Tropical Storm Debby At Tampa Bay

Palma Ceia Skies As Debby Rolls In

Tropical Storm Debby is winding down in the Gulf, though Tampa is still under a Tornado Watch.

Heavy rain pounded the roof last night as lightning flashes made it impossible to sleep. This morning we heard the sound of cars pushing through flood waters in surrounding streets as some made their way to work.

Next we look forward to an explosion of mosquitoes from standing waters.

Picnic Island Palms As Tropical Storm Debby Slowly Moves On

After days of being cooped up (and no painting!) I had to venture out to Picnic Island with the first sun rays to break through this afternoon.  It was difficult walking the beach in high winds.

I took 148 pictures of the shoreline, kite surfers, and a ship in the bay--most are too blurred to use. The filtered look of this photo is due to the salt water on my camera lens. Note the waters have washed  away the palms' soil and roots.

Picnic Island Beach Washed Away in TS Debby

This photo dramatically shows the severe erosion a mild tropical storm can cause. The beach is gone, washed away.

That three foot "ledge" is what the raging storm waters gouged out. As I tried to walk along the water's edge, waves washed the sand from underneath my feet making for an interesting scene as I maintained my balance.

Just off shore, kites with dangling surfers held my attention. This guy was awesome. He's at least twenty feet above the water.

Picnic Island Kite Surfing During TS Debby

As I watched four kite surfers, I noticed one lone wind surfer had sense enough to keep his gear on the shore. A great example of Risk Takers and the Risk Averse.

(These are the young people we want covered under insurance plans to even out revenue and expense that SCOTUS is to rule on today.)

Needless to say, I got some terrific reference photos today, though my lack of photography experience shows in the cloudy saltwater covered lens, and movement from heavy winds.

Picnic Island Gulls Grounded by TS Debby

Aw, look who's strolling in the park.

These usually raucous, begging, and territorial birds seem a little stunned.

What's a gull to do? Too windy to fly and waters too rough to eat.

I always wonder where gulls go during storms. I'm thinking a lot of birds move away from storms. I saw only a few gulls and a couple egrets today.

Picnic Island Palms as TS Debby Passes

Water, Water Everywhere

As winds picked up speed and skies clouded again, no risk taking, I nervously left for home.

I'm eager to compare this photo with a prior one offered on my print site Tampa Bay Sunset
that I took during the Full Moon Sunset.


I saw several palms that were topped by the storm. Though we experience these storms every year, it's sad to see nature's fury destroy nature's beauty.
 
 Arriving at my car I realized why I couldn't see anything in my camera's display. My glasses and the camera lens were covered in a salt spray film, too.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
Gail Kent Studio on Pinterest
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio


Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Gulf Coast art prints:
gulf coast paintings

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Tampa paintings:
tampa paintings

Leroy Neiman's Art Scooped the Loop

Davis Islands, Tampa

Procrastinating on battening down the hatches for tropical storm Debby developing out in the bay today. Hunkered down with a bottomless cup of coffee is cozy, but eager to be painting again.

Snapped these studio shots of sail boats, planes, and clouds during a  Father's Day visit to Tampa's Davis Islands. As I captured this scene, two little guys were making memories catching "sharks" while shoreline fishing with their Dad a few feet away.

Harbor Island, Tampa

This view of Harbor Island from Davis Islands captures traffic around the Port of Tampa with a cruise ship docked, a small merchant ship and a freighter heading for open waters, with sail boats and jet skis around the Davis Islands Country Club.

These scenes are typical Tampa Bay, where my paintings depict calmness and tranquility. I live on Tampa Bay not the high seas, don't sail or deep sea fish, which brings me to the subject of this post, Leroy Neiman's energetic art.

http://www.leroyneiman.com/proddetail.asp?prod=0532

Leroy Neiman died this week and many in the media criticized his contemporary art for multiple reasons. Take a look at this link to see who had the last laugh.

Neiman's art is full of energy and spontaneity. I always loved his sail boats and horses for the movement he executed so beautifully, sometimes using household enamel paints. He was one of a kind, imitated today by lesser artists who render paintings in a rainbow of colors which somehow fall flat without the intensity of motion that Neiman's paintings depict.

As a young military wife, I lived and painted in the Chicago area when Neiman reached his great fame through his works in Playboy and television broadcasts of the Olympics. I loved the city's art focus and the "Loop" in downtown with the colossal Picasso sculpture at Daley Plaza, and other marvelous venues for every kind of art and entertainment. That great city's energy was palpable every where every day. Every Friday night young people "scooped the loop" as they rode through downtown in search of entertainment.

I loved mid-westerners, cultural diversity and the excitement and energy of city life. I realized one could buy anything, do anything, be anything in the city, just as Leroy Neiman believed. "I guess I created LeRoy Neiman," the artist once said. "Nobody else told me how to do it. Well, I'm a believer in the theory that the artist is as important as his work." Leroy Neiman Biography Leroy Neiman's travels and his city environments gave him the focus of his art: beauty and high energy. As a young artist, I loved every Leroy Neiman work I came across in publications and studied every color, every brush stroke. They were captivating.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/1968/68-chicago.html

Worried friends and family warned me to be careful in big mean Chicago. This photo of riots during the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention shows the other Chicago venue that filled TV screens every evening across the country. I arrived there a few months later and lived on a street where apartment, store, corner bar windows were still boarded-up. This was not Neiman's beautiful Chicago. His paintings were of the "good life" and as I recall there was little good about 1968 in Chicago or any other US city.

As an old soul 18 year old bride of my high school sweetheart, a potentially Viet Nam bound sailor of 20, I developed my art focus through my travels and city environments as well: peace and tranquility. Leroy Neiman and I painted that to which we aspired. We each traveled the Loop of having hit our focus. People from all walks of life loved his art. Our Viet Nam war history was pivotal in the difference in my generation and his, in his energy and my tranquility. Now I am the older generation; a new one must find their expression of our global culture for focus as they begin their Loops.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
Gail Kent Studio on Pinterest
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio


Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Gulf Coast art prints:
gulf coast paintings

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Tampa paintings:
tampa paintings

Inspiration in Painting and Pricing Your Art

Tampa Bay Sunset

So much inspiration, so little time to paint!

Waterlogged with this week's rains and ready to get out to paint for my new gallery-

Moving to my own online gallery is big-only want to do it once. I've taken advantage of online information published to help self-representing artists go digital.

Rainy weather can offer painters a needed break to research, stay current on technology, and plan ways to turn over inventory so we can paint more pictures!

Favorite Sunset on Tampa Bay

When looking for inspiration, we need only look around our homes, our own backyards, or family and friends for portraits.

My backyard is the bay, my primary focus. Inside, a maze of stacked boxes is the focus as I prepare to move in a few months- less inspirational than the outdoors.

However, many an artist has drawn or painted gorgeous works of bag and box subjects. I know one painter who paints on boxes.

Art Inspiration, is an article with many ideas to boost creativity!


Once the new gallery beginning inventory is completed, decisions have to be made on what to offer in each venue and to set the pricing that will fit within all venues.


An online gallery's vastly larger audience requires extra care when setting pricing for domestic, international, wholesale, retail, gallery, small affordable pieces-likely a greater line of products. Having always used a simple pricing per square inch based on time, materials and venue, I now have to reformulate prices.

Pricing Art is a brief article that helps focus points of consideration in pricing art works.

In addition to paintings, prints, and cards, visual artists can now easily offer all the items we find in museum gift shops. When choosing marketing venues, great care must be taken in planning to contract with retail professional gallery representation. Their pricing and terms for selling reproductions could create conflicts. Multiple online sites could possibly be utilized to overcome limitations, if the original painting prices aren't compromised in offering more affordable product items.

Happy painting!

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
Gail Kent Studio on Pinterest
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio


Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Gulf Coast art prints:
gulf coast paintings

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Tampa paintings:
tampa paintings

Painting From a Distance

Lights In the Distance 

A fragment of pure joy describes this link of a flash mob concert of Peer Gynt. It brought happy thoughts of distant travels in "the old country" and tears to my eyes as I watched the happy faces of the listeners.

Navigating today's ever-changing unsavory political and economic climate  with a smile on our faces may be the best we can do for ourselves. Snippets of distant events flood the news as we go about our everyday lives and ease into daily routines.

This link of a Belgian flash mob in a do re mi performance will make your day and guarantees you a big smile. If you get the political ad up front, listen or not.

I found this quote to be apropos to my own distant thoughts: Ancient Greece and ancient Rome - people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons.
Elizabeth Gilbert

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/distant.html#ysJlwWUxJlz28Pc4.99

Clear Skies in the Distance

Painting from a distance, figuratively and literally, is my plan for the next month.

 

Pulling back from my perch on the beach while re-imagining many shore and mountain knife paintings as larger more developed works is a task I've looked forward to for a while. 

 

Minimalist tendencies will remain in fleshing-out the memories of places nearby and distant from "some distant and unknowable source."

European classical music has given way to the awesome salsa and Latin beat often heard on Picnic Island on weekends as one group practices or another records performance CDs on the beach. 

 

Mountains are now low clouds in the distance that become heavy summer rain clouds. 

 

It's all in the distance, waiting to be painted, regardless of the source.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
Gail Kent Studio on Pinterest
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio


Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Gulf Coast art prints:
gulf coast paintings

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Tampa paintings:
tampa paintings

Art Lovers Rich and Poor

Sittin' by the Docks of the Bay

An early morning visitor sits on the banks of Hillsborough Bay, lost in texting the moment the sunrise peeked above the horizon.

I learned from him that the boat in the bay was a castaway, a term I hadn't heard applied to a boat. Having grown up in high country, it's not part of my coastal jargon.

No tides rollin' away this morning and just a couple of ducks and blackbirds to watch. It's a quiet start to a new day.

Sunrise Jog

These piers are in an affluent area of South Tampa. I'm fortunate to live nearby and marvel at nature's beauty that surrounds us.

For the last year I've chatted with less affluent frequenters of these piers and Picnic Island where I painted. Most were local; some from other states and countries. 

Last year I was shocked by the numbers of young people I met who had lost jobs, yet hoped for something to come along. Then I met early retirees, all of whom would rather be working.

Young people starting their lives or older downsizers, they shared a solemn expression and gentle smile when they stopped to look at my art. Many who chatted mentioned that they had painted or drawn in the past but gave it up. I always encouraged them to take it up again. Some of my visitors were castaways, too, having lost their moorings. Our economy has brought tragic consequences to many good people who deserve better.

Another Just Ducky Day!

Art Market Thrives
This link was tweeted by Slate this morning. It's a good short read about the art market thriving in this horrific economy because of the super-rich, the "Ultra-High Net Worths." The point is that the Super-Rich love the art they buy.

Well, I'm sure art lovers buy art even when it's not a smart investment. However; I'm old enough to know we've had a number of economic cycles when art was a terrific investment. Besides, it's like "donating" for naming rights-the gifting of great art benefits both givers and receivers.

A sincere thank-you to the Super-Duper-Ultra Rich for sharing your great art! Everyone can appreciate it, especially when they again have disposable incomes to visit museums, or have access to internet connections to enjoy it online. Now, what can we do about this economy for rich and poor?

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
Gail Kent Studio on Pinterest
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio


Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Gulf Coast art prints:
gulf coast paintings

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Tampa paintings:
tampa paintings

Blue Streaks and Blue Skies

Blue Skies and Blue Seas at Picnic Island Beach

Flood Tides and Tropical Storms cover the Southeast as Beryl passes. Beryl's rain clouds arrived in Tampa Bay today.

My own prevailing artistic flood tides call for blue skies and blue streaks of creativity that have kept me away from my blog.

Three canvases in oils and 4 in acrylics almost finished for the new online gallery of larger works. They're bigger, bolder, in full color.

Jackson Pollock said "The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through." Agree, as I paint a blue streak, look forward to the new gallery, and let go focus on the Google and Facebook kerfuffle we've endured this year.

Bay Sunset

The small palette knife studies that I've painted over the last year, and offered for sale on my reproduction site are coming to an end as I move forward. There will likely be a few more uploads of works I held back. Photos will be moved to Flickr.

This study shows how I've begun to incorporate more color, more brush work, as I switched gears for the larger works. This is a gorgeous little painting that I plan to re-imagine in a larger work.

Using the same rich colors, detail will be in the clouds resembling the weekend sunset photos posted on my Facebook GailKentStudio page.

Just as a flood tide is the period between low water, as in the above photo, and the following high waters as in Bay Sunset, above right, I've had the great pleasure of relaxing on the beach and working during a high creativity period, taking a few of the minimalist knife studies to more finished paintings. I've also worked on several large tropical florals-a little fun diversion.

Today's rain offers the perfect opportunity to catch up on reading, planning, shopping. This morning, I read articles about cartoons from Vanity Fair Desert Island Cartoons; about multitasking from Harvard Business Review Unimportance of Practically Everything, and another great one from HBR on how to be happier at work.

To be happier at work, find an interest to pursue, perhaps one that will lead to your own business, for your after hours activity. I must say, I look forward to my painting activities everyday. I'm totally happy with this work. That's why Google and Facebook are out of favor at the moment-they are a huge distraction from my happiness! Blue skies on the horizon don't allow for this distraction.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
Gail Kent Studio on Pinterest
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio


Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Gulf Coast art prints:
gulf coast paintings

Artists No-Pin Policy for Etsy and Other Sites

Fine Artists Seeing Red? you Betcha!

Visual artists and artisans of fine jewelry and hand crafts are seeing red and making noise all over the web about their work being pinned on Pinterest without permission. Pinning intellectual property without permission is theft.

In yesterday's post, Pins Steal Your Art, I linked to two sites to explain how to avoid pins or to take back your work if it's already been pinned to Pinterest boards. You can embed an HTML code that prevents this process, if the website host permits it. Etsy doesn't permit it. Fine Art America allows pin-it button deletion. My domain site built on WordPress will have no-pin code from day one.

I contacted Etsy legal about my art shop having Pinterest pin-it buttons placed on every item I have listed when my permission to embed these buttons wasn't asked. They responded very quickly giving me links to the notice and policy. Etsy replied, in the most gracious non-legalese way, basically, I can have buttons or close up shop.  I still have the shop.

After I successfully pulled up a painting, copied it, printed it in full size, full resolution, off a 600x600 photo with watermark, I dropped larger items from the Etsy shop and placed in the title of every remaining item "No Pin Policy" to discourage the practice. I haven't found Etsy to be a great venue for my art because I don't work their system. I don't believe anyone is downloading and selling my prints, but the fact that they can isn't a good situation.

So, now I've setup a Pinterest account, Gail Kent Studio on Pinterest, and I'm trying to use it without infringing on any copyright to provide the article and informative links that I typically do in my blog posts. Not so easy to do. No original art works will be pinned and none of the art articles I've linked to allow pinning-none. When you look at the dozens of share options provided on art articles, Pinterest isn't one. You have to ask yourself why. Pinterest was described in some of their online description as a catalog. That's exactly what it is. Artists need catalogs, just not free art ones. I'll still give it the ole college try and follow-up in a later post. It may be a very boring site.

Beautiful Bird on Picnic Island Beach Strewn with Algae Bloom

Art for sale and art not for sale

The photos I post on my blog are usually nature shots from the beach where I paint and are watermarked so folks know the source. I would be happy to share most with a request for personal use. They are seldom of high resolution or cropped and edited as fine art. I upload some photos to Fine Art America for affordable small prints and cards of local interest, Tampa Bay Sunset.


My art photos on the other hand are my art and I will do all I can to protect my art. Notice has been given in the watermark and, on Etsy, in the Titles.



Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
Gail Kent Studio on Pinterest
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio


Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Tampa Bay art prints:
tampa prints

Pinterest Pins Steal Your Art

This Butterfly Is Not FREE

PEOPLE WHO PIN YOUR ART ARE STEALING YOUR ART! 

This is an illegal process when users take your work without permission--ILLEGAL!

Only you can give permission to use your art. You hold the copyright to your art.

Pin-It Buttons are now on all my Etsy shop listings. This is original art; I have not given anyone permission to pin anything. 

Why would any professional artist give away their work any number of times and have it used continuously without compensation of any sort?

I'll revisit this later after I contact Etsy. No other sites planted pin-it buttons on my art listings. Never allow pins of original art work. This link is an excellent piece on Fine Art America's position on this thievery Pinterest Enables Copyright Theft

Several people suggested I put my works on Pinterest. I decided some time ago this was not a forum for fine arts or for anyone working in original images and opted to go with Tumblr for my board purposes Gail Kent Studio Notes 

Please Don't Pick the Flowers Without Permission

After looking at the Pinterest situation again yesterday, to find a way to keep my Etsy shop AND protect my work, I realized this will take more research. Much more research.

Clearly not everyone who pins original artworks is intentionally becoming a thief.

Most bloggers depend on sharing imagery and quotes. Most do it with permission and/or attribution, linking to sites rather than just lifting what they want surreptitiously.

I follow an incredibly informative, beautiful blog that offers a way to track pins of your work. Take a minute to read and protect your works.  Pinterest Pinned Art Removal


So, it's back to square one for me. Tumblr is not the venue I need to get great multitudes interested in my imagery, but is a wonderful site to develop a creative board and interact with other creatives. What price Pinterest? Too great.

Pinterest is becoming a megasite. They will have to evolve to correct this dreadful copyright problem their site has created. Visual artists must be paid, this open season on fine art cannot continue.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Tampa Bay art prints:
tampa prints

King of the Wild Things

Picnic Island Sea Grapes

Living on the Gulf Coast of central Florida allows me to explore nature's contrasts throughout the year.

Many days of the last year were spent on Picnic Island, a habitat restoration and park setting with beach. There I paint and photograph all manner of "wild things" indigenous to this area--persons, plants, and things--the sunny tranquility and stormy high waters.

I've learned to venture out and touch sea life that I've never seen before, both the living and the once living remnants that I gather. With exposure to these creatures, fears diminish.

Early on a foggy morning or late in the evening when catching the last rays of the day with my camera, an uneasiness can manifest itself in the solitude, isolation, and sounds of silence of this popular island paradise.

Supermoon Rising on Picnic Island

Maurice Sendak would have understood my uneasiness as I headed off to Picnic Island to capture both high and low tides of this weekend's perigee moon--supermoon.

Maurice Sendak died today. It is our very great loss. I heard an interview he gave to Terry Gross on Fresh Air during one of my painting outings. He talked about the loss of his partner, about aging and being alone, about life. It was incredibly moving, provocative, unforgettable. With this link you can either read or listen Maurice Sendak Interview

Sunset on Picnic Island

"One of the few graces of getting old—and God knows there are few graces—is that if you've worked hard and kept your nose to the grindstone, something happens: The body gets old but the creative mechanism is refreshed, smoothed and oiled and honed. That is the grace. That is what's happening to me."

 http://quotes.dictionary.com/One_of_the_few_graces_of_getting_old#GTkdB8cuizylW1L6.99

He said we may never tame the wild things and I believe him. I'm just as afraid of the dark as those little kids who've loved his books over the years, but I've learned to venture out anyway.

Sendak Exhibition  at the Jewish Museum. Thanks Maurice Sendak for all you gave to so many.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent


Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for Tampa Bay art prints:
tampa prints

Supermoon Saturday

Supermoon at Picnic Island

Supermoon arrives Saturday night and should be at it's fullest brightest beauty around midnight.

These supermoons are mesmerizing beauties, especially when viewed with just a few clouds. These were my skies yesterday, and I'm hoping for clear skies tomorrow night. Here's a brief description of these moons. Supermoon Descripton Video

New moons are also fun for me for the beauty of the shoreline at low tide. Unfortunately, I never remember to watch the tide tables, only rarely catching really low tides during my beach outings to paint. This one proved to be a very popular painting Morning Low Tide

Before the Storm in Tampa

All week we've had the most interesting skies in Tampa Bay.
A painter's dream. I'm building a library of sky shots just from the Spring seasonal color.

This drama played out over Busch Gardens Wednesday afternoon.  After the cloudburst, I snapped a beautiful rainbow over South Tampa, but it pales in comparison to the depth in these clouds.

My hometown, Asheville, known as "land of the sky" made me a skywatcher from an early age. Sunrises and sunsets over mountains are stunning, too.

April Sunset over Tampa Bay

One last Tampa sky in this post-a bay Sunset!

This sunset was in the last few weeks when we finally got some rain. Completely surrounded by water, we seem to suffer an unfair number of droughts in this area. Wildfire season has filled our air with smoky smells several times this Spring, but all clear for now.

That's all from this beachcomber for now.

Have fun catching the Supermoon 2012, skywatchers!


Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent


Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for sunset art prints:
sunset paintings

Meme Art

Setting Sun

Meme Art, as in mimic, it's everywhere. Hence the name, meme, it's viral in no time at all.

When someone says you have to see this, coupled with an LOL, I know I'm going to respond with rolling eyes and "Paleeze, they need to get a life," especially if it involves cute cats. But is it art?

Memes are art. So says Smithsonian: Top Ten Memes , and so says PBS's Idea Channel. Caution: at least one cute kitty in this short video Meme as Art?.

Sunset on the Horizon

I'm now compelled to stay current by downloading software to create my own meme, or to do it with Google+.

I've always used the sun (as in above photo) in the form of various circles as my meme, (:-) is often used. For now the horizon (as in this painting) is my meme, I just haven't put them into the proper meme art form to more accurately represent myself so I can go viral.

Everyone recognizes my art by the signature horizon, so this meme transition may be a bit of a challenge.

http://chzmemeanimals.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/
advice-animals-memes-nyan-cat-auditions.png

Gotta love this kitty! LOL!


How can I change a simple horizon line into something that will go this viral?

 Diversion to be continued...


P.S. I'm really working today, already started three new paintings with my trademark horizon line.








Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for modern art prints:
modern paintings

Protect the Environment Every Day

Message from the Overseas Houston Docked at Old Port Tampa

Protecting the Environment at Home: 

Earth Day 2012 was a success in Tampa Bay with many community groups of volunteers organized.
Though I'm accustomed to channel traffic of commercial shipping lines, barges, fishing and sail boats, coast guard and other security traffic, this ship got a second look during Earth Day clean-up on Picnic Island Saturday.

Docked in Old Port Tampa at the entrance to Picnic Island, which runs under Tampa Airport fuel pipes, this line is in-port frequently and all ships are lettered with the "protect the environment" reminder.

Beautiful Egret Wading on Littered Picnic Island Beach

I cleaned up one small section of beach and park for three days Easter week, collecting hundreds of plastic eggs, plastic "grass", flipflops, candy containers, boxes, plastic drink bottles, plastic cups and other refuse left by adults. Most dangerous were the small plastic rings that birds and waterfowl will become tangled or trapped in.

I gave three days to protect this beautiful egret and thousands of other birds whose home is this island estuary. In this photo, taken after my clean-up, the beach is still littered in green plastic grass and at least one plastic jar top I missed.

Pristine Picnic Island Beach

The Keep Tampa Bay Beautiful group volunteered at Picnic Island for Earth Day. As you can see, it's clean again, after the volunteers collected countless bags of litter from in and around the park and playground plants and beach areas. Park staff were on-hand, too.

Another island painter is in this photo. I believe he keeps to himself. If you visit Picnic Island and happen upon me when I'm painting, I'd very much enjoy your stopping to chat. Sometimes I have to keep working while chatting, though, if the winds are high and I'm using acrylic paint-it dries very quickly.


Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for nature art prints:
nature prints

 

Drawing For Your Painting

White Ibis Strolling by the Bay

A white ibis greeted me early this morning, as we welcomed another beautiful Tampa day. Eager to sketch her later for the kids' art series I'm working on, I pointed, shot, and moved on.

Island birds are the next, and final, series for my children's gallery on Fine Art America.

The shells series was finished today. They're simple shells that kids pickup in the water and on the beaches around Tampa Bay.

Island Shells Series 1 of 4

The children's series are on 6x6" gallery wrap canvas but created as 3x3" watercolors as a concept. They were first rendered as pencil drawings, then painted freely with watercolor.

It's a terrific feeling to take a blank sheet of paper and a pencil and flesh out imagery of any sort. Ingres was my favorite master of drawing for his simply rendered portraits. Though I seldom take pencil in-hand for my larger paintings, I do make a very rough sketch in brown or blue acrylic paints in beginning all acrylic and oil paintings.

There's a Metropolitan Museum drawing exhibition worthy of note “Dürer and Beyond: Central European Drawings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1400-1700,”
You can read about it at the Times Met Drawing Exhibit.  Really beautiful and inspirational drawings from several masters to get your creative juices going.

Storm Clouds Moving In

Listening to the radio as I painted on the beach today, I felt like a country girl in the city. Terry Gross was interviewing Levon Helm. Love those country harmonies even without knowing the music.  Levon Helm Interview  He certainly leaves us a wonderful body of work.

Rains are moving in for the weekend here, so it's computer time for me. Found some great art marketing sites to share in a future post as I explore various venues. Lots of "free" information out there to Google for your own use.



Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for seascape art prints:
seascape paintings

 

Google Blogger Problem Resolution

This morning I joined the Blogger Group  Blogger Forum 

Objectives:  

• need to view my photos which I can't see anywhere in Plus,
• need my posts showing in searches,
• need my Etsy widget to carry over to daily posts                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Shell Game Finding Your Answer

All, repeat, all posts stopped showing in searches and photos are invisible to me since the transition to Plus.
Let's see, how long ago was that?
I'm marketing art online and I'm dead in the water!

Since I went into the forum as a new member, I'm totally reassured that I made the right decision in deciding to hire a consultant before moving on to my own domain site gallery based on a Wordpress template. Wordpress users also have Plus problems yet to be resolved.

I'm certain a pro can fix my Blogger issues in a matter of minutes, as I'm pretty sure I did something I shouldn't have in signing on to Plus. It's taken me many hours, too many to count, to realize I cannot resolve the issues myself. But I've got a few rainy days coming up and, unable to paint, I'll try one more time.

Typical postings on the forum today express absolute user anguish. Students have lost assignments. Bloggers cannot reply to comments. Posts are not being posted. Accounts are closed. URL's renamed. Yep, I definitely need professional help if the younger user cannot find resolution and begs for help.

• OMG, where are my posts? put them back, class assignments!
• Can't reply to my comments, why not?
• Why has my blog gone? Where's my site?

Fellow Blogger Group Members: You are not likely to find problem resolution in the help forum. Your Blogger commiserators don't know how You quite possibly got yourself into your Blogger jam. Play around with the issues and if you can't fix the problems, hire a pro, or barter one, whatever. I didn't see any magical fixes from fellow bloggers on the help site. As for a list of problems that Google is aware of, follow the fix is all you can do, if and when they offer one.

Picnic Island, Tampa, Florida at Low Tide

My pain is that for six months I've painted in one location to capture the essence of that location and cannot even get my art in front of my own Tampa friends and neighbors. If I put in half a dozen search terms, a little something may surface. And that's after hiring my new SE best friend optimizer.

Time for me to get on with it and stop hoping that Google has provided a resolution. Google has not provided me with an answer to my questions.

Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

Google+ Profile link
Gail Kent

Fine Art America Gallery Page Link for abstract art prints:

abstract prints

The Artist as a Brand

Winter Morning Canvas Print

What I've learned about investing in an online art presence, building my brand, selling my art:

• Art is fun
• Art marketing in multiple venues is not fun
• Selling art is fun
• Pricing, billing, collecting and shipping art are not fun
• Self-representing myself in online galleries is fun
• Working half a day on artist's websites, editing to assorted formats, then uploading art is not fun

• Note to Self: Don't worry be happy, paint, hire an intern!

Island Butterfly Series -3/6

Well, perhaps only extraordinarily successful painters hire interns or other assistants who help with everything but the painting. But we can dream. We paint because we enjoy painting and perform as best we can in all the work that supports our brand--our service of delivering our best product.

I've worked hard for six months setting-up my websites and painting a little over 100 small acrylic paintings and studies and 3 medium-sized oils. With the children's gallery that I've started, I'll begin with maybe 30 images and then move on to larger works for the GailKentStudio.com domain site.

Before taking the domain gallery live,  a consultant will get all the websites performing the social networking plan functions I began with. A few major kinks with Google's Plus changes have to be smoothed out.

I've used PayPal with my Etsy shop, and been pleased with performance there. Easy for the buyer to know they will get the product they paid for, easy for me to ship out my art knowing I'm being paid.

With my Fine Art America site, I have nothing to do but upload the art. They format, print, ship, and collect and pay me through PayPal. Wonderful!

The brand is established and now must be maintained. I've met interesting artists through my online presence and we've supported one another with concerns, endeavors, and pats-on-the-back. Contacts, customers and potential customers also contribute to the brand when they comment or share information and links about an artist's work. It's a sense of accomplishment. 

All in all, online art marketing has been a learning experience and will continue to present challenges, growth, and rewards as I expand my art activities. It was a decision without regrets because I started with a plan. I posted about that in this link Set up Online Gallery

Now, to get on with a promotions plan and creating lots of little canvases to fill the children's gallery.



Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios 

Fine Art America Gallery Page Sponsor
minimalism prints

Nature Art for Older Kids

Island Floers Series : 1 of 6

Choosing decorative art for children after they've outgrown Mickey and Little Ponies, but before they've discovered zombies or vampires makes for a challenge.

I'm working on several island nature series for my Fine Art America young people's gallery with the originals now offered on Etsy as affordable art as each series is completed. Island Flowers Great paintings for the young-at-heart, too!

Six series in total in the works: butterflies, flowers, fish, shells, seabirds, and trees. Each is a series of 4-6 acrylic paintings on 6x6x1-1/2" canvas executed in a very spontaneous watercolor style.

Butterflies Series : 2 of 6

These paintings, not graphic art, are all about nature--bright colors and peaceful settings. All images, except the soon to be listed tropical fish, are from the island where I paint regularly.

Girly girl flowers painted in pinks and purples and golden yellows are balanced with boyish tans for moths, butterflies and shells.

The very bright tropical fish series is for the youngest art aficionados. The trees series will feature some great climbing trees and more delicate ones, too, for girls and boys. All are being listed on Etsy as they are completed, then will be available as similar prints in a variety of sizes and formats on Fine Art America.

Island Flowers Series : 2 of 6

Island Flowers 2 of 6  is a beautiful little painting suitable for all ages.

All of these paintings convey the peace and tranquility of nature's gentle movement in an island estuary. 

These images, also very attractive as greeting cards will be  offered at Fine Art America as completed in multiple formatting choices.


Comments are always encouraged.
If you're following interesting blogs, feel free to comment or post those links here, too.

All the best,

Gail Kent
Gail Kent Studio

Find me or my work at the following addresses:

Gail-Kent.artistwebsites.com  my Fine Art America gallery
Twitter.com/@Gail_Kent
www.facebook.com/GailKentStudio
Gail Kent Studio Notes  my Tumblr blog site
www.etsy.com/people/gailkentstudio
https://sites.google.com/site/gailkentstudios