’t view my galleries in Safari for Windows whether I’m logged in or not.   That’s not good.

And let me just go ahead and get my final complaint out of the way: MyArtSpace allows artists to add music to their gallery pages.  In my humble opinion, this is a bad idea.  It has nothing to do with viewing art, and the last thing I want when I go to any webpage is for somebody’s else’s choice of music to start auto-playing over the music I’m already listening to, so I will click away faster than you can say “lickety-split.”  Your mileage may vary, but artists — beware; just because you can add something to your web page, doesn’t mean you should.  This is most true for sound and animation — unless you’re a musician or an animator, and even then, you probably want to allow viewers to turn it on; or at least turn it off, but by no means should you offer your viewers no choice — unless you want to lose potential viewers. </off soapbox>

Enough with the complaints; let’s get to the heart of the matter — creating your own gallery.  As with most online portfolios, it’s a good idea to keep your resume, statement and bio in a plain text format, such as in Notepad, and then copy and paste from that into the appropriate little boxes provided for such information.  The little info boxes on MyArtSpace are quite small, so be sure to check that your information got inserted correctly — that your desired content is all there and that undesired line breaks didn’t get inserted.

Account page

Uploading your images to the galleries can be a little more complicated on MyArtSpace than on some other online portfolios; first you need to upload the images, then organize them into portfolios, and then from the portfolios, create your galleries.  Luckily they provide a good tutorial, helpful graphics and a wizard to make things even easier.  In fact, you probably want to use the wizard to upload your work the first time  — or anytime you plan to upload several pieces into a new gallery.

After they’ve been uploaded, your images will be contained in an image library, where you can go to add new work, and edit or make some detailed adjustments to existing work (such as adding a watermark and making the images printable, zoomable, downloadable, and emailable).   Just go to “Edit and Organize My Art.”

In either the wizard or the standard library view, there’s a nifty tag cloud for adding tags chosen from a list.  I used to be able to add my own tags (such as “encaustic,” which is not an option you can choose from), but now attempting to add my own tag just hangs up the browser.

The portfolios are for organizing bodies of work, and you can add a description for each portfolio, choose which piece represents which portfolio and add new pieces to each portfolio.

Finally, the gallery page is where your work gets publicly displayed.  They are displays of your artwork in a Flash-based page; one page per each gallery.  Any image that is not in a portfolio cannot be added to a gallery.  Each gallery contains thumbnails and a large image slideshow, with information for each image.  Here’s where the music would play, if you added it.  Here’s where I would click away from your work, if music plays.  Just sayin.’

One of My Gallery Pages

I haven’t found a way to re-order the order in which your images are displayed, and it seems they are displayed with latest added shown first.  Just keep that in mind as you build your galleries.  Start with the one you want on the left first.

MyArtSpace also offers an online store, but it costs, with various options and price points.  I haven’t added it, as I have my own website.

As with most other online portfolio sites, the artwork on the front page is displayed by most recently added, which quickly falls off the front page.  I added a few things in the past hour or two, and they are now on pages 2 and 3, and I’m sure they will be buried deep by the time I publish this story.  (Amendment: the front page does not show the most recent work, but featured content; however, you can search for “Most Recent” artists, galleries or images.  Several hours after my initial post of this story, my images are on pages 9 & 10, and my latest Gallery addition is on page 4 of “Most Recent” under “Galleries”  For what it’s worth).

My two favorite things about MyArtSpace are the quality of articles about artists (as well as the quality of artists showing there), and the opportunities for community with other artists.  I have met quite a few artists online through MyArtSpace.  You can “friend” other artists, and send them emails when you add new work or have an opening.

They also offer what seem to be some high quality art contests with great opportunities to show your work.

Overall, I view MyArtSpace as an attractive (if flawed) space to show your work, but more importantly, it’s a great place to connect with other artists –  if you use it to it’s fullest potential — and a great place to see and read about some very cutting edge work.  Worth the effort, I think….

Next review: join me in a few a days as I sign up for FineArtAmerica.  (Subscribe to my new posts in the Subscribe box on the right to receive the review when it is published).

Sorry that this effort was delayed…I got swamped with paying work, but I will continue to review the remainder of the ten portfolio sites I promised to review…the 1 review per day effort, however, was far too ambitious, so I may only be able to review 1 or 2 portfolio sites per week. Thanks for bearing with me!