tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15092114900041306392024-03-13T15:05:29.881+00:00BeechHouse MediaBeechHouse Media - The Art of Mark Taylor - Artist - Blogger - Human - Independent visual artist who blogs and supports other independent visual artists by sharing his experiences from more than three decades of creativity!Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.comBlogger399125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-81024991807783943972023-12-19T10:28:00.000+00:002023-12-19T10:28:07.376+00:00The Art of Wax<p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Capturing History in Wax: A
Journey Through Tussaud's Waxworks</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQJt8O93iHpadZHMckDquB4CGvuzrYeIQkXrhpALLdZpNVKJn0Kl_W27HDBO3nwjcXjsAXJiwMKno6eg3xXTSmkx2UB_r9LnYciUjPxaefyoQ-29zfC9RFr8pV-BzcifsmpPD6KhqYIRAMGic9si_9zC8aTnw0-rfMPLNkiTEh8gp_f2flaD7n4Y0IE84/s1080/cover%20tussauds%20blog.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The Art of Wax cover image on abstract background" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQJt8O93iHpadZHMckDquB4CGvuzrYeIQkXrhpALLdZpNVKJn0Kl_W27HDBO3nwjcXjsAXJiwMKno6eg3xXTSmkx2UB_r9LnYciUjPxaefyoQ-29zfC9RFr8pV-BzcifsmpPD6KhqYIRAMGic9si_9zC8aTnw0-rfMPLNkiTEh8gp_f2flaD7n4Y0IE84/w640-h640/cover%20tussauds%20blog.PNG" title="The Art of Wax" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Art of Wax - A brief journey through the history of Tussaud's</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br />
</span></b></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A
trip down memory lane to Blackpool's Louis Tussaud's waxworks, contrasting its
quirky charm with the hyperrealism of Madame Tussaud's. A celebration of wax
art's rich history and its enduring appeal.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Old World of Wax…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">An art form that dates back as
far as ancient Rome and Egypt, wax modelling had once been used to preserve
images of the dead prior to the invention of photography. Wax figures had also
been used in religion to create effigies of saints, it’s certainly an art form
with a dark past. Today, wax modelling is all about celebrity, popular culture
and the tourist pound so you’re more likely to see a YouTuber immortalized than
you are to see a politicians head on a stick. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Blackpool, The British Vegas…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, we're diving into the
world of waxworks, specifically Madame Tussaud's and its life-size dioramas
that look like they've been plucked straight from a movie set. Admittedly, it's
been a while since I've visited a waxworks museum. The last time I ventured
into one was in Blackpool, a seaside resort on the Lancashire coast of England.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s when I last visited, it was a Louis Tussaud, a far
cry from the Madame Tussaud's that has replaced it in more recent years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For those of you who've never
been to Blackpool, imagine a British version of Las Vegas, but with a beach
lapped by the cold waves of the Irish Sea, hen parties, cheap beer, and a whole
lot of rain. You should definitely pack a raincoat, even in summer.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtr9jiHztIbfgjFLuFNdCNqaFuYWwaZ9Ku14dMSp-fC76_Ee1845024TjHthvHDklRzJa7s5nWi82FVqvs5k9OoS5X6p1tEybEE5UWjocnWiFzmmPfGaIqIdmiOSZrcDHVSAu0tAtKTJs8eaTQ1mnxqQc5bv4RWlepC6EXpFZfMtO6l7YN5KKT8sn8Tuk/s4032/blackpool%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="view from the top of Blackpool tower at night" border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtr9jiHztIbfgjFLuFNdCNqaFuYWwaZ9Ku14dMSp-fC76_Ee1845024TjHthvHDklRzJa7s5nWi82FVqvs5k9OoS5X6p1tEybEE5UWjocnWiFzmmPfGaIqIdmiOSZrcDHVSAu0tAtKTJs8eaTQ1mnxqQc5bv4RWlepC6EXpFZfMtO6l7YN5KKT8sn8Tuk/w640-h360/blackpool%202.jpg" title="Towering Over Blackpool" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">504 feet up at the top of Blackpool Tower while standing on a glass floor!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Blackpool’s also famous for
traditional fish and chips, Blackpool Tower, and the Pleasure Beach, a funfair
that has grown into a theme park that’s not at all like Disney World. It’s also
home to the Tower Ballroom, one of the finest examples of ballrooms in the
world. You can watch a live show in a Victorian theatre, or laugh at comedians
plying their stand-up routines at the end of the pier. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Blackpool gets a bad rap. It's
one of the most socially deprived areas in the UK, yet on my recent trip, I had
a truly wonderful time. It was up there with some of the best short-breaks I’ve
ever had. I stayed in a hotel embedded within Blackpool Football Club, I
literally had breakfast on the terraces overlooking the pitch. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Having travelled to over 50
countries by cruise ship and plane, I must say that my few days in Blackpool
were magical. For me, Blackpool is nostalgia on steroids. I spent countless
childhood holidays there, and it hasn't changed a bit since the 1970s. I mean,
literally not a bit.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some people love Blackpool,
others seem to loathe it with a passion. It’s an acquired taste that is usually
shaped by listening to stories of cheap hotels where your feet stick to the
floor, there might be some of that, but it’s by no means all like that. To
truly understand Blackpool, you need to look beyond the surface, forget the
stereotypes and be open to surprise. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It's a bold, brash place,
filled with the noise of arcade penny pushers, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>children having the best time ever and all of
this noise and chaos is set amidst the weekenders who have probably had a
little bit too much to drink. If this sounds like an horrendous vacation
experience, you also need to listen to the stories of everything Blackpool gets
right. The zoo, The Tower and Stanley Park are world class attractions and the annual Blackpool illuminations are a British tradition.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s loud, it’s certainly
eclectic, and maybe even overly eccentric, and so are many of its people. But
they're also the salt of the earth – friendly, welcoming, and fiercely proud of
their town that genuinely never sleeps.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEjjxPSVJXnkbgq0aCUNgO652O0t7QO6w6t4sZBcdqjFAbXGU_YHNM71fZ0zpkab7l73AFVn6eb7YZDikfFExLirrVOxGdB4J3zYWieIQGTI-Rtzz2DsChWDIVQ-3tIVl7JwSwwCX4ErjP8kZg5oO-YsdquD8m8Vf8FsLhxpBOhJWuMC5WLHv_pkJMRIQ/s4032/blackpool%201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Night view from the top of Blackpool Tower" border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEjjxPSVJXnkbgq0aCUNgO652O0t7QO6w6t4sZBcdqjFAbXGU_YHNM71fZ0zpkab7l73AFVn6eb7YZDikfFExLirrVOxGdB4J3zYWieIQGTI-Rtzz2DsChWDIVQ-3tIVl7JwSwwCX4ErjP8kZg5oO-YsdquD8m8Vf8FsLhxpBOhJWuMC5WLHv_pkJMRIQ/w640-h360/blackpool%201.jpg" title="The Blackpool Illuminations" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Unedited, the rainy outlook across the lights of Blackpool the the Irish Sea. 504 feet in the air, the best view ever.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Blackpool is also a town of
internal economic migration. Brits flock here in search of riches, fame, and
the tourist pound during the summer season. With its live shows, indoor
markets, fairgrounds, and amusement attractions, you get the sense that the pop-up
shop selling fidget spinners or the latest trend was conceived in Blackpool.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Delve deeper, remove your
tourist blinkers, and you'll discover a town steeped in a fascinating and long
spanning history. I'll cover more of that history in another blog, especially
the history of the amusement and fairground industry, which is surprisingly
more intertwined with the art world than you might think with elements of the
industry that date back to 1066.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk6B6WVOH6juv0xiT6-5_UDFaZq_bobtPuGEiNNRMNgYQ7wGoEYv1Qnb0f2MZo4AUGQ-9Szcb2_0aVX9myl-_502ER6wad4wZcs_3hPVUEDasSNl3-xqkqgb1zu-MAe80feAuhZv9YMmsi86tN9XqGgVWEtdtVJIIa_Twy8raBoB8GXvBmy7-x6tUgecI/s4032/blackpool%20FC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Blackpool Football Club pitch" border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk6B6WVOH6juv0xiT6-5_UDFaZq_bobtPuGEiNNRMNgYQ7wGoEYv1Qnb0f2MZo4AUGQ-9Szcb2_0aVX9myl-_502ER6wad4wZcs_3hPVUEDasSNl3-xqkqgb1zu-MAe80feAuhZv9YMmsi86tN9XqGgVWEtdtVJIIa_Twy8raBoB8GXvBmy7-x6tUgecI/w640-h360/blackpool%20FC.jpg" title="Blackpool Football Club Pitch" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A Room with a View, or at least this is where I had breakfast. The hotel is within one of the main stands and the restaurant overlooks the pitch. Clear blue skies wouldn't last all day though, this is after all, Blackpool!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tussaud’s or Not Tussaud’s…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When I visited Louis Tussaud's
waxworks back in the late 1970s or early 1980s, I was amazed by how lifelike
the wax statues were. I vividly remember walking through the chamber of horrors
and the anatomical exhibition, both of which have long gone from the displays
now that the waxworks has changed ownership. I also remember standing in awe
next to a life-size Dr. Who, accompanied by his robotic dog, K9. Adjacent to
the waxworks in the 1970s and 1980s, a separate Dr Who exhibition existed that
had nothing to do with Tussaud’s, it competed for footfall by playing the Dr
Who theme tune loudly. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It seems that my appreciation
for artistic license may have been more developed back then. Looking through
old photographs of the models created and exhibited in the 1970s and 1980s, the
statues appear almost abstract. Was my memory of the exhibition blurred by the
wide-eyed wonder of childhood, or was it more a product of the time period?
Maybe it was a combination of both.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There's no comparison between
the models displayed during those previous decades and the models you see
today. Firstly, Blackpool's waxworks at the time was a Louis Tussaud's, to the
unaware, it was a wannabe facsimile of the more established Madame Tussaud's.
I'm not sure the difference would have been obvious back in the 80s; I remember
my parents calling it Madame Tussaud's, so I grew up thinking they were one and
the same.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7s1xr3j7mfAZC4gSekbZKBwQF8wG3c7oywcqYFy9dCSq8khyphenhyphenxAJ0lVO1RXNFqQACwKIIujJbbeURU_xvOwZRp6EopIKg9y116n83B2XLX4LVNmPSRD7OJtGXCqWjHnolkxsxGZ-Gdj6N6DOe2kGYjsGu9zVyMg4GyVYJcg75yRilsLKyAKZLVNLYt0jU/s4032/blackpool%203.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The Golden Mile Blackpool" border="0" data-original-height="2268" data-original-width="4032" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7s1xr3j7mfAZC4gSekbZKBwQF8wG3c7oywcqYFy9dCSq8khyphenhyphenxAJ0lVO1RXNFqQACwKIIujJbbeURU_xvOwZRp6EopIKg9y116n83B2XLX4LVNmPSRD7OJtGXCqWjHnolkxsxGZ-Gdj6N6DOe2kGYjsGu9zVyMg4GyVYJcg75yRilsLKyAKZLVNLYt0jU/w640-h360/blackpool%203.jpg" title="The Golden Mile" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Interestingly, children have been able to gamble in Britain for decades. Only small coins and smaller winnings but there is a history here that spans back to 1066, before Blackpool had been built and well before the Golden Mile. It always rains in Blackpool.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today's Madame Tussaud's is a
far more polished experience. The models on display are the work of teams of
wax artists, sculptors, and painters, with every single detail meticulously
crafted. Each model costs around £150,000 ($188,276 US) to create and can take
months of work from a multidisciplinary teams of artisans.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Despite the seemingly lacklustre
quality of the Louis Tussaud's models, the exhibition worked because the
statues were of people you would only usually see on TV or in newspapers. There
was no baseline of reality to compare them to, so you could readily accept
their likeness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Louis Tussaud's, as it was
named at the time, was a very different institution from the more established
Madame Tussaud's, despite Louis being the great grandson of Anna Maria
Grosholtz, who would later come to be known as Madame Marie Tussaud.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgktON4-R7IRnUEz4R7TuCBg4UBoZhmqB32iPqtztPM-9qfPhf-s1F7-srnOazNKW5DVCPUK2SLqVra01ahuDzrbhGIXKSeGihx1QGzK_4PQZBsc3huK4svPl2mhnI-NfUUbdQ2yq_ioHznPDUUNJrWqRccecQcilEkhJaDX3bfHG5Zw4ypsPWnnJc1FQs/s4032/Bear%20Gryls%20wax.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Bear Grylls Wax Figure at Tussauds" border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgktON4-R7IRnUEz4R7TuCBg4UBoZhmqB32iPqtztPM-9qfPhf-s1F7-srnOazNKW5DVCPUK2SLqVra01ahuDzrbhGIXKSeGihx1QGzK_4PQZBsc3huK4svPl2mhnI-NfUUbdQ2yq_ioHznPDUUNJrWqRccecQcilEkhJaDX3bfHG5Zw4ypsPWnnJc1FQs/w480-h640/Bear%20Gryls%20wax.jpg" title="Bear Grylls" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Bear Grylls - lifelike wax figure on display at Madame Tussaud's, Blackpool. You can get really close to the figures. Clothing is often donated by the celebrity.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Birth of Madame Tussaud's</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The story of perhaps the most
famous waxworks in history begins in 1761 when Anna Maria Grosholtz, was born
in Strasbourg, France. As a child, she learned the art of wax modelling from
her mentor, Dr. Philippe Curtius. Dr. Curtius, a skilled wax sculptor and
physician, taught Marie the intricate techniques of creating realistic wax
figures.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In 1777, Madame Tussaud
created her first wax sculpture, the famous philosopher Voltaire. As her skills
flourished, she caught the attention of the French royal family, leading to her
appointment as an art tutor to King Louis XVI's sister, Madame Elizabeth,
during the turbulent years of the French Revolution. It was during the time of
the French Revolution (1789) that tensions escalated.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In 1794, during the Reign of
Terror, Madame Tussaud was arrested and imprisoned. Her captors demanded that
she create death masks of executed aristocrats, including those of King Louis
XVI and Marie Antoinette. This task was not only emotionally taxing for Madame
Tussaud but also put her in a precarious position, as her survival depended on
her ability to navigate the dangerous political climate of the time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO8Tln2GRc6_2n-jLCpkhnUV7oy6kiVMwbwX9KgwhlJj4DMKnvPdxcIbIZpSXYcVbsfqwkE1_J8FO1AUd6ovD9fs9Al5GQN-xSzvBfg3u47IC3X5MB52dnUOEcbBzqzKg37xOKk6jP4JD0JYs5Fr7XVVYphchKP-rm5sNUM-HpAOuWcHUjUnCW2dKNhDo/s4000/new%20art%206.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Japanese inspired art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO8Tln2GRc6_2n-jLCpkhnUV7oy6kiVMwbwX9KgwhlJj4DMKnvPdxcIbIZpSXYcVbsfqwkE1_J8FO1AUd6ovD9fs9Al5GQN-xSzvBfg3u47IC3X5MB52dnUOEcbBzqzKg37xOKk6jP4JD0JYs5Fr7XVVYphchKP-rm5sNUM-HpAOuWcHUjUnCW2dKNhDo/w640-h640/new%20art%206.JPG" title="Perseverance Brings Power by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Perseverance Brings Power by Mark Taylor - I'm loving working with limited colour pallets and learning Japanese lettering to boot!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Madame Tussaud's skills in
creating lifelike wax sculptures, combined with her resourcefulness, likely
played a role in her survival during this tumultuous period. After her release,
she continued to practice and refine her wax modelling skills, eventually
establishing Madame Tussaud's Waxworks, which gained fame and success both in
France and later in London. The wax museum became a testament to her artistry
and resilience in the face of challenging circumstances.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Move to London…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In 1802, Madame Tussaud left
France and brought her collection of wax figures to London, establishing her
first exhibition on the city's Baker Street. The exhibition quickly gained
popularity, drawing crowds eager to witness the lifelike depictions of notable
figures from both the French and British courts.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Over the years, Madame Tussaud
continued to expand her collection, adding more celebrities and historical
figures. The success of the exhibition prompted several relocations within
London, each time to larger and more prominent locations.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2VXhYwcNMowrgH8CTxMaCAgEaR5-9LCLtf8EPI936nS8aOC03vSy3e3oP28c9htPJvl6FUly1q88NSxA6RLQsRrOujRLD_LeAaNGFij24hyxAKcGL0CWqEovq2EewcYNxBDCbjkD9_EnB03z943q2wVt1980XUrs5J9nHtQIQhBtSHh9g9KrEn_GXrG4/s4032/Thor%20wax.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Wax figure of Thor at Madame Tussauds" border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2VXhYwcNMowrgH8CTxMaCAgEaR5-9LCLtf8EPI936nS8aOC03vSy3e3oP28c9htPJvl6FUly1q88NSxA6RLQsRrOujRLD_LeAaNGFij24hyxAKcGL0CWqEovq2EewcYNxBDCbjkD9_EnB03z943q2wVt1980XUrs5J9nHtQIQhBtSHh9g9KrEn_GXrG4/w480-h640/Thor%20wax.jpg" title="Thor the mighty" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Thor - a man made from wax and other stuff... Madame Tussaud's, Blackpool.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Surviving Challenges…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Madame Tussaud's faced
numerous challenges throughout its history, including fires, wars, and economic
downturns. However, the wax museum persevered, demonstrating resilience and
adaptability. In 1925, the museum moved to its current London location on
Marylebone Road, where it continues to attract millions of visitors each year.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Evolution and Innovation…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">While Madame Tussaud's
initially focused on historical and royal figures, the museum has evolved to
include celebrities, sports icons, and fictional characters. The waxworks have
become increasingly interactive, with visitors able to pose with and touch the
sculptures, creating a more immersive experience.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That experience is now global,
with more than 10-million guests visiting a Tussaud’s each year across 25
locations around the world. Each location caters to the geographic region,
blending local culture with globally recognised figures to cater for the
diverse audiences and sensitivities to local regional nuances.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The locations to date include:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">London,
United Kingdom<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Amsterdam,
Netherlands<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Berlin,
Germany<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Vienna,
Austria<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Bangkok,
Thailand<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Beijing,
China<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Blackpool,
United Kingdom<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Hollywood,
United States<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">9.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Las
Vegas, United States<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">10.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Nashville, United States<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">11.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">New York City, United States<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">12.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Orlando, United States<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">13.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">San Francisco, United States<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">14.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Shanghai, China<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">15.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Singapore<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">16.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sydney, Australia<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">17.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tokyo, Japan<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">18.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Istanbul, Turkey<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">19.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Prague, Czech Republic<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">20.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Delhi, India<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">21.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Wuhan, China<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">22.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Chongqing, China<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">23.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Guangzhou, China<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">24.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Shenyang, China<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">25.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Seoul, South Korea<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Louis Tussaud's Waxworks: A
Quirky Tale of Wax, Wonders, and Whimsy…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">On my recent visit to Blackpool’s
Madame Tussauds, I was struck by the detail that had been applied in every
model. Some were more realistic than others, but none of them reminded me of
the models that had been exhibited in the same space all those years ago. Now
that I’ve had the opportunity to find a few old photographs of the Louis
Tussaud’s I had visited back all those years ago, the difference is quite
staggering. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">While Madame Tussaud's
Waxworks is globally recognised, a quirky and lesser-known chapter in the world
of wax museums unfolds with Louis Tussaud's Waxworks. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Z-VbqcXkDfl9PP4aaHY9pYvZTaFhiBvvB1O63AZx5UowE5pmRr686qyZn4Xpr0EPL76HiFMHIymcw10t7zI8SG3K-rQlCVZocL8_0PGnhdhIPhhI3zb-TbjiQUYjnLVZnOhKflEYeCoGWzHV3Qu9VDQh5LL2aGHxagCaEq_7NokJiW8QcjcSLZicuE4/s4000/portal.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="portal abstract art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Z-VbqcXkDfl9PP4aaHY9pYvZTaFhiBvvB1O63AZx5UowE5pmRr686qyZn4Xpr0EPL76HiFMHIymcw10t7zI8SG3K-rQlCVZocL8_0PGnhdhIPhhI3zb-TbjiQUYjnLVZnOhKflEYeCoGWzHV3Qu9VDQh5LL2aGHxagCaEq_7NokJiW8QcjcSLZicuE4/w640-h640/portal.JPG" title="Portal by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Portal by Mark Taylor - one of my latest creations is available now from usual stockists and directly. </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Born into the famed Tussaud family, Louis
Tussaud carved out (no pun intended) his niche in the wax figure world,
creating a unique legacy that adds a touch of eccentricity to the wax museum
landscape. I guess that’s a polite way to say that even today, Louis Tussaud’s
models are an acquired taste, not overly lifelike, and judging by some of the
more recent photographs I found online, the models to the casual visitor are
perhaps seen as more of a supermarket value range when compared to the much
bigger Madame Tussaud’s. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqJ3UxH_f5Vc2GZgCdhyphenhyphennsVJJ793CiyLuLqlYdmy8tRVlM9JU1oc4I7suhOaF2wnvJVgeVnkHPkr5JE1Fl0w_l5yHYVybUceRf9J06Xm8K_XFbP-hOeRrz_dVcL4T02RUyQD80ayheSrr6tvXu3i1B3-xoTc1RYvkEz_Ur6FzgVfRAA_Wplb2iArOErFc/s4000/new%20art%205.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Fall Down Seven Times Stand Up Eight by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqJ3UxH_f5Vc2GZgCdhyphenhyphennsVJJ793CiyLuLqlYdmy8tRVlM9JU1oc4I7suhOaF2wnvJVgeVnkHPkr5JE1Fl0w_l5yHYVybUceRf9J06Xm8K_XFbP-hOeRrz_dVcL4T02RUyQD80ayheSrr6tvXu3i1B3-xoTc1RYvkEz_Ur6FzgVfRAA_Wplb2iArOErFc/w640-h640/new%20art%205.JPG" title="Fall Down Seven Times Stand Up Eight by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fall Down Seven Times Stand Up Eight by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s not to disparage the
models created at the hands of the teams behind Louis Tussaud’s models. Far
from it, all too often I see a news headline decrying the quality of the
waxworks models when some celebrity or other has posted about their seemingly
hilarious visit on social media. These celebrities, and to a lesser extent some
more mortal members of the public who dismiss Louis Tussaud’s as overly
inferior, are kind of missing the artistic point.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Two Faces of Wax Art:
Louis Tussauds Waxworks and Madame Tussauds Waxworks…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Wax figures have long been a
source of fascination and entertainment, with their lifelike appearance and
ability to capture the essence of a person or character. While Madame Tussauds
Waxworks is often considered the gold standard of wax artistry, Louis Tussauds
takes a very different approach, but, despite the whimsical and playful nature
of their models, is no less serious.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Madame Tussauds focuses on
hyperrealism, creating wax figures that are so lifelike they can from a
distance be mistaken for the real person. Louis Tussauds, on the other hand,
embraces a more artistic and playful approach, often using caricature and
exaggeration to create figures that are more akin to sculptures than realistic
representations.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You laugh at Louis but not at
Matisse…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That both Madame Tussaud’s and
Louis Tussaud’s coexist, enriches the artistry of the world of wax modelling. Contrasting
styles between the two institutions bring a much wider range of artistic
expression to the medium, just as two contrasting painters bring their own
contrasts in more traditional art forms. Some find the realism painted by old
Masters to be the gold standard when it comes to traditional artworks, the same
people might tut at the thought of hanging an original Pollock on their wall.
Both are valid art forms that appeal to each of their respective tribes.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9R4ToFGbUbc50-VKCKSHFpxna3lDXeJbmtoJar_y2oBu06cUyfn5MKD3HdvEsVj7RJvhQyiNDSWtvPN87HXxaFX5sRL53baeVzg6ZAZXTHLqQrCjTMCCqYM0L6H9ks4ehTPkMlrGuoGcCqSRParpHJ4mxgrcvj4taztqLqdJCc0U2iUixjz6dki1-U1o/s4000/As%20Seen%20on%20TV.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="TV game art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9R4ToFGbUbc50-VKCKSHFpxna3lDXeJbmtoJar_y2oBu06cUyfn5MKD3HdvEsVj7RJvhQyiNDSWtvPN87HXxaFX5sRL53baeVzg6ZAZXTHLqQrCjTMCCqYM0L6H9ks4ehTPkMlrGuoGcCqSRParpHJ4mxgrcvj4taztqLqdJCc0U2iUixjz6dki1-U1o/w640-h640/As%20Seen%20on%20TV.JPG" title="As Seen On TV" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">As Seen On TV - all hand drawn and painted, this is one of my most recent retro inspired artworks. Available from my usual outlets and signed editions are available directly. </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Louis Tussaud’s figures have
been mocked by many, but as I intimated earlier, they’re kind of missing that
all important artistic point. Art needs to be different to cater to the diverse
tastes of art fans around the world. Some might find the caricature based
whimsical nature of a Louis model to be laughable, and that’s great, it’s a
reaction, something every artist should aspire to bring out from their work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I personally favour Madame
Tussaud’s approach because I love detail, anyone who follows my work will know
that I sometimes go over the top on detail in my own work, it’s not necessarily
needed, but I consciously choose to add tiny extras, often to the detriment of
time. I do this because the niche audience my retro work serves have a tendency
to be sticklers for nostalgia and a small detail can be the difference between
triggering a moment of remembering the past, or making the work blah. But I
fully appreciate that sometimes, we just need a nod to the subject or a moment,
it all depends on the crowd you’re playing to. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSgr7nmrXgFLRu3hxw7Hamjh-nSWzM1knPiIAOvN6nzRbN66n2Qy-Wijlc4PyZMT72mltdfCuUCdTR0WHqO4m33O1Q7wyrPEG-bNK7EowzvmkMCK7aie55SwKpktpmZAY_HwY5SiBWt_0OZ5If9dGL9itkAk03p_j9_FoPfq9IQIyvJXsx4XeaWNUaw2w/s4000/new%20art%204.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Great Talents Mature Late by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSgr7nmrXgFLRu3hxw7Hamjh-nSWzM1knPiIAOvN6nzRbN66n2Qy-Wijlc4PyZMT72mltdfCuUCdTR0WHqO4m33O1Q7wyrPEG-bNK7EowzvmkMCK7aie55SwKpktpmZAY_HwY5SiBWt_0OZ5If9dGL9itkAk03p_j9_FoPfq9IQIyvJXsx4XeaWNUaw2w/w640-h640/new%20art%204.JPG" title="Great Talents Mature Late by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Great Talents Mature Late by Mark Taylor - from my new Japanese inspired series!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Louis Tussaud’s is without
question, very much a conversation starter. I think that’s something that
certainly, many new and even not so new artists can learn from. Art should make
you think,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>engage with, and talk about,
and it should give you a different perspective, and challenge perceptions. The
exaggeration is a disconnect from the real world with Louis Tussaud’s and as an
institution that is seen as an entertainment venue first and foremost, perhaps
in this respect Louis Tussaud’s is more on point.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The contrasting approaches of
Louis Tussauds Waxworks and Madame Tussauds venues and artistry serve as a
testament to the adaptability and versatility of wax as an artistic medium.
Their distinct styles not only enrich the art world but also encourage broader
appreciation for the diverse interpretations and expressions that art can
encompass. It’s also fascinating that both institutions are engaging the
general public in a conversation and discovery of an art form without many of
the public realising that they are visiting what is essentially a gallery
created by artists.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidR8-C6cFCFMixPH_sMviTBRZDgET_IDC444Gbat281EA8KYUvCT4uAByA6I5VYfXHUCytXibqUJXXw8Q-CPKwPmRaNoALtj0qE-Pb51M8ROakQLnwGnCh3VvzHvwnngugqkXi3LjDTGGOj87wd2VrujDG7L02dUpKNa5r68GX-QtCUYuxqZQkFAZys4A/s4000/flick%20football.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Flick Football art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidR8-C6cFCFMixPH_sMviTBRZDgET_IDC444Gbat281EA8KYUvCT4uAByA6I5VYfXHUCytXibqUJXXw8Q-CPKwPmRaNoALtj0qE-Pb51M8ROakQLnwGnCh3VvzHvwnngugqkXi3LjDTGGOj87wd2VrujDG7L02dUpKNa5r68GX-QtCUYuxqZQkFAZys4A/w640-h640/flick%20football.JPG" title="Flick Football by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Flick Football by Mark Taylor - one of my retro toy creations inspired by tabletop football or as friends in the USA call it, soccer. (It's football you know...)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Legacy of Louis…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Louis Tussaud, born in 1869,
inherited the families creativity and developed his own passion for wax
modelling. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the mid-19<sup>th</sup>
century, Louis set up his own wax museum, it was intentionally different to
Madame Tussaud’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>original venue in
London, England, and had been created to appeal to a very different audience.
Opening in Regent Street, London, in 1890, the waxworks enjoyed a popularity
that continues today.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Louis's waxworks quickly
gained attention for its eclectic mix of historical figures, celebrities, and
peculiar creations, each imbued with his distinctive style.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Louis Tussaud's Waxworks was
not known for its strict adherence to realism, making that distinction between
the two museums even more apparent. While Madame Tussaud was synonymous with hyper-realism,
Louis took creative liberties, infusing a touch of humour and whimsy into his
figures. Visitors to his museum were treated to a curious collection that
included exaggerated and caricatured versions of famous personalities, making
for a light-hearted and entertaining experience.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Following Louis Tussaud's
death in 1938, his waxworks continued under the care of his descendants. The
museum faced challenges, including changes in ownership and locations, but it
maintained its reputation for quirkiness. Over the years, the collection expanded
to include new additions, blending historical figures with contemporary pop
culture references.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Louis Tussaud’s was also known
for its chamber of horrors attraction, something I remember well from the
Blackpool location. It featured exhibits that were probably too mature for
young people, yet I must have been around 9 or 10 years old when I first visited.
Exhibits at the time included a torture chamber and a guillotine. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkabFu8vfAXALmQGXdHNUZ8WcLxux7cTphXZSGtwJp4qMAsqSqHYc2oGe_z2wKnRQPm_LIALo_m7NRHZbNeGYMrsqRvPGxnSiXfVCxNmdnKAGN-82jxENfC4rvlLysZy4LF7Kh1mErRy5SjA7qVejzOp5FQbhB-X3-ZlXXPffPWv0JTgK8iF5SPiF0B5M/s4000/slot%20car%20racing.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Slot Car Racing art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkabFu8vfAXALmQGXdHNUZ8WcLxux7cTphXZSGtwJp4qMAsqSqHYc2oGe_z2wKnRQPm_LIALo_m7NRHZbNeGYMrsqRvPGxnSiXfVCxNmdnKAGN-82jxENfC4rvlLysZy4LF7Kh1mErRy5SjA7qVejzOp5FQbhB-X3-ZlXXPffPWv0JTgK8iF5SPiF0B5M/w640-h640/slot%20car%20racing.JPG" title="Slot Car Racing art print by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Slot Car Racing art print by Mark Taylor - available from my usual outlets. You have no idea how long it took me to paint the track, it looked so simple yet I was still working on the track after 5 hours! You can see the detail on my Pixels website.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Evolution of Wax
Modelling…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the early days of wax
modelling, artisans and sculptors would use beeswax, today the materials are
far more advanced. Wax is still the primary material used in modelling but
artists also use resin and silicone, and the techniques used today are
significantly more advanced than in the past.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Early artists would use simple
sculpting techniques, today they use a much more varied range of techniques,
technology and skills including digital sculpting and 3D printing. This isn’t
surprising as some of the wax models today also incorporate technologies and
advanced animatronics. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">New techniques are constantly
being explored, but many of the techniques used today<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hark back to the very same processes used by
Madame Tussaud. Once a public figure is chosen, there is a sitting where up to
200 measurements are taken of the subject alongside photographs from every
angle. Eyes, hair and skin are colour matched, and a metal armature is
constructed to support a clay mould.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiinYqT5Br1pqUIfgiaRZoMMw1F9TXatsy4_hLwJJsFk6dWJXgZalcUFgoIYOsTNnV6Xu9QXK3SPTOLimz8LXUSZQ9hJd9i4os7A4An0GcExCCQVPCwrH6llaTZlnKkfB8id2qMNdedUjxkJjtraRKhAwSitCMXXwqZaBQZhLRQ_XnnlKho2fgmxTtRl0Y/s4000/new%20art%202.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Wabi Sabi Japanese inspired artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiinYqT5Br1pqUIfgiaRZoMMw1F9TXatsy4_hLwJJsFk6dWJXgZalcUFgoIYOsTNnV6Xu9QXK3SPTOLimz8LXUSZQ9hJd9i4os7A4An0GcExCCQVPCwrH6llaTZlnKkfB8id2qMNdedUjxkJjtraRKhAwSitCMXXwqZaBQZhLRQ_XnnlKho2fgmxTtRl0Y/w640-h640/new%20art%202.JPG" title="Wabi Sabi Japanese inspired artwork by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Wabi Sabi Japanese inspired artwork by Mark Taylor - one of a series of new works originally created as a commission. The commissioned piece will appear on a future trading card!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The head is worked on
separately from the body, in a process that can last for around four to six
weeks. Real human hairs are inserted individually, including eyebrows, and
artist’s will then paint the model to reproduce the exact skin tone and detail any
blemishes. In this process, ten base layers are used to replicate the skin tone
and it is at this point that an hair stylist will style the hair.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A plaster cast is created from
the clay sculpture and then melted wax is poured slowly into the mould to avoid
air bubbles. Excess wax is then removed leaving a hallow head where the eyes
and teeth can then be placed. The body of each Madame Tussaud waxwork is then
created in exactly the same way, but bodies are created using fibreglass for
durability. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Wax Modelling Beyond The
Tourist Attraction…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Wax models have also been used
in anatomy and medicine for centuries and while the contributions of Vesalius
and his followers to anatomical illustration have been widely recognised, the
work of Veslingius and particularly Fabricius has often been overlooked. By
1600, Fabricius had amassed over 300 paintings that together formed the Tabulae
Pictae, an impressive anatomical atlas that was highly regarded by his
contemporaries. Many of his new observations were incorporated into subsequent
works, including those by Casserius, Spighelius, Harvey, and Veslingius
himself.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSxg8sOwZ1Tbo0Y2m8Fshr69DzDP2MhnarmsvC7NqjFKxsE52p2fJq0zuiPqx6E9MdKeneM6YRF1KC5Up0pVE9Ft0C4GS4ZgoDQDravmq7D2DZeFufegnScXTxW0tRu5fpVS4bMbXfbFmIM69EAsl_KxdRCmDaPrJEyMdKCDe-aboOZCp3D53SnVbHTk4/s4000/neon%20nostalgia.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Neon Nostalgia art print of vintage technology by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSxg8sOwZ1Tbo0Y2m8Fshr69DzDP2MhnarmsvC7NqjFKxsE52p2fJq0zuiPqx6E9MdKeneM6YRF1KC5Up0pVE9Ft0C4GS4ZgoDQDravmq7D2DZeFufegnScXTxW0tRu5fpVS4bMbXfbFmIM69EAsl_KxdRCmDaPrJEyMdKCDe-aboOZCp3D53SnVbHTk4/w640-h640/neon%20nostalgia.JPG" title="Neon Nostalgia by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Neon Nostalgia by Mark Taylor - another new retro work, this time featuring the stuff you really wanted in the 1980s!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Tabulae Pictae: A
Masterpiece of Anatomical Illustration</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Tabulae Pictae was a
ground-breaking work that featured highly detailed and accurate illustrations of
the human body. Fabricius's meticulous attention to detail and his use of
shading and perspective created a sense of realism that was unmatched by previous
anatomical illustrations. His work was particularly influential in the
development of anatomical wax modelling.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Influence of Eustachius
and the Rise of Anatomical Wax Modelling…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Tabulae by Eustachius
(1552), which were not published until 1714, also had a significant impact on
anatomical wax modelling. Eustachius's detailed illustrations of the inner ear
and other anatomical structures provided valuable inspiration for wax modelers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In 1742, Pope Benedict XIV
established the Museum of Anatomy in Bologna, entrusting Ercole Lelli with the
creation of several anatomical preparations in wax. Lelli's work was highly
regarded, and his wax models were used for teaching and research purposes for
many years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Felice Fontana, recognising
the potential of wax models for anatomical teaching, proposed the establishment
of a wax-modelling workshop in Florence in 1771. With the support of the Grand
Duke, Fontana's workshop produced a large number of highly detailed wax models
that were used for teaching and research purposes throughout Europe.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR2HW1IJQwh-f31h_HLRolPEPV_gg5a7TDCuod0lmbsXjX0DdehupsRVq3SCY3wjs7rC782NkVUlERe16PNM_GVScp7b7xiIIBp3E_pfBWSco4VVTDu2VWxw8q_1JLZi_HVMWSOdDPYkt_JhZRdKPBuby4jhytwwJ9kmJx21IEauk2AjCQxytO8NILrzk/s4000/New%20art%201.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Japanese inspired art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR2HW1IJQwh-f31h_HLRolPEPV_gg5a7TDCuod0lmbsXjX0DdehupsRVq3SCY3wjs7rC782NkVUlERe16PNM_GVScp7b7xiIIBp3E_pfBWSco4VVTDu2VWxw8q_1JLZi_HVMWSOdDPYkt_JhZRdKPBuby4jhytwwJ9kmJx21IEauk2AjCQxytO8NILrzk/w640-h640/New%20art%201.JPG" title="Fear is Greater than Danger by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fear is Greater than Danger by Mark Taylor - one of the new series of Japanese inspired works I have worked on.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The contributions of
Veslingius, Fabricius, Eustachius, Lelli, and Fontana to anatomical
illustration and wax modelling were significant and far-reaching. Their work
helped to advance the understanding of human anatomy and revolutionised the way
anatomy was taught and studied.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Renaissance…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Masters of wax modelling also
appeared during the renaissance, where models would appear alongside more
traditional works of art. Sculptors during this period would also create wax
models as drafts for the works they would go on to produce in stone or marble,
and there are surviving examples from Michelangelo in the Royal Collection and
the British Museum. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It was also during the
renaissance that wax portrait reliefs became popular, with the craft originally
attributed to Antonio Abondio who had previously created works for the courts
of Northern Europe. Interestingly, wax portraits continue for the time being to
be one of the more affordable entry points to serious fine art collecting. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today it’s not impossible to
pick up a relatively early work for a few hundred pounds or dollars, although
those with more important connections will be more likely in the region of ten
thousand pounds/dollars. In 2015, a work valued at $7000 surpassed the estimate
with a final sale price of $31,250 and in 2020, a collection of wax seals from
famous figures including William Pitt, Marie Antionette, and Benjamin Franklin
was sold at Sotheby’s for £5250 (UK).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Collecting Wax Art…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are thinking about
collecting wax based art, you might also want to consider that the figures,
models and seals you are most likely to find today will have been created with
beeswax, and this is especially problematic to care for. Often tinted with
pigment, wax portraits are especially susceptible to UV rays and heat from the
sun. You might also want to consider how any pieces are lit, the standard light
level to display these items is usually around 150 LUX with a maximum UV level
of 75 microwatts per lumen. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Temperature is another factor
to consider. In warm or high temperatures, the works can become deformed, if
the temperature is too cold, then you will see cracks leaving the work brittle
due to a loss of moisture and elasticity. If models are constructed using metal
frames, there’s also a consideration around the introduction of rust. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So while there are a lot of
these works selling relatively inexpensively when compared to other fine arts,
you do need to pay attention to the condition of the work. If problems are
caught early on, then it is possible for a conservator to preserve the piece in
most cases, but this adds to the overall cost of ownership. That said,
traditional fine art can also succumb to environmental factors, and I have a
feeling that wax is beginning to become more fashionable amongst collectors
given the recent sales figures, so long as you keep it stored in a cool dark
place, but just maybe not in Louis Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors, it was
horrific!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark is an original retro
artist who has been painting the 1980s since the 1980s. He is a vintage
technology and home computing preservationist (retro hoarder) and has been
creating art professionally since the mid-eighties. He made brief appearances
on TV and Radio during the 1990s. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can purchase Mark’s work
through Fine Art America or his Pixels site here: <a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</a> You
can also purchase prints and originals directly. You can view Mark’s portfolio
website and see a small selection of his works at <a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank">https://beechhousemedia.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Join the conversation on
Facebook at: <a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</a>
and Threads or connect on “X” (You realise it’s still Twitter right?)
@beechhouseart You can also find me on BlueSky, but let’s be honest, no one can
find anyone on BlueSky. All images, text, are copyright. </span></p><p></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0Staffordshire, UK52.8792745 -2.057186824.569040663821156 -37.2134368 81.189508336178847 33.0990632tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-74855573281299958182023-10-26T11:32:00.000+01:002023-10-26T11:32:27.281+01:00How The 80s Changed The Art World<h1 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Back To The Eighties</span></b></h1><p><b><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtSQu7A_Sxd5-MNznup7F64pv4wJGaApl6VfKBLPDjwecuy8dmvcwdgNpCuqPjCIpS2j3qt67s3tivbZferEk9mgslXk1GTDBkzS_v28ivKRhJVK0W57ErypEK3d2qqJzTxzFj53PFtogzX4e-U_nIUvJxt7PJSnW7UrrICj9n6pe3W1H1baDB8JGGa0w/s2560/1980s%20cover%20image.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="how the 1980s changed the art world blog cover image" border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="2560" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtSQu7A_Sxd5-MNznup7F64pv4wJGaApl6VfKBLPDjwecuy8dmvcwdgNpCuqPjCIpS2j3qt67s3tivbZferEk9mgslXk1GTDBkzS_v28ivKRhJVK0W57ErypEK3d2qqJzTxzFj53PFtogzX4e-U_nIUvJxt7PJSnW7UrrICj9n6pe3W1H1baDB8JGGa0w/w640-h480/1980s%20cover%20image.PNG" title="How The 80s Changed The Art World" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A decade of technology, new art forms, and neon leg warmers...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The 1980s was a decade of questionable
fashion, global change and technical innovation, all of which greatly
influenced the way art was created. Art became less traditional as technology
advanced and artists began experimenting with new materials, tools, and
techniques, all while venturing on to the path of creating entirely new art
movements that would become symbolic of a decade that would also give us the
Rubik's Cube and neon leg warmers.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a> <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This time…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This time, we explore how the
1980s changed the way we produced, purchased, viewed, and even thought about
art. We also explore how the technological advances of the 80s influenced the
art world and how the decade inspired a legion of young artists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also take a look at the brand new art
movements that began at the very same time that Hill Street Blues, Dallas, and
Miami Vice were showing on TV in the days before we had reruns and inferior remakes.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether you are anchored in
the traditional practice of creating art using a brush and canvas or you are a
digital artist pushing and pulling pixels, the 1980s had been a pivotal moment
for the art world, even if those of us who lived through the decade hadn’t
realised it at the time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you create art in the 21<sup>st</sup>
Century, it’s fair to say that how you create, view and sell your work today
owes a great deal to the disruption that technology and creativity was
responsible for during that neon decade of mass consumerism, consumption, and a
thirst to find out what was next. So, we’re heading back to the 1980s to find
out what exactly went on.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifDjXRBlXA0A9l34yHriWj-Rp3rOtTrk7oMqxoEGELNuvuQ0xnOwqcnkf-C04F-MSxyeXuzEAlVFlTTjxfehOj6k9h-foSyUMWVEeSDAzd-DtUNIjE1vnDv_W8aVG7f1ffSzAH02SRdij4CyWBG7WK2lnXTlyJngSD22q09NxPEhPUthTdnE4MKRC91ZU/s4000/IMG_0672.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="art print juxtaposition of 1980s toys and technology with an ice cream van" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifDjXRBlXA0A9l34yHriWj-Rp3rOtTrk7oMqxoEGELNuvuQ0xnOwqcnkf-C04F-MSxyeXuzEAlVFlTTjxfehOj6k9h-foSyUMWVEeSDAzd-DtUNIjE1vnDv_W8aVG7f1ffSzAH02SRdij4CyWBG7WK2lnXTlyJngSD22q09NxPEhPUthTdnE4MKRC91ZU/w640-h640/IMG_0672.JPG" title="That Was The Eighties By Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">That Was The Eighties By Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A Rose Tinted Decade…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I was born in 1969, not long
after the moon landing. My recollection of the 1970s is a rose tinted history
of reading the Disneyland Annual, the hot summer of 1976, a picnic on the
school sports field to celebrate the Queens Jubilee in 1977, and the Atari VCS
and for me, that was the beginning of my lifelong affiliation to all things
tech, and quite bizarrely, my lifelong addiction to creating art. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">By the 1980s, affordable home
computers were widely available and even if those computers were mostly being
used by the kids to play early video games, the inadvertent and almost subtle exposure
to art that by proxy of the ephemera that came with them would provide, couldn’t
be ignored. As a child, I had no idea just how much the art that accompanied
the marketing materials was influencing me to set out on a creative career path.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Atari VCS, an early (but
not the earliest) video game console, was strangely one of the inspirations
that pointed me towards a career in the arts. The artwork adorning the boxes
that held the game cartridges was incredibly powerful, but more than that, these
images perfectly summed up the power of illustration and its ability to say the
same thing in any language without using words. It was an almost perfect
demonstration of how art could be effectively used in marketing campaigns to
tell the back story quickly and form a deep connection with the buyer. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">At the time, I hadn’t quite
pieced together how or why the style of the art used in the packaging could
carry so much influence when it came to selecting new games. It was bold,
colourful, and full of imagination, but more than that, there was a consistency
in the packaging and the design. As a child, it just looked very cool. As a
professional artist reflecting on the period, it was a masterclass in design.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When you made the pilgrimage
to the video games store you would be met with a display of titles that would
spark any youngsters imagination. It wasn’t until many years later that I
recognised the design and style choices used for the boxes had been an act of savvy
marketing that felt very different to anything that had come before. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Looking back now, we can see
that the original Atari 2600 game boxes had been a masterclass in creating brand
recognition. Atari’s logo, sometimes called the Fuji logo is still an iconic
image today and instantly recognisable, even to those who didn’t grow up through
the Atari generation. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Created by George Opperman,
Atari’s very first full time graphic designer, the logo was designed to
represent the letter A, created in a way that represented two players competing
on the video game, Pong. The advertising executives who designed the marketing
campaigns understood that focussing on building strong brand identity should be
front and centre of their design choices and so they masterfully crafted
designs that felt almost futuristic, yet today remain timeless.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The boxes used a recognisable
font called "Harry" and artwork which told the story of the game
inside. This made them visually appealing and helped to create a consistent
look for the Atari 2600 brand, the same principles were followed throughout the
marketing campaigns of a number of their subsequent products. As a result, the
boxes almost begged you to collect them all. People didn’t play video games, they
played Atari, and that was the confirmation the designers and marketers needed
to confirm Atari’s dominant position as number one.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This consistency of design
also made it feel like everyone who bought into Atari was part of something
bigger. It created a sense of community among gamers who knew that they were
all sharing the same experience, and the visual appeal of the packaging meant
that the products lent themselves to being collectible even though millions of
units had been sold. The downside, the 80s was a decade of consumerism and it
was disposable. Collectible or not, these boxes would usually end up in the trash,
leaving the games to gather dust on the shelves inadvertently leading to
everyone who owned a game console to blow the dust of the cartridges when they
didn’t work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As an artist, I’m not sure I
have ever found a better way to understand the importance of telling a story in
your work than through studying period specific video game ephemera and box
art, especially from the 80s and early 90s. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Art played a pivotal role in
early video games marketing, with game boxes often including physical items
such as maps, user manuals, and in some cases, even full length books which
would provide you with the back story to the game.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Again, it was another
marketing masterstroke for the time, it meant that something that was primarily<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a mix of a plastic case and a digital file on
a silicon chip, also came with something that was tactile, even useful, to the
extent that the ephemera included in the package was often what made the
product more desirable than the game it contained. I lost count of the number
of games I collected on the premise that the included feelies represented way
better value than anything else on the shelf.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFs8JeEez7N6Eth_p61U5pB2Ou_rCx77hMm9OIsovY88iyfYnfTKrvaP-awIQxAtgfnv25SEgWqzeanomufYyIyj6GiiaSxUVif67TsNJGczsb5HHeK_hYu72YCRESZhQwEE9eWex8dg1jv9BqHM4FwQ8CH9r9aOeqlAestfBGy1w-fIOI1tnDETXWrng/s4000/IMG_0675.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="art print of boy riding a bicycle in the 1980s" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFs8JeEez7N6Eth_p61U5pB2Ou_rCx77hMm9OIsovY88iyfYnfTKrvaP-awIQxAtgfnv25SEgWqzeanomufYyIyj6GiiaSxUVif67TsNJGczsb5HHeK_hYu72YCRESZhQwEE9eWex8dg1jv9BqHM4FwQ8CH9r9aOeqlAestfBGy1w-fIOI1tnDETXWrng/w640-h640/IMG_0675.JPG" title="Time To Go Home by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Time To Go Home by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Dawn of New Processes and
the Advent of Print…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Most of the artwork produced
for marketing at the time would have been airbrushed or even sketched by hand, digital
mediums had yet to fully evolve and we were nowhere close to being able to
create anything that we would take for granted today. 80s art had quite a
distinctive look, not only were creative processes different from today,
printing processes were very different too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the 1980s, colour printing
was much more expensive than it is today, it was more difficult to print
complex designs with multiple colours, although the likes of Mattel and Hasbro
would use more expensive bright and colourful packaging to appeal to children.
Using fewer colours made the printing process simpler and much less expensive,
but there was also an upside to using a limited colour palette, it lent itself
to creating strong brand identity, a design choice that is still used today.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">From advertisements for the
local supermarket to product packaging, everything had historically been
created by the hands of traditional artists who had far fewer tools than we do
today, which kind of proves that it is possible to create art with almost
anything. Paints and pigments were also less advanced during the 80s than they
are today, yet the designs created during the eighties across all sorts of
packaging still remain iconic to this day.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It really is a testament to
the skills of the many artists who would become involved across a very young
industry, especially when you consider the limitations they were working with.
There was no internet to influence an artists creativity so everything felt
arguably more original than it does today, and also arguably, it was maybe a
time when artists still had to think deeply about creating something unique. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, creating art has become
comparatively easier, we have the tools but we’re often blinkered by some level
of digital influence. Be it following a trend that attracts likes and followers
or remaining in the comfort zone of a safe demographic, and I think that really
does take a lot of the creative uniqueness away from the art world.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Who needs an artist…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When we look back at the
technology, computer, and video games industries, there was no clear path for
traditional artists to play a role, at least initially. Most artists at the
time would have been working in other creative areas or would have already have
become established artists, often working on project after project anonymously
and then falling into the industry almost by accident rather than seeking the
industry out as a vocation that they could anchor their creative skills within.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Artists such as Oliver Frey,</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Raleway",sans-serif; font-size: 14.5pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Cliff Spohn, Steve Hendrickson, and Susan
Jaekel had been amongst the early pioneers in creating marketing materials and
artwork for the industry, each of these already had a remarkable talent and a
level of artistic provenance. The industry attracted relatively new artists
too, some would join the industry perhaps accidently, some through helping out
a friend of a friend, it was an industry that was simply too young to realise
that it needed artists, yet artists would become pivotal in the marketing
efforts that would eventually make the video game industry financially more
valuable than Hollywood.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Many of those original artists
who had worked on the ephemera and marketing materials used throughout the
industry have long since established cult followings for their work especially
amongst video game and popular culture collectors. Much of their work today is
highly regarded and sought after within the industry and by collectors. Today,
their artistic styles are often replicated, but I often get the sense that
those original artists are not celebrated anywhere near enough. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is only relatively recently
that some of their work is finally being seen as collectible, not just for it’s
artistic style but also for what the work represented during the 1980s, and it’s
becoming increasingly more challenging to find any of their original works,
some of which probably won’t have even made it to the 90s. The eighties was,
amongst other things, a disposable decade.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What ephemera hadn’t been
thrown away during the 80s was extremely affordable up until around 2013, around
2010 it was literally being given away. Since then there has been a steady
increase in value, and it remains just about affordable to collect right now,
but values are escalating and it might not be quite so affordable for much
longer because of a recent new focus on retro and preservation amongst
collectors. Of course that collector bubble could burst, but the sweet spot for
collectible years at the moment seems to be any ephemera created between 1977
and 1986, especially when it comes to VHS video cassette tapes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s often cited by key
industry insiders who had been involved with the industry at the time, that
most of what was produced in the early 80s was thrown away when the next new
thing came along. For todays collectors, thankfully a lot of what was produced
had been produced in high volumes, so it’s not always especially rare whenever
you do come across items from the 80s, but what still exists usually ends up in
private collections which reduces the overall supply. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Back in the 80s, as a society,
we had no real concept of preservation, neither did we have the technology that
makes preservation quite as easy as it is today. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even those who had been pivotal in building
technology empires during the early part of the decade have since admitted they
had thought that this new wave of technology would be just a passing phase, and
there was no compelling reason to save or preserve things. Attitudes were very
different, this was as much the golden age of making a fast buck as it was the
golden age of technology.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC0BZNOFDcGrGpeUBsqsupNd5NLGg_UD_rZNtzPFjGzFvwvKb_QwhDP_8BlpYSqcMx5XGmRuYLeQAbnqAI8aQr3lXj6j4mAskGPQzM71q9MXtfchZWSQ7ilsf2OOe7ArO-n9K46X0Ke9GbiKOUBY3ZJvtc3gfYiGHhAEfHMUogBb_rOjSjT7MxGwAXios/s4000/IMG_0676.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="boy on bike in the 1980s with rain" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC0BZNOFDcGrGpeUBsqsupNd5NLGg_UD_rZNtzPFjGzFvwvKb_QwhDP_8BlpYSqcMx5XGmRuYLeQAbnqAI8aQr3lXj6j4mAskGPQzM71q9MXtfchZWSQ7ilsf2OOe7ArO-n9K46X0Ke9GbiKOUBY3ZJvtc3gfYiGHhAEfHMUogBb_rOjSjT7MxGwAXios/w640-h640/IMG_0676.JPG" title="Riding in the Rain by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Riding in the Rain by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Art began to shape product
marketing…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Many of those original artists
who had suddenly found themselves in this very new and unfamiliar tech-industry
brought something fresh to what for a while had been a very narrow niche. They
also introduced art to an audience who perhaps wouldn’t have considered
themselves as being previously appreciative of art, but there was just
something very different about box art and the ephemera that accompanied many
of the products.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It wasn’t<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>just games, even the instructions for the
latest kitchen appliance would have had hand-drawn illustrations, but the
stories that were being told through the art that accompanied video games appealed
to the younger generation and had massive appeal to inquisitive young minds who
had mostly enjoyed the wave of B movie sci-fi during the 70s. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The art had to convey a story,
it had to appeal to a specific demographic, yet a lot of the marketing strategies
from these new industries were having to be made up on the fly as the industry
expanded. I think there was some element of the industry being taken by
surprise at its rapid growth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The illustrations and art that
would appear on marketing materials at the time appealed to young people for a
variety of reasons. It was colourful, vibrant, dynamic, exciting, aspirational,
and then it would be placed front and centre in a social setting. If you need
art to appeal to the TikTok generations of today, that’s still kind of the recipe
for success that you need to follow. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Despite a lack of experience
across the industry in marketing this entirely new technology, the successful
manufacturers and publishers very soon came to understand that art can connect
with people on a deep level, just as it has with traditional art forms for
centuries. They embraced this principle, creating vibrant and dynamic art that
appealed and resonated with those they wanted to reach.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There were no huge, or even accessible
data-sets that could be mined to figure out who would be more likely to buy into
any of this stuff, neither was there any sense of just how big the technology
monster would become, and even above this,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>there were simply no rule books that set out how to do any of this which
led to even more innovation and a lot of what we take for granted today has
roots back to these almost experimental marketing campaigns.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retailers and manufacturers
only began to introduce what we would know today as loyalty schemes, in the
early 90s. Prior to this, loyalty schemes had mostly been about rewarding
buyers with something like Green Sheild Stamps, collect enough stamps and trade
them in for a gift, and some retailers would hand out more stamps then others
which meant that buyers would be more likely to shop at one store over another.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">By the early 90s, the schemes
and developed into mass data gathering tools that would allow retailers to
identify not just shopping habits, but also people and they began to realise that
by piecing together this data they could better understand what else connected
a person to a product.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The technologists, the
programmers, the scientists, the manufacturers, the publishers, and let’s not
forget the artists, whatever product they were working on at the time, were
unknowingly the pioneers of the modern technology industry that we know today
but they were also pioneering a lot of what we see today beyond the world of
technology. They were writing the book on how to connect a product with a
person, they were learning how to influence before the world had an influencer
around every corner, they were creating something that modern day marketing
campaigns owe a great deal to.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0HqQgT8KoK_MChUunW50QTiMkGXyjoC51hEjkf3h3rJd1yAe_b3FH06tPeGP2A-XJ1xQsO-YwLNifUdSkgxaLulySi9qwpjj3snUiMOswTIISiJqQ-SA4NbrKIRklwH9Oy5HBniipk62XMNuF7tqvCyVIPCRlQ20oEOsL_NNsf00-sRRymP_CEs7Z62k/s4000/IMG_0615.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="art print of juxtaposition of 1980s and 1990s technology" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0HqQgT8KoK_MChUunW50QTiMkGXyjoC51hEjkf3h3rJd1yAe_b3FH06tPeGP2A-XJ1xQsO-YwLNifUdSkgxaLulySi9qwpjj3snUiMOswTIISiJqQ-SA4NbrKIRklwH9Oy5HBniipk62XMNuF7tqvCyVIPCRlQ20oEOsL_NNsf00-sRRymP_CEs7Z62k/w640-h640/IMG_0615.JPG" title="The Retro Hoarder by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Retro Hoarder by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Marketing Got Smart and
Technology Invaded The Home…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It was, as Bob Ross would say,
an happy little accident that the industry grew into what it has become
today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the 1960s and 1970s, unless
you had been using mainframe computers in school or tended to live your life in
a lab, the very idea that computers could actually be useful in the home would
have been a completely alien concept. But by the 1980s, things had changed,
technology had advanced and it was miniaturised to the point that it was
finally affordable enough to be brought out of the lab and into the front room.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The next problem to overcome
would be to figure out how and who these boxes of silicone would be sold to.
Some of the early manufacturers would bundle a recipe program that would allow
you to maintain a small database of cookery ingredients, others would appeal to
time-poor executives and bundle rudimentary accounting programs into the box,
and the savvier ones, well, they realised that they could appeal to children by
bundling in brightly coloured game boxes that promised hours of interactive
fun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They literally threw everything at
the wall and surprisingly, everything stuck.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The even savvier one’s would
also bundle in education software that would appeal to the parents of the
children who really just wanted to play games, and some of those manufacturers would
also target schools to drive forward the concept that computing would be the
next big thing and they should be placing computer science on the curriculum.
That alone ensured that schools would be continuously buying the technology,
but the manufacturers had probably miscalculated that a schools typically low
level of funding wouldn’t always stretch to an upgrade down the line.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Given that there were no rule
books, no precedent, and no historic references that could be consulted,
collectively, maybe a little by accident, the technology industry had come up
with a genius marketing plan but the competition was growing and companies,
manufacturers, retailers and publishers knew that they would need to stand out.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It was big business, but the
cake wasn’t quite big enough to feed everyone. One of the more recent historic
studies determined that more than 500 companies had entered the same space during
the early 80s, all selling broadly similar things, indeed, some were selling
the same thing or an exact bootleg copy of it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With an industry in it’s
infancy, a lack of consumer confidence in the quality of what was being sold,
the general lack of knowledge from the public as to how these technical things
worked and little to no concept of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>how
and why they could be useful, the market became flooded and many of the
original companies folded just as quickly as they had arrived. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Those who remained had to
think differently. They had to address the quality control issues and they had
to show people how the technology could make their lives better. They also had
to work on the marketing materials which for a while in the late 70s and very early
80s was often created with a typewriter and a few badly drawn sketches. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A cover and instructions for
some of the early video games and computer programs was often little more than a
photocopied piece of paper, typed out on a manual typewriter together with very
simple illustrations. The photocopy would be inserted into a polythene bag
alongside a floppy disk or cassette tape and that was essentially how early
software which had often been created by a single person writing code would be
sold. The issue here was that any retailer taking on stock had the problem that
no matter how they displayed the goods, everything looked the same.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Publishers quickly realised
that in order for their product to sell they would need to create packaging
that appealed to those who owned or who were thinking of buying a computer, and
so they began to work on ever-more elaborate designs. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The packaging had to quickly
tell a story, appeal to the target audience, and more importantly, it had to
look better than anything else on the same shelf. For some, better also meant
bigger and retailers were happy to display huge boxes containing all sorts of
ephemera and instructions. This is something that rarely happens today, everything
has to be an exact size, the smaller the better, so the artwork and
illustrations that are used in product packaging today have become massively
more critical to making the product stand out.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, retailers demand
uniform, industry standard sizing that means you can fit an exact number of
products onto a shelf and more if possible. Redundant shelf space from the big
box products as seen throughout the 80s and 90 is now viewed as lost profit and
logistics and supply chains work on volumetric controls because no one wants to
pay to ship air. Environmentally, we have moved on since the 80s and 90s, but
the principles of using art within packaging design which had been first used
throughout the 80s are still very much evident today.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVG2_jExq3W3HnmHzgTJwU0s5pltC_EhnLPg-wTY-VoSxkQkfK9Q2zNtrrPK04N4RK6FnMiLeBnWXgpeCDvxiJZ6RX7KLMS0qKBCrTKxPt_rdgFiy66nWb0E5RYRcvpcFta-4atvAc74wANfdAuGMMObvsf5HuUkpQbhB3G4shV0AN3VEXgWEvRcthpCg/s4000/IMG_0614.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Artwork of cassette tape and cassette players" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVG2_jExq3W3HnmHzgTJwU0s5pltC_EhnLPg-wTY-VoSxkQkfK9Q2zNtrrPK04N4RK6FnMiLeBnWXgpeCDvxiJZ6RX7KLMS0qKBCrTKxPt_rdgFiy66nWb0E5RYRcvpcFta-4atvAc74wANfdAuGMMObvsf5HuUkpQbhB3G4shV0AN3VEXgWEvRcthpCg/w640-h640/IMG_0614.JPG" title="Magnetic Memories by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Magnetic Memories by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You had to judge the book by
the cover…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The 80s was the time when the
cover really did sell the book and anything else. Buying decisions would be made
based solely on how excited you were from the art on the cover of a game, on
the side of an arcade cabinet, or on any other product packaging that needed to
convince the buyer to part with their cash. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With little information available
other than whatever had been written in physical magazines or by word of mouth,
and with no such thing as online reviews, the artwork used in the packaging and
marketing materials had to resonate with the target audience who would be
browsing a flooded market. Today, internet hype and a well financed marketing
campaign seem to be enough to make the case for a sale for most things, and as
I have always said, even the bad stuff sells with the right marketing strategy
and enough advertising budget behind it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The 1980s, The Birthplace of
Affordable Technology and Modern Day Marketing…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As we reflect more on the
1980s, we begin to realise how attitudes to art and design would begin to re-shape
the art world as we know it today. It inspired many who grew up during that
decade to appreciate art more deeply, even if that initial introduction had
been subconsciously made through something as simple as a video game box, or
the cover of the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>video you’re your parents
had rented from the local video store. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Many of the early technologies
that had emerged during the eighties such as computer graphics and video art,
are now essential tools for artists. The art world and technical innovations we
witnessed throughout the decade began to change the way artists approached
their creations, they no longer had to be confined by the edges of the canvas,
they could create a fully immersive environment and comparatively very quickly.
It was a complete step change to what had been widely available and done
before.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A new art movement seemed like
it was created every 4.7 minutes…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Aside from the technology,
entirely new art movements had been created throughout the decade and many of
them nodded to technology or the mass consumerism we were witnessing at the time.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Neo-Expressionism was a
reaction against the Minimalism and Conceptualism of the 1970s with Neo-Expressionist
artists returning to figurative painting and sculpture, often using bold colours
and expressive brushstrokes. Works created by Julian Schnabel, Anselm Kiefer,
and Jean-Michel Basquiat are the standouts.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Pictures Generation was a
lose-knit group of artists who emerged in New York City in the late 1970s and early
1980s. They were interested in appropriating images from popular culture and
using them in their work. Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Laurie Simmons, and
Barbara Kruger were amongst many artists who were influenced by a number of
factors, including the rise of mass media and consumerism, the development of
postmodern theory, and the work of earlier artists such as Marcel Duchamp and
Andy Warhol.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Street Art began to evolve as
a significant art movement in the 1980s too and it was perhaps one of the most
disruptive art movements to emerge. Using public spaces to create their work,
often a juxtaposition of graffiti, murals, and stencils, we witnessed the likes
of Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Banksy quite literally turning what
would have once been seen as vandalism into highly prized works of art that are
now as sought after as the old masters.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Neo-Pop was a revival of Pop
Art that had been the standout movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Neo-Pop artists
used images from popular culture in their work, but they often did so in a more
ironic or subversive way than Pop artists had in the 50s and 60s. Jeff Koons,
Keith Haring, and Andy Warhol explored the relationship between high art and
low art, and they often used their work to comment on consumerism, celebrity
culture, and other aspects of contemporary society<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Often characterised by its use
of bright colours, bold imagery, and mass-produced materials, Neo-Pop artists
often appropriated images from advertising, magazines, and television,
challenging the traditional notions of beauty and taste.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Young British Artists (YBAs)
was a group of artists who had emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s.
They were known for their provocative and often shocking work. Damien Hirst,
Tracey Emin, and Sarah Lucas have all become household names since. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Yet another that had been influenced
by mass media and consumerism, the YBAs' style is often replicated today. But
the movement's impact was rooted in its shock value. Attempts to recreate that
shock today generally miss the point. Mostly, these new movements had arisen
out of the popularity of the new technologies that had been rapidly evolving
during the early part of the decade. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">By the end of the decade, the
technology had to have a significant impact on the art world. Both video art
and computer art became increasingly popular throughout the 80s and by 1989,
these explorations in the new media would be legitimised as valid art forms. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Artists such as Bill Viola and
Gary Hill used video to explore themes of identity, memory, and perception.
Artists such as Charles Baudelaire and Jenny Holzer used computers to create
new forms of art, such as digital prints and video installations, yet less than
a decade prior, art had been mostly talked about in a more traditional sense.
It had been a sculpture or canvas, the concept of it being completely created
with the aid of technology hadn't even been contemplated as something that
would become mainstream so quickly.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji-ospOdaMYgeBClG1SKbX2pO1aNsjR1iT7mgvPSTkPY61CsbT6snK742KTm8sRcYpWQhN8brttSq9N6-L0Zzx6aVdfzXVgRzS-EtcAZcorIZF6vz-UI2zwecoicg0S_0eUyl39nDr3AlnDzciGcZZC-J49sOhlt2XIF0JfZXvQRzeQWPt2PFI_G8_KAs/s4000/IMG_0613.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="artwork depicting joysticks from the 80s and 90s" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji-ospOdaMYgeBClG1SKbX2pO1aNsjR1iT7mgvPSTkPY61CsbT6snK742KTm8sRcYpWQhN8brttSq9N6-L0Zzx6aVdfzXVgRzS-EtcAZcorIZF6vz-UI2zwecoicg0S_0eUyl39nDr3AlnDzciGcZZC-J49sOhlt2XIF0JfZXvQRzeQWPt2PFI_G8_KAs/w640-h640/IMG_0613.JPG" title="The Joy of Sticks by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Joy of Sticks by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Then the walls began to
tumble…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It wasn’t just the Berlin Wall
that came tumbling down in the 80s, and despite the developments in technology
and art movements other factors began to affect the markets. While there was a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>growing interest in feminist art, conceptual
art, and postmodernism, there were also some sticky moments that led to art buyers
losing significant amounts of money.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It wasn’t so much that there was
a legitimate art market crash, it was more akin to an art market correction,
something the industry witnesses periodically, but this time it was different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 1980's had seen a flood of incoming money
from Wall Street, the Japanese Yen was strong, and auction houses were
aggressive with their pricing to take advantage of the seemingly surplus
wealth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">19<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup>
Century paintings had been attracting big money buyers, and the practice of
speculating on the next big thing and then flipping it on to the next buyer for
a healthy profit was very much the order of the day. The return on any
investment was often significantly better than even the banks or stocks had
been paying. The 80s was amongst everything else, one of the most money
obsessed decades ever seen and the young, upwardly mobile had speculated hard
and bet big.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you were selling major
works that were on collectors wish lists in the early to mid 80s, there really were
no upper limits to the value of these works. The world was generating more
billionaires than millionaires and no one seriously thought that the bubble
would ever burst, but burst it did. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Wall Street traders thought
they were untouchable, or at least they did until the 19<sup>th</sup> of
October 1987, a Monday morning that would later be known as Black Monday. This
was the day when the financial walls of Wall Street would come tumbling down,
hard and fast.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Post-crash, the economy slowed
and showed little to no signs of a speedy recovery. About 20% of the
impressionist and modern works previously in demand had failed to sell through
the big auction houses, a turning point that would initially send a shiver
through the bones of art collectors around the world, but art is a long game
and serious collectors knew what the speculators didn’t.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">At the start of the 80s, art
collectors had been largely outnumbered by speculators who had no real interest
in the work, their interest extended only to the monetary value of the work.
When Wall Street crashed, those who had placed their wealth in the game simply
to make a fast buck found themselves mostly burnt. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The fallout from this is that
the art world suddenly had fewer speculators, art prices once again began
reversing back to near normal values that were somewhere closer to being
realistic, and the art market began to heal from the frantic trading that had
been happening for a number of years. Thankfully, for serious collectors, the
market would begin to go through a process and period of correction, although
the journey to that correction had left behind many casualties.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The art market depression
continued between 1988 and it would be 1992 before any new shoots would emerge
that would indicate it’s eventual recovery, the global nature of the art market
would see the industry recover more quickly than other industries, such is the
resilience of the art world. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There was then a period of gradually
increasing values placed on artwork between 1993 and 1995, but by 1996, the
market was once again buoyant and artworks began reaching record highs. A stark
contrast from the historic lows of the previous years since 87.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQNs0ZJeoKMr-WMGum2qtL0UGFuv4eTultuH5XVO8UhdC8iKPMUcPtAKguikAjkkFmybvFonrdvv-v0uAMUjXkrV6vvsIedJbrC9Y05JTDjJS1ntrr22pLgeXQY9N6KZI0PE_Z3t_qm2LtcnnFMESuHIOj_LnWOtAnqcjhuq6cs8szrs-4sQbTW8N1_OM/s4000/IMG_0609.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="artwork featuring old computer cables" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQNs0ZJeoKMr-WMGum2qtL0UGFuv4eTultuH5XVO8UhdC8iKPMUcPtAKguikAjkkFmybvFonrdvv-v0uAMUjXkrV6vvsIedJbrC9Y05JTDjJS1ntrr22pLgeXQY9N6KZI0PE_Z3t_qm2LtcnnFMESuHIOj_LnWOtAnqcjhuq6cs8szrs-4sQbTW8N1_OM/w640-h640/IMG_0609.JPG" title="Connected by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Connected by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The foundations of the future…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The eighties, for some of us
at least, seems like it was only five minutes ago, but it wasn’t. I’m regularly
reminded that the technology I bought back then and still use today is mostly
functioning with the assistance of thoughts and prayers and a constant supply
of old electronic components which are becoming more difficult to source. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But, even today it’s difficult
not to see the influence and impact that the 80s had on modern day life,
especially when you look at technology, and the crash and subsequent market
correction between 1987 and 1996, serving as a reminder that art, like any
other commodity that can be traded, is as susceptible and volatile as any other
investment. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The value of art might have
been more volatile during the late 80s, but that didn’t stop artists from
pushing the creativity needle forward. It was technologies turn once again to
disrupt the norm. It was during this period that creative communities would
begin to look for new ways to engage with their audiences. While the internet
did not exist in its current form at the time, early online communities were
formed on bulletin boards that could be accessed using a personal computer, a
telephone, and a device called an acoustic coupler. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This was essentially a
precursor to the internet and it allowed people to communicate and share
information with each other in a way that had never been possible outside of
the military and academia before. Now, when I say share information, the
information was often the latest text adventure game for a home computer such
as the Commodore 64, but this rudimentary online access allowed real-life
communities to incubate and share their thoughts and their work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Almost any information you
find on the internet today could be found somewhere in the world of bulletin
boards throughout the 80s and early 90s, you just had to know where to look,
and if you didn’t know where to look, you would quickly hear of online
communities through word of mouth and user groups. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Out of these communities,
various scenes would begin to take a foothold, often with groups collaborating
on projects from around the world. Art and creativity had stepped into the next
phase, despite the turbulent years in between.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some of these communities were
interested in the convergence of technology and art so they would create technical
demos that would demonstrate their skills and create content that would appeal
to broader audiences. These demo’s would frequently feature home brewed art and
music created digitally by these usually small community groups. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Most, if not nearly all of
these demo’s can still be viewed and seen today either through emulation or on
YouTube. Second Reality, a demo created in around 1993 was celebrated at the
time for bringing digital and video art to life with its ground-breaking
technical effects, the likes of which were incredibly difficult to achieve when
it first came out. Many of these demo groups had names, in the case of Second
Reality, the group was called Demoparty who had entered Second Reality into an
early PC demo competition. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The effects within that demo
hadn’t been seen before, certainly not in a manner that presented such a
seamless visual experience, and certainly not using a computer to generate the
effects. With its bouncing polyhedron, Moiré patterns, demonic like rotating
head, plasma effects, and more, and a soundtrack that would later used in
commercial recordings, the demo scene had arrived and visual arts would once
again deliver a change in the way we produce, create and think about art. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The demo scene at the time was
ground-breaking in geek culture but it was also quite niche in that access was
restricted to those who had an interest in technology and the means to access
it. Yet, the scene had a significant impact on, and influenced the art world as
we know it today in a number of ways. It pioneered the use of these new
technologies despite those technologies being limited, the scene was as much
about pushing creative and computational boundaries beyond what people had
previously thought was possible.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The scene also inspired a new
generation of artists, many of whom would go on to achieve major success in the
art world for their creative and immersive projects that challenged traditional
notions of what art could be. Other demo artists never really left the scene
and continued creating demo’s on what are now vintage systems and others began
creating demo’s on systems that were much more current. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Many of the artists who stuck
around are still developing demos today, continuing to push old technologies
beyond anything they were originally designed to do. A number of these demo
artists continue to do great things and frequently come up with creative
projects that have never been thought of, let alone done before, yet very few
of them are widely known outside of the demo scene which is a monumental shame,
and more so, because their work often inspires others to create similar works
which others then get the recognition for.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Thankfully, even if you don’t
have an easily accessible way to watch and listen to some of these demos, most
of them end up on services such as YouTube where they can be viewed. The files
are usually made freely available for those who continue to use old
technologies, and there are emulators for these systems which can be loaded on
to a home computer or even a Raspberry Pi. There’s no excuse not to take a
look, and especially if you are into art that provokes conversation and
thinking, or you’re into just plain old weird. Some of these demos can be a
little out there, which is really the point of art, it doesn’t have to be all petals
and landscapes, weird is really good too! These demos really should be
celebrated and I think that they are worthy of opening up a new conversation
around what art is, and should be. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2mcWf3r2vvoY-B_SkBM6VdDIAqyUoPRVazbl66lPEhiMTA6dRSiESoR9Qt0n3TZJKc-YBrB0EjbHM-dpwDyf8OM-gUhNmM-5ZmqddGUwzl_Xoyav-GgHB8IVuyHmeQ8yXp5gaJuQ1rgCvK01fuIXHKGUDQt8RtRIV0DLc3rt-syFrrAJP2C84DBEC3s8/s4000/IMG_0611.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="artwork of a drawer containing vintage technology" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2mcWf3r2vvoY-B_SkBM6VdDIAqyUoPRVazbl66lPEhiMTA6dRSiESoR9Qt0n3TZJKc-YBrB0EjbHM-dpwDyf8OM-gUhNmM-5ZmqddGUwzl_Xoyav-GgHB8IVuyHmeQ8yXp5gaJuQ1rgCvK01fuIXHKGUDQt8RtRIV0DLc3rt-syFrrAJP2C84DBEC3s8/w640-h640/IMG_0611.JPG" title="Retro Junk Drawer by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Retro Junk Drawer by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The 80s was a monumental
decade…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For art, and technology, the
80’s wasn’t just a bold decade of neon colours and excess, it was
transformative in so many ways. There’s little doubt that the art world changed
as a result of many of the artists who throughout the 80s would create work
that really pushed the boundaries of anything that came before. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Artists throughout the 80s
weren’t afraid of going there in terms of subjects that would have once been
avoided, and then they embraced the technology, even though that technology, by
today’s standards, was limited. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It was a challenging decade
because everyone was kind of just making it up as they went along. There were
no rule books, maybe some heavy text from a university lab, but remember this
was also pre-internet and there was no such thing as a Dummies guide. The world
was much smaller and to some extent, I think that was in part something that
led artists to find their own inner creative souls, there was no point of
reference that was easily accessible which could easily influence an artists
hand.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There were other innovations
and inventions that helped to define the 80s, many have been and gone but even
those that are no longer used today had been pivotal in defining how we use
technology today, and as artists, how we create our work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l9 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Compact discs: CDs were first
introduced in 1982, and they quickly became the dominant format for music
distribution. CDs offered superior sound quality to vinyl records and
cassette tapes, and they were also more durable and portable. Beyond
music, CDs were used to store significant amounts of data, but more
importantly, it would store this data at a much lower cost than had ever
been possible before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your first
hooky copy of Photoshop probably came on CD, and your first copy of
Encarta or Encyclopaedia Britannica certainly would have.</span></li></ul><br /><ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l9 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mobile phones: The first mobile phone
was invented in 1973, but it wasn't until the 1980s that mobile phones
became widely available. In 1983, Motorola released the DynaTAC 8000X,
which was the first handheld mobile phone. Mobile phones became increasingly
popular throughout the decade, and by the end of the 80s, there were over
10 million mobile phone subscribers worldwide. Today, we use them to live
out our lives, run our businesses, tether them to a card payment device so
we can sell our art, and allegedly, influencers on social media use them
to feel good about themselves and be the best version of you (them, you
know what I mean), which is a thing we definitely didn’t have in the 80s.<o:p></o:p></span></li></ul><br /><ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l9 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Video games: The video game industry
exploded in the 1980s, with the release of popular consoles such as the
Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis, but the concept of
home computing and it’s accessibility to businesses built the real
foundations for the platforms and systems we see and use today. <o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Video games became a popular form of
entertainment for people of all ages, but they also helped to promote and
gently introduce <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>new technologies such
as computer graphics and artificial intelligence, and to some extent, the
creation of interactive environments and massively improved in-game art has in
itself become an art form.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Without
those early pioneers creating video games, the development of Ai would
certainly have stalled. These systems <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>provided a new platform for AI research and
development and early video games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man used simple
AI algorithms to control the non-player characters (NPCs). As video games
became more complex, so too did the AI algorithms used to control the NPCs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You
also have the video games industry to thank (or blame) for providing the
original funding for Ai research. In the 1980s, the video game industry was one
of the fastest-growing industries in the world which led to a significant
increase in investment in AI research, both from within the video game industry
and from outside sources.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">World Wide Web: The World Wide Web
was invented by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 who had created the system of
interlinked hypertext documents that are accessed via the Internet. This
had a major influence on the art market becoming more accessible to more
people, it democratized art and pretty much sealed the fate of many of the
pre-internet-era gatekeepers to the art market.<o:p></o:p></span></li></ul><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikXYQL7DXd0L6e5t1Rq319L0fcydH16dYJYGSo5Ii8yGPrzsFFmsNpGNUkKmUepWgPZ1lmFuAQ_C01W4cmoOdkXkiaOYSttACy-BBla4KNN8rxhB6oiikK7pnwyvz2MgzP0OLrGq6HxEtDDx6b0r-1vw_sgG5LZ5IrAFaE_OMwIBnW9zDsbn8VdZJXP0A/s4000/IMG_0612.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="artwork of joystick interface and joystick" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikXYQL7DXd0L6e5t1Rq319L0fcydH16dYJYGSo5Ii8yGPrzsFFmsNpGNUkKmUepWgPZ1lmFuAQ_C01W4cmoOdkXkiaOYSttACy-BBla4KNN8rxhB6oiikK7pnwyvz2MgzP0OLrGq6HxEtDDx6b0r-1vw_sgG5LZ5IrAFaE_OMwIBnW9zDsbn8VdZJXP0A/w640-h640/IMG_0612.JPG" title="Up, Down, Left, Left, Right, by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Up, Down, Left, Left, Right, by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div><br /><ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
</ul>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 18.0pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Notable
Events that changed the Art World…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Whitney Museum of American Art in New
York City held a major exhibition of Neo-Expressionism in 1981.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los
Angeles (MOCA) opened its doors in 1986.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The first Venice Biennale to feature video
art was held in 1986.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The AIDS epidemic had a significant impact
on the art world during the 1980s. A number of artists sadly died from
AIDS, and many others created work that addressed the epidemic.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l5 level1 lfo4; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 led to
increased cultural exchange between East and West Germany.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It wasn’t just the 80s…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m writing this as if the
1980s had been pivotal in completely shaping the lives we live today, and to
some extent, certainly when it comes to technology and art, the 80s did play a
significant role in shaping the way we live now. But other decades had a
similar role to play in shaping the 1980s. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The concept of much of what
came out of the 1980s had been played out for decades previously, digital art
had been created as far back as 1952, Oscillon 40, created by American
mathematician Ben Laposky is considered the first truly digital artwork,
although I suspect it wasn’t his first attempt. Laposky used an oscilloscope to
manipulate electronic signals and photograph them in the shape of waves.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another early example of
digital art is Hommage à Paul Klee 13/9/65 Nr. 2, created by German artist
Frieder Nake in 1965. Nake used a computer algorithm to generate a series of
abstract drawings, a very early pre-cursor to modern day Ai.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These early works of digital
art were created using a variety of different techniques, but they all shared
one common feature: they were created using computers. This made them
fundamentally different from traditional art forms, such as painting and
sculpture but it wouldn’t be until the 1980s that some of the new artforms
would be legitimised as valid artworks, today these works for some collectors
are as sought after as an original Old Master is to a traditional collector of
fine art.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNFh5gbP35Al5I56hcGew66WxNgpjHFkGvtiAnk3eaqr_6g3qhTqnXVEhK7moEnzlIGfggTONwM3qAMVhxEoV-AcYSMFFWiKiH-y5D1JVp8JVe8FdRKIZnIA23F9ELwqMjndm6wZRVtvOQF3BsictGNE-mbY1_GUWTvod3kNRNmHylMZX9oD7GP_LCk_Q/s4000/IMG_0610.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="artwork of retro computer peripherals" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNFh5gbP35Al5I56hcGew66WxNgpjHFkGvtiAnk3eaqr_6g3qhTqnXVEhK7moEnzlIGfggTONwM3qAMVhxEoV-AcYSMFFWiKiH-y5D1JVp8JVe8FdRKIZnIA23F9ELwqMjndm6wZRVtvOQF3BsictGNE-mbY1_GUWTvod3kNRNmHylMZX9oD7GP_LCk_Q/w640-h640/IMG_0610.JPG" title="20 GOTO 10 RUN by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">20 GOTO 10 RUN by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">How did the 80s legitimise
these new art forms?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Computers became accessible
and affordable which made it possible for more people to experiment with these
new media technologies, As the interest grew around computing, new software
tools were created, not always specifically to create art, but to encourage
people to buy into the concept of how computers could be used for things that
had only ever been confined to laboratory environments and universities. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The emergence of digital art
exhibitions and dedicated galleries had been established in the 1980s,
introducing the new media artforms to a much wider audience than ever before.
Those who had been creating technical demos would also contribute to raising
the profile and awareness of computers and technology being used in art. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">At the same time, a growing
number of established and well-respected art critics and curators developed an
interest in the works being produced at the time. This was even more evident
with the establishment of the SIGGRAPH Art Show which took place in 1986. This
was the first major exhibition of digital art.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The 1993 publication of the
book "Art in the Electronic Age" by Frank Popper was one of the first
major studies of digital art. By the mid-90s, the technical advances had really
begun to disrupt the traditional art markets allowing traditional artists who
would never contemplate using a digital medium, to at least make digital copies
of their work. This would be a key moment in the supply of lower cost prints,
but it also contributed significantly to the preservation of traditional art.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_xwuI4l-8c3IJYS-ZoBVFZNqXlldJ-KXGCFoXB6KYI-CfqT1z_eyjGFE9ln4MNtjilBGxpaEAklDHWc-Mf6fFNDU6fpqO1R2Xoy5aIyJeGUpyZG-VjIxFrvirM7KV9UvZT-uK5BOE0MmGQX4RIsxokyNvXf1D_1Llmbm2CYLRoIB-pUrnJH5YZG6L0D4/s4000/IMG_0674.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="landscape through open windows" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_xwuI4l-8c3IJYS-ZoBVFZNqXlldJ-KXGCFoXB6KYI-CfqT1z_eyjGFE9ln4MNtjilBGxpaEAklDHWc-Mf6fFNDU6fpqO1R2Xoy5aIyJeGUpyZG-VjIxFrvirM7KV9UvZT-uK5BOE0MmGQX4RIsxokyNvXf1D_1Llmbm2CYLRoIB-pUrnJH5YZG6L0D4/w640-h640/IMG_0674.JPG" title="Open The Windows by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Open the Windows by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In 1989, The World Wide Web
would become the birthplace of art market disruption…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The other disruptor was of
course the internet. The bulletin board user groups had mostly, by the mid-90s,
transitioned to online communities on the world wide web which by this time
could be accessed by steadily increasing internet connection speeds. This would
be a significant piece of the jigsaw that saw one of the biggest changes in the
way art was not only consumed, but the way art would be purchased too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Non-represented artists looked
initially towards online auction sites such as eBay to make their works
available to a wider audience until the concept of print on demand was
introduced by Café Press in 1999. Café Press had been one of the early pioneers
to allow artists to upload scans, files, or copies of their work where online
customers would order the work either as a traditional canvas or poster print
and soon after, on a number of other products. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This service paved the way for
other print on demand services to join the online space,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Red Bubble, Tee Public, Fine Art America,
Zazzle, Society 6, had all been amongst the early adopters of online based
printing services, and it was this disruption which finally tipped more
traditional bricks and mortar galleries to go online. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some of the most prestigious
physical art galleries would even partner with the original print on demand
services to offer prints of their gallery represented works which encouraged a
global audience to embrace the online purchase of art, it was suddenly easier
for artists to find a global audience than a local one. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6VnOZyPHWpc3Z67mN97ePS1ECAMaMrz_oMtMkqsluWzn1fGv_hsnOOOXVK9Kmbk4SK8VFQOko46B4odLGPLeAfiMnmTK4ujUyE3YhbNcE3wYMrv_HB3aMC4GOygWl3d78O4fUm85h9N6tdVuULFi_WNGsFKlTvNB0_H6r4ZoqR20cdL_G20oMAiKlGBg/s4000/IMG_0673.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="abstract landscape art print, mountains, trees and sun" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6VnOZyPHWpc3Z67mN97ePS1ECAMaMrz_oMtMkqsluWzn1fGv_hsnOOOXVK9Kmbk4SK8VFQOko46B4odLGPLeAfiMnmTK4ujUyE3YhbNcE3wYMrv_HB3aMC4GOygWl3d78O4fUm85h9N6tdVuULFi_WNGsFKlTvNB0_H6r4ZoqR20cdL_G20oMAiKlGBg/w640-h640/IMG_0673.JPG" title="Pastel Valley by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Pastel Valley by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Importance of
Preservation…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The 1980s, was without any
shadow of doubt, pivotal in the development of so many things that we take for
granted today. Yet, there’s a real risk that much of what should be properly
attributed to the decade becomes lost in history. As I said earlier, much of
what had been created at the time was forgotten almost as quickly as it arrived
as new iterations came along and that’s especially true when it comes to work
from artists who really did set the standards for what we do today with
technology.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So little of what really went
on during the 80s was properly documented, it definitely wasn’t preserved for
future generations with anything like the thought we give to preservation today.
Partly, that’s because the technology for preservation was difficult and it was
often a challenging and manual process that attitudes and people didn’t feel
compelled to do. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A lot of digital media was
preserved, not by anyone having some kind of master plan, it was preserved to
all intents and purposes by software and video pirates. Whether it was a video
game, computer demo, digital art, a film, much of it was pirated in some form.
Whilst I would never condone piracy, without the volume of backups (OK…illegal
copies) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that had been created by everyone
from school children copying games to parents using a hooky copy of WordStar or
Lotus 1-2-3, a lot of these historic moments from the 80s would have been lost
long ago. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As we approach almost three
decades since the end of the 1980s, many who were instrumental in pushing all
of these boundaries are sadly becoming fewer and fewer. There’s a real risk
that without capturing the history now, we might just end up losing it forever.
Being mindful that some of that history might now be a little inaccurate due to
the number of years of forgetting and re-remembering, often through a rose
tinted lens, the importance of historic preservation should be central to every
artists thinking.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think preservation and the
importance we should place on it is one of the 80s finest legacies. For
hundreds of years prior to the 80s, preservation was almost second nature, but
the 80s changed that. Fine art was safe enough but a lot of what had been
created during the early 80s was lost very quickly which is a real shame.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If there is one thing that we
should as artists, all take away from the 80’s, it’s that no matter how far
your career has or hasn’t progressed to date, preservation of your work and proper
documentation is so very important. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think most people who had
been involved with creating those bits of ephemera during the decade probably
didn’t give preservation much thought, but one thing above all else I think we
should all take from the 80s, is that we should never blindly bumble through a
decade mistakenly thinking that it’s not significant, whatever you create is
significant because it’s at least part of your own story. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark is an artist who
specialises in vintage inspired works often featuring technology. He is also
known for his landscape works and the occasional abstract, creating
professionally since the 1980s. He is also a specialist in secure computing
environments and is a globally recognised key note speaker.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can purchase Mark’s work
through Fine Art America or his Pixels site here: <a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</a> You
can also purchase prints and originals directly. You can view Mark’s portfolio
website and see a small selection of his works at <a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank">https://beechhousemedia.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Join the conversation on
Facebook at: <a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</a>
and Threads or connect on “X” (You realise it’s still Twitter right?) @beechhouseart</span></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0Staffordshire, UK52.8792745 -2.057186824.569040663821156 -37.2134368 81.189508336178847 33.0990632tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-90203527613092644692023-08-24T14:33:00.000+01:002023-08-24T14:33:35.280+01:00Ai - Artistic Integrity - How Ai is being used to fool art buyers<p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">How AI is being used to Fool
Art Buyers</span></b></h1><div><b><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYiZMJ5YxBA6jcvXZ1nKGdhRzMXWn08SAhg6KCVKzlIN6qVwe3KQqVBqPXdnxgTWDYbSQSQaNu9btuBfbRpJQ2Ui2_zU_pxP6vxY27kVjt75YaMZSV-7hbB2FA_QIfaEGahYbTV_TE9wZ93JkwR9J77ezc90owzbgCznItuK28Nr1jyzsgOt-WsbWk13M/s2356/artistic%20integrity%20cover.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Artistic Integrity Blog Post title cover, computer chips on a dark background" border="0" data-original-height="1571" data-original-width="2356" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYiZMJ5YxBA6jcvXZ1nKGdhRzMXWn08SAhg6KCVKzlIN6qVwe3KQqVBqPXdnxgTWDYbSQSQaNu9btuBfbRpJQ2Ui2_zU_pxP6vxY27kVjt75YaMZSV-7hbB2FA_QIfaEGahYbTV_TE9wZ93JkwR9J77ezc90owzbgCznItuK28Nr1jyzsgOt-WsbWk13M/w640-h426/artistic%20integrity%20cover.PNG" title="Ai - Artistic Integrity" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">How Ai is being used to fool art buyers...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The advent of Artificial
Intelligence (AI) has undeniably brought numerous benefits to the art world,
revolutionising creative processes and expanding artistic possibilities, or at
least that’s how the teams behind these engines are selling it. But, there’s
also a dark side of exploitation and dishonesty that is beginning to blur both creative
and ethical boundaries and that’s something that could have a long lasting effect
on the art world.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Other Side of the AI coin…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether AI really will turn
out to be the force that completely displaces and disrupts entire industries is
yet to fully emerge, and as much as I call out the pitfalls of depending on AI to
take over the creative process performed by artists throughout this article, we
need to remain mindful that AI can genuinely bring around positive change by
becoming another useful tool that an artist can legitimately use in their
business without risk or worry that the robot will replace them. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihIeC0y6o5rdD405J3IY4JIWfM64iN-a1ZoszdDEPVq_XWsLiKg3W-V5VCLbUDEinCNEcYFpwAqXA7ZrWI2bxFRzA_PnqbCucFTlSytQRkSv94j7Du0BSbvLL2wfQFoWT7AbsykKZSIbtFFIfuFi2EO5ub08F0CeZyA3nJlySJZrQK79Vk8v5PHYEuTvQ/s4000/image%201.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="artwork depicting 80s retro technology by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihIeC0y6o5rdD405J3IY4JIWfM64iN-a1ZoszdDEPVq_XWsLiKg3W-V5VCLbUDEinCNEcYFpwAqXA7ZrWI2bxFRzA_PnqbCucFTlSytQRkSv94j7Du0BSbvLL2wfQFoWT7AbsykKZSIbtFFIfuFi2EO5ub08F0CeZyA3nJlySJZrQK79Vk8v5PHYEuTvQ/w640-h640/image%201.JPG" title="Home Shopping by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">One of my latest retro artworks - Proudly hand drawn using a digital medium and no Ai!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether artists turn to AI for
image generation, the development of new ideas and concepts, research, planning
out work, or the multitude of business related things that creative types would
rather see carried out by anything, or anyone other than them, AI, as much as
we think we dislike it today, will be something that we will all need to better
understand, or at least learn to live with in the future. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not completely against AI,
it’s way better than I will ever be at generating titles, it can certainly
refine the often odd sounding titles that frequently spring to mind midway
through a work, and it’s really helpful in figuring out the metadata labels
that need to be applied to images being sold online so that they can be found
through search engines. Using AI to do these things literally saves me about a
day of admin each month.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tasks such as search engine
optimisation take so much time away from the creative process so using AI to at
least lend a helping hand should be seen as a help rather than something that
takes away a human role. I’m sure SEO specialists are reeling right about here,
but most independent artists have very few or even no employees and they don’t always
have a budget for professional SEO services, so anything that can help them to
focus on higher value tasks is savvy business practice rather than anything
sinister. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I frequently use AI to help
with search engine optimisation, something I’m comfortable with because 90% of
my business doesn’t come via the web, and I’ve started to take advantage of it more
recently as a tool to reduce some of the administrative burden of running my
business. It doesn’t do everything for me, but it can be really useful for some
of the small tedious and repetitive tasks that allow me some extra creative
time. What I don’t use it for is the creation of art, partly because I really
enjoy the creative process and secondly, because AI art, well, it just isn’t
very good right now.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But something that can
completely change the playing field for artists is beginning to emerge, and
that is AIs role in more dubious business practices. It’s a dark side that’s
becoming more common and it happening more frequently lately, it’s even
celebrated through click-bait headlines on the web that tells us how a side
hustle artist/author made mega-money through selling AI work that took little
to no effort to create. Great if you don’t subscribe to any code of ethics I
guess.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s certainly a trend
right now of inexperienced non-artists and even would be authors chancing their
arm at an art career or more specifically, an art or writing related side
hustle. They’re probably thinking that creativity is a well paid and easy, work
from home vocation. Experience suggests that it’s neither truly a work from
home vocation, and it’s definitely not easy, and as for well paid, well someone
is making money in the art world but from experience of the past four decades, the
real money is made in the secondary art markets.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The use of AI to generate art which
is then offered for sale to the art buying public transitions from something
fun to becoming an issue when it comes to freelance work or quality control.
The speed that AI can generate work means that markets can become flooded with
sub-par work very quickly, and because the work takes little to no time to
create, it also makes it incredibly inexpensive to create. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMLCEo3QDdXnEoG_bik_adD7qb9dkiKOyliGe9KjMl1NG9oWHHz75S13EUB6WPdrQor7rJyq9YlgNZbDfeughPhQE9zlqJgzawL4A9_Y21kfSq85Jg93e6vak2dmKb1M8Jw3H6ASSUekG5_LI7iGH1Hd_YqaFCXypTs7ABbc8X_ReligHKzdfjecsz8-w/s4000/image%202.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro game console artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMLCEo3QDdXnEoG_bik_adD7qb9dkiKOyliGe9KjMl1NG9oWHHz75S13EUB6WPdrQor7rJyq9YlgNZbDfeughPhQE9zlqJgzawL4A9_Y21kfSq85Jg93e6vak2dmKb1M8Jw3H6ASSUekG5_LI7iGH1Hd_YqaFCXypTs7ABbc8X_ReligHKzdfjecsz8-w/w640-h640/image%202.JPG" title="Forgotten Play Days by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Forgotten Play Days - Part of my forgotten consoles series of works. Again, no Ai here folks. Just time, lots of time...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We’ve seen this before with
print on demand services offering batch uploads across pre-built templates.
Sure you can have a keyring with my badly cropped image of a stolen positive quote
in red, green, blue or yellow, hey, you can even have it on a Sippy cup. Makes
me sound like some art purist, but we should at least expect some element of
quality control in the art world. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you
should, you’re diluting the market including your own.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Not everyone who buys art
spends the kind of money that might be stereotypical of the sales figures
recorded in the media whenever art sells for millions of dollars. A lot of art
is affordable, the markets for inexpensive home décor art are fundamental to
the success of many independent sellers who use store fronts such as Etsy. This
kind of art market is a high volume business, it also collectively generates
more income than the fine art markets where the multi-million dollar works are
sold, but the overall income is then devolved to multiple artists.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s also a growing number
of relatively well established artists who have decided to utilise AI image
generators without disclosing to their potential buyers that the image has been
created using AI. Ethically and morally, I’m not convinced this is the right
way to go, it feels completely disingenuous to exchange art for money under a
misconception that the work had been created by the artists hand. Artistic
integrity should be the foundation on which art careers are earned and this
opaqueness is further muddying an industry that already has its fare share of
trust and integrity issues. So there are some challenges in the art world when
it comes to AI but as AI models mature, maybe the real challenges are yet to
emerge. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A Brief History of AI Art
Generation…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Art created using artificial
intelligence is often predicated on the end user typing some simple text
descriptions into a web page or application and allowing the AI engine to generate
an image based on whatever dataset or multiple datasets that have been used to
teach it, but it wasn’t always done like this.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Art produced using AI isn’t
something that is entirely new. Early AI models appeared back as early as the
late 1960s, with the first system of note being debuted in 1973. That system
was Aaron, developed by Harold Cohen, a British artist (1 May 1928 – 27 April
2016). Aaron was a computer program with the specific purpose of generating
what at the time was called, autonomous art. When it arrived it gathered a
great deal of attention and it was displayed in a number of exhibitions at
various museums and galleries, including the Tate Gallery in London.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The difference between Aaron
and modern day AI art generation however, is significant in that modern AI
image creation is accessible to virtually anyone with an internet connection
and a keyboard and there is no requirement on the end user to even begin to
fully understand how it all works. There are very few barriers and the price of
entry into the space starts at the princely sum of free. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There were plenty of barriers
in the late 60s. Aaron had been literally created by Cohen and a level of skill
in creating the model that then created the art was required. Today, the heavy
lifting has been done by others and AI art creation for most people is little
more than a single click of a mouse or entering some descriptive text. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s really what sets apart some
of today’s so called AI artists and Cohen’s use of Aaron. Cohen did more than
enter descriptive statements to generate the work, he essentially created the
virtual brush and paper with a specific intent to create, what was at the time,
something that hadn’t been seen before. To some extent it could be said that
Aaron was just as significant as the output it generated and was in itself,
intrinsic to the end result.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAtfT9ixkTXO1xF4It2kcHmTxIypysh6KK_Oe8U_sC0Yzmvu9tPoT303MO9npBU5gzVCxGxE5bPf3eM3TxYrPRhGTpOvmllLhZFDcJ-p7zbXu7uB33Y9g46mqGNL-FzGVHF-IGPsKv_2MmFbCd_buCzua9HSMGtxPxGKryflgTg52xTKMJ_-b8WFjpx1c/s4000/image%203.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro console painting by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAtfT9ixkTXO1xF4It2kcHmTxIypysh6KK_Oe8U_sC0Yzmvu9tPoT303MO9npBU5gzVCxGxE5bPf3eM3TxYrPRhGTpOvmllLhZFDcJ-p7zbXu7uB33Y9g46mqGNL-FzGVHF-IGPsKv_2MmFbCd_buCzua9HSMGtxPxGKryflgTg52xTKMJ_-b8WFjpx1c/w640-h640/image%203.JPG" title="Print and Play by mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Can you imagine a games console with a built in printer, this is the kind of 80s innovation that was abundant at the time. It also didn't sell very well but it does have fans. At least a dozen who purchased this work already it seems...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Everyone’s an artist…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The introduction of modern AI
tools has made it incredibly easy for anyone with a computer or mobile internet
connection and five minutes to spare to generate what on the surface at least,
looks like incredible artwork in the style of almost any artist in the history
of art, ever. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Social media is awash with
output from the latest tranche of apps and websites, all providing the user
with an experience that needs little to no instruction to use it and in many
cases, these systems are either available freely or at a minimal cost. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI engines such as DALL-E 2,
Craiyon, Adobe Firefly, and even Bing which can create images using just Microsoft’s
Edge Browser have become as well known as the phrase ChatGPT. It’s fair to say
that the market for these kinds of applications has grown enormously over the
past couple of years, and for most people, these systems are fun, but they’re
not really fulfilling the full potential that AI can offer, but I think that’s
the point, if AI is to succeed in the consumer market you have to give
consumers something that they can get on board with. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI image generation is already
exponentially more advanced than it was even six-months ago and the fast pace
of AI development means that it will become even better in time. A point to
bear in mind here is that to date, AI development has clicked along at a rapid
pace, and just as we’re thinking that it will make some kind of exponential
leap in the near future to give us what we think we really want from it, things
might soon start slowing down in some sectors of the industry because the
industry is facing a myriad of supply and demand bottlenecks that might not be
all that easy to resolve quickly. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Those bottlenecks are already
beginning to slow things down, driven by the demand for GPUs, CPUs and other
components needed to train the AI models and run the data centres.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These chips and other components aren’t even
close to the consumer grade chips we recently experienced a global shortage of,
these are ultra-high end, high-specification, massively powerful and much more
expensive than the chips most people will be familiar with and even when
they’re more abundant in availability, they’re not always that easy to source
and procure. You don’t tend to pick these things up from the local PC store.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">People close to the supply and
manufacturing side of the industry are already starting to hear the loud
sucking sound of these high-end components are making as they fly off the shelves
leaving a void with little to no stock available to replace it. The companies
gearing up to move into AI in the future are already in the process or indeed,
have already secured the components they need, or at least the savvy ones will
have. The rest who have been slow to adapt, I think they’re going to fall
behind rapidly.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The issue now is the lack of
production facilities with the capability to create new chips and when most of
the demand is currently falling on a handful of manufacturers who are
themselves struggling to secure the raw materials, it’s a technology problem
that could slow down the exponential leaps forward that we’ve been seeing for
the past couple of years. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Despite these supply issues, the
pace of AI’s development behind the scenes is happening so quickly that what we
think of as ground-breaking today will looked massively outdated tomorrow, but
it will be the supply of the technology that will be needed in the future that
will ultimately be the determining factor in just how quickly we get to see any
of these next generation AI systems anytime soon. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Given these bottlenecks we
might even begin to see smaller AI models that rely on less computational
power, and there is some wider benefit in that. Smaller models can be more
focussed and bring better results, they’re not as overly reliant on the latest
technologies and they’re generally less expensive and less environmentally
draining to operate. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s something else that
could ultimately decide AIs fate. The current AI engines rely on having access
to lots of power and consumers are beginning to ask questions and become more
focussed on companies carbon strategies. As governments race towards net zero
targets, it’s unclear how well most of these large AI models will perform
environmentally in the future and the hype train for AI, at least right now, seems
to have overshadowed the burning question, how do you make AI more environmentally
friendly?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Smaller AI models might be the
answer to some of the environmental questions and there is also that wider
benefit in that they can also be trained on very specific datasets. These
models already exist today for things like medical and scientific research, and
the results that those models generate are generally laser focussed on
providing a specific outcome, which also means that the best ones are usually
very good and very accurate and massively more efficient than the lar datasets
that more generalised models use.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The issue with large data sets
and AI engines which are designed to be everything to everyone, is that they then
have to be massively scaled and when you scale technology, a conversation has
to be had around just how sustainable this technology is, not just today, but
in the future too. Technology at scale doesn’t always offer savings in either
money or power.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI will need to evolve not
just in providing iterative jumps that make the models more adoptable, but it
needs to evolve in terms of the computational power and energy consumption
these models require. It certainly needs more efficient algorithms that are
less reliant on using as much power as they need today. Better algorithms that
are more efficient can have a significant impact on what’s actually needed to
run these systems and one of the problems often seen with developers is that
they have become overly reliant on resources and they create less efficient
code. Go back to the 80s and look what companies like Atari did with just 4K of
RAM, that’s the kind of efficiency that will be needed again.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The promise of Quantum
Computing will ultimately have the potential to solve complex problems with
less computational power and it could deliver better results faster, but the
promise of mass quantum computing is far from being fulfilled anytime soon,
certainly in a way that makes it affordable to those who might get the most
benefit from it. We’re in the midst of a global economic crisis and science
budgets are being cut.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Designing specialised hardware
tailored for AI tasks, such as application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs)
or field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), can greatly improve energy
efficiency. These chips can be optimised for specific AI workloads, reducing
the need for general-purpose computing resources and their use reduces the energy
needed for tasks to be completed, but the issue here isn’t that the technology
doesn’t exist, it’s that the manufacturing process is carried out by so few
companies. You only need to look at the cost of a Terasic DE-10 Nano board to
know that there’s a supply and demand issue with FPGA.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I suspect that in the future
we could begin to see some of this specialised hardware evolve into <a name="_Hlk143597857">Neuromorphic computing </a>technologies, a technology that
aims to mimic the brains structure and function. This is a technology that can
lead to highly energy efficient AI systems, but it’s really complex. The idea
is that these systems can process information in a more parallel and adaptive
way, similar to how the human brain works. The downside is that engineers and
researchers with expertise in neuromorphic computing are relatively rare, which
drives up the labour costs associated with developing and maintaining these
systems. Efficient it might be, but it’s also incredibly expensive when the
expertise needed to operate and build the model just isn’t in place and no one
seems to be doing much in the academic space to encourage people into the
industry.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_dWNgYoCMUAgwTtZmhTyPcn47NSq0dG1U_qNmlMLWGp5f0hYsemuvd8Nzx6n_I0O2QJ0a9Vo6wVw9COaIylSsZZDk_D3mBhIGZkTey9yHUa_FyIlWG0GVyYfYT7PtGoq8qiJy0SPDmpy_RK8FaJXgRxfij4PGWaoY8rxyrJh6zB1asKObvcdR3v7rsig/s4000/image%204.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro game console art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_dWNgYoCMUAgwTtZmhTyPcn47NSq0dG1U_qNmlMLWGp5f0hYsemuvd8Nzx6n_I0O2QJ0a9Vo6wVw9COaIylSsZZDk_D3mBhIGZkTey9yHUa_FyIlWG0GVyYfYT7PtGoq8qiJy0SPDmpy_RK8FaJXgRxfij4PGWaoY8rxyrJh6zB1asKObvcdR3v7rsig/w640-h640/image%204.JPG" title="Joystick and Game Included by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Joystick and Game Included by Mark Taylor - another retro work and another forgotten console from the 80s... still no Ai...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are other ways in which
AI could become more efficient and more environmentally acceptable than it is
today, but the models powering the AI will need to adapt. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Techniques like knowledge distillation will
eventually need to be used. This involves training those smaller and more
efficient models I spoke about earlier to replicate the behaviour of larger
models. Model pruning, on the other hand, involves removing redundant or less
important parts of a model. Both approaches reduce computational demands
without sacrificing performance and both models require less computational
power, and less energy to function.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another way that AI might
begin to address some of the power and component issues is by doing the exact
opposite of training smaller datasets. Transfer and Few-Shot learning models
involve large datasets that are then fine tuned for specific tasks with smaller
datasets. Few Shot Learning goes beyond this, it is trained on models that
contain fewer examples meaning less power is needed and the theory goes that
smaller, more focussed training sets will provide far better results on any
specific subject that it has been trained on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Data Centres are another
incredibly expensive resource, anyone who subscribes to a cloud storage account
will have seen at least an element of shrinkflation, less product for a higher
price, and with many cloud storage providers realising that energy costs are
significantly higher lately, the general trend has been to reduce the amount of
storage available to end users while usually increasing the price they pay. Not
all that long ago we were inundated with free unlimited cloud storage offers,
today those products have limited the space and most of them now charge a kings
ransom for anything useful.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">To get better, data centres
themselves need to become more efficient, particularly those that deal with AI
engines. They really need to be laser focussed on renewable energy to power
them and they also need better and more efficient cooling for the vast amount
of computational power that inevitably generates more heat. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Where AI models are
replicated, we have to bear in mind that the power needs exponentially rise.</span><span style="color: #d1d5db; font-family: "Segoe UI",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; mso-font-kerning: 0pt; mso-ligatures: none;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Developing AI systems
that dynamically allocate resources based on the task's complexity can prevent
overutilisation of computational power. This could involve scaling down
resources during low-demand periods and making sure that high use periods
happen only when energy consumption is generally lower and more affordable.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">To achieve some level of
environmental nirvana, it really needs some collaboration to happen far more
than it does across industries and research institutions. Collectively, if they
can accelerate the development of energy-efficient AI technologies by sharing
knowledge, resources, and best practices it could lead to faster advancements,
but everyone in the AI space right now seems to be focussed on being first past
the post where the short-term financial rewards are going to be higher. The
problem with this approach is that development will eventually crawl and it
will ultimately be more expensive both in a financial sense and even more so,
in the environmental impact it will have as the technology becomes more
abundant.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ultimately, achieving a more
environmentally friendly AI involves a combination of innovation in algorithm
design, hardware development, energy-efficient infrastructure, and responsible
decision-making by AI practitioners. As AI continues to evolve, a concerted
effort towards sustainability will be essential for minimising its
environmental footprint and that’s another point to remember the next time you
fire up the latest AI image generator, it might save you creative time and it
might create passable art that sells into a short-term, trend following yet,
shallow market, but the environmental impact alone if everyone is doing it,
should raise some strong moral and ethical questions. I’m not sure as an artist
that you could even begin to claim that you are environmentally sustainable if
you rely on masses of backend power, even if you’re not paying for it and art
buyers are definitely becoming more environmentally astute.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiO7Mq6tLC_AuvO5AG673YA4FYsRirhg3pJ7a090ikkDLsJyNOZzrRjiEJHIyX2TL7J1P1af3p5H0xuS_2lGL4UF4Fg8x6n7GF3QGEhOp_Oe3iaqpOkLm5GxGGYZt45OsTMA8dLpGPk157-Wmk_8xrBIuBToK_DatkGgfYfpRlCWp0VS9WXZ3ZkYKG83w/s4000/image%205.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro console painting by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiO7Mq6tLC_AuvO5AG673YA4FYsRirhg3pJ7a090ikkDLsJyNOZzrRjiEJHIyX2TL7J1P1af3p5H0xuS_2lGL4UF4Fg8x6n7GF3QGEhOp_Oe3iaqpOkLm5GxGGYZt45OsTMA8dLpGPk157-Wmk_8xrBIuBToK_DatkGgfYfpRlCWp0VS9WXZ3ZkYKG83w/w640-h640/image%205.JPG" title="Home and Away by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Home and Away by Mark Taylor - another interesting yet forgotten 80s console that also worked in the car. Notice the receipt, the price label in the style of Toys R Us, the console had everything and virtually sold very little...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Spotting when AI is being
used…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I suspect in time, AI will
become smart enough for us to be unable to distinguish whether something was
created using AI or not, and that could compound some of the issues we see
today when AI is used but not disclosed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today, making the distinction between AI and
human art is possible with some visual training, but we shouldn’t take it for
granted that it will always be the case. AI is relatively still only at the
start of its journey.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Even today, the images created
by AI are a huge leap from the days of Aaron, some of todays output is even
passable as artwork that wouldn’t entirely look out of place in a gallery with
some subjects looking almost indistinguishable from those drawn or painted by
human hands. They’re certainly a long way away from the neural network images
that became popular among mobile users in around 2016, an idea that created
abstract works based on photographs and images you had supplied and uploaded
into the apps and very much a precursor to the technologies that we are seeing
today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But, there are some
limitations with todays AI which to the casual viewer might not be immediately
visible. Once you develop a slightly better understanding of AI’s current image
creating limitations you begin to notice the cracks and the similarities that
exist between AI works.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s the lack of detail and
the distortions for a start, flaws that just wouldn’t be present had the work
have been created by a human, even an inexperienced human who has rarely
created art. The flaws look like computational errors which would, almost
ironically, be very challenging for a human to create with the same effect. At
the moment, so long as you have some basic knowledge of how AI images are
structured and generated it’s relatively straight forward to determine when
something is and isn’t using AI. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are aware of the
limitations, it’s possible even with a small amount of visual training to spot
images created by AI, particularly images created with the more recent AI
engines such as Adobe’s Firefly and DALL-E 2. If you have been exposed to human
produced artworks over the course of an art career, the task of identifying AI
becomes even easier. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI images tend to also lack
the emotion that will be more obvious in a work created by a human. AI can create
some pretty soulless creations at times and we’re maybe, even with the pace of
current pace of change in the technology, still half a decade or more away from
AI that can replicate some of those personal nuances that humans bring to a
work of art. Remember, AI is trained on data sets that have no idea of context
from a human perspective, that’s also why we see so much bias occurring in some
of AIs output. What comes out of AI is only ever as good as what goes in, in
this case, the data the AI is trained on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When it comes to AI image
generation, today it feels like a by-product of everything else that AI can do.
As it evolves, for artists, it will eventually serve one of two purposes, it
will either help enormously with the creative process or it will become the
force that displaces an entire industry, which road it takes will be largely
determined by how artists begin to embrace it, or move away from it, and to
some extent, the public’s acceptance of AIs role in creating art.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Why can’t AI draw hands?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the big problems with
AI image generation today is that it relies on what I’ve come to term as the
billboard effect. When you look at an image created by a human, be it a
photograph or some other image, what you look at tends to be in high
resolution. Mostly, printed images are created by thousands upon thousands of
small dots printed by an inkjet printer or represented by pixels on a screen. In
short, most images that you will be familiar with, have detail that is clear
even when looking at the images for a prolonged period of time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Billboards can be printed
using very low resolutions, these images are created with far fewer dots and
nowhere even close to having the same level of detail that would be found in a
fine art print. The billboard images work because we’re viewing them, often only
briefly, from a distance away. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Once we get around 650 feet
away from an image, our eyes can only resolve around one pixel per inch. While
300 dots per inch seems to be the golden rule for print resolution, in truth,
it’s not a super helpful number that can be applied to everything and it also
makes prints more expensive to produce. But, it is an accepted standard that
reproduces the detail needed for the best fine art prints, it’s also
unforgiving for artists because at that resolution, any discrepancies in the
work are easier to spot.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A billboard is usually printed
at 15dpi, the advertising on the side of a bus is usually no more than
72-100dpi, and many fine art prints are usually printed at 240dpi, although I
do tend to stick to the regular 300dpi because I put so much effort into
creating intricate, even small details into my retro works and some of the
prints I offer are sold at a size that would be large enough to notice the
difference up close. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>AI models found
online are usually creating work at a screen resolution of somewhere in the
region of 72 dots per inch. In short, not really good enough to hang on the
wall.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So, when you look at low
resolution images on a billboard from a distance you are doing the heavy
lifting by resolving the missing detail. You generally only ever view a
billboard for a short period of time and you are usually standing too far away
to be able to view any detail even if it was present because of the shortcomings
in not being able to process more than about one pixel per inch from a distance.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With AI images, it’s kind of
the same thing. It’s an approximation of an image, but get up close and study
it for a few seconds longer and the cracks begin to show. We might stumble
across AI images in the news or online, both of which would be providing us
with images that have much lower resolutions than would be expected from a fine
art print, but we will usually move on much more quickly than if we were
viewing a high resolution artwork that has been professionally printed and hung
on the wall at home or in a gallery where we’re also closer to the work. AI
image generation is more smoke and mirrors than we might initially think it is.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI simply doesn’t do detail
very well when it comes to images. It also struggles with other things too, so
we will often find misquoted information or information that makes no sense and
it hallucinates more than a hippy on a mushroom trip at times. When AI is
focussed on a particular task and is less generalised, it tends to perform way better,
hence medical research which is predicated on learning from those very specific
small data models, which also make it generally much better and faster than a
human.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When AI becomes part of a
consumer facing system that tries to be everything to everyone, it struggles. In
part, unlike humans who are usually inspired by reality, AI is inspired by
whatever dataset it has been trained on and it literally doesn’t know anything else.
At best, this means that it can only ever create an approximation or
reproduction because it has no real context or reality to base the output on. Until
the issues of context and emotion are included in the data sets, I think AI art
will continue to struggle because there will be missing data and missing detail
that humans understand because they have life experience to baseline it on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you look at AI generated
hands, they tend to be deformed for one reason alone, the datasets containing
the images used to train the AI will be more likely to have featured faces, and
faces tend to be much more prominent than hands when you look through any photo
collection.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That said, if we look at how
much hand generation has improved even since the beginning of this year, we are
now getting to a point where even hands are becoming more identifiable as
hands. It’s not that AI is getting better, it’s that the data sets are getting
bigger and more varied. There are still plenty of tells though, the occasional
extra thumb, hands appearing in an anatomically incorrect place, these are the tells
that AI is being used.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Unnatural textures, either too
smooth or perfect or that don’t look quite right or are shown in the wrong
context can also be an obvious tell, as can plastic-like skin and unnatural
skin tones, or the ultimate giveaway this month, retro-futuristic colour
palettes. When recreating materials, often the materials will look overly
uniform, there may be no creases or shadows. If there are obvious brush
strokes, look for replication of the same brush stroke within the image, this
would imply that a digital brush algorithm is being used.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There will be other inconsistencies
or objects that appear to be out of place, any light refraction included in an
original photograph used to train the AI is likely to still be present in the output
and it is often represented by weird black dots and lines. Lighting is another
giveaway, a human artist will instinctively know that reflections are generally
uniform and light is cast often from a single point, especially in landscapes
when either the sun or moon is the light source, AI generally doesn’t
understand how to render light sources that well so it casts misplaced shadows
and reflections.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you zoom into the image,
you might notice unnatural poses and expressions, stark colour changes that
make no sense, artifacts left behind from the original source, pixelation in
some or all areas of the image, or an halo effect that looks like it should be
fixed with an application of gaussian blur in Photoshop. You will especially
see this in fake images of anything usually in flight. UFO photographs can
often be debunked within seconds when AI has been used.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another giveaway is that the composition
of the image tends to be disjointed, or the image may be unnecessarily cropped
in a way that makes little to no sense. Artists are usually taught composition or
they will pick it up as they gain experience, AI has certainly got a way to go
before composition becomes natural, partly because it has no reference or
context other than the training images it has been trained on. Size and scale
are difficult to comprehend in a photograph unless you have some other context
or other point of reference.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Repetition and unnatural
patterns are another area where AI struggles. Misaligned repetition of a
pattern is often the first clue, but also look out for patterns that would
first appear to fit together if they were to be realigned, but would then still
not match perfectly. AI, is still incapable of creating perfection. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You might also want to conduct
a reverse image search of the image in its entirety and sections of it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reverse image algorithms will be typically
looking at the same reference photos online that had been used to train the AI,
so it’s relatively easy for them to pick out elements of an image that may be
from another artists work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s also worth looking for
the artists signature, if it’s present and in the usual place (most artists
will sign their work in the same way, usually in the same area of their work), you
should look for smoothing of the area where the image looks like it has either
been healed or cloned from another section of the image. In instances where the
signature or watermark has been removed smooth areas tend to mean that the
image has been manipulated and sometimes the area looks as if it has had a
section of the surrounding area pasted over the signature. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsEccmyL7SmBimvQxDalHA74IpC_K_k5YnEbM4RT6pEiey7aYMeV6EGTtL-45KweEjbRo246p3BWYSHoZXERXcU3mQxyfbiOyFIF-mSw1q7iH0KiHkjxTHU_JWUJvnc3Lc5WhoGCEFIj7vripFDLjrWS-vLSueWbimDSwgELGSN-UaMa8kKf5GqtUBkXc/s4000/image%206.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro console painting by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsEccmyL7SmBimvQxDalHA74IpC_K_k5YnEbM4RT6pEiey7aYMeV6EGTtL-45KweEjbRo246p3BWYSHoZXERXcU3mQxyfbiOyFIF-mSw1q7iH0KiHkjxTHU_JWUJvnc3Lc5WhoGCEFIj7vripFDLjrWS-vLSueWbimDSwgELGSN-UaMa8kKf5GqtUBkXc/w640-h640/image%206.JPG" title="Forgotten From Taiwan by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Forgotten From Taiwan by Mark Taylor - this sold better than others, today it is collectible, again, plenty of Easter Eggs to find in my latest works...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You might be wondering how
easy all of this is, but on a recent social media scroll I managed to pick out
a dozen or so images that had definitively been created with the use of AI, and
none had been disclosed as being produced using artificial intelligence. Just
to be clear, there was no need for me to perform any kind of forensic
shenaniganry to categorically prove each image was AI, it was evident visually
but backed up with a screen shot and reverse image search. The whole process,
well it took me less than 10-minutes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What gave the game away for
these images were that two were juxtapositions of another artists work which I
was familiar with, and both were essentially the same image. Another used a
colour pallet that would only make sense with an entirely different subject and
there was no smooth gradation of colour, it was stark and pixelated in a way
that wouldn’t indicate that the image had been badly resized. Out of the ten
images, a number had been uploaded to a print on demand service and were
available for sale, again with no disclosure of the process of using AI in the
marketing description. If you are familiar with the capabilities of any of the
major digital art applications such as Photoshop, Corel, or Serif, that alone
will give you a good foundation on which you can become a master sleuth in this
field.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My experience which spans back
to day one of Photoshop and before that, Delux Paint on the Commodore Amiga
computer and even earlier 8-bit micro’s in the 80s and their rudimentary
imaging programs, and having used almost every digital art application since,
this long-term experience <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>means that I
am probably in the unique position of being an official anorak in this
department. I can tell the difference between photoshop being used and Corel,
but with only minimal visual training I really do believe that almost anyone
can currently master this dark art of distinguishing an AI image from the real
thing, and I would certainly encourage art buyers today to be extra cautious
when buying work they believe to have been created solely by the artist.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That brings me nicely to
another point. Most savvy art buyers will already be looking out for these
visual cues and it’s not just art buyers who buy the most expensive works. As
AI becomes more widely accessible, that means that those people who currently
buy work have the same level of access as anyone else to the same AI tools.
Some of the more recent conversations I have had with my own buyers mostly
confirm that they’re quickly becoming adept at spotting when something is amiss
with a piece of work, and more of them are rightfully asking the right
questions around whether AI had been used in the creation. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The AI Artists Can No Longer
Catch Everyone Out…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When AI art is generated by a
person who has minimal experience with AI prompts, I suspect that some of this
missing detail is also the result of the artist having a lack of understanding around
how AI algorithms are programmed. The models AI image generators are being
trained on are getting better, but the results we’re still seeing from
inexperienced AI artists aren’t quite reaching their true potential just yet. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">To get better results you need
to start out with very specific instructions and additional modifiers need to
be progressively included to change the conditions on which the final image is
generated. Having an understanding of composition and artistic styles would be
useful here, without that background knowledge, AI derived art will always look
a bit soulless and often generic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s having that extra level
of art and design knowledge that would make an AI image more believable, but
many who are casually creating art on these platforms will take whatever comes
out. The instructions we type into AI are called prompts, but prompt modifiers
can be used to refine the results. If the modifiers are grounded in the user
having a knowledge of art history, the modifiers can be made much better and
the results will be much more believable.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Prompt Modifiers…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Your subject is what will be
included in the image, it becomes the main focal point, so a modifier would not
only include the subject but would also include for example, a specific
background, a particular location, or an action. Modifiers give the subject
additional context because without the additional context provided by a human,
AI is generally very prescriptive. Ask it for an image of a frog and you will
get an image of a frog, but ask it for an image of a frog sitting on a tree
branch in the jungle surrounded by exotic flowers and you then have much more
context which the AI can work with to level up what could otherwise be a rather
bland image of a lonely frog.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can further refine the
prompt modifiers to include things like actions, so the frog could also be
reading a book. If you think back to the lesson on verbs during your days at
school, words such as: fall, run, jump, push, pull, play, sit, stand, can all
be used to give even more context to the prompt, each time adding a further
element of detail on which the AI can do its thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Beyond actions, you could also
apply additional modifiers such as giving it the context to produce the work in
a specific artistic style, this could be photographic or abstract, equally it
could be panoramic or it could be in the style of a particular artist. If the
model has been trained with images reflecting those prompts, the output again becomes
more believable. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Macrophotography is something
that can be recreated well with AI, there’s less detail in the background to
get wrong, but what you are more likely to see from an inexperienced AI user
with little to no artistic knowledge is usually the same image that anyone
could generate with a very simple prompt. That’s another way of figuring out
what’s AI and what’s more likely to be original, try and recreate the same
image using a simple description, chances are, the output you will see will be
the same or a very similar image.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Prompt modifiers for image
generation can even extend to materials and mediums, lighting, colour palette,
perspective, mood, or even an era or historic period in time. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Iw9-rZ6zFaSvkGsle3CODq-ij38KOmZql7BP-CETnJQTqk-MHciVPPb-6I-xqvHQi5ndtZ5F8Dg7axPwrkfCg9KgI4P5pS41XhrCD1Ve1RoPCX8X2P6qMDUuGWOcJsjSs4vRn8_vyO0IaIMnuR6f1G9MKU4UPu2h1kgc3fGBNoJf8d5luoyOinseEK8/s4000/image%207.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Retro console painting by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Iw9-rZ6zFaSvkGsle3CODq-ij38KOmZql7BP-CETnJQTqk-MHciVPPb-6I-xqvHQi5ndtZ5F8Dg7axPwrkfCg9KgI4P5pS41XhrCD1Ve1RoPCX8X2P6qMDUuGWOcJsjSs4vRn8_vyO0IaIMnuR6f1G9MKU4UPu2h1kgc3fGBNoJf8d5luoyOinseEK8/w640-h640/image%207.JPG" title="Mega Retro by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Mega Retro by Mark Taylor - still no Ai folks, all hand drawn. This took me just over 70 hours to complete - because I didn't use Ai. Even the cardboard backgrounds have been hand drawn for this series. Think of the series as anti-Ai. </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">From what I have seen on
social media lately, people do seem to be over-obsessed with steam-punk and
retro-futurism, probably because those are also two design trends that have
come back into vogue of late and those two styles are often used to create
example works. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Each of those modifiers that
are included in the text prompt will incrementally bring more life to the
image, but they could also bring more problems. Hallucinations are a real thing
with AI which probably explains some of the really weird things we have been
seeing as people dabble with the online image generators for five minutes
before declaring themselves a real digital artist. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Most casual AI users will
start out only entering very basic prompts and the output will only ever be as
good as the user input together with the complexity of the data models used to
train the engine. Overuse of modifiers can also lead to issues, so to maintain
some consistency and quality, some generative AI technologies will limit the amount
of context and the number of modifiers that can be used. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s where AI image
generation begins to fall apart, right now it’s a maturing technology that has
yet to fully demonstrate its potential. In the great scheme of things it’s been
around for only five minutes compared to the time period that artists have been
creating art and the current AI tools are essentially and arguably, more or
less only the first real generation of tools that regular consumers can
actually play with. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are some other issues
with AI that haven’t as yet been resolved. The training data is one of the
biggest issues. AI image generators are trained on massive datasets of
images. These datasets typically contain a wide variety of images, but they
often have a bias towards certain styles or palettes. For example, a dataset
that is heavily weighted towards anime images will likely produce AI images
that have a similar anime style and if the data sets have been limited in this
way, that will limit what the AI engine is capable of delivering regardless of
how well you craft the prompts.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The algorithm is only ever as
good as the data set used to train it, if that dataset includes any biases at
all, the AI is then compromised and will include the bias in the output and a
prompt modifier isn’t going to change that bias, other than possibly adding in
further biases. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With art, that bias could also
be in the form of cultural misappropriation, especially if the datasets used to
train it included images of specific cultures or elements that are scared,
sensitive, or otherwise important to specific communities. If the datasets
didn’t address context, the biases could be reinforced and even amplified.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s a real risk that AI
could use an amalgamation of various images that each have sensitivities and
then generate an image that contains not just biases, but other issues that
would make the output even more challenging. As we’ve learnt through history,
not everyone will be attuned to the nuances of cultural misappropriation, and
AI definitely struggles in this area. Professional artists will almost always
be more sensitive to those specific issues and will be much more careful about
what they release.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The algorithms that are used
to generate AI images are also a factor. Some algorithms are better at
generating certain styles or palettes than others. For example, some algorithms
are better at generating realistic images, while others are better at
generating abstract images. Bias will also be visible in the output here too,
if an algorithm is biased towards a specific art style, the end results will
always be tinged with elements of that style.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As with all things consumer
facing in the AI world, what we get to see today isn’t what the big players will
already be working on for tomorrow. It’s an early foray into AI for most
consumers, but frankly, that seems to be just enough to convince a bunch of
folk who haven’t picked up so much as a crayon since their formative school
days to convince them that they are a real digital artist and there’s a problem
with this, especially around cultural misappropriation, but also around
intellectual property rights, copyright, and of course, a market saturated with
un-curated AI generated content. This distorted view of what a modern day
artist is, could ultimately present the art world with another challenge that could
have wider implications for the industry in the future.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">An art world that could fall
apart…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The introduction of AI and
specifically, AI that is consumer facing, becomes a problem for artists who
have sunk literally decades of their lives into mastering their craft. If
casual art buyers are happy with an AI generated print that can be produced for
pennies or for free, even if it has some glaring artistic and design issues, they
are more likely to use AI than pay the human overhead and especially at a time
where art to some extent, or at least art prints that you might buy from big
box stores is seen as decorative, and in some cases, even disposable. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid4yx_9zyuyBSSIAA4MExRHpom9UXzYV-qQ2j7Qh4EM9S2BRX35c3sH3FIX4UinDwSHdsThp4OElxu6STKbnqpj_xryOQjEnKxe4s339biSWXiepOnnACMOHqvbyDVk1BEqec-dlRj7AuVoQcAChy4GfMAWLI4Q4XtWpayQJbo4WQTwN7foInUin8wuXA/s4000/image%208.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro console painting by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid4yx_9zyuyBSSIAA4MExRHpom9UXzYV-qQ2j7Qh4EM9S2BRX35c3sH3FIX4UinDwSHdsThp4OElxu6STKbnqpj_xryOQjEnKxe4s339biSWXiepOnnACMOHqvbyDVk1BEqec-dlRj7AuVoQcAChy4GfMAWLI4Q4XtWpayQJbo4WQTwN7foInUin8wuXA/w640-h640/image%208.JPG" title="Actively Forgotten by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Actively Forgotten by Mark Taylor - this was an interesting console with an early 3D - pre-VR headset that wasn't VR, but looks like modern day headsets. Interesting that VR headset design hasn't changed since the 80s and 90s.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When you change the colour of
the curtains, you can easily change the print and in a cost of living crisis as
we’re seeing globally today, value is becoming more of a driver in the art
world that isn’t the art world that bids on an original Matisse in an auction
room on a Tuesday night. That should be concerning because that Tuesday night
art world represents considerably less income than that generated by other
markets for art where the art is priced more affordably to the masses who
purchase it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When you give the public the
ability to own a digital paintbrush that is only confined by words and
imagination, the competition for existing artists then becomes everyone who
owns a device capable of accessing an AI tool and who opens up a print on
demand account. We might even get to a point at least temporarily, that you
could now be competing with the exact same people who would once purchase your
work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This stuff is also addictive. AI
image generation from the comfort of your sofa can feel empowering, providing
nothing more than a well crafted prompt anyone can now create almost any image
imaginable, and they won’t stop at one or two images, there’s a certain challenge
to be had in bettering your past efforts. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The issue here is that at some
point, if more people believe that what they are producing is worthy of an
upload to a print on demand service or being sold through some quickly strung
together online store, we will end up with market saturation and an inability
to find unique works crafted by hand. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The impact of a saturated art market
will be felt initially by those current artists who use their hard earned artistic
skills and talent to sell relatively low cost prints to casual buyers who are as
focussed as much on value as they are on the aesthetics of the work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The same can be said for those
with tight budgets and an ambition to write their first e-book. I might charge
around £X or $X to create a bespoke book cover which would potentially include
many hours of work over a period of weeks or months. A new author might not
have that kind of budget available, nor might they appreciate that books really
are judged by their covers, and if they’re writing down a description so that
an artist has at least some kind of design brief, there’s a fork in the road
that the author can now take. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Once the writer has created
that brief they can either type it into an AI engine and generate multiple
images until they’re happy, or they could hand that brief over to an artist
along with the money. My experience tells me that they would be much better going
with the expertise they would get from commissioning an artist, but most
writers who are just dipping their toes in the water might not be as yet aware
of the benefits they get from using human experts over AI to create the imagery
needed to sell books.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If they feel the result
through AI is good enough, that’s often more than enough for those who can live
without the specialist advice and support, to nudge them in the direction of AI
which then takes away the need to hand any money to an artist. Of course, they
won’t have the support that an experienced artist will bring to the table which
could ultimately result in many more book sales, but a new author might not get
the volume of sales that would make the expense of a skilled artist an absolute
requirement. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In most cases, especially when
all that’s needed is a thumbnail for an e-book cover, the result form AI is
going to be fine, so much so that I’m not entirely sure that I would advise new
writers against doing anything else other than to utilise AI and certainly in
the early days of being an author, unless you can categorically say that you
are in it for the long haul and you have a real belief in what you have
written. Let’s be honest, a whole lot of first-time self-published books fail
early on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It's no different from the
situation we already have with e-books. It’s easier than ever to self-publish,
but take a good look through any e-book store online and you will find
short-form books with incorrect grammar all over the place and because you can
publish quickly, many of the e-book stores rapidly become flooded with books
that are little more than brief PDFs. What might have once been included in a
blog post is now monetised to the point where the income is still likely to be
better than the ad-revenue you might get from<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>publishing an ad-supported blog.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It's the same story for other
services where the commissioner feels that they can get away with using AI.
Logo’s, digital ads, flyers, exactly the kind of things that would historically
have been commissioned through an artist or graphic designer. The results won’t
be anywhere close to the results you can get from using an experienced hand,
and the advice that a client would usually be reliant on to guide them through
what can be a complex design process just won’t be there with AI but the cost
savings will ultimately become the driver and quality becomes secondary at
best.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We can already see plenty of
articles online that outline how someone had been able to give up their nine to
five and utilise AI to generate dozens of e-books, and if you are producing in
volume there’s a much better chance of selling enough to make some level of a
living wage, but there are all sorts of issues around whether what is being put
out there does or doesn’t include the intellectual property of others. <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Real Fear or Misplaced Fear of
AI…</span></b></h1><div><b><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvSUecsufSMf-OT1DXT96YSzMsoPdcdBf1bd6xnnWbbwnayw1W4RH7W8o2JXWh7ryW7y6t3WU_zScBxb1k4hEB5HNFw_IaeWA_9M8mVxP3eIgXiSXckqE9IrY_wOI1Qum-AMs7Ma8abXiZHdXnXKb1uUQ6q3q2TbQEzrJv6q8xphHdq00ealcS52r_QUo/s4000/image%209.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro console artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvSUecsufSMf-OT1DXT96YSzMsoPdcdBf1bd6xnnWbbwnayw1W4RH7W8o2JXWh7ryW7y6t3WU_zScBxb1k4hEB5HNFw_IaeWA_9M8mVxP3eIgXiSXckqE9IrY_wOI1Qum-AMs7Ma8abXiZHdXnXKb1uUQ6q3q2TbQEzrJv6q8xphHdq00ealcS52r_QUo/w640-h640/image%209.JPG" title="Plug and Play by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Plug and Play by Mark Taylor - so many accessories and it was still a flop. Highly collectible today, as should this artwork be! </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A lot of artists I have spoken
to recently have told me how much they fear being completely displaced by AI in
the future, and especially those who work in fields that could become much more
susceptible to automation. If you are working on repetitive patterns and AI is
then able to recreate that pattern, it probably is more suited to carrying out
repetitive tasks more efficiently, but as I said earlier, repetition doesn’t
always come out perfectly with AI, at least not yet. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is something that today’s
artists could eventually embrace. If the initial work to create the pattern or
design is carried out by skilled hands and human emotions, there will be
obvious benefits in taking an AI model to increase productivity. It has the
potential to drive down the cost of repetitive, low-level tasks or even take
costs completely away, so it’s a no brainer that AI should be used. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think the issue we have
today is that AI is already being looked at as if it’s some golden panacea that
will reduce the need for expensive human intervention for pretty much
everything, and if business owners are not fully aware of AIs current
limitations, there’s a real danger that they only realise its failings and
shortcomings after things have gone wrong. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is an underlying issue
that needs calling out…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Technology is increasingly
being used by the bad players, be that to scam artists to part with cash on the
premise of a social media user reaching out to suggest that they would like to
make a purchase of the artists work, but as an NFT. The scammer will then
insist that the sale has to happen on a specific NFT platform which has been
created, you guessed it, by the scammer. If you didn’t guess, you might want to
be really cautious about engaging with users on social media who reach out to
buy your work as an NFT. You might also be a really strong candidate for buying
my latest chocolate fireguard.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI is being increasingly used
to make scams more believable than at any time before, and scammers are already
seeing a greater number of social media users falling for them. Scams are
typically set up with budgets, you usually need people behind the scenes, often
lots of them, and people are generally expensive, but some of this back office
work to bring a scam to life is now being done through AI and that takes away
the cost of running a scam.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Deepfakes are AI generated
videos or audio recordings that are made to look or sound like someone or
something they’re not, often swapping out faces or creating new recordings that
look and/or sound like real people. These scams are often used to spread false
narrative, and with global elections not too far over the horizon, it’s
entirely plausible that a rogue government or dictatorship can spread
legitimate sounding information that resonates with a cohort of the population
whose beliefs align. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">ChatGPT Phishing is now a
thing, of course it is, and who didn’t see this one coming! For those who need
a recap, ChatGPT is essentially a chatbot that runs on an open platform which
can be misused to create authentic conversations through an online chat screen.
Scammers are using the system to create fake customer service portals where
they then harvest the data the end user willingly supplies, and the
conversation can be persuasive enough to get even the most internet savvy user
to part with deeply detailed personal information. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Voice Cloning is a very
different issue to deepfakes, yet no less sinister. Scammers use the voices of
real people in phone calls, voicemails, or other audio captures where a users
voice identifies them. To train the models, an AI needs only a handful of words
from the victim to then generate an entire vocabulary and then go and have a
conversation with say, your bank. It could also mean that you receive a call
from a familiar number where the number has been spoofed but to make it more
believable, the clone might be trained using the vocals from someone working at
your bank. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Verification Fraud is the next
generation of the dark art of forging passports and official papers. Once an
industry reliant on wayward artists, AI has even replaced these usually highly
skilled fraudsters and I think that’s such a shame really, I’ve been fascinated
by the work of some of these artists/fraudsters for decades, not that I condone
it, but come on, artistically, you have to appreciate their level of skill. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The documents created by AI
are often indistinguishable from the real thing and significantly better than
those created by hand, even the traditional artists who created this type of
work would struggle to get the same level of quality, bearing in mind that the
data sets here would be more textualised and probably easier for AI to deal
with. I think everyone can see how badly this one ends, we often need to prove
identity not just at elections, but to open a bank account, sign up for a loan,
this list is endless.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbMkt248eP0sJWgM_lsWFT-PB-zjLNfgOXzqlJJBaoyUcusQrR8ImyzXarJ6jqOwcuBIuwoFH765SXEaa9yDZRkGZoYBPcCMdsYpjeFgpkoBDdWEBjLjVqWWl9FfeOSQGgBqW1AL8rXT37P4uW16gKeiKfd0fWliwCvOHNZAd3SuQYqXdSZqJhbN6-_ws/s4000/image%2010.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro console artwork by Mark Taylor, multiple consoles" border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbMkt248eP0sJWgM_lsWFT-PB-zjLNfgOXzqlJJBaoyUcusQrR8ImyzXarJ6jqOwcuBIuwoFH765SXEaa9yDZRkGZoYBPcCMdsYpjeFgpkoBDdWEBjLjVqWWl9FfeOSQGgBqW1AL8rXT37P4uW16gKeiKfd0fWliwCvOHNZAd3SuQYqXdSZqJhbN6-_ws/w640-h640/image%2010.JPG" title="The Retro Collector by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Retro Collector by Mark Taylor - the big one, every console featured in the series and plenty of Easter Eggs to find in this work. Thanks to everyone who purchased this recently, I had a blast creating it by hand... just like a real artist...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The really contentious issue…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As far as scammers go, if
you’re really careful about what you share and who you share it with, making
sure that you carry out due diligence and always remember that if it sounds too
good to be true it usually is, you have a better than average chance of not
becoming a victim. I say that with the caveat that scammers evolve just as
quickly as the next leap in technology and it will only be a matter of time
before they come up with some new way of getting you to part with either your
cash or your identity, the two most valuable things a scammer needs, even above
oxygen it seems. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But it’s not just your average
scammer who is using AI to deceive. As with every technical evolution, there
are always those who will be figuring out ways to use the technology with a
level of malicious intent, sometimes this intent doesn’t have to be criminally
aligned, it’s sometimes done out of naivety. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And, here we are in 2023 and
there are artists who maybe as little as six months ago were happy to produce
work using a paintbrush together with at least a modicum of skill, who then
discovered gateway platforms to AI such as Chat GPT and the dozens of AI based
image generators and saw the easy way to an accelerated art career and the
potential riches. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Art is, and always has been at
a commercial level, about the numbers. The number of eyes you can get on an
artwork has a direct correlation with the number of sales that you are likely
to make, and the volume and consistency of art is an attractive proposition to
both galleries and search engines. If you can flood a platform with art, your
results are going to get seen. It’s the downside of ranking engines (usually a
relative of AI if not AI itself), and it’s also the downside of many online
marketplaces and print on demand platforms where there is no quality assurance
for the incoming works that are being uploaded and there’s often little to no
curation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Maybe it’s the sales platforms
that governments should focus on through regulation even above talking about
regulating AI. AI being only a tool that is used to create what’s essentially,
and let’s call it what it is in this context, where the use of AI isn’t
disclosed, a fraudulent product that has just as many implications to global
markets than the overall risk that AI presents.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">All sorts of things that are
perfectly legal can be used in illegal or illicit ways. It’s how those things
are used that is at the crux of almost every argument against AI that I have
heard to date, AI itself isn’t as yet smart enough to be overly worrisome, how
people are beginning to use it, is.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Which brings me on to the
artist using AI to deceive, and yes, those artists are becoming abundant in
number and bolder in their commission of what in some territories might even be
regarded as a crime in every other sense. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That might sound dramatic, but
here’s some context. An artist spins up the latest image generation app,
creates a text prompt, the work is then generated by the AI tool. If the artist
then claims this as their own work which is what we are currently seeing,
that’s not only misleading to buyers, but it is discourteous to artists who are
still spending hours and months creating work that comes from both their talent
and their heart.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You might argue then that all
artists should be using AI to level the playing field, but I’m pretty sure
that’s not really what the art buying public want or need, some will be
intrigued by the trendy nature of AI, but most art buyers will be far more
receptive to a work knowing that it has been created by the artist, and as we
know, art buyers tend to buy into the artist just as much as the art. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Artistic integrity lies at the
core of the art world, with the exception of the murkier elements that are less
than transparent, despite these elements being fewer than people would
initially think. When artists resort to using AI to generate their artwork
without disclosing its involvement, they compromise this artistic integrity
that underpins the non-murky parts of the art world. Art is a reflection of an
artist's unique perspective, skills, and emotions. By claiming AI-generated art
as their own, these artists devalue the essence of art and betray the trust of
their audience.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">None of this is to suggest
that AI shouldn’t be used in the creative process, what I’m suggesting is that
you really shouldn’t disrespect those who are buying from you with any level of
deceit. If you do, it compromises more than the relationship you have with the
buyer, it also compromises the art world more broadly. AI can be useful, but it’s
use should be open, which may encourage new buyers, and it’s use should also be
responsible, not just ethically, but as I mentioned earlier, there are wider
issues at play including the future of art markets and more than that, the environmental
impact that AI presents.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Then there are the other
issues that are less contentious but they are issues that haven’t been
addressed and it might already be a little too late to put the toothpaste back
in the tube. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Using AI to generate artwork
without proper attribution raises significant concerns when it comes to
intellectual property rights and plagiarism. When artists present AI-generated
pieces as their original work, they will either naively or knowingly infringe
upon the rights of the AI developers or those who trained the algorithms, or
those who created the work that was then used in the training sets.
Intellectual property rights are crucial for fostering innovation, and artists
who cheat using AI not only disrespect these rights but also undermine the
rights of fellow artists, particularly those artists whose images have been
used to train the AI in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnu0a55VAw8DbtJEh0B3raoqO2QbE0m30BDGhZRjXo0FXT13CepDqHBegztrp6p0s4T2GW7bwy4v7fb8L_dA7sWrz_c0sdVGmCgStBLCqtGbGQ2laG5cyt-yt-mBj_YAeho097eZ0uOZGCiAb6_qNGtTsu57JeiyKJltHkeFO-oN_3EO9rK9zy-BeP53I/s4088/back%20in%20time.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro watch artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnu0a55VAw8DbtJEh0B3raoqO2QbE0m30BDGhZRjXo0FXT13CepDqHBegztrp6p0s4T2GW7bwy4v7fb8L_dA7sWrz_c0sdVGmCgStBLCqtGbGQ2laG5cyt-yt-mBj_YAeho097eZ0uOZGCiAb6_qNGtTsu57JeiyKJltHkeFO-oN_3EO9rK9zy-BeP53I/w640-h474/back%20in%20time.JPG" title="Back in Time by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Back in Time by Mark Taylor - one of the earlier 2023 retro works, all hand painted, including the LCD details. Watches popular in the 80s and 90s and making a comeback today!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s an impact we should
care about…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The prevalence of AI-assisted
deception in the art world can have detrimental effects on the art market.
Collectors, galleries, and buyers rely on the authenticity and the uniqueness
of artworks when making purchasing decisions. If they discover that an artwork
they acquired was not genuinely created by the artist, it undermines their
trust in the art world, a world which, has historically seen some elements of
it fight against transparency to some extent, which alone means that the art
world as we know it today is already on some shaky ground. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This further undermining of
trust can lead to an even deeper loss of confidence from buyers and it is this
erosion of trust that has the potential to have lasting consequences for the
entire art ecosystem.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">To some extent, some of this
behaviour can be understood, as an artist it pays to be entrepreneurial, in
fact, it’s encouraged, but the role we have within the art world is also one
where we should be educating buyers and encouraging them to support the art
world and us. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So, maybe an artists role is
evolving, perhaps it might become one where the artist becomes a
preservationist of an industry, perhaps it’s also a role that guides and
educates buyers to consider how, and what they purchase so that the longer term
art market remains viable for both buyers and artists and maybe there’s some
education needed in the damaging impact that AI could potentially have on the
environment if it’s used for low value short-term gain. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Nobody wins if the industry
becomes watered down, especially buyers who might be relying on the investment
opportunity that buying art presents. There is no reward for anyone if the
product can be self dispensed freely or more dramatically, aides the
advancement of global warming.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">While AI has the potential to
enhance artistic expression, the misuse of this technology by artists who cheat
undermines the integrity of the art world. It is essential to address this
issue collectively by promoting ethics, transparency, and responsible use of AI
in art. By doing so, we can ensure that art remains a realm of genuine human
creativity, where artists are valued for their originality, skill, and the
emotional depth they bring to their work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As an artist, it is crucial to
establish ethical guidelines and promote transparency. Artists should clearly
disclose the involvement of AI in the creation process, allowing viewers to
appreciate the work while providing them with an understanding the role
technology played. Additionally, art organisations and institutions can and
should be playing a vital role by implementing policies and standards that
promote honesty, accountability, and proper attribution.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Print on demand services
should insist on disclosure as a condition of hosting the work, something that
if not addressed could see them losing market share eventually, especially when
buyers begin to distrust the work they present. That too is an industry that
needs to take a close look at itself, if a POD company suggests that they
represent the work of living artists, there’s already a question around artists
who reuse out of copyright works, often created by long passed artists.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwHCY2iiFy5I8__DaUtLlosPPtxnYC6lDOoTdWD4hw-yoINtDCu9QxD8Y2H7NvX4ipXAl2zKnUIGc5ZxvUjC0bz0i5DHzUuTO4YLQ5Sfcz3EhwneCQSSr6BfsNhoSdWc6j1VFopK-x8k7Ng1kYXYKaQxOThh7IRAK9zbU7x5kQt_eHVCkxIdYK4L-7Znk/s4088/Car%20Parts%20retro%20Radio.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro car radios artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwHCY2iiFy5I8__DaUtLlosPPtxnYC6lDOoTdWD4hw-yoINtDCu9QxD8Y2H7NvX4ipXAl2zKnUIGc5ZxvUjC0bz0i5DHzUuTO4YLQ5Sfcz3EhwneCQSSr6BfsNhoSdWc6j1VFopK-x8k7Ng1kYXYKaQxOThh7IRAK9zbU7x5kQt_eHVCkxIdYK4L-7Znk/w640-h640/Car%20Parts%20retro%20Radio.JPG" title="Car Parts Retro Radio by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Car Parts Retro Radio by Mark Taylor - all hand drawn again using a digital medium. No Ai, just a memory of listening to Dolly Parton on a Sunday drive with the parents. In the 80s we occasionally listened to Rick Astley... I rick rolled the parents as often as I could!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Until Next Time…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As an artist, I’m equally as
excited as I am worried about the future AI will play in the industry. There
will be broader benefits that will help independent artists run their
businesses much more efficiently, and even today AI has a role in testing
design choices, and running point on some of the low value, yet highly critical
work that we usually have to do. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Where I worry, is that artists
will naively go down the rabbit hole of AI without fully realising the impact
it could have on an industry or without realising the longer term impacts on
the planet, something few of us will initially think about when we create our
next funny cat masterpiece form a short text prompt. In my experience, short
term thinking is rarely good for business and the art world is at best, mostly
a slow burning candle. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI isn’t going to go away
anytime soon, yet the shine is certainly dissipating. There is already some
chatter in the industry that we have been over supplied with AI models and some
people are quickly moving on. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The challenge though will be
those who spot the financial savings and begin to automate roles that would
once be filled by humans. The argument being that people will find new roles
that support the delivery of AI, but that’s not a role that the average worker
will fill, it takes years of training and experience to fill some of the
critical roles that the AI industry needs and when it comes to things like neuromorphic
computing, we’re already struggling to find the skills and there are very few
who can teach it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So whilst I’m not dismissing
the future of AI, I am certainly dismissing the hype of AI creating a better
world. Governments are already on the hype train with an eye on increasing
their GDP by becoming global super hubs of AI innovation, but even with the
blunt instrument of regulation, we really have to ask, is AI really worth it
just to create your next masterpiece from a sentence of descriptive text. AI
replacing workers, well, we’re now seeing the likes of Amazon rethinking their
robotics and AI strategies, robots are efficient, but they’re certainly not
cheap.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So until next time, take care,
stay creative, and look after each other.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark is an artist who
specialises in vintage inspired works featuring technology. He is also known
for his landscape works and the occasional abstract, creating professionally
since the 1980s. He is also a specialist in secure computing environments and
is a globally recognised key note speaker.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can purchase Mark’s work
through Fine Art America or his Pixels site here: </span><a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> You
can also purchase prints and originals directly. You can also view Mark’s
portfolio website at </span><a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://beechhousemedia.com</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Join the conversation on
Facebook at: </span><a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> and
Threads or connect on “X” (You realise it’s still Twitter) @beechhouseart</span></p><p></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0Staffordshire, UK52.8711297 -2.085677850.196747027124019 -6.48020905 55.545512372875976 2.30885345tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-38014541915082142582023-06-21T15:21:00.000+01:002023-06-21T15:21:08.056+01:00The Subtle Art of Printers<p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Choosing a printer fo</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">r your
fine art needs…</span></b></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAcUWc_4iVVlcb6xqSzDoWePCvDaj30paCuWi9WJPiyJGlfUCniZtS8dCyUkbvFJndNRBsRxVZfLZiL7cdX-a-jjocdoU0WdsAi03hMQOjbK-8NdjZIRaAhdR0Xh98zblB5o2Sbp024q-u5BVV2V4djOwyMqBIn32tuOXLo4gJWVX6YLiyjJP6lVOu9nQ/s1920/print%20cover%20blog%20image.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The Subtle Art of Printers Title Image" border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1920" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAcUWc_4iVVlcb6xqSzDoWePCvDaj30paCuWi9WJPiyJGlfUCniZtS8dCyUkbvFJndNRBsRxVZfLZiL7cdX-a-jjocdoU0WdsAi03hMQOjbK-8NdjZIRaAhdR0Xh98zblB5o2Sbp024q-u5BVV2V4djOwyMqBIn32tuOXLo4gJWVX6YLiyjJP6lVOu9nQ/w640-h426/print%20cover%20blog%20image.PNG" title="The Subtle Art of Printers" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Understanding Printers...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">Printers are an essential part
of any home or office, but with so many different models on the market, it can
be tough to know which one is right for you. This time in my blog, we'll
discuss the multitude of things that you need to consider when choosing a
printer, as well as provide some practical tips for printing, selecting a
printer, setting it up and maintaining it. Oh, and we also come to the
conclusion that mostly, all printers suck.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Printers Revisited…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s time we revisited
printers, firstly, because we haven’t looked at them in a while, and secondly,
because printers really do suck. Whether you are a binge printer or
recreational printer, these bottomless money pits should come with a warning
label that they do nothing to assist your positive mental wellbeing. Yesterday,
a 3 minute print job took almost 3-hours out of my already chaotic day.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">From ink stains on the carpet
to random settings, sticky touch screens and endless reams of paper strewn
across the floor, those are just a few of the problems that printers bring into
a household and none of this is because your kids decided to print something,
it’s generally what happens after the self-update process has done its thing.
Printers cannot be trusted, they constantly need adult supervision. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Family use aside, if you are a
professional artist who regularly uses a printer to produce commercial quality
prints, there are things you really need to know before committing to any
particular model or brand, but more than that, you need to be able to resolve
any issues that will pop up frequently, because from experience I can
categorically say that printers are designed to make your life as difficult as
possible and I genuinely think that’s the bar that printer manufacturers aspire
to meet. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Forget the implementation of
artificial intelligence, it would be fantastic to find a printer with any level
of intelligence. Over the years I’ve not had a great experience with more than
a few of them as you can probably tell.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn1csrx3ThZRSbp0qU-i9vJ5yMW7OLtXHPRluziTmdDV-NIx5NunFpfAOw82UMuF3vNHl3y8W2vpiucFqodSwPzWMqmrBPslsJBjxfcDECNzLOCaoZz6Ag3QtOIp4oDFmfdBotCSG8Qe4LSVjyWMDEi-JvYjODNz5mo8PTgouxbOJhFTOIJcHqGkeuR0U/s4088/Will%20work%20for%20Ink.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Will work for ink artwork featuring a printer" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn1csrx3ThZRSbp0qU-i9vJ5yMW7OLtXHPRluziTmdDV-NIx5NunFpfAOw82UMuF3vNHl3y8W2vpiucFqodSwPzWMqmrBPslsJBjxfcDECNzLOCaoZz6Ag3QtOIp4oDFmfdBotCSG8Qe4LSVjyWMDEi-JvYjODNz5mo8PTgouxbOJhFTOIJcHqGkeuR0U/w640-h640/Will%20work%20for%20Ink.JPG" title="Will Work for Ink by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Will Work for Ink by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are no ‘good’ printers
these days…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’ve been using a printer at
home since the early 1980s, my first printer used a roll of thermal paper and
when they discontinued the printer that I had been so impressed with on my
shiny new-fangled 8-bit home computer, I bought up the entire local stock of
thermal rolls. I still have two unopened in a shrink-wrapped box in the attic
but the printer has sadly long gone. I did see one pop up on eBay last week and
had to show restraint because I know I have a problem with collecting old
stuff. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For less than fifty bucks and
with no need to ever buy ink, that little thermal printer was the best computer-y
thing I ever owned. The print quality was awful, it was really slow, it made
about the same level of noise that a jet engine would make on take off, and it
only printed across the four inches of the thermal roll and yet, it was still
the greatest printer I have ever had the joy of using because mostly, it just
worked and I have never to this day found another one that worked quite so
well.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It only had two settings,
either on or off and they operated by taking out the mains plug or inserting it.
There were no complicated buttons, just one about the size of a finger nail
used to feed the new roll of paper and it all plugged directly into a port at
the back of the computer via a ribbon cable. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The connection was precarious,
it would disconnect if you wobbled the table but nothing more than a blob of
Blue Tack was required to stabilise it. Sure it had it’s nuances, but if you
gave me a printer today and told me that all I would need to do to make it work
how I want it to work, would be to add a blob of the sticky blue office supply,
well I think I would bite your hand off.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I own a printer farm…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, I use multiple
printers, dye-sublimation, laser, I even own a dot matrix because it’s the
cheapest way of printing out that casual everyday stuff that doesn’t need a
high DPI count or even colour, and I couldn’t even begin to tell you how much I
spend on consumables each year, but let’s say it’s roughly about the GDP of a
country according to my bank balance. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I still use a thermal printer
today, it’s nowhere near as as good as the one I owned back in the 1980s, even
if I do look back through rose tinted glasses but it is fantastic at printing
address labels and receipts. I can print out exactly 200 receipts from one
cheap roll of thermal paper after working out the math that gave me the optimum
font size to page yield. It’s 11 point if you’re wondering. The downside, they
haven’t figured out networking for that either, it uses Bluetooth so that’s
just fun, please read fun, with the sarcasm it deserves. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Each of the printers I use
today has to meet the standard of having the ability to produce commercial
quality archival prints or serve another purpose that means that I’m not over
paying for anything I print out. The printers range from shelf friendly, entry
level, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>all the way up to it didn’t look quite
as big in the pictures. But here’s the thing, they all suck, and some more than
others.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I probably need to explain why
that is, it’s certainly not the quality of the prints they produce, even the
dot matrix produces pin sharp high contrast text that looks like it could have
come off a laser printer. The cheap inkjet I use to print off those e-tickets
or to send a good old fashioned complaint letter to the council, who never read
emails, even that is a quantum leap forward from a high-end printer I owned
about a decade ago. I’m regularly impressed at the range of materials I can
throw at them, except the dot matrix which is a bit fussy, but they all suck
for one reason alone, they’re junky money pits that only work when they feel
like it and you can find them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Connect them to Wi-Fi and it’s
a game of where’s Waldo when attempting to find them on the network but the
print quality, I have no complaints in that department. The issue is that to
get them to print anything from anything that’s not physically and directly
connected, is quite frankly, painful at times. No printer found, no printer
found, oh, there it is.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s something else too,
they insist on telling me that they’re out of ink when there’s still half a
tank remaining, so I pretend to change the ink cartridges by taking them out
and putting them back in, and the faded lines are once again complete and the
tanks continue to work for about the same number of prints that the first half
of the tank yielded. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I only knew for certain to do
this when I had to install a clear plastic third party ink tank when global
supplies of original ink cartridges were delayed during the pandemic. The
original tanks are never clear so you have no way of knowing how much ink is
left because you rely on an on screen infographic that always lets you know
that you are about to run out of Cyan.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Just to be clear, using the
third party ink was eye opening in that it told me something that I had been
convinced was happening for many years yet could never prove, which was that
the ink remaining indicator on that tiny screen, lies. In fact it lies so much
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was hiding classified documents in the print
queue and demanding a mistrial when I complain.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I was surprised, as I often am
when things look like a bargain and work, at just how good the yield was from
the third-party ink cartridges and the text was nice and crisp. These were
certainly better than the alternative brand ones I had used before, they were
recognised by the printer and the colours were actually brighter than the
originals, although I hadn’t opted for the cheapest they were still 60% less expensive
than original tanks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My choice to use an
alternative was a one off in a supply crisis. I have to guarantee the print
quality of my work so I tend to stick to original inks, and this really makes
sense when you are using high-end premium papers, but the results from the
replacements were really good and would be more than good enough if I were just
printing text or using the printer for regular things.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I wouldn’t necessarily trust
third-party inks inside my wide format printers when longevity of the print
along with vibrancy and resolution is imperative, and especially when the cost
of a wide format printer means that it’s not easy to just replace. There’s also
little point in using a wide format printer for general documents, that would
be throwing away money needlessly and they’re much slower at printing in any
case. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqBTwBK1hQni8fmDBGffyKKVyBvPr01mZPNq8qj3PvJ3QkU7gy4VTGAVGrO0VoUiCXeKFZ_lqjBJEfmPXVegSQV0bwtxjUQ7BW26PEmCIBTXLWDeosdKD18P4LK29XHLETCnR_-rfet9mokEsAFMdKGuuAdYQ-FnL5bWUhiF3UvhBKLKyHjMOAUsjX9Uo/s4088/Sakura%20Serenity.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Japanese landscape art, mountains, lake, pagoda," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqBTwBK1hQni8fmDBGffyKKVyBvPr01mZPNq8qj3PvJ3QkU7gy4VTGAVGrO0VoUiCXeKFZ_lqjBJEfmPXVegSQV0bwtxjUQ7BW26PEmCIBTXLWDeosdKD18P4LK29XHLETCnR_-rfet9mokEsAFMdKGuuAdYQ-FnL5bWUhiF3UvhBKLKyHjMOAUsjX9Uo/w640-h640/Sakura%20Serenity.JPG" title="Sakura Serenity by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Sakura Serenity by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For day to day stuff like
printing out any emails that you need to keep a paper copy of, I just use a
budget printer that costs about the same as the inks that go inside it. It
makes more sense to go with third-party ink for this kind of thing because if
the printer does fail, it’s still cheaper overall even when it fails. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Fail it will eventually. Sadly,
there is no such thing as a cheap printer that will last and arguably, there’s
no such thing as an expensive printer that lasts either, but this really does
drill home the message that cheap printers are disposable, and that together
with the cost of inks, I think this is their greatest problem.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Now I’m sure someone will
point out the pitfalls of using a third-party ink and I think I’m well aware of
the arguments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They can potentially
damage the printer, reduce its overall life, put extra strain on the print
head, consume more ink, produce washed out prints, you could print out an
entire list of negatives with 3<sup>rd</sup> party ink depending on who you
speak to. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In my experience sticking to
original ink is something to consider if you use an expensive printer
especially if it’s still under warranty, but a sub-hundred buck printer used
for printing letters, labels, and emails, it’s never made any difference even
when I compare the results with my more expensive printers. Some of these
alternatives do promise similar levels of longevity of prints to those offered
by the original manufacturer, but can you trust them with commercial work, I’m
still on the fence about that.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can buy premium
third-party inks that are genuinely better than the original versions, usually
these are for specialist use and in some cases these can cost more than the
originals. These might be better than the original inks for certain jobs but
it’s always best to carry out some research, I do use some of these for some of
my special edition works, and I have a printer that is solely used for printing
with food grade edible ink, and everything used for producing food grade prints
is kept separate to my other kit. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Real Reason Printers Suck…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I did say that there was one
reason that printers were junky money pits but that’s unfair. There are plenty
of reasons that contribute to their reputation for being generally bad. Printer
manufacturers spend a lot of money on research and development, but clearly
nowhere near enough when it comes to making sure their printers connect to a Wi-Fi
network. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Printers almost always have a
limited life, and support for the drivers needed for the computer to operate
the printer generally goes away when new printer models arrive, and when the
drivers are produced they’re rarely updated. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Most modern printers include a
touch screen but it’s not clear from the picture on the box how small your
fingers need to be to actually touch it, let alone how great your eyes need to
be to view the user interface that won an interface of the year award in 1986.
But hey, it’s smart enough to also allow me to print out colouring pages but
for some reason it still needs a cyan tank installed even though it’s only
printing in black. What is it with cyan ink.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For those who really know the
ultimate test for any electrical device is whether or not it runs Doom. I can
confirm that in some cases you can run Doom on a printer screen but it’s not as
good as Doom running on say, a banana because a banana has better controls.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When it comes to customer
support, well, they all mostly fail in this area too. In all my years of
printing I have come across one manufacturer who has excelled in providing a
really bad customer experience, but I have found plenty of others who have come
really close. I used to spend a lot of money with this manufacturer, buying
consumables, even some of the other technologies they sold, you could say I was
even a fan, but the phrase, ‘ I used to’ might give you an idea where I’m
heading with this.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When I had the misfortune to
think that customer service meant that there was at least some level of support
on the end of the phone, I was corrected by a really cheerful support desk operator
who explained very abruptly and rather dismissively that the £1000 (UK) printer
I purchased 12-months and one day ago was no longer in warranty and my best
course of action would be to buy a new one. No serviceable parts, or certainly
none we’re telling you about, but here’s a link to our new product range. At
least the operator was a human and not a bot telling me the bad news I guess.
You would expect service desk support to get better as you level up and pay
more, but that’s not my experience. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">On balance, my experience with
some other manufacturers has been like chalk and cheese, a 3-year old out of
warranty printer from another manufacturer was replaced with a refurbished
model for the cost of postage which was so much better than simply throwing the
old one away, and they even provided me with a new set of test inks. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Of course your individual
milage with any printer manufacturer will vary, some people might have better
luck than I did with the company who epically wronged me, but I won’t be going
back to them anytime soon which is a shame because the print quality was really
good. Apparently, Cannon say they can, experience tells me they can’t.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s a lot we take for
granted…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">At the lower end of the
printer market, we can forgive some of these issues with modern-day printers.
Mostly, the manufacturers are selling the devices as loss leaders making any
profit in the future from the continuous sale of original inks. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you think about the
complexity of something that is asked to faithfully print out a photograph by
firing lots of dots of ink at the paper in the right place and with the right
colour, and to make sure that device works across a range of devices that might
all be configured differently, it shouldn’t be possible for any device to be
able to do this at under fifty bucks, yet visit any number of box stores and
there will be rows upon rows of sub fifty and sub one hundred buck printers,
all capable of creating photographs and printing out school projects or even
fulfilling the printing needs of a small business and they all mostly work
across almost every computer or mobile format. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">At the higher end of the printer
eco-system, we begin to see the real bells and whistles that originated through
all of that R&D the manufacturers tell us is so expensive for them to do.
Better screens, more features, more responsive to accepting different paper
types, more expensive ink tanks is usually a commonly shared downside, but no
matter how much you pay, printer manufacturers still need to figure out
networking if you have anything more than a laptop connected to your router. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The higher end printers do
cost more but generally they will produce much better results. Most will almost
always yield more pages per refill, and most of them will handle most of the
jobs and paper types that we throw at them without too many major complaints,
they will all of course complain about anything to do with wireless networks.
That said, the price you pay is no guarantee that the printer will consistently
do what it says on the box, these are printers after all and well, printers
suck however much you pay.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">At the budget friendly end of
the market, we should probably start thinking of them not as printers, but as
live services, a bit like the cable box or streaming device. We shouldn’t be
overly concerned by the device so long as it produces what you need, it’s the
overlaid service that we pay for. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Live Services, the two dreaded
words that have become synonymous with voluntarily signing up to hand our money
over to the cyber-highwayman of the modern day. No matter how often we say we dislike
live services and subscriptions, we always seem to be at the ready when it
comes to signing up to them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The manufacturers offer a
subscription for ink that usually includes the printer communicating with the
manufacturer and reporting back on the number of print jobs carried out, along
with a bunch of other metrics that might or might not be identified in the end
user licence agreement that none of us read. I find it funny how the printers
internet connection works just fine when it comes to reporting back and taking
money off us.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The device itself is almost
irrelevant at the lower end of the market, it’s a subsidised machine that is
little more than a gateway to handing over a regular supply of cash. The
benefit we get from this is that it will print out most of the things an
average family might send its way together with the promise of new inks being
delivered just in time for the last page of the current tank to be printed out.
It’s almost always exactly the 50<sup>th</sup> page on an average 50 page per month
plan. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You pay for these dreadful
‘live services’ depending on the number of pages you need to print over the course
of a month, yet my suspicion is that regardless of the money you pay, you will
get the same volume of ink as someone paying slightly more, you just won’t be
able to use it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I recently took an allegedly
empty subscription ink tank apart and there was still plenty of ink inside, so
my theory is that the remaining ink which will usually be thrown away is locked
behind a paywall and the cartridge stops working once you have used up your
pre-paid metered dose of ink or reached the monthly page count. If that is the
norm, from both a cost of living perspective and from an environmental
perspective, I can’t say that I would be happy about that if I was a subscriber.
To be fair, it’s not just printers, car manufacturers have been known to lock
the built in heated seat behind a pay wall. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think what we can take away
from this is that the printer industry is rapidly moving towards becoming a
live service industry as users transition away from printing in general. Whichever
way they go, I would expect customers to be more attuned to environmental
issues, and cost is always a consideration. Mostly, I think people just want
economy and for the devices not to suck quite so much as they do.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think we can forget ever
finding the unicorn that is the perfect printer, it doesn’t exist today and I’m
not convinced it will exist tomorrow. For me, I would rather pay more upfront
for a quality printer that delivers quality results that still gives me the
choice between using original inks and third party tanks. Oh, and I would love
it to connect to my Wi-Fi network without it delivering a message of impending
doom, telling me to install yet another cyan tank in order to proceed or that
the printer couldn’t be found on the network. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The current model of printer
monetisation seems to be working for the manufacturers for now so I’m guessing there’s
no urgency for the industry to really shake things up, but it does need shaking
up. Some manufacturers such as Epson are putting their weight behind refillable
eco-tanks, and I have to say that this is possibly the best thing we have seen
from the print industry for years. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We need to see more innovation
like this, and less innovation around the bells and whistles that can be
alternatively provided through an app on our smartphone. I’m not interested in
a printer that can print colouring pages directly from the smart screen, I need
it to connect and print whatever I send to it, and if it could do it a little
more quietly, that would be a welcome bonus. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Those are the features that
really matter. I would love to see the real numbers behind the add-on services
that connect you online just to give you access to quick templates. I have
never had a cause to use any of these extra services that come packaged within
the printers settings, if there is a way to turn them off, that’s something I
always do and I think most people are the same, we just don’t need the extra bloat
within an already difficult to use user interface.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoXoqbI5Gimzsb8dM6hm4fl4BqYK_kK45h-m6PFdnbKnOq_WAZzuAvKxZy6Q3b3SvM8SwN4MhZlUdNSEBC5UcCOV19F7cdtsa0M9q87R2CJF3-gHOS5v033IBB8WhKSyczI9cA1gX7wWJQPVbmbVmYXwT_vFotpKSfqshiD-ig1X6DEjI8yMaiIiBu-3s/s1462/oh%20crop.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="oh crop icon artwork print" border="0" data-original-height="1462" data-original-width="1182" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoXoqbI5Gimzsb8dM6hm4fl4BqYK_kK45h-m6PFdnbKnOq_WAZzuAvKxZy6Q3b3SvM8SwN4MhZlUdNSEBC5UcCOV19F7cdtsa0M9q87R2CJF3-gHOS5v033IBB8WhKSyczI9cA1gX7wWJQPVbmbVmYXwT_vFotpKSfqshiD-ig1X6DEjI8yMaiIiBu-3s/w518-h640/oh%20crop.PNG" title="Oh Crop by Mark Taylor" width="518" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Oh Crop by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If all printers suck, how do
we choose one?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s easier than ever to buy a
printer today, assuming you can find the one you want in stock. I remember a
time when a printer was specific to the device you were using it on back in the
days of 8-bit home computers, but the development of standards such as USB and
Wi-Fi mean that we no longer have to rely on additional interfaces or being
reliant on having a specific port available on the computer and if we can’t
find the exact printer we would like, we can choose another in the knowledge
that at least on some level, it will work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The challenge we have today is
that we have no way of knowing what the printers are really capable of or how
they will perform until we take them home and plug them in. At that point you
might already be committed to paying an ongoing subscription for ink with no
possibility of returning the unit unless it develops a fault in the warranty
period. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you visit a physical brick
and mortar store the printers will usually be stacked in boxes on shelves with
at best, a demo unit on display that’s not connected to anything. It might not
even have any components inside, the display units are often only a visual
queue that shows you what you are buying but they rarely demonstrate what they’re
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>capable of. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the past year or so I have
only ever stumbled across one retailer who had working units on display, and
one more that had sample prints in a folder next to each printer. That should
at least be a thing that becomes the minimum standard we should expect when
making the kind of commitment that buying a printer needs. I’m sure that would
drive more people back to physical stores rather than buying online, although
pricing would need to be comparable which I guess could be an issue.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Other than reading online
reviews which in this day and age aren’t something you should really be hanging
your coattails from, there are very few reliable sources of truth that beat a
path through the hype from the manufacturers. If you are served by a sales
person working for commission, there’s really no single source of independent
and completely unbiased truth that you can rely on and the industry is awash
with affiliate marketers who get paid if you click on the links from reviews or
YouTube videos. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are thankfully, some
good sources of information to be found online, some of the industry websites
that focus on graphic design carry reviews that are often much more honest than
the sites with some level of manufacturer sponsorship or link. A search through
Twitter will usually highlight people who are reaching out to the manufacturers
for support but what you are likely to find when you find these messages is
that the manufacturers hide any responses. Probably another good indication
that you should avoid that particular manufacturer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are specialist printer
retailers although many of them have migrated to online only businesses over
the past few years but these tend to be much better at signposting you someway towards
the right device but often, these retailers are tied to specific brands and the
costs tend to be much closer to retail than some of the discounted models you
will find elsewhere online.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you buy a printer online,
you need to be careful that you are not buying last years model, or a model that
was manufactured even longer ago than that. While I was looking through Amazon
this week I found nine out of ten models on sale had now been superseded with
newer models, and the discounts didn’t really take this into account, two cost
more than the manufacturers recommended retail price. I had better luck finding
the latest models directly from the manufacturers websites, but finding
somewhere with stock is another challenge and some were only available on a
waiting list.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Out of all of the printers I
looked at my choices dwindled down to a couple of older models for the same
price as the latest versions, or heavily discounted printers that had long
since become unsupported by the manufacturers and looking through online forums
and discussions, it seemed as if all of them had some kind of hot topic
discussion point which would make you nervous about making a commitment. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There were a couple of new
models that were in stock but they were at the higher end of what I would think
would be most regular people’s budget, although there were a few services
offering rentals, inevitably the overall cost of those devices was higher than
buying outright. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Rentals might be more cost
effective once you factor in depreciation, service and future replacement costs
but the ongoing cost might be prohibitive if you just need an occasional print
or you’re not using it in a commercial environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I rented a huge dye-sublimation printer for
6-months several years ago when I placed some of my work with a retail chain,
and that worked out much cheaper than outsourcing the work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, I tend to outsource
most of my print jobs other than special editions and local sales because printing
does take up a lot of time which could be spent doing higher value things like
creating work or completing commissions. Generally when you print your own
creations, buyers will expect a framing and matting service which makes for a nice
upsell opportunity but again, the time needed to do this has to be taken into
account. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">During the same, not very
scientific research, I also checked the stock at a local supermarket who had
been advertising a deal for an everyday, all in one inkjet printer, but once
again, the printer is now old stock and a newer model is available, if you can
find it in stock. I had a dye-sublimation printer on back order for over 12
months during the pandemic, in the end the company reached out to cancel the
order because they couldn’t guarantee the supply chain. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Don’t be fooled by low initial
costs…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The supermarket were offering
a steep discount over the original recommended retail price but I was able to
find the same printer from other retailers for a similar price, albeit some
retailers also added on the cost of shipping, there were others who were
offering an extra set of inks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It's also worth bearing in
mind that at these very low price points, there will be nothing available that
could do anything more than light duties, and you would need something at a
much higher price point to consider using it to produce commercial quality art
prints. Ideally it would need to also be a wide format printer too, preferably
one that uses dye-sublimation, two features which you are unlikely to find in
the middle aisle of Aldi next to the discounted arc welder.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Buying a printer is very much
a case of buyer beware. That sub fifty buck printer is almost certainly not
going to provide you with the commercial grade prints that you might want the
printer for, and it will devour ink by the barrel if you use it for anything
other than light duties compared to some of the more premium offerings. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Remember, at really low price
levels it’s a reasonable assumption to make that the manufacturer is only
charging you for the components and the logistics of shipping it. Ink and live
services are where it’s at, that’s how printer manufacturers make their money.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSJXMgcxVvc6LmQhxjt5tTGm35s5tM3pkI9MNnQ_WhwJ_xWJGPS4olwPqfdwqmnhSfg0xUbI16z032eVRQdFQiwSlfwOCdNkNUpR9Df6CHcJI_RiuwBA7Do9uVCN8OImzbVni3HQcncIcrUOVBfrQxMoASwPSO4LYshUOhM10CFU-cuA4IJTnHdVtOBAw/s4088/Two%20Way%20Pager.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Two Way Pager art print retro email device" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSJXMgcxVvc6LmQhxjt5tTGm35s5tM3pkI9MNnQ_WhwJ_xWJGPS4olwPqfdwqmnhSfg0xUbI16z032eVRQdFQiwSlfwOCdNkNUpR9Df6CHcJI_RiuwBA7Do9uVCN8OImzbVni3HQcncIcrUOVBfrQxMoASwPSO4LYshUOhM10CFU-cuA4IJTnHdVtOBAw/w640-h640/Two%20Way%20Pager.JPG" title="Two Way Pager by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Two Way Pager by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The new vehicle emissions
standard – Printer Edition…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are some manufacturers
who promise greater page yields while focussing on low running costs but you do
have to compare these running costs against what you might actually use the
printer for. Mostly, their yields per set of inks are based on a relatively
small percentage of the paper being covered when compared to real life use, in
tests the coverage is around 5% of the paper. The yields are calculated in a
lab in ideal conditions, and the images will have been curated specifically for
the test using special test patterns but it appears in some cases that
something might be slightly off with the final reports.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There have been some alleged
cases of manufacturers cheating the ISO requirements when manufacturing and
testing printers. In one study, researchers found that some manufacturers were
using different test pages and settings than had been specified in the ISO
standard (International Organization for Standardization). This resulted in the
printers appearing to meet the requirements when they were actually nowhere
close.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The ISO has taken steps to
address the problem of cheating. In 2017, they updated the ISO 12646 standard
to make it more difficult for manufacturers to cheat. However, there is still
some research based evidence that cheating continues to occur.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">While there are standards that
printer manufacturers should meet, the results might not be anywhere near
indicative of real world use. This could potentially be another situation
that’s more familiar to diesel car drivers where vehicle manufacturers had been
found and admitted to using cheat devices to bypass the emissions test. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So, whilst research has
demonstrated that printer manufacturers have been allegedly doing something
similar, we haven’t seen much, if anything around legal actions against an
industry that signs up to what is essentially a voluntary set of standards. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This makes it really hard to
make a balanced decision because some tests might show lower yields yet still
be more economical. I can just imagine the class action adverts that might
spring up in the future, did you or anyone you know own a printer between 1989 and
2023, you might be owed millions for overpaying on ink.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s just no profit in tin…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Selling hardware in the IT
industry isn’t the sole source of income resellers will be relying on, their
overhead is often high as is the cost of storing unsold kit, and the profit
margins for hardware are often very low. The IT industry tends to make any
profit they do make from offering warranties and service wraps, and live
services offered directly by the printer manufacturers will be diminishing the
IT retailers profits even further making it less profitable for them to keep a
stock of the most up to date printers or carry a full range of inks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So the answer is to figure out
exactly what you want to do with the printer before you begin to start
shopping. It could very well be a false economy to pay so little for the
printer if you then need to feed it with ink constantly, but it may be overkill
to pay premium prices if all you need the printer for is the occasional print where
you might be happy to pay only a few pounds/dollars each month.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Maybe, and more importantly in
the first instance is working out your budget, both now and by taking into
account how much you will be paying for consumables. The pay to print model
which we know is little more than a subscription to a live service, can sometimes
feel like a shakedown that would make the mafia proud despite the offers
presented at first glance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Most manufacturers will have a
range of subscription options from light use to heavy duty printing but you
need to consider the options carefully, especially when page yields advertised
are often only representative of covering a small surface area of the paper. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This can make a subscription
seem like great value, but in real terms use, you could run out of ink very
quickly and end up reordering your next supply early if your plan is geared to
general home or light office printing and you are using it instead to create
prints of your work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you stop buying the ink or
subscribing to the service, in some cases the printer will refuse to work, just
as we used to see with mobile phones which had been locked to a single cell
carrier. In the UK and EU, the practice of locking down phones to a single
operator was outlawed some time ago and any contract phone today has to be
supplied unlocked. The same is not true for printer manufacturers, they can
hold you to ransom if you pick the wrong scheme. Remember, you’re really buying
a service rather than a printer in this instance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Printer Security…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You also need to consider how
much you care for your time. As I said earlier, some manufacturers are better
at updating firmware and drivers, Brother are excellent and my six year old
Brother which I use for everyday stuff is still being updated, almost too often.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Others that I have owned even for a
short time have stopped receiving updates to either the drivers, printer
software or firmware, rendering them pretty much redundant and certainly not
secure enough to sit on my network. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If new drivers are released and
firmware is updated, the theory is that it is supposed to be a hassle free
experience, but it’s usually not. Brother is the exception here, but others
often require me to go and search for updates and manually install them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are a few manufacturers
who do keep everything updated for extended periods but you are only likely to
find out if they do when you start using the printer over an extended period or
you do some research and take a look online at any complaints people have. I
usually find Reddit a great source of information, if there’s a sub-reddit for
the printer, it’s usually because people have an opinion. That said, Reddit are
slightly going off track at the moment in what I am calling their Elon moment
of monetising the source of a lot of their traffic. That’s maybe another blog
for another time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you do find yourself
scouring the internet for new firmware and drivers, there’s a risk that printer
manufacturers websites could be spoofed and the firmware could contain malware
and viruses, so you have to be particularly vigilant when checking websites to
validate the authenticity of both the site and the files you are asked to
download. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In my experience, printer
security isn’t generally at the top of everyone’s mind when updating a printer,
but if you imagine all of the information that you are likely to send through
to the printer, it’s fair to say that there could be a lot of very personal
information such as bank accounts, scans of passports, even lists of accounts
and passwords, so the last thing you need is a malicious driver update
capturing any of that information and sending it across the internet
unencrypted or someone using the wireless functionality of your printer to jump
on to your wireless network. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif48DnDn-HlEuId-ZlhDlvVPIWsoFgUDeslHxwCQaaMwOvdWzG7V_DtXAcYbyeoEATzImZWTrKMETDXggqZ2_y1Bhc34WN9RZAoizcW6SHvm3VJh5DIuxI4xBOqxRYyhLqjEjRmHPGDljONS8jV52pdSNc83NIf_n7MReZz3KbgSadzKun9WL7T7nPvuA/s4088/Laser%20Disc.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="laser disc player art print" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif48DnDn-HlEuId-ZlhDlvVPIWsoFgUDeslHxwCQaaMwOvdWzG7V_DtXAcYbyeoEATzImZWTrKMETDXggqZ2_y1Bhc34WN9RZAoizcW6SHvm3VJh5DIuxI4xBOqxRYyhLqjEjRmHPGDljONS8jV52pdSNc83NIf_n7MReZz3KbgSadzKun9WL7T7nPvuA/w640-h640/Laser%20Disc.JPG" title="Laser Disc by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Laser Disc by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In my professional experience,
printer drivers and printer Wi-Fi encryption are almost never a dominant
thought that will sway a buyer away from one printer to another. I think for
the most part, the public don’t really pay that much attention to the issue and
if they are aware of it, the reality of someone hijacking your print queue is
usually met with something along the lines of, who else would want to see my
kids homework print outs. It’s not the prints that are the target, it’s the
network that the printer has joined.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Although rare, it is also
possible for wireless printers to become a stepping stone for bad player to
gain unauthorised access to the rest of your wireless network and the devices
on it. Here’s a quick run through of what you should be mindful of when setting
up wireless printing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l23 level1 lfo20; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Change the default settings that come shipped
with the printer, most of them will share a default username and password, it’s
imperative that both of these are changed from the outset and if you can change
the username, change it to something that doesn’t indicate the model of the
printer, even better, change it to something that doesn't identify as a
particular device. You should do this with everything that sits on your
network.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l23 level1 lfo20; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Never leave any electronic equipment,
especially wireless routers in a position where they can be seen from the
outside. I walk past one particular house everyday and can see the home owners
wireless router on the windowsill, complete with all of the details that I
would need to access the network if I were a bad player and because it’s in
such a prominent position, that wireless signal is delivering a much better
signal across the street than it’s delivering in the lounge!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l23 level1 lfo20; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If there is a firmware update, don’t put off
installing it. These are generally issued to address the most recent security
vulnerabilities and they often make the printing experience better and in some
cases more efficient.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l23 level1 lfo20; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Make sure your Wi-Fi network is using
appropriate security, use a strong unique password and good encryption such as
WPA2 or WPA3. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l23 level1 lfo20; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Use a firewall, this can either be a software
firewall such as those that usually come with your anti-virus package, or it
can be a hardware firewall although those will be more likely on corporate
enterprise grade networks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l23 level1 lfo20; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You might have purchased the printer for its
bells and whistles, consider turning off any of the bundled services that you
don’t use as each one widens the attack surface for bad players to target and
third-party services available on your printer could be harvesting data.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l23 level1 lfo20; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If your printer offers encryption or other
security features, use them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l23 level1 lfo20; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Consider placing your printer on a different
network. This might make it more problematic to print from mobile devices but
you could look into the possibility of adding in a second router in Bridge mode
and setting up a separate wireless network that has no sensitive devices on it.
Setting a separate network up in the first place will require some networking
knowledge but there are plenty of online tutorials if you think that this is
something that you want to do.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As I said earlier, bad players
attacking a network via the wireless printer is rare, but that doesn’t mean
that it can’t or won’t happen. It’s more likely in a corporate setting and it’s
worth being pragmatic about these things. You need to be aware of the risks but
equally, a hacker isn’t going to see your network pop up on some screen the
second its powered on. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Hackers will usually be reliant
on the hooky copy of Photoshop you downloaded from a dodgy website or the hooky
copy of Office that contains malware, or you clicking on a link in an phishing
email. If your computer hygiene is generally good and you avoid such things
your risk is exponentially lowered although it never goes away. The internet is
still the wild west in the way it was when it first came out, today it’s a lot
more violent. Be careful out there.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Bare bones printing usually
comes with a high overall cost…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Cost is going to be one of the
biggest considerations regardless of what purpose you use the printer for. As I
said earlier, the payback for manufacturers is from selling ink, hopefully via
a subscription which you are less likely to avoid paying for FOMO (Fear of
missing out). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you just need a printer for
text, you don’t have to spend big, and you don’t necessarily need to buy
original replacement inks if there are compatibles available. Of course in some
cases the compatibles are going to be of a poorer quality than the originals,
but from experience that’s not always the case. There are some compatible
cartridges that cost more than the originals purporting to be a much better
quality product with a higher page yield, but again, we are usually at the
mercy of online reviews in the absence of a print lab where we can carry out
independent testing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My experience with
non-originals has varied over the years, but I have found a few that have
genuinely worked better than the originals but you do need to do your research
and you need to consider what you are printing. A third-party ink might not
have the pigment that the original inks contain and might fade much faster, or
they might even bring a range of issues and clog up the print heads which
sometimes means a replacement printer is going to be more economical than
replacing the print head. There are also inks that will definitely be far
superior to anything the original manufacturer provides and some of these also
come with a guarantee that your printer won’t break down through using them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What do you want to print?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are in the market for
something that will produce quality prints, this usually means looking at
devices at the other end of the price scale, but there are intermediate level
devices that can produce exceptional prints, although most will produce them at
a higher base price than a more expensive printer can manage, there are some
economies of scale with printing and larger devices with larger ink tanks can
be more economical.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You also need to consider
whether or not you need an all in one device that has the ability to scan,
print and copy, but bear in mind that these devices with few exceptions tend to
not be exceptionally good in any single area, they’re built for general use and
printer output is usually on a par with a lower priced stand-alone printers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Making the right choice is
hard…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Already, breaking this down to
exactly what you need the device to do should provide you with a much clearer
steer about which way you need to go. But there are so many factors to consider
and so many different use cases that you might have, so I think there is often
some merit in considering whether it is just a single device that you really
need. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are an artist, relying
on an all in one device for the scanner might be a false economy, the scanners
tend to be slow and the resolutions and quality of the scans can be poor if you
are planning to use them to scan artworks professionally. You might need a drum
scanner to get the best results but the cost of these is usually prohibitive
for most people, in which case it might be that you outsource professional
scanning rather than taking it on yourself.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I mentioned earlier that I
have a number of printers, that’s because each have their own strengths for the
wide range of jobs that come through the studio doors, but it also makes it
more cost effective overall. There’s no real benefit printing text on an
expensive dye-sublimation printer when the dot matrix can handle drafts for a
fraction of the cost. Equally, I might need something that looks a little
better than the dot matrix output or I will need to include graphics, so a low
cost ink jet will be more suited to a particular task even if the cost per print
is a little more expensive. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It's not unusual to work with
a range of printers when you are creating prints that will be sold
commercially, but to get the best value it comes down to using the devices
strategically and thinking about any wear and tear. Having printers that suit
specific needs means that you’re not putting any of the devices under a heap of
stress, but good housekeeping is something that will pay dividends. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So many types of printer…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The types of printers you are
likely to find in most retailers generally fall into three main types, but this
might limit you or lead you to the wrong decision. There are printers that can
be used for specific tasks which will make it more cost effective than assuming
that a laser jet or ink jet are the only viable options. Those are the two
technologies that most retailers will stock because they tend to be the most
popular technologies, but for some jobs, even a low cost ink jet might be akin
to using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Inkjet…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Inkjet is a technology that
covers a broad range of uses and an even broader range of printers. Inkjet
printers are popular for home and small office use because they’re often
inexpensive and easy to set up. They work by propelling tiny droplets of ink
onto the paper and they can be found at all price points from a simple office
inkjet right the way up to a commercial inkjet capable of producing top quality
prints on multiple surfaces.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Laser Printers…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Laser printers are more likely
to be found in offices but if you plan on printing mono text based documents at
home, it’s worth considering them for home use too. They’re much less expensive
than they once were and despite the toner cartridges costing more than a set of
inkjet inks, the page yields are often considerably higher, making them much
more cost effective. Toner is generally available through third-parties and
there is less risk around using third-party toners, they all tend to work in
exactly the same way and produce the same kind of results.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Colour laser printers are a
more complex proposition and they will have higher initial and ongoing running
costs, but the overall page yields almost always make them more economical than
regular inkjets. Print quality is usually great with these printers but there
may be better alternatives depending on what you want to print and the medium
you want to print on. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whichever way you go with
lasers, they’re mostly built for large volume printing and this is where they
really begin to make sense financially. The downside is in the range of print
mediums that the smaller laser jets can handle but most will be able to handle
paper and card stock, many will print on transparent film but heavy duty papers
are often more of a problem.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">All In One Printers…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sometimes referred to as MFDs,
or Multi-Function-Devices, they usually come with a heap of added benefits that
make them a great choice for the home or office user. They also come in
different sizes, some can take up the footprint of a laptop, others are floor
standing and capable of printing thousands of pages each day. The downside is
that they’re not particularly strong in any area, print, scan or copy, when
compared to the output from individual devices. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The upside is cost, it’s much
cheaper to buy an all in one and they take up so much less space than
individual components, but if quality printing is important and you need it for
commercial art prints, they’re unlikely to fulfil that need entirely. That said,
there are some that come close to perfect printing, but they will more than
likely use regular ink tanks which means that the prints will fade in time,
they can be fussy about paper type and they’re generally more suited to
everyday printing. Point to note, some still come with a fax capability as a
throwback from decades past, you need to consider how often you think about
sending a fax today.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Faxes are still sent today but
phone lines have evolved over the past few years, and that’s if you still have a
landline that can be used with them. Most Fax components of MFDs will also be
incompatible with technologies such as digital voice. It’s so much easier to
send an email!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Dot Matrix Printers…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s an old almost antiquated
technology that is still in use and there are printer manufacturers who still
make them. Dot Matrix printers are great if you only ever need to print text,
not so much if you need to print graphics. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The print head uses pins to
strike an inked ribbon which can usually be re-inked a number of times. Despite
their antique nature, most of them are pure bred work horses that also despite
their mechanical nature are relatively easy to repair. I still use one for
printing drafts and code listings, and it is the same one I have been using for
the past decade.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Modern Dot Matrix printers are
usually connected via USB but the range of devices that they work with is
limited. If you just need something for invoices or things that only you need
to read, and you want a printer that won’t break the bank when replacing ink,
they’re certainly an option. Newer ones tend to be more expensive than lower
cost inkjets initially, and their output is limited.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Photo and Dye Sublimation
Printers…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some retailers might tell you that there’s
little difference between inkjet and dye sublimation printers, if they’re
trying to sell you an inkjet, most likely because there are inkjet printers
that have rich feature sets and almost perfect printing. If you ask a retailer
who specialises in dye-sublimation, they will point out the limitations of
regular inkjets and also point out that it’s worth paying a premium for the
better technology.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you ask me, it depends on
what you want to print. If it’s photographs that can be reprinted in the future
or you are using it for anything other than commercial work, dye-sublimation
printers might be an expense that you can avoid. If you care about the
longevity of your print output or the range of mediums you can print on, then
going all in on a dye sublimation printer is the way to go and if you need to
make prints of your artwork, then a wide format dye sublimation printer is a
must have.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Dye-sublimation printers use a
heat transfer process to create prints. They utilise a special type of ink
called dye sublimation ink, which is typically in the form of solid dye panels
or cartridges. The ink is heated, turning it into a gas without passing through
a liquid state. The gas then permeates the surface of the specially coated
paper, where it solidifies and becomes fused with the paper fibres. This
results in continuous-tone prints with smooth gradients and vibrant colours.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Inkjet printers, on the other
hand, use liquid ink that is sprayed onto the paper in the form of tiny
droplets. The ink is delivered through microscopic nozzles in the print head,
propelled by thermal or piezoelectric mechanisms. Inkjet printers can produce
prints by either depositing ink directly onto the paper (known as the
"drop-on-demand" method) or by utilising an intermediate mechanism
such as a print head that transfers the ink onto the paper (known as the
"continuous ink system" method).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Aside from the longevity of
the prints that can be produced on a dye sublimation printer, you might also
want to consider the other benefits. You will get better colour accuracy, (as
long as you apply the correct colour profiles), you will almost certainly find
that the finish of the print is indistinguishable from commercially produced
photo and art prints.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Wide Format Printers…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These are available through a
range of the above technologies and are also known as large-format printers.
These are capable of printing on larger paper sizes than standard printers and
are commonly used for producing banners, posters, architectural plans, and
other oversized documents. Wide-format printers can utilise various printing
technologies such as inkjet, laser, or even UV-curable inks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are a professional
artist, graphic designer or photographer, a wide format dye sublimation printer
is almost a complete business in a box and there are some that also provide a
cutting ability similar to the ability that Cricut machines have so that
stickers and shaped works can printed out. The downside to these is the expense
with most commercial dye-sub or laser printer/cutters costing upwards of five
figures.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Thermal Printers…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My first printer in the 1980s
was a thermal printer and despite its small size, it was a useful addition to
my shiny new home computer, especially when I was typing out BASIC programs.
One of my first commercial digital artworks was sold as a thermal print, a
black image on metallic silver paper that was around four inches wide.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, thermal printers are
still manufactured and can be purchased for less than a hundred bucks. They’re
extremely useful for printing shipping labels, most will come with software or
an app that has templates which can be used with online sellers such as eBay
and Amazon, generating the relevant product bar codes, assuming you have a
barcode that has been assigned under a standard such as GS1.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are two types of thermal
printer, direct thermal with uses a heat-sensitive paper and thermal transfer
which uses a ribbon to transfer ink to the paper. The downside is that colour
thermal printers are still in their infancy and not widely regarded as being
useful for anything other than limited colour printing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Plotters…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Plotters are capable of
producing extremely high resolution prints and are useful for technical
drawings and architecture. They use markers to provide the print layer and are
generally much more expensive to purchase than other types of printer. For most
people, a plotter will be mostly redundant in that they are suited for a very
specific task and their footprint would make it impractical for anything other
than specialist use.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Impact Printers…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Slightly different to the dot
matrix printer which is also an impact printing technology, impact printers are
mostly used in certain manufacturing industries for specialist processes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Portable Printers…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Portable printers can be
useful, although not entirely practical for all of your print needs. Most of
them will have a built in rechargeable battery and they can be a fun way to
share photographs if you’re meeting up with friends and family. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">They can be extremely useful
for printing out receipts, especially if you are exhibiting at shows and
events, and they typically connect over wireless to your device. There’s no
absolute reliance to have a Wi-Fi connection, although they connect via Wi-Fi
to your device, this is typically through the printers own hot spot. Many of
the portable thermal printers work this way too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can find pocket sized
printers which are more suited to printing out snapshots and receipts, but if
you are commuting and need access to a printer that will print out business
documents, there are larger format sizes available, although don’t expect
sizing above the standard letter size or A4. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Almost from the same stable,
portable document scanners work in a similar way but my advice is to steer
clear of these as the results won’t always be any better than the scanning
feature that is integrated into modern cell phone operating systems which
utilise the phone camera with a much higher resolution than a portable document
scanner will offer.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaIWpFByipNkk_j9Lo9vFPyNt1aTlk27m9M94fY9wm18BjHMqhCYLtOxM2VThg80MAbYrFfHUrAZFIwQbUAwvKru_mqQ5T603yom5n65lzqx9tYJ5tSCN8LsyduRVGFJih5pedXc-0wwW8Xx7O9FrWjwCqEYvyEMfuCDIrk-_7dlmQDfLxipHLfCRpyyw/s4088/I%20Want%20My%20MP3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="mp3 player art print" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaIWpFByipNkk_j9Lo9vFPyNt1aTlk27m9M94fY9wm18BjHMqhCYLtOxM2VThg80MAbYrFfHUrAZFIwQbUAwvKru_mqQ5T603yom5n65lzqx9tYJ5tSCN8LsyduRVGFJih5pedXc-0wwW8Xx7O9FrWjwCqEYvyEMfuCDIrk-_7dlmQDfLxipHLfCRpyyw/w640-h640/I%20Want%20My%20MP3.JPG" title="I Want My MP3 by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I Want My MP3 by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What other things do I need to
consider?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m often blown away by the
ever increasing resolutions offered by various printer manufacturers. Printers
just keep getting better and they always seem to have ever burgeoning numbers
printed on the boxes lined up in retail stores. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">High numbers are usually a
good sign that a printer will perform, but they’re not the best and only
indicator that you should consider before parting with your cash. A printer
capable of extremely high resolution prints might not perform as well as the
printer with a slightly lower resolution. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The high resolutions offered
from new printers means on paper (excuse the pun), the biggest numbers should
produce the sharpest detail because the number of dots per inch is higher. This
should also mean that there is far more detail in the print image but that’s
not the only<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>consideration. A high
resolution print that is overly saturated will look less sharp than a lower
resolution print that is perfectly balanced. You will likely be printing at 300
dots per inch (dpi) for commercial work, so ideally anything above 600 dpi is
going to be useful, the overall resolution will then determine the detail but
bear in mind that unless you are using a wide format printer, larger
resolutions aren’t necessarily the be all and end all.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Resolution is a measure of
pixel density, not the overall size of the print. If you place a business card
next to a bill board, it’s likely that the bill board was printed at a much
lower resolution, although both look pin sharp. That’s because a billboard is
viewed at a distance so you won’t necessarily see that it is made up of lots of
dots, a business card is seen much closer and if you applied 72 dots rather
than 300 the image would be lacking any level of detail, this is because the
human eye resolves the larger lower resolution print when viewed from a
distance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">However, much of the detail
won’t come as a result of the quality of the resolution, it will come from the
medium being used, the settings that you choose, the application that you are
using to print the image from, and more importantly, whether or not you are
using the correct colour profile. I have managed to get some great results from
the cheapest inkjets by changing the settings, the paper and setting a colour
profile.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s something else that you
need to consider when buying a printer, will it support the colour profiles
used by your application, your monitor, or the colour profile of the paper as
provided by the paper manufacturer. Profiles for specific media need to be
applied to every device in your creative process so that the colour you print
is the same as the colour you see on screen.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The ink that you use will also
have a bearing on the final results, if you are using third-party inks, the
printer might not be optimised for the pigment or dye that the cartridges
contain and this can often lead to over or under saturated prints that appear
to be blurry, but bear in mind that some third-party tanks will be infinitely
better than the originals, so it’s not an easy space to navigate.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The medium that you print on
is another huge consideration, if you use low quality paper stock, it will
impact the overall quality of the print and again, this could be another
culprit for over and under saturation but loose fibres in cheaper paper stock
can clog up the print head. Good quality paper stock is usually more expensive,
but the paper tends to be slightly heavier and the manufacturer might have a
specific colour profile that can be used with that specific paper. The
brightness of the paper tends to make a difference to the colour of the print,
brighter papers will usually provide more vibrant colour.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Canson papers are generally
excellent and come with profile support, but I have found with many of the
premium papers that cheaper printers can sometimes struggle with their weight
or texture. Some glossy or lightweight papers can slip on the print rollers
meaning the printer will either jam or the print will be at an angle leaving an
inky mess inside the printer. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Getting the correct paper
weight is usually trial and error. Some printer manufacturers will state that
their printers are compatible with mediums up to a specific weight, but that
doesn’t always mean that particular weight will work, it depends on the quality
of the paper or other print medium. Papers and print mediums that are too thin,
too slippy, too thick, are all going to present an issue at some level, and
even the coating on some papers can make some printers struggle or can mean
that the ink doesn’t adhere properly to the paper. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I look at supported paper specifications
touted by manufacturers with some scepticism, from experience not all papers
are equal even if they’re the same weight. One thing you really need to know
before deciding on a printer is what kind of material you will be using, so to
give you a better idea, here’s a rough guide to figuring that part of the
equation out.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">300 GSM+</span></i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> <i>Good
quality business card or heavy card media<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">180-250 GSM Mid-Market quality
magazine cover<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">130-170 GSM Promotional
Posters and Flyers<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">80 GSM Regular everyday matte
white office paper<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">35 GSM – 55GSM A regular
newspaper<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Paper Chase…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I tend not to make any
compromises on paper, I only ever use acid-free mediums and wherever I can, I
always buy paper that’s made as close to home as possible. The environmental
impact of buying incredibly cheap paper through online marketplaces should be
something that needs to be better controlled and monitored. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The wood pulp could originate from
trees that might have been illegally felled or logged from regions where
environmental controls are not enforced, and the impact of shipping it from
somewhere like China isn’t something I can get behind. I do purchase some
papers from Italy, but those are usually very specialist and I will only use
those papers when I need an absolute guarantee of quality. I only buy recycled
paper if it carries a trustworthy certification<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>The Colour Profile…<o:p></o:p></b></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">An ICC profile is a file that
describes the colour gamut and colour rendering intent of a device. There is a
difference between the intent and the gamut, a colour gamut is the range of
colours that a device can reproduce whereas a colour rendering intent is a set
of rules that describe how colours should be translated from one device to
another.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">ICC profiles are used to
ensure that colours are reproduced accurately when they are transferred from
one device to another. For example, an ICC profile for a printer can be used to
ensure that the colours on a monitor are reproduced accurately when they are
printed so that you print exactly what you see.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">ICC profiles are typically
created by device manufacturers and in some cases, paper manufacturers. They
can also be created by third-party companies that specialise in colour
management. An ICC profile is a complex algorithm that can take many years to
refine and develop.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">ICC profiles are used by a
variety of software applications, to use one, you need to install it in the
software application that you are using. Once the ICC profile is installed, the
software application will use it to ensure that colours are reproduced
accurately.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">ICC profiles can help to
ensure that colours are reproduced accurately when they are transferred from
one device to another. This can be helpful for businesses that need to ensure
that their marketing materials look the same across different devices, such as
printers, monitors, and mobile devices and they are essential for professional
printing of artworks and photographs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">ICC profiles can also help to
improve your overall workflow by reducing the need to manually adjust colour
settings. This is one of the things that can save you a heap of time and
frustration and it means that what you print will be consistent. Never
underestimate the power of an ICC profile to contribute to having either a
positive effect on your bottom line, and when used frequently, they also have a
massive time saving benefit too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Checking Printer Settings…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Most failed prints usually
come about as a result of the wrong settings being applied or the wrong type of
paper, or print sizing being set incorrectly. It’s frustrating when this
happens even when printing everyday print jobs, when you print commercially,
every print has a defined monetary value and it becomes critical to your bottom
line. If you are using a $30 sheet of paper the last thing you want to see is a
misaligned or mis-sized print. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Checking the printer driver is
also something that can affect your print output, it’s not just about the
security an up to date driver offers, things like page yield can be affected
too. Using generic drivers can be a particular problem when you use plug and
play through Windows. Plug and play is designed to automate the installation of
a driver but if Windows cannot find the original driver it will often revert to
a generic one.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are missing useful
features on your printer and they’re showing as not available in your
application, it could be because a generic driver has been installed. The
problem with generic drivers is that they’re just that, generic and need to
work with many products. This means that the features of your printer might not
be accessible or the print quality might not be optimal. Generic drivers should
only be a temporary replacement for the authentic driver specific to your
printer, mostly because generic drivers are updated less frequently. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">They can also be responsible
for introducing compatibility issues with other applications, and especially
when working with colour profiles, that’s another good reason to take some time
researching printers and consider the manufacturers history of providing
updates. It’s another subject that often appears in so many online
conversations and looking through a few posts on Reddit recently, printer
owners are generally an unhappy bunch of users regardless of their allegiance
to any particular manufacturer, once again reaffirming the notion that mostly,
all printers suck!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Setting the print quality incorrectly
is another cause of failed prints, many printers will allow you to set a
default printing profile and then we forget and print out a letter in the best
resolution and we will print out art prints using the draft mode on really
expensive paper stock. Setting up paper sizes and margins can cause similar
issues, and leaving paper margins at the default offered by programs such as
Microsoft Word can mean you spend even more on consumables. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Decreasing the page margins
especially on drafts and print outs that very few other people will read can
make a huge difference to your consumables bill. If you are a regular user of
applications such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs or Pages, make sure you set up
your own templates with reduced margins so that you can fit more on to each
page, and I would go so far as to say that creating templates will always bring
better results than relying on the printer manufacturers software applications.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you could judge a printer
based solely on the functionality of its software and print features, that
would certainly simplify the selection. Some of the print manufacturers have
brilliant companion applications that allow you to layout your page so that
what you see in the print preview is exactly what will be printed out, really
useful for printing multiple labels on a single sheet or when you want a
selection of images on the same page, but not all printer software is equal and
some of it that gets bundled with a printer is supplied by a third-party
outside of the printer manufacturer usually in the form of a lite version. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the past when comparing two
printers side by side, I have been known to download the software before making
a commitment to the printer to give it the once over and a general kick of the
tyres. The software can often tell you more about what you are about to buy
than you can read on the box. Sometimes the manufacturer provides a mobile app
as well, and these are usually worth a download so you can at least compare the
user interfaces which are mostly more reminiscent of the Windows XP era. It is
worth checking out how often these support applications are updated too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ4WlIQ_TiprOgDgp2KJpK0TNvY9plRZi3MIydG2kHTXCmKFd0y5t9bUl4aD5AwQhsJDCuY3Qte9ktKtnytHaqHQoEF9vw-4Wclwkgud5PlIDlc3Q6LUKPkJoIeMryDyrQrqoGj_jqRkw9i1D2vTqTfczDNFdb1WZQZwIJ4btQceHG1oGPCHA1Dd4lsnM/s4088/A%20perfect%20day.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="landscape art two deckchairs on a beach" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ4WlIQ_TiprOgDgp2KJpK0TNvY9plRZi3MIydG2kHTXCmKFd0y5t9bUl4aD5AwQhsJDCuY3Qte9ktKtnytHaqHQoEF9vw-4Wclwkgud5PlIDlc3Q6LUKPkJoIeMryDyrQrqoGj_jqRkw9i1D2vTqTfczDNFdb1WZQZwIJ4btQceHG1oGPCHA1Dd4lsnM/w640-h640/A%20perfect%20day.jpg" title="A Perfect Day by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A Perfect Day by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Printer Tips and Tricks…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are some things that we
never realise will make a difference to the printer output beyond the usual
suspects of brand, paper stock quality and making sure the settings are
correct. Making sure that your print rollers are cleaned with isopropyl alcohol
means that there is less chance of paper fibres and inks building up and
leaving behind a residue that makes the paper slip, jam, or stick.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Purging your print queue can
speed up the printing process, sometimes print jobs fail to spool properly while
the printer is still attempting to resolve previous print jobs. A clogged up
queue means that your printer either fails to print or takes a lot longer than
it should. Cancelling previous print jobs that haven’t cleared should resolve
this issue.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are connecting via USB,
make sure that you are using a high speed USB cable, ideally USB 3.0. Not all
printers will support USB 3, neither will all computers, but using a high
quality cable does make a difference to the speed of the print job when
printing over a cabled connection. Remember that Wi-Fi printing will always be
slower than printing via a cable, that’s due to other network traffic using the
same bandwidth, you might also see more issues with unfinished print jobs
sitting in the print queue on a wireless network. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you can, give your printer
a static IP address on your Wi-Fi network, there are plenty of online guides
that will take you through doing this step by step, but you may have to also
consult the documentation from the manufacturer or supplier of your Wi-Fi
router. Some routers will even allow you to plug the printer into a USB port on
them so that any device accessing your Wi-Fi can then print without any issues
with your device showing an error that says it can’t find a printer on your
network. If you set this up on a PC, make sure that you also set the printer so
that it can be shared and found across other devices on your network. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whenever possible, I would
always suggest connecting the printer to either the router via USB or even
better, through a network cable, although not all printers have network
capability and not all routers will support a printer, or at least very well. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are able to do this, it
will exponentially increase the speed of printing, but one thing I would also
point out is that when you are printing, ignore the promised page per minute
speeds from the manufacturers, the results are usually collected in ideal
conditions and the printer and network will have been optimised for the test by
people who really do have a better grip on this kind of stuff than most regular
folk will have. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I wouldn’t be overly concerned
about slightly slower speeds between printers, the fastest printer on a poorly
configured network will only work at the speed that the network allows. Mostly,
it is what it is and the fastest speeds published by manufacturers will likely
be predicated on printing at the very lowest quality setting.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some applications have their
own support for some printers and it is often better than the software provided
by the printer manufacturer, although it is usually dependant on you having an
official printer driver installed so that the application can talk to the
printer and is able to understand what the printer is capable of. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When it comes to borderless
printing you might think that this is the best output which will provide the
best results, but that very much depends on the paper or other medium that you
are using. Not all papers are suitable for borderless printing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Regular inkjet papers are too
thin for photo prints and generally won’t work with borderless printing, the
ink will completely saturate the paper and the paper is unlikely to remain flat.
If you select a borderless setting and set the paper to regular inkjet, most
printer software will prevent you from doing this because you might have to
clean up an incredible inky mess but some printers will allow you to press print
and it rarely ends well.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Quality photo paper,
especially if it’s glossy doesn’t always play nicely with borderless printing
either. You need to make sure you are using a paper that specifically
identifies it as being suitable for borderless printing otherwise the ink could
struggle to adhere to the border and begin to separate from the paper. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You also need to be mindful of
colour bleed around the edges with borderless printing, if any of your other
settings are not consistent with the paper type that you are using a borderless
print can lose detail around the edges and detract from the quality of the
overall print.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><h1 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Printer Calibration…</span></b></h1><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
Printer calibration is important because it ensures that the colours you see on
your monitor are accurately reproduced on your printer. I mentioned using ICC
profiles earlier but calibration can be done in a number of different ways.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Calibration will greatly improve
the quality of your prints. When a printer is calibrated, it can produce
more accurate and vibrant colours. This can make your prints look better, but
maybe as importantly, it will save a heap of reprints and a lot of time and
frustration. Good quality paper, the correct settings, an ICC profile, and a
calibrated printer are considered the magical ingredients to produce a great
print, even from budget friendly printers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Calibration is the best way to
save money. If you are not happy with the quality of your prints, you might
reprint them after tweaking the settings, and it might take two or three prints
before you’re closer to happy. Calibrating your printer can help you avoid this
by ensuring that your prints are accurate the first time, and it means you
won’t be using excessive ink by overcompensating on some of the settings.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are a number of ways to
calibrate your printer. You can use a software-based calibration tool, or you
can use a hardware-based calibration device. Software-based calibration tools
are less expensive, but they may not be as accurate as hardware-based calibration
devices. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">No matter what method you
choose, it is important to calibrate your printer regularly. This is because
printers can drift over time, which can cause the colours to become inaccurate.
Calibrating your printer once a month or every two months can help you maintain
the printers colour accuracy. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Most printers will have some
form of calibration function, the problem tends to be that it’s rarely repeated
by the user after the initial set up, unless lines start appearing in your prints.
Calibration will use ink and I suspect this is what puts people off doing it,
but it also saves ink in the long run, it really is swings and roundabouts with
this stuff but calibrating the printer regularly will give you consistent
output and it will contribute to extending your printers life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Printer Cleaning…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Print heads and nozzles
shouldn’t need to be manually cleaned all that often if you use the printer
frequently, but they will need cleaning regularly if you don’t use the printer
for a period of time. Many printers have a self-cleaning routine, you’re more
likely to see this on printers that have a built in screen or are able to be
set up via a software application initially and it’s not a setting that you
should turn off. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The best advice I can give you
is to schedule any self-cleaning routines to a suitable time. The last thing
you need is the printer to start churning away and doing its thing during a
Teams meeting, and if you have more than one printer, set the cleaning activity
at different times. I learnt this the hard way when four of my printers all
fired up at the same time, not only did I nearly fall off my chair, the noise
of four printers doing their own thing is like being subjected to noise levels
that would usually mean wearing ear defenders.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You also need to make sure you
have at least some paper in the printer so that the cleaning routine can take
place, although it may not be needed with your specific printer, it’s better to
be prepared. I regularly find the odd page on the floor from some random
activity taking place.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When it comes to how often you
should use the printer, each printer technology will be different but any kind
of inkjet system or dye-sublimation technology needs to be regularly fed with a
print job. As a minimum, I try to make sure that inkjets print out at least two
or three times a week because this is one of the best ways to keep the nozzles
clean and longer term it reduces the amount of ink used and wasted through drying
out.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You also need to clean any
moving parts and rollers, I tend to use a cotton bud or Q-Tip with isopropyl
alcohol, or a long handled paintbrush to keep the rollers clean, it’s
surprising just how much paper dust settles on those rollers and an excess
build up will make any paper eventually slip and jam and if there’s enough of
it there could be a chance that you begin ingesting it and that’s probably not
so good.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Your Mission, make printers
suck less…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you keep on top of general
printer housekeeping they can mostly continue to do a good job for a while. I’m
yet to find the perfect modern day printer that provides me with everything I
need in a single device, but from experience, having a couple of printers and
sending specific print jobs to the right printer is a lot like having tools in
the toolbox. Just as we wouldn’t rely on a hammer to do the work of a screwdriver,
printers are really no different. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">They’re all designed and
manufactured with a specific function or range of functions in mind, the real
issues show up when we creep outside of the printers technical scope and ask it
to do what it wasn’t designed to do, or as we know from our experiences, we try
to find the printer on a wireless network. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We really have only scraped
the surface of what we need to consider when thinking about purchasing a
printer, although I think to some extent, any modern printer will generally
give you exceptional print quality, especially if you think back and make a
comparison to printers of a decade ago. In terms of output, I’ve yet to find a
modern day printer that produces results poorer than they could produce a
decade ago. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If there were a handful of
important takeaways to think about, I would certainly think about what you need
the printer for, the budget you have, and whether that budget can stretch to
either a better model or having access to a second cheap and cheerful printer
for the more regular light duty things you ask of it and keep the best printer
for the highest paying jobs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I would be less inclined to
worry about resolutions if the print output size is the size you need, and I
think I would put as much of the budget as I can into a printer only model
rather than a multi-functional device. If you already have an MFD and the
scanner works, sure you will have an extra few steps to take when photocopying,
but that non-MFD is going to give you way better results and you can buy a mint
pre-used scanner from eBay these days for very little, even professional
scanners can be affordable if they’re pre-used.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">From my own experience, rental
can work but I did find some distinctive triggers that separate when you should
buy, when you should rent and when you should buy again. You need enough work
to make rentals economical, and then you need to recognise when you reach a
critical point that might make an outright purchase a better longer term fit
for the purse strings. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Bear in mind that there’s
often some level of equipment cost versus use calculation that needs to be
considered, and take into account any depreciation and replacement costs as any
combination of these things could affect the amount of tax that you pay or even
claim back because these things can be tax deductible in some regions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The overall cost of the
printer should be thought about, there’s little value in renting a domestic
level printer that’s maybe a bit more robust than others, it’s still a domestic
printer. If you are in the market for a wide format printer that’s likely to
cost in the region of a five figure sum, rental and a service wrap might be
much more practical. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When you hit printer costs at
five figures, it’s unlikely you will be using them to only print out the
occasional piece of work, they’re more likely to be heavily used and abused and
having them professionally serviced and calibrated makes a lot of sense. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When my work is rotated into one
of my retailers, usually during the summer months, I might need to supply
anywhere between 300 and 400 prints, all of them are signed so it makes much
more sense for me to either outsource the work or to take a week off from everything
else to focus on printing. It is really horses for courses, there will be a for
and an against for anything you do but in the end it comes down to how much
difference the decision will make to your bottom line.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibnntyeKqy0BNmXIgbgPayAkG_w-eErLnvEzaVsbTvYWsY_SV8gscOM3BVaQmEQpwx39MPrWjZ0NCxB4f7Tjijzc3j3iGsV5Wu1yuyFt1ygX4Yh4daMz9VH8RvJqZlnsDXjgkwtBfIj6j2sK9qtLCYEIK07xXc_uQXbdHdOg1pMAVbBhBWFnI1pnHEwrI/s4088/circuit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="circuit board art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibnntyeKqy0BNmXIgbgPayAkG_w-eErLnvEzaVsbTvYWsY_SV8gscOM3BVaQmEQpwx39MPrWjZ0NCxB4f7Tjijzc3j3iGsV5Wu1yuyFt1ygX4Yh4daMz9VH8RvJqZlnsDXjgkwtBfIj6j2sK9qtLCYEIK07xXc_uQXbdHdOg1pMAVbBhBWFnI1pnHEwrI/w640-h640/circuit.jpg" title="Circuit by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Circuit by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Think about the other services
you can provide if you have the right printer…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I use a Cricut cutting machine
which is superb, especially when working with intricate cuts and vinyl. Matched
with a dye-sublimation printer, there’s not too many jobs that come through the
studio doors that I need to fully outsource.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I don’t routinely offer any
printing services but plenty of artists do, it’s an ideal second gate to your
business that can be a useful service to other artists in your area. If you
only have a limited number of print jobs from your own work, offering to rent
out the printer or provide a service to other artists can make it more
affordable to go for a better printer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I also use a dye-sublimation
heat press for mugs. Most of the time a client will order a mug through one of
my print on demand stores but depending on the customers location, it’s not
always economical for them to then have to pay import duties or excessive
postage. With a stock of sublimation ready mugs I can still offer the same
product, but I can also offer bespoke designs for clients. Right now I’m
processing an order for 100 mugs with retro-inspired designs, so it also
benefits my bottom line by being able to offer both design and printing without
the need for a third party. The downside is finding the time to commit to
production so you do have to consider whether this is something you can afford.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The point is that even if you
don’t have quite enough throughput to justify the printer that will make your
art prints pop, you can get creative by offering additional services. I view
high end printers as an extension to the business rather than looking at them
solely as devices that I can only use for printing my own work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you need the highest
quality printing but don’t have the volume to get the most value from a
printer, outsourcing your print jobs with a specialist local printer or using
print on demand is probably going to be the direction that you will initially
travel in, but an over-reliance on print on demand will mean that you lose that
all-important connection to your client base. You essentially do all of the
work to bring the clients to someone else’s website, where they then take the
relationship over and provide the print and you receive a fee. It’s a good
model but it should never replace that direct client relationship.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Print on demand takes the
transaction headache away but there are solutions to overcome that by using a
service such as Shopify. That said, you are then responsible for every order so
there’s the friction, either lose the relationship or retain it and work a
little harder.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are looking to own your
own printer, the question is around how much volume you intend to put through
it and if there’s not enough volume, the happy compromise would be to outsource
to a local printer. There are pitfalls here though.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Bear in mind that not all
local printers will be familiar with the standards needed when delivering fine
art prints. With this in mind, some of your printer purchase decisions will
come down to knowing your audience. If they are happy to pay a premium, they
absolutely need to receive the best possible premium quality. If they’re more
budget conscious, you have to find the middle ground, there’s always going to
be compromise involved in doing this.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The only other thing to add
today is not to underestimate the added burden and responsibility that home or
studio printing will add to your art practice. I outsource quite a bit of work,
operate via print on demand and then print special editions in the studio or
through a specialist print service that deals with fine art prints and has
access to the mediums I need from them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Despite this, the time I spend
printing in the studio still equates to anywhere between six and eight hours
each week which is just like adding another day’s work to a nine to five job so
you do have to make some additional commitments. Creating the work with a brush
or whatever your medium of choice is, is only ever 20% of the job.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjJRa9tPZl3K4zoVP4-sw3aA9NaOf81g9Iq-Ji2A7paCdqJAhJ5paQFb1uypKkQVWgTG95vvanWmFeEG-u-6FC-Y54f1TyZjsAGCnZes0PKqHjTs6XmmSXEz4pLMIFZFAgWtZ7cTuwmW3VtlshrGdeGGUbj_n6qH7JNY9S5B7hFyb7uLiGLq-3MkX_tDA/s4088/New%20England%20Fall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="New England Fall art print two trees on hillside" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjJRa9tPZl3K4zoVP4-sw3aA9NaOf81g9Iq-Ji2A7paCdqJAhJ5paQFb1uypKkQVWgTG95vvanWmFeEG-u-6FC-Y54f1TyZjsAGCnZes0PKqHjTs6XmmSXEz4pLMIFZFAgWtZ7cTuwmW3VtlshrGdeGGUbj_n6qH7JNY9S5B7hFyb7uLiGLq-3MkX_tDA/w640-h640/New%20England%20Fall.jpg" title="New England Fall by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">New England Fall by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Stay Creative!</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Hopefully, my musings today
will help you reach the right decision when it comes to selecting a printer. I’m
brutally aware that you may have even more questions now than you had when you
thought you just wanted a printer, but think of it this way. The print that the
printer creates is, for artists, a constant shop window. You need something
that will print with enough vibrancy, clarity, and crispness so that it shows
your work in the best light possible, The end result is what people will
develop a feeling for.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether you outsource the
work, do it yourself, set up a collective group of artists who share the
equipment and the costs is less relevant, the ultimate test is whether the
output is good enough to hand over or sell to those who care enough about your
work to want to own a print of it. Clients mostly don’t care that you have the
greatest printer with all of the functionality of the Starship Enterprise, they
care about how the end result looks and what it costs, and occasionally that
focus might lean more on one side than the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Owning a farm of printers is
more akin to collecting pets, they all need feeding and looking after, each
printer will also have its own set of complicated emotions that you will need
to work with, and that has to be reflected in some way through what you charge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Buying big and expensive might
ultimately be more cost-effective than buying cheap and cheerful, but either
way, there will be a learning curve to understand what the device is capable of
so that you produce consistency at every step. For me, answering the questions
where the answers didn’t appear on the box the printer arrived in was way more
useful when selecting the printer. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Good luck with your search and
if I ever do find the unicorn that is the perfect printer, I’ll revisit this
topic and let you know what it is. In the meantime, as always, stay creative,
look after each other and try not to spill ink on the carpet!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark is an artist who
specialises in vintage inspired works featuring technology and is also known
for his landscape works and the occasional abstract! He lives in Staffordshire,
England. He has been creating professional digital work since the 1980s.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can purchase Mark’s work
through Fine Art America or his Pixels site here: <a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</a> You
can also purchase prints and originals directly. You can also view Mark’s
portfolio website at <a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank">https://beechhousemedia.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Join the conversation on
Facebook at: <a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</a>
connect on Twitter @beechhouseart or waste hours on Pinterest right here: <a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</a></span></p><p></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0Staffordshire, UK52.8792745 -2.057186824.569040663821156 -37.2134368 81.189508336178847 33.0990632tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-18580643356003875072023-05-25T11:24:00.000+01:002023-05-25T11:24:15.003+01:00Digital Preservation<h1 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">: The Importance of Preserving Digital
Art and Media</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhktp5AIM92Gthobj21rBSv3kbweQFL6iohT9ruUOUQ4utIFgUliOQiqhzMhPYVf2ckVDULryknqExuwksjOCgpn-fEytsOnaB06LR1MGdC74H5S0H-6eFUHLA5UreZ8StyBFT0h-3ZwyxfWvvDPbgmcE3rzmVKyS6iF8HZ79l-hr_K5dfx2NMCIkKM/s1080/preservation%20blog.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Title image for digital preservation blog with computer and floppy discs" border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1080" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhktp5AIM92Gthobj21rBSv3kbweQFL6iohT9ruUOUQ4utIFgUliOQiqhzMhPYVf2ckVDULryknqExuwksjOCgpn-fEytsOnaB06LR1MGdC74H5S0H-6eFUHLA5UreZ8StyBFT0h-3ZwyxfWvvDPbgmcE3rzmVKyS6iF8HZ79l-hr_K5dfx2NMCIkKM/w640-h336/preservation%20blog.PNG" title="The Art of Digital Preservation" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Art of Digital Preservation</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In a world where technology is
constantly evolving, it’s tempting to get swept up in the marketing hype and
buy into the latest and in marketing speak, the greatest technologies. But do
you really need the latest technology for everything that you do and is there a
case to make sure you maintain some of that older technology as a means of
digital preservation? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This Week…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This week, we discover some of
the best ways to continue using and accessing your old technology and your collection of
files and artworks, likely built up over decades. We also take a look at the ethics of digital
preservation, the techniques and skills we need to preserve what we do today,
and begin to understand why we continue to have such a reliance on using and
revisiting outdated equipment.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKwsZfATFbHHlZrMRVMf2R7U6mmaTxEs8zEzuRl8OHT5e8eYE9NNZFgyT-FH3NnhLOMQi2rLg0X9VHYcjnLBSA6Fgx54ucDIJZXqqDOgKILtvszSkdbo9oIfHjtZGH_JCXZJAiX9RFWLs2FxIewSTyj9o7MX_GbqRMR8MsURlJqRYdOcdj3g23bqS2/s4088/Drive%20Talking.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Vintage technology disc drives, painting by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKwsZfATFbHHlZrMRVMf2R7U6mmaTxEs8zEzuRl8OHT5e8eYE9NNZFgyT-FH3NnhLOMQi2rLg0X9VHYcjnLBSA6Fgx54ucDIJZXqqDOgKILtvszSkdbo9oIfHjtZGH_JCXZJAiX9RFWLs2FxIewSTyj9o7MX_GbqRMR8MsURlJqRYdOcdj3g23bqS2/w640-h640/Drive%20Talking.JPG" title="Drive Talkin by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Drive Talkin by Mark Taylor - One of my latest artworks. Each element was individually hand drawn and painted, my usual over the top attention to detail because I love creating this stuff! Who knows, I might be the first artist to have ever painted an RJ45 cable next to a Zip Drive.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We rely on technology…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whenever we head to the stores
to pick up the latest technology, the sales and marketing people will use every
excuse in the book to upsell us on the promise of greater battery life, a bit
more zip and a little more zap, but as an artist, there are times when old
technology is vital to the process of creating our work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Artists frequently have a need
to rely on technology, whether it’s to market and sell our work, create it, or
write up those pesky bio’s that we all seem to avoid writing and rarely ever
revisit. We often use technology to store and preserve our work or research our
subject matter, to order new supplies, or engage with social media or just to
run our business and our lives. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Technology today is just as
embedded in the art process as the paintbrush. It’s an essential tool and often
one of the most expensive tools that we have, and it frequently needs to be fed
with upgrades and updates that will either cost us in terms of money, time, or
both.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Yet there are times when we
have a need to revisit older technologies, whether that technology is an old
school film camera because we need that particular grainy look, or whether it’s
to revisit files stored on that Zip Drive we invested in way back in the 90s.
The problem is that old isn’t always exactly compatible with new and that can
be problematic if you are looking for a specific aesthetic or you need to go
back and find a particular file.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Now I’ve bought that shiny new
thing, the first thing I need to do right after I’ve finished this thing and
that thing, is to make sure I transfer my old files from my old thing over to
the shiny new format. I think most of us decided to put our older technology in
the attic and we never did quite get around to transferring the old files to
new systems, so the ability to go back and revisit old technology is often a
necessity today rather than being only a nostalgic trip back to the past.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Cloud Will Burst…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Preservation of old and legacy
digital files is challenging and you have to creatively think about how you
might hang on to those old files. Old technology is mostly incompatible with
new technology, but this isn’t simply an issue that blights the preservation of
the past, we’re now beginning to see history repeating itself and we might just
be sleepwalking into an even bigger problem for the future.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The digital dream we have been
sold over the past decade is to move whatever we can into the cloud, and most
cloud services are now badged as being live services which carry ongoing
subscription costs so that we can continue to access our data. We have been
sold the benefits of cloud first for at least the past five years and over the
past couple of years we have been all in.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The pay to play monetisation
model could become a problem if you’re no longer willing or able to pay for
access, but a greater problem facing the new digital world, is that many of
these live services only remain live while they are financially viable. You
might want to take pause and let that sink in for a moment, it’s not just your
ability or willingness to pay, it’s the collective ability and willingness and
the willingness of the live service to continue.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are looking to preserve
your modern day files or even digital purchases, there really are no guarantees
that you will be able to for the long-term if you are completely reliant on a
live service. With old technology the problem today might be around keeping the
technology alive or transferring files to a new device, but with modern day
cloud and live services, the problem is that whatever you purchased or stored
today, whatever you thought you had digitally preserved, is only ever going to
be accessible while the service you pay for continues to have skin in the game.
That doesn’t mean that your data ceases to exist but it does mean that you will
no longer have the ability to access it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhInoj8rrX7f6iWlV32Mo3lkpxJ3eU8qpp0dDsjSsbd5up1P8Uq_PTodMzYx6eqDw3ST9JaMZUtjiM3hqvgU1AY6S6FjJ0nwQyrLjdsEd80PpfRxDKDU2U4VlDQXpE1jxdlGTvQ5dycBbddDivn4BjwZooZOyxDzHUbPN9B4HqBzcE1doU6PxIkTNOH/s4088/Planetary%20Target.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Abstract artwork in neon colours by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhInoj8rrX7f6iWlV32Mo3lkpxJ3eU8qpp0dDsjSsbd5up1P8Uq_PTodMzYx6eqDw3ST9JaMZUtjiM3hqvgU1AY6S6FjJ0nwQyrLjdsEd80PpfRxDKDU2U4VlDQXpE1jxdlGTvQ5dycBbddDivn4BjwZooZOyxDzHUbPN9B4HqBzcE1doU6PxIkTNOH/w640-h640/Planetary%20Target.JPG" title="Planetary Target by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Planetary Target by Mark Taylor - One of my recent abstracts inspired by the 1980s with a focus on a cloud based future.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Live services are only live
while they’re profitable and already this year, we’ve seen very new and very
young services such as Google’s Stadia shut down, and e-stores from the likes
of Nintendo and Sony are no longer available on their older devices. This means
that whatever you purchased in the past, unless you have already downloaded it
to some kind of physical storage will no longer be accessible, and if you have
downloaded the file, there is no way to update it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Unlike that Zip drive from
1999, there’s very little hope that you can ever retrieve information from
current or previous cloud services if those services no longer exist and again,
there’s a question around whether your data continues to exist. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For people like me who take
the preservation of old technology and files, probably way too seriously, old
non-cloud based technology and physical media will always have an advantage. If
you are saving your digital artwork in the cloud you really ought to be
thinking about preservation of those files in the future and have at least some
sort of plan to retrieve those files and move them somewhere else should the
live cloud service you subscribe to ever ceases to exist.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We were sold a digital
promise…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Digital preservation isn’t
just a present day problem with shuttered cloud services, we were once sold the
promise of a digital future that would enable us to forever retrieve our files
and our memories in the form of low resolution photographs from our early-era
digital cameras by using physical media such as CD ROMS. Video gamers and music
fans have been pushed towards the digital download, but at best, it’s a model
based on Blockbuster. You could say that at best, you’re not really buying
anything, you’re simply renting it only while the store front and storage plan remain
open.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">At least with physical media
we only had to worry about rot…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The promise of a lifetime
digital archive of our best moments should have come packaged with a huge caveat,
the discs will do exactly what it says on the tin so long as you continued to
keep them in museum like temperature controlled environments and never touched
them. No one ever mentioned that the coating of a CD or CD ROM would oxidise or
that poor quality control wouldn’t pick up on the use of cheap solvents and
materials used to provide a ten pack of blank CDs for the price of a candy bar.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, we know that those
indestructible, unless scratched, CD ROMS are prone to disc rot. Yes, they
still look shiny, you looked after them and kept them in their plastic Jewel
case, but that doesn’t matter. Over time, the protective layer of the disc
which is made from a layer of thin aluminium or other metals, begins to break
down due to temperature and humidity changes. Most that exist today are either
in boxes in the garage or the attic and both of those locations are hardly
conducive to preservation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another big problem for those
of us who still rely on using old technology is leakage. Either the battery in
the device leaks over time or the circuit board of the device begins to oxidise
and corrode. Plastics and rubbers break down and essentially turn to mush,
frequently leaving behind a sticky residue that takes great skill and a bottle
of isopropyl to remove, often over a period of weeks or months. Once these
materials begin to break down, there’s very little you can do to stop the rot,
although you can slow it down which will give you a little more time to properly
figure something more permanent out.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As much as I love old
technology and however much I seem to dedicate my life to preserving it, collecting
it and using it, it can be a character building test at times when all you need
to do is find that one file from 1996 and display it on a modern day PC.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Regular readers will know that
I am a huge fan of old technology, my collection includes everything from the
first 8-bit home computers to a collection of computer and technology magazines
from the 80s right the way through to the present day. I don’t just collect
vintage computers either, if it’s 80s or 90s technology of any description I’m
all in, often these devices that have since been forgotten were the very
foundations of everything we take for granted today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Preservation is something I am
way more focussed on today than I was back in the 90s, but to do preservation
properly means that you have to invest so much time in making sure that you’re
not introducing new factors that could accelerate the breakdown of the media
even further. In my mind, there is no difference between the issues we face as
artists with papers containing acids and the digital media which often
contained similar substances.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5ikgiW4sSp1vKTBSEp5uHjWLGXzQBHNOtWxFLxi79CCubJFARK3nfnnZBLHfKuHKZ7_Ut3UUbsTfD3_4uNdVBebJJtHjLXMzf1Et29ES3ngheU1643ErFrL6P_V6FmYOdxN9c0kbQixuB64yb4JVaRmO_5EzFNaVB5AZ6G37INHcuZuKAV5CCqvc8/s4088/Laser%20Disc.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="painting of a laserdisc player by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5ikgiW4sSp1vKTBSEp5uHjWLGXzQBHNOtWxFLxi79CCubJFARK3nfnnZBLHfKuHKZ7_Ut3UUbsTfD3_4uNdVBebJJtHjLXMzf1Et29ES3ngheU1643ErFrL6P_V6FmYOdxN9c0kbQixuB64yb4JVaRmO_5EzFNaVB5AZ6G37INHcuZuKAV5CCqvc8/w640-h640/Laser%20Disc.JPG" title="Laser Disc by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Laser Disc by Mark Taylor - Had so much fun creating this and then I spent almost a week painting a cardboard texture because it looks cool! No arty reasons other than me geek.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As an artist who has made a
career out of creating works inspired by the 70s, 80s, and 90s, with many, many
landscape works thrown in to reflect my love of the outdoors, I still use old
technology almost every day. It’s critical to get that certain look for some of
the commissions I take on, but it also serves the purpose of preserving the
technology and providing a mechanism to retain even some of my oldest digital
works. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Is it challenging? At times,
absolutely, but the real frustration is often not keeping things working, but
transferring old data to new systems and often, completely new and incompatible
formats. Is it worth it, absolutely, I would recommend everyone immediately set
up an archaeological expedition to the attic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s also worth keeping those
old skills that you might have already started to forget about. Technology is a
lot like fashion, it’s cyclical, that’s why we’re seeing a resurgence in people
clambering for the distraction free Walkman’s and authors are keen to get their
hands on early internet-free word processors.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I Do Modern Stuff Too…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not suggesting that anyone
abandons new technology to replace it and completely rely on something that’s a
few decades or even older, mostly we need to keep on top of the trends not just
for the supposedly better battery life, but because most of what we do these
days means that you have to have the latest operating systems and security
patches. If I need to apply for government issued paperwork or do my banking
online, I have to use an app or the latest browser which will often only work
if I have the latest operating system and therefore, the latest device to run
it on. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As I have moved from creating
art using more traditional mediums and transitioned to creating primarily
digital work, that means I’m heavily invested in the eco-systems of the big
tech giants. Yet, because of the subject matter and the huge amount of research
I like to do to accompany every single retro artwork I create, I still have a
need to plug in a 40-year old home computer from time to time. It might be when
I create authentic old school pixel art, but sometimes, it’s because the old
technology lets me do things faster and without any distractions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We shouldn’t throw away our
old technology…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Call me an hoarder, I think
most people do when they see my collection, but there is good reason to hold on
to your old technology. Not least that at some point in the future it will
officially celebrate its turning retro birthday and will inevitably become at
least as valuable as the price you originally paid for it, well in most cases,
but also because there could be a time when the files you have stored on the
device might once again be needed. There are other reasons that you might not
consider at the time you make the decision to either sell it, dispose of it or
give it away.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h3 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Because you have personal data
stored on it…</span></i></b></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are more than a couple
of reasons for not just throwing out old technology. If you have any personal
data stored on it even if you can’t access it, that doesn’t mean someone else
can’t access it. That password you used for Myspace which you still use today
is the digital equivalent of your house keys, your bank balance, and probably
your entire modern day online life. If you have used technology for a while, I
can almost guarantee that your passwords haven’t evolved quite as quickly as
the devices you are using them on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h3 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Because, the environment…</span></i></b></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s an environmental
problem facing humanity that’s not being helped by our appetite for bigger and
better. We’re all guilty of this even unconsciously, and virtue signalling by
displaying a save the planet poster and doing little else shows just ironic
humans can be. Trust me when I tell you that there are many people who will
find some use from a forty year old computer, you just think there’s very
little benefit in going there because up to date and shiny is suddenly the new
best thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h3 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Your memories are stored
within the silicon…</span></i></b></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You early memories might only
exist on the hard drive attached to the Windows 3.1 PC gathering dust in your
attic. Wouldn’t it be great to dig out those very first digital photos taken on
your very first low-pixel digital camera that you were once so proud to own?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h3 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s your artistic legacy…</span></i></b></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As an artist, your early work
is often some of your best work, although we never realise this until years
later when we have become less free in our craft. After years of being
influenced by thousands of other artists and seeing our skills leap to higher
levels, often our early works provide a much better insight into what
originally ushered us into our work. Going back and revisiting my older works
reminds me of everything that made me want an art career in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You might not think that your
early work is to the standard you meet today, but that’s kind of the point. How
else can you measure your own progress? It’s also worth bearing in mind that in
some cases, those earliest works could become increasingly desired and valuable
to collectors. I recently sold a work I created in 1992 and am now curating a
collection of works I produced in the mid-90s with the intention of recreating
them with modern tools.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h3 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The technology could be more
valuable than you think…</span></i></b></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You have old technology
gathering dust in the attic but it’s still somehow in the original box, well,
given the huge increase in the number of people now getting into the retro
collecting hobby that original iPhone, old Motorola 8800, Tandy TRS-80 or if
you’re really lucky, any early Apple computer that you might have taking up
space, could be worth much more than you think. You might want to think about
getting that kind of technology serviced and maybe even insured or gift it to
my backlog of technology that I’m slowly working on bringing back to life!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimwzeGfEApQRkNoktwQFgoVGmY6p0sZDxuHSMa2Ur1X52w-c0VZkZQon3Ds1_XsAieoaOxCRrG-viKD7hwKKteD1NMyAsB4LbupGwJ7414J-GaMc_qYy38bYCF8qgByC59tB_BLxSanz4XNrrz_CONGZrorHwSgk4RfSzIAnyy-IMD-_1LyspHpMIv/s4088/Galactic%20Feline%20Goldfish.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="goldfish in astronaut helmet worn by a cat" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimwzeGfEApQRkNoktwQFgoVGmY6p0sZDxuHSMa2Ur1X52w-c0VZkZQon3Ds1_XsAieoaOxCRrG-viKD7hwKKteD1NMyAsB4LbupGwJ7414J-GaMc_qYy38bYCF8qgByC59tB_BLxSanz4XNrrz_CONGZrorHwSgk4RfSzIAnyy-IMD-_1LyspHpMIv/w640-h640/Galactic%20Feline%20Goldfish.JPG" title="Galactic Feline Goldfish by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Galactic Feline Goldfish by Mark Taylor - I wanted to create something different and then I was asked to create a commission to create something different. The galaxy works in mysterious ways!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Fixer Upper…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I touched on some of the
technical problems that you will often find with old equipment earlier, gadgets
can be prone to all sorts of environmental factors that compromise the
integrity of the electronics and the cases or the data. But it’s worth
remembering that at one time, humans built things to last and even as recently
as the 1990s, we still had manufacturers that were proud of the products they
put onto the market and many of them hadn’t as yet contemplated outsourcing
manufacturing to the cheapest mass production facility where quality assurance
and standards can only be described as almost non-existent. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The issue we face today is
that paying a premium price for new technology is no guarantee that the goods
are going to be premium quality. I’m convinced that goods are solely designed
to be replaced at exactly one day after the warranty expires and even relying
on big brands doesn’t change this, many of the brands we knew and trusted in
the past have been wound down and consumed into mass manufacturing operations
that produce generic products with those old but well known once-premium labels
and brands written on them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That said, there are plenty of
examples where the modern day equivalent is built with better quality
components but that’s usually as a result of the components being refined over
the years to become more reliable, less expensive or both. There are plenty of
examples where the old equipment was never as reliable as we remember it, but
there are plenty of examples where the old technology has been proven to
outlast anything built today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The good news is that most of
the old technology that you might have sitting in the attic that hasn’t seen a
power source in three decades can be made to function just as, or better than
it did when you refurbish it with modern replacement components. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s also surprising at just
how often new old stock comes up for sale on market places such as eBay. Often
it will have been stored away and remained untouched and it’s not always
expensive. Today, I frequently purchase floppy discs for around the same price
I paid for them when they were being used by everyone.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I still own working Commodore Amiga
computers, I use them frequently to create artworks with applications such as
Delux Paint, the original precursor to Photoshop and produced by Electronic
Arts who are better known for creating Madden and FIFA video games today.
There’s no comparison between Delux Paint and Photoshop, Delux Paint didn’t
have layers and had almost none of the functionality that Photoshop offers
today, but it does have the ability to create truly authentic pixel art that is
almost impossible to replicate on modern day equipment or applications and
without Delux Paint, I’m not sure that we would even have Photoshop today.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVbKvaxaJPEV_mtt2OHi-nY5D-oPaeebi_FdFxAG9rXrfkXhCpVYEKfsrXj6TtqBSvCQNBdpfC0PUlYJS6WdEH_2flLbSz0kFZ6oLOGRHE04aJcY-akoeIIISL2-T1RgCeeT5HBl0vC-qqGi0FW7voMB0caC9u4SwL66tjHFXGLh4KcKjbOJog-NX6/s4088/Into%20the%20Blue.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Linear abstract artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVbKvaxaJPEV_mtt2OHi-nY5D-oPaeebi_FdFxAG9rXrfkXhCpVYEKfsrXj6TtqBSvCQNBdpfC0PUlYJS6WdEH_2flLbSz0kFZ6oLOGRHE04aJcY-akoeIIISL2-T1RgCeeT5HBl0vC-qqGi0FW7voMB0caC9u4SwL66tjHFXGLh4KcKjbOJog-NX6/w640-h640/Into%20the%20Blue.JPG" title="Into the Blue by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Into the Blue by Mark Taylor - I originally created a version of this in 1993 on the Commodore Amiga. The new file was created using Procreate on an M2 iPad Pro with refinements created within Photoshop. All hand drawn with a stylus. If you buy a print of this, consider the acrylic block because those colours really pop with some backlighting!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Most of yesterdays forgotten
technology can be brought back to life to provide many more years of use, you
can often find modern replacement components if you do have to carry out some
first aid, and in some cases you can find components such as FPGA (Field
Programmable Gate Array) chips that can become a direct hardware level
surrogate which can reliably act as an old computer or device by replicating
the old technology directly on-board the chip.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One thing I would always
recommend is to replace older power supplies with modern ones. There are a lot
of manufacturers who can still supply a power supply that has been built within
modern day safety regulations, and using a new power supply means that you are
less likely to find other issues when you power on an older device.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you do use old power
supplies, always check the plug. Wires work loose over the years and these
could present a fire risk, for the sake of a few minutes it could save a major
headache. It’s also worth checking online forums including platforms such as
Reddit. If you are using the old equipment there will almost certainly be a community
of people doing the same thing and they will have documented most of the issues
that they will have found when powering it up for the first time in decades.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Speaking Old Languages…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are a heap of reasons
why we still like to use old technologies instead of shiny new technologies
today. More often than not it comes down to it being a nostalgic anchor to the
past, but there are practical reasons too, and the use of old technology in
modern businesses is much more widespread than you might think. Alongside the
technology of yesterday, there are plenty of good reasons to keep popular past
programming languages alive and if you are serious about preservation of past
technology and formats, the old programming languages are going to be incredibly
useful but also those old programming languages are becoming incredibly useful
in supporting businesses that rely on legacy systems.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Being what some might call a
dinosaur, I still continue to use my old technology to produce authentic pixel
art and to preserve my older works but also because I still have a need to use
some legacy software that has never been bettered in the years since it was
originally released, and more often, when modern day replacements just haven’t
been created, and I’m not alone. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the past year I have been
asked so many times to help keep legacy systems up to date, or as up to date as
they can be. There are examples of old Atari computers being used to manage
booking systems for a camping site, and the financial industry still utilise
old programming languages such as COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language), which
was first introduced in 1959 to run critical business systems such as payroll
and billing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Fortran is still used in the
scientific sector particularly in fields such as physics, chemistry, and
geology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>C and C++ are two programming
languages that have been around since the 1970s and are still widely used
today. C is a general-purpose programming language that is used for system
programming, embedded systems, and game development, among other things. C++ is
an extension of C and is used for similar purposes as well as for developing
large-scale applications, such as operating systems and video games.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Lisp is a very well matured
programming language that was first developed in the late 1950s. It is still
used today in many areas of artificial intelligence and machine learning as it
has powerful features for manipulating and processing data. If there is one
language that might need to become better supported in the future, I have a
feeling that Lisp is on the list as AI continues its mission to take over the
world. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Assembly language is a
low-level programming language that has been around since the early days of
computing. It is still used today in applications that require direct access to
hardware, such as device drivers, embedded systems, and real-time systems, and
it is critical within some industrial processes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is one of the legacy
languages that I continue to use so I can create new applications on vintage
home computers and it’s a really useful language to understand when working
with emulation. It’s efficient and its ability to directly access hardware
means that applications don’t have the overhead which is at a premium with old
systems. It’s also a great way to become a more efficient programmer, a lost
art that has meant that modern day applications use much more overhead and
power to do some of the basic things you need to do when programming.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">BASIC is another language
still used in some educational settings as an introduction to teaching
programming concepts. Its simplicity and ease of use make it a good choice for
beginners who are just starting to learn programming. It is a language I have
argued long and hard over in academic circles to be integrated more in school
curriculums as it is one of the fundamental building blocks that underpins
every modern language that has emerged since.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB4ae__mvvICLKjQ7hS9r5s0BPsb83Y77B24fRg-YWL6oMMGYNEYIKxfDM2WAWnBvGa41WxBYAgJ4wS5Kk1xFIe-9EPWQolxns9vTAeeJXnEFm54MmdVmIArK0KeBPKw116isMbnx5DOhAndO2ybBRX4JD68093uZfMQMrHLUQ-3NBQX_lm8jj_cNz/s4088/I%20Want%20My%20MP3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="painting of a retro MP3 player by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB4ae__mvvICLKjQ7hS9r5s0BPsb83Y77B24fRg-YWL6oMMGYNEYIKxfDM2WAWnBvGa41WxBYAgJ4wS5Kk1xFIe-9EPWQolxns9vTAeeJXnEFm54MmdVmIArK0KeBPKw116isMbnx5DOhAndO2ybBRX4JD68093uZfMQMrHLUQ-3NBQX_lm8jj_cNz/w640-h640/I%20Want%20My%20MP3.JPG" title="I Want My MP3 by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I Want My MP3 by Mark Taylor - The original MP3 Players had batteries that could be replaced, held charge for days, and were indestructible. That's progress I guess... Once again, this is all hand drawn and painted using a stylus. Total creation time was around 9 hours.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Old Refuses to Speak to the
New…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Bringing old technology back
to life is one thing, there is very little that can’t be repaired or refreshed
these days with varying degrees of effort, but getting it to talk to modern
equipment is possibly going to be the most challenging task you will have to
overcome. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Independent retailers are
going to be your best bet in finding old mediums, if you go into a big box
chain store it’s unlikely the staff will have enough knowledge or experience to
help you figure out what you need to do to transfer old files or replace components.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With a growing trend towards
revisiting older technologies, there are now plenty of small home based
businesses and enterprises that have created entire micro-industries in
creating the components, cables and mediums that you need to make the old talk
to the new, and a lot of one time hobbyists in the vintage technology space
have come up with really useful inventions that have turned their hobbies into
fully fledged international businesses.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are good reasons to keep
a cable drawer…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That tangled mess of cables in
that one drawer that you never open is worth maintaining. If you want to
revisit old technology, replacing old cables can be one of the biggest expenses.
I recently came across a cable that allowed you to connect an old games console
to a composite connection on the TV. You could have picked these up for a few
pounds or dollars even a couple of years ago, the price attached to the one I
saw in a retailer recently was £150 or $187 US because everyone had a clear out
and most of these cable were thrown away.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you plan on using any kind
of vintage technology then it’s worth holding on to any cables that you do have.
The only cable I would say is safe to throw away would be the old Apple 30-pin
connector, but if you have an original iPhone, even that cable could add to the
already high value that the original iPhones attract. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">USB cables, whether they are the
mini, micro, or the lesser used Micro-B cables will be useful for connecting
video cameras from the early millennium years. Display port cables can still
handle resolutions up to 8K, so they’re worth holding on to too, and whilst so
many people threw their VGA monitor cables away, these are becoming
increasingly valuable as retro collectors seek out those huge CRT monitors that
we all had before the days of LCD panels. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">CRT TVs and monitors are becoming
more difficult to find in working condition, yet the demand for these amongst
the retro community has never been higher. If you have an old video camera or
Video Cassette Recorder, CRT TVs are still going to be your best bet if you
plan on transferring old video cassettes to a new format.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I can see CRTs becoming the
tech sectors equivalent to mining gold and it pains me to admit that I don’t
think we will ever see a manufacturer start making them again. We might remember
them as having a fuzzy picture but if you plan to use old technology, the
picture you get from a CRT TV or monitor is significantly better than you will
ever get from the latest 8K Ultra everything flat screen TV. Old technology was
designed to be used with CRTs and whilst you can source new cables and adapters
to convert old signals to newer HDMI standards that will work on modern TVs and
monitors, the output even if it is upscaled to the new resolution will be
generally pretty poor in comparison to the vibrancy of an original CRT. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are companies, mostly in
China that purport to manufacture new CRT TVs, but most of them are more likely
to just be taking old discarded tubes out of TVs originally destined for landfill
or recycling. The tubes are placed into new plastic cases which means that the
quality will be questionable and will never be consistent between TVs. Some
might already have screen burn making them less than useful, and I would be
nervous about plugging in technology that doesn’t have to pass the rigorous
electrical standards that we have in place today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Even if the technology is
labelled with safety markings, that doesn’t always mean that the technology has
passed any safety certifications. Entire industries have been set up in the
East to recreate authentic looking electrical safety labels, product labels and
product brand badges to feed a market of fakes. Replacement products are then
badged and sold in Western countries, usually online and shipped from China
with scant regard to safety.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">No one that I’m aware of has
the current capability to mass produce CRT TVs for the domestic market today. That
said, there are specialist vacuum tube manufacturers who continue to innovate
the technology for use in industrial applications and aviation, but it would
take an insane amount of work to bring back domestic CRT TVs, and the public
would need to buy back into the technology more widely. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is very little doubt in
my mind that there is still a market for CRT TVs, and I’m certain if a
manufacturer created a new CRT TV it would sell in enough volume within retro
and vintage collector circles to make it worth their while, but it is an
expensive technology and that would no doubt be reflected in the price they would
need to charge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the stand out features
of CRT technology and indeed, even the early flat panel LCD displays was always
the amount of connectivity that they had which allowed you to connect all sorts
of devices. Today, we’re lucky if we get 3 HDMI sockets, so we often find
ourselves buying a third-party HDMI splitter to accommodate all of the devices
we need to connect to any modern display. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Connectivity with modern day
equipment is often sparse in order to keep the costs down and there’s an
assumption made by many manufacturers that we would never need to have legacy
connections on new equipment, but that hasn’t stopped a huge market emerging to
provide all sorts of legacy connections via various cables, dongles and hubs. I
checked one high street retailer recently and asked if they had a TV with more
than 3-HDMI sockets and out of more than two dozen TVs on display, only one of
them had more than four HDMI connectors with most only having three. Even when
using modern day technology, three HDMI connectors is going to prove to be
challenging for most people.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVJOrKWnK54ujMj9C8hJH3mrD2N1XdwHlT5chJF6obYsg7pJdBNPkPrV8q2vDbarmG1uhmmVKVi9s2PnMO1wtiUXvD4HTHrZx1qkrTXDjgE1_O9XIGh1ulVA5rVFo7_Kd9-lz4w29GFFLEnP_QyHNyMTJ3ep5KV1rBmsFK3KVdeV4sS2NBVZx3CdEu/s4088/Car%20Parts%20retro%20Radio.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="vintage car stereo players artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVJOrKWnK54ujMj9C8hJH3mrD2N1XdwHlT5chJF6obYsg7pJdBNPkPrV8q2vDbarmG1uhmmVKVi9s2PnMO1wtiUXvD4HTHrZx1qkrTXDjgE1_O9XIGh1ulVA5rVFo7_Kd9-lz4w29GFFLEnP_QyHNyMTJ3ep5KV1rBmsFK3KVdeV4sS2NBVZx3CdEu/w640-h640/Car%20Parts%20retro%20Radio.JPG" title="Retro Car Radio by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Retro Car Radio by Mark Taylor - Each of these radios and the speakers were hand drawn and painted using a stylus on an M2 iPad Pro. The individual works were then assembled in a large format work. The original and prints show the detail of the plastics, each asset took an average of 10-hours of work. A labour of love or preservation of forgotten technology?</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Data Problem…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you think that preserving or
protecting your old personal data that exists on all of these old hard drives,
CD ROMS, and USB sticks is a challenge, you might want to consider how much
more of a challenge it will be in the future when you need to preserve the data from a
modern day SSD drive for example. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We will be facing a real
crisis within the next decade or so when it comes to either preserving or
deleting data that we produce today. We currently have things like end to end
encryption, and modern PCs and laptops come with SSDs rather than the hard discs
of the past. This presents a problem in that the data on them isn’t easy to
completely destroy and in some cases, it’s no possible at all. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The firmware on a modern SSD (Solid
State Drive) is designed to prevent sectors of the drive from being written
over. This means that the data is still present and if someone has some motivation
and the right tools, they will be able to recover it. We might also want to
preserve that data, so the challenges we face today in getting the old to speak
to the new are going to be exponentially harder because we will have to factor
in the encryption. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This raises another question,
what about all of the old technology that you have today that might have
personal data on the drives. If you are thinking of selling your old
technology, figuring out ways to retrieve your old data and permanently delete it
is imperative. Bad players are actively seeking out auction websites and yard
sales and buying old PCs, not because they are retro collectors looking for a
way to retrieve their old files, but because they know that there will be a
wealth of value in your old files, and on most hard drives, there will almost
certainly be enough data for the bad player to create a duplicate of your
identity. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I get gifted a lot of old
technology but the one thing I am careful about is whenever I come across
personal data. Even worse, should I ever stumble across corporate secrets if
the technology originated from a business. Nowadays I only scour the systems
for software that’s no longer available so it can be preserved and I skip around
anything personal or commercial, mostly because if I find it and let the
previous owner know, they will often have an expensive legal responsibility to
do something about it which they wouldn’t thank me for. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With any kind of data
preservation there will always be a question around the ethics. Whether those
ethical dilemmas stem from the potential to view personal or organisational
data or whether it is the ethics of sourcing ROM files for use on emulators, ethics
is a big question and the answers will often lead you into legally opaque
areas. There could very well be an argument to preserve an old operating
systems code base but what about preserving modern code that is freely
available. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The counter to this is that we
were once so poor at documentation and retention especially back in the 80s and
90s, that if it hadn’t been for software piracy we would have lost so many of
the software titles that defined the early days of home computing. Today, it’s
not uncommon to find a code dump of a popular software title from that era which
is the only working example that exists. That’s not to condone any form of software
piracy but we should be trying to find a solution to ensure what we have
available today doesn’t go the same way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’ve often thought that the
software industry should contribute to an independent global council for
digital preservation, with developers ensuring that any code is archived for
historic purposes and access to that code could then be legally controlled in
the future. It would go some way to preserve the digital only downloads that we
lose when an e-store closes, and the original authors could receive a royalty
payment should the code ever be reused or accessed in the future. Archive.org
is attempting this in some way but it falls short in that there is no mandate
for any developer or creator to think about preservation. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCZk-sve-oQfnKNFqoIHE2aUDnfUvijULsG-7e1d-oFypdm1f-Mq1QqoHcUXqBZkntB7Zc5gdO71KjXJhu8eegutwL7FclgJi4Eo1gWTD7fiERPsg5v2iur6zZ-CUTjInoqLom5t5xUE6mhx1Vcty5hXxey9g8ufdjakKf2sMW7wuvpTu5u_oBrbSp/s4088/Video%20Y2K.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro video camera from the year 2000 artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCZk-sve-oQfnKNFqoIHE2aUDnfUvijULsG-7e1d-oFypdm1f-Mq1QqoHcUXqBZkntB7Zc5gdO71KjXJhu8eegutwL7FclgJi4Eo1gWTD7fiERPsg5v2iur6zZ-CUTjInoqLom5t5xUE6mhx1Vcty5hXxey9g8ufdjakKf2sMW7wuvpTu5u_oBrbSp/w640-h640/Video%20Y2K.JPG" title="Video Y2K by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Video Y2K by Mark Taylor - These were awesome little video cameras. HD in the year 2000, built in USB connector meant no cables. Hand drawn, I reused the Planetary Target abstract I created because it perfectly sums up the period between the late 80s and early 2000s when home video was a thing that didn't need a cell phone.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Our Data Defines Us…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I suspect what we do today with
our data will define us in about a hundred years and people will be asking what
on earth we thought we were doing. We’ve only recently arrived at a point where
we are beginning to really care about what happens to our data and the truth is,
we haven’t really cared before this point and a lot of data that we wouldn’t
want out there is already out in the wild. I think the saying goes, you can’t
put toothpaste back in the tube.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So when we talk about
preservation, it’s not just the old stuff that you need to be mindful of,
preserving todays data will be exponentially more difficult in the coming years
so it’s probably worth looking at backing up that data on physical mediums
today. The issue here is that there are few, if any physical mediums that have
the kind of storage capacity that most people would need in the modern day but
you certainly need to have a data plan, even if you only have personal data to
back up.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What do we need to preserve
old files and formats?</span></b></h1>
<h3 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Optical and Physical Media:</span></b></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are of a certain
vintage or you have ever used hardware of a certain vintage, there’s a good
chance that you might have pondered how on earth would you even begin to
transfer your old files so that they can be viewed or even used on a modern
device. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Optical and physical media is
still largely available, at least for now but it will only be a matter of time
before our ability to utilise it for preservation begins to wane.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">3.5 inch floppy drives never really
went away. The 40+ year old technology has only recently been banned by the
Japanese Government for use within its own offices, and as I said earlier,
there are plenty of organisations and users who still rely on this old
equipment to run their businesses. The point here is that it’s worth doing some
homework first because the solution to do what you need to do is most likely
already being used by an entire community of vintage technology and legacy
users who have had maybe 40-years to figure this stuff out.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With floppy discs, it’s not always
easy to read and preserve original files because the discs might have become corrupted.
CD ROMS are rapidly going the same way and becoming more complicated to do
anything with for very similar reasons. The biggest issue is that modern day devices
don’t usually have the connectivity that you need to plug in old floppy drives,
and I don’t think I’ve seen a PC in at least the last five years which includes
an optical drive such as a CD ROM.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Optical CD ROM drives can
still be purchased and rather usefully, some will externally connect to a USB
port on your new PC. Rewritable CD ROM drives are also still available,
although the media you purchase for them today is generally of a low quality. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Floppies are a different
matter entirely, in part because the computer had to control when the drive
would spin, when the arm would move and know exactly when and where to place the
arm so that the computer could read the relevant data in the correct order. Modern
USB connected 3.5 inch floppy drives will have limited function for the
preservation of data if your data was created on anything other than a PC or
IBM compatible, there are options here if you find that you need a drive from
something that isn’t PC based, but most of these options will come with a very
steep learning curve.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are various ways to
still read most of your floppy discs, although to read some formats will
possibly require you to install some kind of emulator on your modern system. The
file systems and the way files are constructed are very different these days
and older computers such as the early 1980s home microcomputers rarely had any visual
user interface, you communicated with the built in programming language such as
BASIC or any of the others I outlined earlier. If you are backing up from older
IBM compatibles and early PCs, then learning the basics of DOS (Disc Operating
System) will be instrumental to any success you have with preservation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The weight of sledgehammer that
you need to crack this particular nut will vary between the complexity or
simpleness of the original system you need to somehow replicate and the
complexity of the modern day system you need the file to be transferred to.
Thankfully, most emulators that run on PC or Mac, or even on single board
computers such as the Raspberry Pi, will let you transfer old files with relative
ease. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you run an emulator on a
Raspberry Pi, you can transfer files to and from the emulated system by
connecting the Pi to the PC (or Mac) through file explorer and either Wi-Fi or
via an ethernet cable. This does involve a small level of easy tinkering, and
it usually just means connecting to your Raspberry Pi via it’s IP address over Wi-Fi.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are plenty of YouTube
tutorials that go through this and many will utilise the most likely emulators
you will be using, and the emulators really are all much of a muchness in how
they function. The difference between emulators is how well they emulate
something on your new device and some emulators will always be better at replicating
specific systems across all modern devices. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Once you know how to find the
Pi on your wireless network, you can replace the Pi with almost any device and
use the same method. If you prefer, you can use a network cable to do the same
thing and it will likely be much faster at transferring any files.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Floppy discs often take a
little more work. There are modern-day floppy disc drives available that
connect to modern equipment via USB, but there are a couple of considerations
that you need to be mindful of before attempting any type of transfer. Firstly,
floppy discs are fragile and susceptible to breaking down due to environmental
factors, and dust and dirt can cause mechanical issues with the drive and
render it useless. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Before you get too excited and
charge ahead, make sure you check every disc for visible signs of failure and
especially look out for any part of the disc that has started to erode. If you
need data from those there will be no way of guaranteeing its integrity or
condition, and it’s usually only recommended if you have some experience of
recovering data. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I regularly have to check 3.5
inch floppy discs because those are the discs where most of my early works had originally
been saved. To clean them, I use a 3D printed 3.5 inch disc frame that has
small pegs which hold the disc in place. They’re widely available on Etsy these
days and they’re much cheaper than replacing a drive. A wheel is then inserted
which allows you to turn the disc which can then be gently wiped with a cotton
bud and a drop of isopropyl alcohol.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The above is the easy part of
the great floppy challenge, the real challenge is when you need to utilise old
drives which were built into home computers such as the Commodore Amiga and
Atari ST. You have a few options here, in some cases you can source spares and occasionally
you might come across new-old stock for replacement parts, but there is no
guarantee that those parts will be available when you want them or where you
need them to be delivered.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you have an older computer
such as an Atari ST or Amiga, the modern USB replacement 3.5 inch drives which
can be picked up for around $25 US, and around £25 UK, might share the same
disk size but they are completely different technologies. Modern discs (or as
modern as a 3.5 inch disc can be) will be Double Sided, High Density, (DS/HD)
but many of the older computers with built in drives such as the Amiga used a
Double Sided, Double Density (DS/DD) and wrote in a completely different file
format and required a different drive technology.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When this happens you might
have to trigger your inner geek and go down the route of SD Card solutions that
replicate floppy discs and floppy disc controllers of yesteryear, or you could
utilise a Raspberry Pi Pico, a small $5 single board microcontroller which will
then form the basis of a project to repurpose almost any 3.5 inch floppy drive.
Arduino boards can also be found in some of these projects, but almost all of these
will need some form of other hardware to be attached in the form of a HAT
(hardware attached on top) or will need to be soldered to the original board. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">HATs or whatever term is more relevant
to your choice of single board computer (SBC) or microcontroller can be found which
perform all sorts of functions. Some will allow you to utilise original 9-pin
D-Type controllers such as those which were once used on older PCs and game
consoles, others will allow you to connect an audio cassette player so that you
can load files stored on audio or data cassettes into the emulator or core.
Most of these additional devices are inexpensive, so before you spend
significant money on rebuying all of your old cables and replacing old
equipment, it might be worth considering whether a single board computer with a
HAT device or even on its own will perform the task you need it to perform. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’ve had some success in
replicating non-PC 3.5 inch floppy discs using an SBC together with a modern
USB floppy drive, other people have figured out 5.25 inch disc projects using
the Pico, I’ve yet to meet anyone who has come up with a way of recreating the
older 8-inch formats. My advice here is to seek out pre-built projects which
come with support because some of these SBC focussed projects can be challenging
if you’re not keen on navigating the initial learning curve.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh99ajSCLexmlJZlmN_acY7NPSnavVi_tkOfUf-CHPa_wZuOUiOmV9CgvGKlf90_mfdbel9X7VfzhtO3p_hUwJumz9o5iVIDbSD26Vi4MdvDnNGFQoxZhmvDaeJMgOdXn0K_6CMWIC52_N0VjE5B2s8BMY-rd3DSkSfDEM5fU45pJCtow3x1cY12scu/s4088/Retro%20Auto.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Retro Auto artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh99ajSCLexmlJZlmN_acY7NPSnavVi_tkOfUf-CHPa_wZuOUiOmV9CgvGKlf90_mfdbel9X7VfzhtO3p_hUwJumz9o5iVIDbSD26Vi4MdvDnNGFQoxZhmvDaeJMgOdXn0K_6CMWIC52_N0VjE5B2s8BMY-rd3DSkSfDEM5fU45pJCtow3x1cY12scu/w640-h640/Retro%20Auto.JPG" title="Retro Auto by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Retro Auto by Mark Taylor - I filled my first car with speakers and only had a radio. I think 18 year olds in the 80s were all just like me!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h3 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Cassette Tape:</span></b></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the UK and Europe, disc
drives were never as popular as they were in the USA during the days of 8-bit
and 16-bit computers. This meant that while my US friends had become used to
fast loads and floppies, most of us across the pond had to load and save our
files using a very slow cassette tape that would work only when it worked which
wasn’t all that often.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you don’t have access to
the original equipment, you have limited options to transfer cassette tape
based files. My preference would be to go with an FPGA based device such as the
Mister, but that’s going to be an expensive option although you can add a HAT
that allows you to connect a cassette player to the Mister and there will be
almost no difference in compatibility. Mostly, you will need to seek out SD
Card based solutions but that won’t solve the problem of the file being on the
cassette rather than on the device.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In some cases, files can be
transferred from cassette and recreated as a digital file using a cassette
player, a mobile phone that can listen to the audio, and an application. Most
people who use this method use it to download tape files to emulators, usually
using some kind of Android based device. If you are invested in the Apple
eco-system, there’s nothing that I’m aware of, certainly through the official
App Store that would allow you to do this. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A much easier way would be to
invest in a modern cassette player with a USB port. These can be picked up for
less than $50 US, £50 UK if you look around online, most come with some
software that will enable you to backup your cassette based music collection,
just don’t expect Dolby levels of sound quality. There’s no reason why these
same devices couldn’t do the same thing with data so that the newly created
digital data can be read by an emulator, but you will need to source some
software for your PC or Mac that will convert the original analogue track into a
file type that will be readable with your emulator.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h3 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Repurpose an old PC:</span></b></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I remember a time when you
could pick up a used vintage PC for little to no money at all, and most of the
time people were happy to hand them over for free in return for taking them
away. Not so today, a 1971 era Kenbak-1 will probably cost you in the region of
$40,000 US, (only 50 were made), an Apple 1, has a current value of around
$460,000 US, but even a basic X286 PC from the 90s is likely to be worth anywhere
between $200 - $600, although you can find them cheaper depending on where you
look, the condition they’re in, and any extra’s which may be included. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro collectors are currently
buying up older PCs, almost anything is collectible and in demand and
especially PCs that utilised DOS, partly because of the brilliant games and
text based adventures that could be found on the systems at the time. The demand
is currently outstripping supply, so much so that modern day replica’s of older
PCs can often be found either as hobbyist builds or in a few cases, as
commercially produced systems and you might need deep pockets to afford some of
those.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you do have an older PC and
that’s where the files you need to preserve are, the options available become
numerous and can mostly be solved with the addition of a USB controller,
drivers, or cables. If you are using Windows, you do have an option to run some
applications in compatibility mode, the problem you might face is when you need
that compatibility to go back pre-Windows 7 in most cases, it’s not a reliable way
but it is worth a try. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There will be oddities with preserving
old files if you originally used proprietary drives such as Zip or Jaz Drives, or
any number of the drives that came on the market and competed with each other
in the early days of microcomputers and early PCs. Most of these drives were designed
to tie you into a physical media format which would have been largely
incompatible with any other drive from any other manufacturer, and because
there were once so many of these things, none of them found mass traction and
adoption. This means that you are going to be limited without replacement
drives, and in some cases you might need to be creative in how you attach those
early drives to a modern PC.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It becomes slightly easier if
you have the original technology, there will almost always be a way to transfer
files, even if you need to utilise a single board computer such as a Raspberry
Pi and set up a preservation project. This is generally where emulation can
make life much easier.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h3 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Emulation:</span></b></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Something else to bear in mind
is that whilst many of emulation based solutions will allow you to source original
ROM files from the internet, doing that is something that mostly falls into the
category that is a legally grey area. Mostly, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that area is not so grey in that it’s
definitely illegal even if you own the original file, and it’s something that
becomes complicated to do if you’re not used to running emulators, most need
you to perform at least some sort of configuration. The good news here is that
the emulation scene is big enough to offer support and most emulators are
similar in how they work that in understanding one, means that you can probably
tackle them all. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Emulators can emulate most
things on a modern day PC or Mac, including relatively recent video games
consoles, but that’s a completely different subject for someone else to cover.
What I will say, is that there is a good chance that you will be able to recreate
your old system on a new PC with an emulator to preserve your own original
files.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h3 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What can I emulate?</span></b></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">On my $70 Raspberry Pi 400, I can
emulate dozens of older systems, and almost everything I need to emulate without
turning on a modern PC. I have emulators that can recreate those old LED and
LCD table top video games along with emulators that can perfectly recreate 1980s
arcade machines right the way through to home computers and video game
consoles, although video games consoles post PlayStation 3 are few and far
between and replicating a modern console is going to tax even the most powerful
modern PC. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Emulation of early systems is
generally flawless, emulation of modern systems is almost always a choppy
experience at best, the emulators for anything from the PlayStation 3 onwards
just haven’t had enough years of development to produce a seamless experience
and arguably, that kind of technology is still relatively easy to find in
working order.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s also worth bearing in mind
that some emulators were written in the early 2000s and a few were created
during the late 1990s, so depending on what you need to emulate might require
you to either emulate an earlier system in order to emulate an even earlier
system, which is going to be character building, or it will require you to
track down some earlier hardware and work forwards from there. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some of these emulators will continue
to work well despite not being updated for many years, other emulators have
huge communities that continue to develop the code to make it compatible with
modern devices. My advice is to once again turn to the internet and track down
the communities based around the system you need to emulate, and there are some
really obscure systems so chances are that whatever you need to emulate will
have someone waiting in the wings to offer some support.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Most emulators will be Open
Source and freely available, in part because the copyright still exists for
those old systems so anyone selling you an emulator is likely to be breaching
the user agreement for distributing the software. That said, there are a few
emulators that have been created by the original manufacturers or by
organisations who now own or are closely aligned to the trademark, these will
be mostly for industrial systems which are still required for manufacturing processes
and some of them will cost money. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I use emulation a lot,
especially when I need to create 8-bit images for clients and don’t have access
to the original equipment. If I work on digital assets that will be used on
original hardware, wherever possible I will create the assets on the original
device wherever possible. For preservation, I don’t think it really matters,
what does matter is that you have a file you can continue to access.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Emulation is going to be one
of the primary tools that you will have to save your old digital work and files
before transferring the old or newly created file to your chosen storage for
preservation and use. So with this in mind, it’s worth getting a basic understanding
of what emulation is and how it generally works so you can begin to apply the
process of preservation across almost any technology or file that you will need
to preserve. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Emulation is one way of recreating
past technologies and formats, there are other ways such as creating a virtual
machine (VM) on a modern PC and installing an older operating system within
that virtual machine running within a modern operating system, but it’s not a
process I would recommend if all you need to do is transfer your first digital painting
on to a USB stick, this approach would be similar to taking a sledgehammer to
crack open an egg.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A step above emulation and a
direct replacement for owning the original equipment would be to replicate the original
hardware at the hardware level as opposed to emulating via software. It’s worth
just going through a brief explanation of software versus hardware emulation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l8 level1 lfo7; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Emulation:
Emulation involves creating a software-based replica of a hardware system or
component. It typically runs on a general-purpose computing platform, such as a
personal computer or a gaming console. Emulators mimic the behaviour of the
original hardware by interpreting the system's instructions and translating
them into equivalent actions on the host platform. Emulation can be more
flexible and easily accessible, as it allows running multiple systems on a
single device, but it may introduce some latency or inaccuracies due to the
translation process. This might still be your best bet because as I said
earlier, it matters not if you just need to preserve the file or transfer it to
modern storage mediums.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l8 level1 lfo7; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">FPGA-based
Hardware Replication: The MiSTer platform (there are other FPGA platforms), on
the other hand, utilises a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) to replicate
the behaviour of specific hardware systems. An FPGA is a reconfigurable
integrated circuit that can be programmed to mimic the functions and behaviour
of various digital systems. Instead of emulating the system in software, MiSTer
or any other FPGA device recreates it in hardware using programmable logic
elements. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This
approach aims to achieve greater accuracy by directly replicating the original
hardware's behaviour at a lower level. MiSTer uses FPGA cores that are
specifically developed for each system, providing a more faithful
representation of the original hardware's operation. For some use cases, this
might be the way you need to go in the absence of original equipment, but for
general preservation, it’s another sledgehammer that you won’t necessarily
need. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In summary, emulation involves
creating software-based replicas of hardware systems, while running a core on a
MiSTer FPGA device uses reconfigurable hardware to replicate the behaviour of
specific systems. Both approaches aim to provide a means of playing or
experiencing classic hardware and software or accessing legacy files, but
FPGA-based replication tends to offer a more accurate representation of the
original systems because the hardware it runs on becomes to all intents and purposes,
a new version of the original hardware at the hardware level.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As for what you will be able
to preserve is really down to the “cores” or systems that you are able to
emulate. The most popular ones are listed below, but it’s worth noting that
there are literally dozens and dozens of emulators available for almost any
computer or single board computer, and there are emulator packages available
for other devices such as game consoles, Mac, and older hand held devices such
as Sony’s PlayStation Vita and the recent Steam Deck from Valve. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSUSSuFULYB7wUJfz0uqXE7UxscsMBimNvH9B6sFo_Nl1DSa42tObBFurC-PKeYfvnx8mFyKUWLVCAQJBCyPFNNhMuPGdpDOX5x_gCP_gJoGpJGh6tTk7goFQF_2yeHUEpyIkjOruQXLdDoJsfojv9jaOPYfJmfoEhrAcLpdiLyWXvs4XZAgsjj19v/s4088/No%20More%20Hidden%20Figures.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="female astronaut artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSUSSuFULYB7wUJfz0uqXE7UxscsMBimNvH9B6sFo_Nl1DSa42tObBFurC-PKeYfvnx8mFyKUWLVCAQJBCyPFNNhMuPGdpDOX5x_gCP_gJoGpJGh6tTk7goFQF_2yeHUEpyIkjOruQXLdDoJsfojv9jaOPYfJmfoEhrAcLpdiLyWXvs4XZAgsjj19v/w640-h640/No%20More%20Hidden%20Figures.JPG" title="No More Hidden Figures by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">No More Hidden Figures by Mark Taylor - I find the history of women playing a major role in the Space race of the 60s an inspiring story. </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Most Popular Cores:</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro
Gaming Consoles:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">NES (Nintendo Entertainment System)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sega Genesis<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Game Boy (including Game Boy Color and Game Boy
Advance)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">PlayStation 1<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Atari 2600<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Atari 7800<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Neo Geo<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Game Gear<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sega Master System<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">TurboGrafx-16<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Nintendo 64 (limited compatibility)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Home
Computers:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Commodore 64<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Amiga<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Atari ST<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">ZX Spectrum<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">MS-DOS (using DOSBox)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Amstrad CPC<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Arcade
Machines:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">FinalBurn Alpha<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Neo Geo<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Capcom Play System (CPS-1, CPS-2, CPS-3)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Atari<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Handheld
Consoles:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Game Boy<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Game Boy Color<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Game Boy Advance<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sega Game Gear<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Atari Lynx<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Neo Geo Pocket<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Other
Consoles:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sega Dreamcast (limited compatibility)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sega Saturn (limited compatibility)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">PSP (PlayStation Portable)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Nintendo DS (limited compatibility)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">3DO<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Wonderswan<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Other
Systems:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Apple II<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">BBC Micro<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Acorn Archimedes<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">MSX<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Amstrad CPC<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sinclair QL<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Oric<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Thomson TO7/70<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">ColecoVision<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Intellivision<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 72.0pt; mso-list: l0 level2 lfo2; tab-stops: list 72.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Vectrex<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is worth noting that the
compatibility and performance of emulation can vary based on the specific
Raspberry Pi model you have if you are using a Pi, and the quality of
functionality can vary between the emulator software being used. Additionally,
certain systems may require additional configuration or BIOS files for proper
emulation which is true even if you are using an emulator from a PC or Mac, but
the emulation community reaches far and wide and support is often just a click
or two away and YouTube is a great source of reliable step-by-step instruction.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It's also worth mentioning
that new emulators and compatibility improvements are being developed
constantly, so this list may not be exhaustive and may change over time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Rather than games consoles
where it is unlikely your original files will sit, it’s more likely that you
will want to emulate an older computer. A Raspberry Pi can emulate a wide range
of popular vintage computers, and both Mister and PC/Mac are capable of running
most of them really well. Here are some examples:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Commodore
64: The Raspberry Pi and PCs can run emulators such as VICE to emulate the
Commodore 64, a popular 8-bit home computer from the 1980s.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Amiga:
Emulators like UAE4All and Amiberry allow the Raspberry Pi to emulate the
Commodore Amiga, a renowned home computer known for its multimedia
capabilities. If you need to emulate on a PC, WinUAE is one of the best for Commodore
Amiga, but you could also use an A500 Mini, a replica of the original Amiga
A500 that also emulates other Amiga models. These devices are manufactured by a
company called Retro Games Ltd and are available from places such as Amazon,
and it is a hassle free way of replicating one of the best home computers of
all time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Most
of my modern Amiga based artworks are now created on this device, purely
because it is more efficient and the use of the WHD Load functionality means
that files no longer have to exist on a single disc.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Atari
ST: The Raspberry Pi can emulate the Atari ST, another popular home computer
from the 1980s, using emulators like Hatari which is a cross platform emulator.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">ZX
Spectrum: Emulators such as Fuse and ZEsarUX enable the Raspberry Pi to emulate
the ZX Spectrum, a widely-used 8-bit home computer primarily known for its
extensive game library and despite its limited graphics and pallets is actually
one of the finest machines to create 8-bit graphics on, if you can forgive the
attribute clash where colours overlap.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">MS-DOS:
DOSBox, a DOS emulator, can be installed on a Raspberry Pi to run software and
games designed for MS-DOS-based computers but it really comes into its own when
used on a PC where any old DOS based files might be found. Certainly if you
have access to a USB Floppy disc alongside DOS Box, that might be all you
really need to begin your journey of preservation. PCem should be your go to
emulator for IBM PC and clones.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Apple
II: The Raspberry Pi can emulate the Apple II, a series of personal computers,
using emulators like AppleWin and LinApple. Apple II runs extremely well via
emulation on every device I have ever attempted to run it on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">BBC
Micro: The Raspberry Pi can emulate the BBC Micro, a popular home computer in
the UK, through emulators like BeebEm and B-Em. There are known problems with original
BBC Micro’s with a few components that haven’t aged well, but it is becoming a
popular micro for collectors in the USA who feel able to take on the challenge
of getting a PAL rather than NTSC device to power on, and the challenge of the
power supply of course. It is an unlikely source of original files, many of
which will either reside on a floppy disc (5.25 inch, and that’s an issue
without a physical drive) or on cassette which will be slightly easier to
preserve.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Acorn
Archimedes: The RPCEmu emulator allows the Raspberry Pi to emulate the Acorn
Archimedes, a line of computers known for their advanced graphics and sound
capabilities. In terms of digital art, many of the original digital artists in
the UK at least, will have had some touch point with an Archimedes and it is
feasible that old files where they still exist, might need to be preserved.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">9.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">MSX:
The Raspberry Pi can emulate the MSX, a popular home computer standard, using
emulators such as openMSX and blueMSX. MSX was a standard rather than a
computer and it was a standard that went beyond home computers. MSX was an
abbreviation for Microsoft Extended Basic, so if you do have original files
from this system it is likely that you can find far easier creative ways of
preserving them because the language was largely shared between lots of devices
from the period and it is well supported by emulators today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The
standard wasn’t as widely adopted in the West but it remained popular in Japan
and the far east more broadly, but it had some limitations mostly as a result
of each manufacturer utilising the standard but then making significant changes
between models that made them incompatible.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l3 level1 lfo3; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">10.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tandy TRS-80: Emulators such as XRoar and MAME
can be used to emulate the Tandy TRS-80, a popular line of microcomputers
produced by Tandy Corporation that found traction in the US especially where it
was affectionately better known as the CoCo or Color Computer. If you were
getting into computers during the 80s in the USA, the TRS-80 could very well
have been one of your first forays into home computing. If it wasn’t the Tandy,
then it was likely to a machine from Commodore or Atari. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This really does demonstrate
the breadth of the possibilities for emulation which should make any
preservation projects much easier, and aside from the consoles, most of the
home computers above had at least some level of graphic capability that would
lend itself to the creation of digital art. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBiZ4bsWtr0B9JAZXc9CIyo1xtddJSP1hBnehhx4YGEoqwcuOWxhcvCGTwhAEYAgJdD1Mg51S1v0IavQ55y9v9Me40m23P4QsK1QvoKWQUqmEZYhemHcH4SaGahspDfjUFUBoPP5zFGOtGz4_oavolnSOI7z4c_RXytaGqTdOupXDqR8WMt-PN9_o7/s4088/Telepoint%2092.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="vintage telepoint phone from the 90s artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBiZ4bsWtr0B9JAZXc9CIyo1xtddJSP1hBnehhx4YGEoqwcuOWxhcvCGTwhAEYAgJdD1Mg51S1v0IavQ55y9v9Me40m23P4QsK1QvoKWQUqmEZYhemHcH4SaGahspDfjUFUBoPP5zFGOtGz4_oavolnSOI7z4c_RXytaGqTdOupXDqR8WMt-PN9_o7/w640-h640/Telepoint%2092.JPG" title="Telepoint 92 by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Telepoint 92 by Mark Taylor - A precursor to the modern day cell phone, these telpoint handsets could make calls within range of a base station which could be found in restaurants and service stations along major traffic routes. When they worked... Again, this piece is all hand drawn. I would love to find an original one of these today!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It's not just art assets that
you might need to recover from old data storage mediums, recently I had the
pleasure of recovering a lost unpublished manuscript on behalf of a collector
of my work who also happens to be a writer. Originally created in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Word Perfect during the early 1980s it had originally
been stored on a 5.25 inch floppy, was later transferred to a 3.5 inch floppy
which is where it remained until two weeks ago. It’s now stored on a USB memory
stick with multiple copies in the cloud!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Video Killed the Radio Star…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not sure if video ever
killed radio or whether Netflix truly killed video, but I do know that there
are still millions of VHS and Betamax video tapes filled with distant memories languishing
in cardboard boxes. There may even be a couple of Video 2000 cassettes
somewhere amongst them too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Preserving video footage from
old 8mm film and VHS tapes was for a while during the early 2000s, a widely
held skill. We had begun to see the emergence of recordable DVD players and
many of us would attach our decades old failing videocassette players to them
and transfer our VHS tapes so that we could preserve our videocam memories onto
CD-RWs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We did the same with Vinyl
records when as the audio cassette became popular when Sony gave us the
Walkman. Everything is cyclical, Walkman is back as a brand, vinyl outsells CD,
Blockbuster still exists in Bend, Oregon, and a handful of new video rental
stores have begun to remerge over the past couple of years. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Maybe it’s the social event of
selecting a title at the gathering in the Church of Hollywood on a Saturday
night, and the shear profit that can be made from selling popcorn and Ben and
Jerry’s. Who knows, maybe it’s just a nostalgia thing that we’ll move on from.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In every attic in the land
there exists a cardboard box, and where there’s no cardboard box there is a gap
that memories of past technologies fill. In that box there will be a mish mash
of blank tapes from every conceivable format that we bought into as the next
big thing as we listen to the shouts of, “we want our memories back”.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Thankfully there’s both an app
and a dongle for that, what a time to be alive. The missing bit is the
technology that is still needed to spool that magnetic tape into a muddled mess
because the heads need cleaning. If we can lay our hand on a bargain eBay video
cassette player, we now have options.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Connecting a VHS player to a modern
display is going to be your next mission, for this you will need at least a
composite to HDMI adapter. These are cheap enough but buyer beware, the
cheapest will degrade an already degraded film even more. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You might want to spend a
little more and buy some upscaling technology, or you could find a specialist
who preserves and transfers old film, there are plenty of small independent
businesses that have managed to somehow continue making a living out of
transferring old film formats to digital files and often they can tackle the
preservation of other file types too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You might need to borrow or
buy a playback device, there are still plenty of working video cassette
recorders on sites such as eBay, my advice is to avoid the listings that
suggest what you are buying is super rare, the reality is that very few of
these devices are going to be worth more than $50 US or £50 UK. The exception
will be the devices that combine recordable DVD and Video Cassette, and because
many were manufactured without a recordable DVD, you may have to pay a premium
for these. If you already own the playback device, you will need to get it connected
to your TV or monitor, thankfully you can easily pick up composite to HDMI
cables, although in some cases you may have to use a combination of cables,
bearing in mind that the more connectivity you place between the player and the
screen, the poorer the quality<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of
picture you will see.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">To counter this, I would be
minded to play the footage back through a video capture device or card, and
again, these are readily available but I would go for something that will
upscale the resolution, and I would avoid the really inexpensive devices
because they will either lack in the sound department or the display, often
both. Get the best you can afford.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Transfer of video is usually as
simple as starting the playback on the device and using video capture software.
I would avoid any software bundled with capture cards that have been purchased
online, you will have no idea if that software contains any malicious code.
Stick to something like Premier Pro or any of the free video editing suites
such as Da Vinci Resolve or OBS Studio if finances are stretched.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Just remember to clean the heads
on the playback device using isopropyl alcohol before you start, check the
medium containing the footage for any signs of degradation, and make sure you select
the correct input source on your software.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Once you have a digital file
you can then begin the real clean up process using the video editing software.
You will need to follow similar principles for audio tapes and CDs, but the
process for capturing sound is generally much easier than it is for video.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPsMLCZLKtagQWMvK-H5nwJFtjs_hMq_5P873RqS6kLy5ZjLEgy8Bzz1uaL-eC4ZN6T9pCy3S6DYuywwJIRYn98JGnvbbU_sJ8FQxG3UMeoj9g_WORSk8X5cOk5ktxIg7a80pNCcX_NKIaoK9fqPOI6H4aJBGexv5MjKbX6v8uKt2K01lIQqZ_c-gQ/s4088/TV%201974.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro Tv artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPsMLCZLKtagQWMvK-H5nwJFtjs_hMq_5P873RqS6kLy5ZjLEgy8Bzz1uaL-eC4ZN6T9pCy3S6DYuywwJIRYn98JGnvbbU_sJ8FQxG3UMeoj9g_WORSk8X5cOk5ktxIg7a80pNCcX_NKIaoK9fqPOI6H4aJBGexv5MjKbX6v8uKt2K01lIQqZ_c-gQ/w640-h640/TV%201974.JPG" title="TV 1974 by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">TV 1974 by Mark Taylor - There was nothing like a game of Tennis on the TV in the 70s! Hand drawn because I don't believe in AI - unlike so many artists these days who love nothing more than to press a button. I have views I will one day share, but in the meantime, lazy, get a grip.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Digital Preservation Coalition…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Organisations such as the
Digital Preservation Coalition are excellent sources of information that will
help you to preserve all of your digital files, and they provide deep insights
into how you might want to pre-plan any future preservation requirements which
is essential if your current work involves digital assets that you will want to
continue to own or have available. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can find the Digital
Preservation Coalition website and its resources right here: <a href="https://www.dpconline.org/about" target="_blank">https://www.dpconline.org/about</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The DPC has various objectives
at its heart; <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<ul style="margin-top: 0cm;" type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l9 level1 lfo10; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Community:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> by
offering a warm welcome to all agencies and individuals with an interest
in digital preservation and providing an efficient and effective platform
for meaningful and sustained professional exchange.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l9 level1 lfo10; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Advocacy:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> by
working towards a climate of public and institutional policy which is
better informed and better inclined towards digital preservation.<o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l9 level1 lfo10; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Workforce Development</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">: by
providing opportunities for our members to acquire, develop and retain
competent and responsive workforces that are ready to address the challenges of
digital preservation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l9 level1 lfo10; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Good Practice:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> by
supporting our members towards greater maturity in digital preservation through
knowledge exchange, continuous improvement, horizon scanning, advice on
standards, authoritative publications, and engaging and informative events.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: 200%; mso-list: l9 level1 lfo10; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Accountable, Sustainable and Dynamic
Governance:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> by maintaining and enhancing our
organizational functions and structures to ensure good governance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Usefully, the site is also
home to the Digital Preservation Handbook which goes into great detail in
highlighting the various resources that you might need. It also provides a
strategic overview of the key issues around digital preservation, but more
importantly, it offers insight as to which tools might be more suited to
particular preservation projects.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Selecting Target Formats for
Preservation…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The best advice I can offer
anyone before you embark on any kind of preservation project is to first figure
out if anyone else has preserved the file before Archive.org is a vast rabbit
hole containing thousands upon thousands of files, applications, ROM files,
video, code, magazines, books, and I’m not sure there’s going to be enough space
here to list everything that the organisation has preserved. You can literally
spend weeks on the site just looking around, and it is also carrying out the
never ending mission of capturing the web through time points in history.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another consideration is that
not all digital formats are suitable for preservation and some might not have
been created with preservation in mind. It’s also worth noting that a file doesn’t
have to be preserved in the original format if it can be preserved in a
different format that will make access and future preservation easier. That said,
the point of preserving something is to usually preserve it in its original
format but it’s often a case of being pragmatic. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Open Source formats are the
obvious choice to ensure future compatibility but proprietary formats might be
more robust, bearing in mind that they will ultimately become susceptible to
upgrade issues and obsolescence. In most cases, preserving in an Open Source
format will provide a level of assurance in that the formats are more likely to
be technologically neutral and not reliant on business models. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The choice of file formats
becomes more limited when we consider preserving newer technologies and file
types, often the newness of something means that it’s not fully matured and
there’s less likely to be anything other than proprietary formats available. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Lossy formats, where data is
compressed or thrown away as part of the encoding will inevitably mean that you
will only be able to preserve at best, a facsimile of the original file,
elements will be missing because they were thrown away, so if preserving an
original file is critical, lossy files shouldn’t be used.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is where decisions have
to be made. The properties of a file are the essence of the file content, so
you have to consider exactly what you need to preserve and the reasons you are
preserving the file. With digital art, you will want the preservation file to
be as close to the original as possible and you will want to retain the original
metadata. The issue here is that the metadata is often stripped out by the very
tools that you will use to preserve the file.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The tools used within
preservation fall within broadly different categories and have significantly
different functions. In any preservation project you have to consider the tools
that you will use for migration. Migration is very much about transferring
unsupported and obsolete formats and converting them into new formats. We then
have to consider the tools for rendition, how will the file be viewed or played,
but there are also tools used in the process of preservation that will identify
formats or aspects of file formats which are not immediately obvious.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Validation of files is
imperative in any preservation project, and this usually requires more
specialist tools of which there are relatively few. JHOVE is one such tool and
is used for file format validation, validating the integrity of the file by
comparing the file format against a list of expected file behaviours.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One more thing that you will
need to consider as part of any preservation project, is the proliferation of
formats. Ideally, files need to be in consistent formats which will remain
supported for as long as possible, or that can more easily be migrated to any
future format. What you definitely need to avoid is to create a library of new
files in inconsistent formats. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Preserving digital art is
challenging, most images are simply saved as JPEG images which in itself is a
lossy format which is subject to degrading further, so my advice here is to
create multiples of any file you are working on. I tend to keep a JPEG for the
initial distribution, but I also keep individual copies of the file in the
original format. This means that I also retain each layer used, and to add to
the provenance of the work I also retain the files created at various stages of
completion. This way I can at least demonstrate that I was the original author
of the work, and if there are issues with the lossy files down the line, I can
recreate them. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyAU0PhD2Og5dibDWNG48EMgTqc37g6NeI1GU6jH-qqwv9xsxtUSm9bEE10Ks8kp-oGwFOmNt_9JVfO_IUf-P61au_0jR4m4Vixc7qS7DpqGkTNBOhcHtQjEdouO1B78N41n_RVNdJA63HFvUcivWGFLDSbTxx3tm_SPwCzB2XFv-dAmf7YsxP6_sr/s4088/Jurrassic%20Coast.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Jurassic Coast artwork stained glass by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyAU0PhD2Og5dibDWNG48EMgTqc37g6NeI1GU6jH-qqwv9xsxtUSm9bEE10Ks8kp-oGwFOmNt_9JVfO_IUf-P61au_0jR4m4Vixc7qS7DpqGkTNBOhcHtQjEdouO1B78N41n_RVNdJA63HFvUcivWGFLDSbTxx3tm_SPwCzB2XFv-dAmf7YsxP6_sr/w640-h640/Jurrassic%20Coast.JPG" title="Jurassic Coast by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Jurassic Coast by Mark Taylor - One of a series of landscapes I have been working on recently. This is the first to be published and originated as a commissioned work that was printed on acrylic block.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Think about preservation from
the start…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If I work on a five thousand
dollar commissioned digital artwork, I’m not going to upload it to One Drive or
Drop Box and then rely on those services to forever be the single source of
truth. I have a hosted server with a mirror for my work where it needs to be
backed up online, but most of my work will sit on at least two physical mediums
of which at least one is then stored in a completely different physical space. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the fundamental cornerstones
of the art world is that art should be well documented. Documenting your work
allows you to take your place in a rather large history book. The benefit of
doing this might ultimately only ever be useful to your family, but for artists
who will go on to be discovered more widely within the art world, this documentation
will help future generations to understand the context of your work and to
understand the process and mind behind it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We all generally accept that
an original Matisse or Van Gogh would be much more valuable if the provenance
can be proven, it’s also what helps to determine that a work is not a fake.
With digital work and digital files, or indeed any kind of electronically
stored or produced media, that distinction will prove invaluable in the future
but even before we become discovered as artists, it is one of the underpinning
principles that will ultimately make you and your work collectible, it should
be as essential as creating the work in the first place and it is at its most
basic level, what also encourages collectors and galleries to continue to
invest.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It should also form an
integral component of your plans for preserving your work, making sure that any
documentation is treated in the same way as the artwork you create. This
shouldn’t only include the artwork and the written description, it should also
include any concept sketches, files that you created as part of the final work,
and all of this should then be packaged and supplied to any buyer, especially
where those buyers are buying original work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Buyers wouldn’t expect this
documentation if they were buying an open edition print, but they would and
should be given the documentation or at least a copy of the documentation if
the work is being sold as an original or limited edition, even if it is a
digital work or print. I also think it goes deeper than that, we should be
documenting and preserving work so that we have a much better understanding of
our own journeys and progression. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If we document our work we can
revisit it. If we were professional athletes we would record every race and
play it back in the hope that we see something that we can change. I find doing
this is the only opportunity I get to take a little time out to stand back and
take a closer look at what I’m doing and where I’m going, and how much I’m progressing.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Even nearly four decades on, I’m
never completely happy with anything I create, the next work has to be better.
When I look through all of the documentation I’ve written up over the years, I
do think my technique has evolved, I think my style has become much more
refined and I know I’m much faster today than I was even five or six years ago.
If I can see that, I would hope that the documentation and the work evidences
that for collectors too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My point here is that documenting
is important for your art, it’s essential for preservation but selfishly, it’s
critical to building your own confidence and provides some self validation to
your work and your own progression. So with any plan for preservation,
documentation should be regarded as being just as critical in your thinking.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjizs94M6LXhw2aZiaQBvPbJdvBrmE5ZOXFL8OWmaTK04mmieRya0G_rKsPDsaq5fzk_u1V1pBK6xVto4eWSaMW-rtNuC4xIW3ynVJvhc3fpZ64i7FKq5bK6EFnI74IO7rPi4SwT0HJ3DxvBdXKgabWs0RRMbmmfgIufwbd4OUO3eYCu6Zv_AoMb-7P/s4088/Radiance%20In%20the%20Grove.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="abstract landscape artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjizs94M6LXhw2aZiaQBvPbJdvBrmE5ZOXFL8OWmaTK04mmieRya0G_rKsPDsaq5fzk_u1V1pBK6xVto4eWSaMW-rtNuC4xIW3ynVJvhc3fpZ64i7FKq5bK6EFnI74IO7rPi4SwT0HJ3DxvBdXKgabWs0RRMbmmfgIufwbd4OUO3eYCu6Zv_AoMb-7P/w640-h640/Radiance%20In%20the%20Grove.JPG" title="Radiance In the Grove by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Radiance In the Grove by Mark Taylor - Aspects of this were painted using acrylics, digitised using a drum scanner and depth digitally added by hand using a stylus. The light was created with a paintbrush using a dry medium and then dabbed with the edge of a steel ruler!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Future of the Cloud…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Before we conclude, I think it’s
worth reminding ourselves that preservation should be thought about even as you
start a brand new work. There are techniques and tools that we can apply and
use to bring back memories from that VHS or Betamax video tape, we can tackle
that old Word Perfect file and preserve the words so that they can continue to
be read, but we now know that all of this post-preservation takes some
considerable effort and time, in most cases it takes some financial input too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We are better prepared these
days for the likelihood that a cloud service will shut down, I think we can all
assume that whatever they once said about anything you write being forever
available on the internet, we can now disregard because while it might be
stored somewhere in cyber space for eternity in some form, that no longer means
that it will be forever accessible. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">More than that, the world is
changing rapidly and what we think we know today will without doubt change
tomorrow and we can already see the signs that the cloud as we know it today, is
evolving, maturing, and responding to changing needs, cyber threats, and bottle
necks produced by the shear volume of data that is exponentially growing second
by second, but how much will it change in the future is more of a concern, and
just how much more difficult will digital preservation be in the next decade?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I touched on the small point
that cloud services have been shuttering of late and for some, this might be a
worry in that some day, the cloud might cease to exist all together and we will
have forever lost any hope of preserving our digital lives and files. For
clarity, I don’t see the cloud disappearing entirely, or even ever, but I can
guarantee that it will become more passive in its role and it will probably play
a less significant role in favour of edge and distributed computing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Let me explain, imagine a data
centre as it exists today, it holds billions of data points all pointing to
individuals or organisations, artworks, downloads, word files, spreadsheets,
PDFs, digital purchases, music, you name it, it will have a presence in the
cloud. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Data centres are large
operations and they’re also incredibly expensive and complicated to operate.
Another issue with the cloud is that there are no obvious economies of scale
for low level users and small businesses, the more bandwidth you use, the more
storage you need, the higher the cost. However, there are some hidden economies
of scale at play here despite the costs becoming exponentially greater. If fewer
organisations relied on cloud based computing the costs would already be
prohibitively expensive. Bandwidth is up there with printer ink and gold.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But it’s the sheer size of
data centres that presents some of the biggest headaches and challenges. Not
only are they expensive to set up and operate, albeit there will be savings in
managing them with better implementation of AI, but the size of them also makes
them a target for bad threat actors who are intent on breaking into them to
steal the data they hold. Information is power and future wars will no doubt
become ever more reliant on access to data.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another problem is that masses
of computing operations are carried out in the cloud and if the bandwidth isn’t
available, it introduces a time delay or lag. If we think of a future where augmented
reality glasses finally become a thing, and more and more people utilise it and
access it, bandwidth will become even more critical. Let’s put that into some
context.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If bandwidth is at a premium
and the internet continues to grow exponentially, everything will become much
slower, because we will be forever impeded by the speed of the networks and the
speed with which we can respond by adding to that infrastructure. If you play
online games a 50 millisecond delay is enough for you to lose a game of Call of
Duty if you’re playing online. If you play competitive e-sports, that 50
milliseconds is comparable to an athlete passing the finishing line in a race
about a minute after the winner. A 10 millisecond delay through the lens of a
connected augmented reality or virtual reality device will be more than enough
to introduce motion sickness in the wearer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you’re playing Call of Duty
or experiencing a world in VR with a little motion sickness, no one dies, it’s
a bug bear that we have to shoulder and we mostly accept that it is what it is
in the hope that the bugs will be ironed out one day and networks will evolve
even more. But, until that happens, let’s place the same delays into other real
world scenarios. Imagine a 10-millisecond delay in a self-driving car
travelling at 70 miles per hour, the outcome of that delay could indeed be a
matter of life and death. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So whilst the cloud is useful
right now, there are questions about firstly, how long each service remains financially
viable, and secondly, as the world becomes more connected, is it actually fast
enough to cope. There will be instances even now, where the ideal would be for
cloud users to operate in true-real-time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">To do that, you would probably
need to be connecting to a cloud service with less than one millisecond of
delay, that’s assuming that we get to the point of all networks being able to
transmit data at the speed of light, which would mean that any cloud user would
need to be less than 93-miles away from where the data is being processed. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh48Fgs4oj03eCqRNhwwWSYui7Ub_H_GAiKl0f-BxcOtQ5-Nx8VedjNqyB7RWKVOxlwpugPIxCTnnvuXii7rdlEurx4YUX810NaFn8Hb60mfF4ZHXMg6y77PuUVFZQ7Hg9WXDImwm5DSdagX9vjiXVpljUnM9Zy4-bth4yg84sEN7zhvUZAJ2MgTCjo/s4088/Departing%20Tide.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Boat leaving the estuary artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh48Fgs4oj03eCqRNhwwWSYui7Ub_H_GAiKl0f-BxcOtQ5-Nx8VedjNqyB7RWKVOxlwpugPIxCTnnvuXii7rdlEurx4YUX810NaFn8Hb60mfF4ZHXMg6y77PuUVFZQ7Hg9WXDImwm5DSdagX9vjiXVpljUnM9Zy4-bth4yg84sEN7zhvUZAJ2MgTCjo/w640-h640/Departing%20Tide.JPG" title="Departing Tide by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Departing Tide by Mark Taylor - A simple seascape that highlights the plight of fishing crews around the world when they have to leave family behind. Originally created as a commissioned work.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is essentially where the
next iteration of the cloud begins to emerge in the form of edge computing. The
cloud as we understand will continue to underpin what we do, but its role will
become less obvious as the processing will be done on the edge of the space
between the user and the cloud service, more localised in one sense, more
decentralized in another, we might have even come full circle to some extent. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Going back to the cloud being
big enough to be a target of criminals, the idea of processing data closer to
home will make life a lot more challenging for the bad players but we are still
away, away from this being the norm. If you process or store data at home,
meaning that you’re not leaving a data footprint spread across the cloud, the data
stored closer to home becomes a smaller target, so it becomes more like finding
a needle in a haystack and the bad players have a harder time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So if the processing of data
becomes more local with the cloud then used simply as a bucket to fill with
data which in turn is processed not within the data centre but in that local infrastructure
closer to home, that has to be far more secure. That does make an assumption
that we can find better ways than we currently have to protect the edge, but
once that is achieved it could also reduce many of the current bottlenecks between
the user and the cloud service, it will become faster by default, although I
suspect we will never find a complete golden panacea.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My point is that we really
ought to be thinking about our future data at the same time as we’re thinking
about preserving our past data. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As artists who might be
creating digital works, we don’t have anywhere near the same data retention and
preservation requirements as governments and large corporations have, and the
transition to edge and distributed computing isn’t something that most of us
need be overly concerned about. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">At the level small businesses and
individuals utilise cloud services I think changes will be negligible for a
while, and any changes will mostly happen in the background without us knowing
what those changes are or mean. But one things is becoming very clear and that
is that the cloud isn’t something that we can guarantee will have permanence and
that’s why we need to develop our skills in mastering the art of digital
preservation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The extent that we do that
might even mean that we need to start thinking about reintroducing some of the
old ways of doing things but on a grander scale that allows greater retention
capability and storage capacity. It’s a challenge that might be worth getting
the jump on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Only the tip of the digital iceberg…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Hopefully you now have some
awareness of why digital preservation is critical, especially in the art world.
We have often gone to extreme lengths in the preservation of physical artworks
but there is a question around why we’re not doing it enough for digital art.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are a serious art
collector you will no doubt get excited when news that a lost Van Gogh has been
found and preserved, yet here we are at the very early dawn of digital art and
already it seems that we are less concerned about future generations becoming excited
when a lost digital artwork is uncovered. It’s as if we sometimes press the
pause button on capturing historic moments and my fear is that humanity will
look back with regret that we didn’t do a little more to preserve these still early
days of the digital revolution.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We have covered a lot already
in this article but I fear that we haven’t even scratched the surface of what
is a fascinating subject that everyone could get involved with. Preservation of
digital media has a limited window in which you can make sure that the snapshot
of history is captured for future generations. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As custodians of digital
assets in these still early defining years, surely we all have a responsibility
to do what we can so that future generations can understand how we got to the
here and now. So as I said at the beginning of this article, it’s time to put
on your best Indiana Jones hat and climb into the attic to make a start.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Until next time, stay safe,
stay creative, and look after each other!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark is an artist who
specialises in vintage inspired works featuring technology and is also known
for his landscapes. He has been creating professional digital work since the
1980s and collects vintage technology and ephemera.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can purchase Mark’s work
through Fine Art America or his Pixels site here: <a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</a> You
can also purchase prints and originals directly. You can also view Mark’s
portfolio website at <a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank">https://beechhousemedia.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Join the conversation on
Facebook at: <a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</a>
connect on Twitter @beechhouseart or waste hours on Pinterest right here: <a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0Staffordshire, UK52.8792745 -2.057186824.569040663821156 -37.2134368 81.189508336178847 33.0990632tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-41562193778115574912023-04-06T11:31:00.000+01:002023-04-06T11:31:26.967+01:00Why Automating Art Sales May Not Be the Best Idea <p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Importance of Personal Connections with Art Buyers</span></b></h1>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Pressing Pause on Automation...</span></b></h1><div><b><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaQlfkpoODbPm5xe8HTNYghDPkzHT27Vc6XC97gUYLYe1eWTrQiv1cGFC7URhUcU7nfTCIiSM1O7PRnTC6RVx4dLrYiQ7Cy7tsGztBcZCUTcrya9y6_3v4tJ9re2tfp8uYfS9G3bsQtN-kEK0kMrTPQbc0gpEc8QoLoOcK6ty4Fk995mX4AV0pdrWg/s1920/cover%20automating.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Paint cans, title slide, newspaper print, art blog cover image" border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1920" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaQlfkpoODbPm5xe8HTNYghDPkzHT27Vc6XC97gUYLYe1eWTrQiv1cGFC7URhUcU7nfTCIiSM1O7PRnTC6RVx4dLrYiQ7Cy7tsGztBcZCUTcrya9y6_3v4tJ9re2tfp8uYfS9G3bsQtN-kEK0kMrTPQbc0gpEc8QoLoOcK6ty4Fk995mX4AV0pdrWg/w640-h426/cover%20automating.PNG" title="Why Automating Art Sales May Not Be the Best Idea" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Time to reconnect with your creative flow!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In this weeks blog we will be
looking at pressing the pause button on fully automating the process of selling
art. Not because automation is inherently bad, but because there’s still a
really long way to go before we no longer have to turn up at physical art
events so that we can build strong connections with those who buy into our work
and ultimately, buy into us as artists.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><b>Treat every buyer like the
superstar they are…</b></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In a world where oil is
finally more expensive than printer ink and Old Mother Hubbard appears to be
running the world’s supply chains, never in the history of ever has it been so
important to look after those who continue to buy our work. Even more so when
those buyers continue to buy our work during a cost of living crisis amidst a
global economy that makes those self checkout machines at the supermarket
scream unexpected item in the bagging area if you buy anything other than own
brand discount tin foil.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The World Changed…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I don’t know if it’s just me
that’s noticed that the world seems to have changed dramatically since the
pandemic. Everywhere you go you are forced into utilising some sort of
technology that automates a response that you would have once expected to be
performed by a human. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another thing I noticed is how
good manners seem to have been thrown out of the window alongside the discarded
wrappings of fast foods, and it’s not just young people any more. It’s young people,
old people, and normal-aged people (53 year old males who identify as Geeks). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Three years living under the
covid cloud confronting the fragility of our existence, and an acceleration of
automation that meant we didn’t have to consider the feelings of a bot, I think
it’s fair to say that huge numbers of people are feeling disenfranchised from
the very premise of society and presence, and then we’re told we can no longer
speak to another human and we need to press 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, to join a
queue.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Automation was already nearing
hair pulling levels of frustration before the pandemic but then we spent the
best part of two years singing the virtues of non-contact shopping. The most
primordial of human instincts kicked in, and along with our need to survive, the
online shop with delivery to your doorstep, an activity which could be
completed without feeling awkward about not opening the door to the delivery
driver, became the flavour of the day. Just leave the shopping right there
buddy and take three steps back, I need to spray it with my alcohol based spray
first.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If a few years of eating alcohol
tainted bananas wasn’t enough, phone lines were replaced almost overnight with
chatbots that kept you waiting for half an hour while you shouted in capital
letters as you typed, “I WANT TO SPEAK TO A HUMAN”, and with the pandemic not
quite over but certainly over in enough people’s heads to make you feel like an
outcast if you continued to wear a face mask, I think we’re now at the point
where we need to switch some of that automation off and finally take off the
discount tin foil hats.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDOu-H_L_6eHO_TDkb6N4X5FrY7XXTZNbtjNf-MbIm-ElvOrylUVNn9F1lW6aMZSe1cerVbzK5fyRDyUoIB5eJd1tBprSZ8yDOzb3PnVmBulRjfEK-Vg7JxrTiMtYWWDyI9Ehu8koEerVVkwWRPRidFf-beL1AaHKV_xzmRFg0U_Bc068zQEV2JTEB/s4088/fry%20and%20fry%20again.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Fried food art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDOu-H_L_6eHO_TDkb6N4X5FrY7XXTZNbtjNf-MbIm-ElvOrylUVNn9F1lW6aMZSe1cerVbzK5fyRDyUoIB5eJd1tBprSZ8yDOzb3PnVmBulRjfEK-Vg7JxrTiMtYWWDyI9Ehu8koEerVVkwWRPRidFf-beL1AaHKV_xzmRFg0U_Bc068zQEV2JTEB/w640-h640/fry%20and%20fry%20again.JPG" title="Fry and Fry Again by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fry and Fry Again by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And then there are the
three-percenters…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">According to some report or
other I looked at the other week on the internet, 3% of the world’s population
enjoy speaking to Chatbots and the same people also favoured contactless
shopping. I’m not sure who those three percent are but they certainly shouldn’t
be going outside and nor should they ever be put in the precarious position of
being in the same room as a sharp object without adult supervision. I can hand
on heart say that I have never knowingly met a three percenter, or at least one
that will admit to their deep admiration of a chatbot, I mean it’s just weird.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Now we have to change,
apparently…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The rest of the world might be
eager to utilise the services of ChatGPT and fully automate their workflow, me
on the other hand, well I’m of the breed that doesn’t very much care for it. To
put some context around this, as we, or certainly I, discussed in my last
musings, I have worked with AI for years and I still stick by my words in that
it’s not yet mature enough to trust, and it’s dangerous enough to know that we
should never trust certain elements of the population to go anywhere near it,
even if it’s only the AI platforms they’re happy for us to see, you should see
what’s in the lab.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Give me time and I’m sure I
will eventually see the light, but right now, after a couple of years of
avoiding people-ey situations, I would rather have a little bit of social
interaction. Not too much because, well, people, but enough to at least go home
with a product that I didn’t feel I had to earn through pressing random numbers
on a dial pad and hoping that the right thing was in the right box when it
finally turned up.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m all for change, mostly it
can be a force for good to coin a much overused cliché, but there are some
things that really don’t need too much change because as the old saying goes,
if it ain’t broke, you don’t need to fix it, and once again I find myself using
another overused cliché, but face to face interactions really aren’t broken in
our business. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So, I’m making a pact with all
of my regular buyers right now. I am not going down the road of mass-automation,
nor am I introducing chatbots, and I certainly won’t be having some AI presence
write all of my blog posts, journalists and real authors are becoming rarer
than Panda’s lately. Note to editors here, a months long media course and paid
access to ChatGPT does not a journalist make, and yet I find so many articles
lately that are clearly the ramblings of an hallucinating AI bot.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The breaking news is that I’m
changing the way I run my business by remaining just as I am. If a buyer wants
to talk to me about my process, the weather, my views on if now is the right
time to change the UK government (it is and has been for the past 13-years..),
or the buyer just wants to have a proper cup of coffee with me that’s served in
a ceramic mug, then I’m all in. Even better if they want to pay me in cash or
vintage computers and old magazines in exchange for my art. I’m not a fan of a
bank that prevents me from walking through a set of physical doors so that I
can complain to a real human.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So yes, my business is
changing. The change here though is that I’m not going to get sucked into a
world where communication is no better than the T9 predictive text that used to
be on my original Nokia phone (still with plenty of charge all these years
later). I’m changing in a different way to every other business I hear about and
I’m going to continue doing things the old school way. How’s it going? Well, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m talking to clients face to face, and frankly,
business has never been better.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5aqS_NbaXta0bW_HSFCVv9pJzYSHxtbwKsISgd7VYIuyC0Df-svo6tZENK0oiojaZw1Ms8ofwYqYq49bNUjnQO2OibjE5Yc5iJM_1s0vPCkg-YdB8yaImPp-bFF8limUAn8YhhfdqSGdRkOGOEUbaOJhOIBIgCZRWXnunrPkRDOOP8w2W4DjUH8d-/s4088/endless%20path.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="endless path retro abstract art print" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5aqS_NbaXta0bW_HSFCVv9pJzYSHxtbwKsISgd7VYIuyC0Df-svo6tZENK0oiojaZw1Ms8ofwYqYq49bNUjnQO2OibjE5Yc5iJM_1s0vPCkg-YdB8yaImPp-bFF8limUAn8YhhfdqSGdRkOGOEUbaOJhOIBIgCZRWXnunrPkRDOOP8w2W4DjUH8d-/w640-h640/endless%20path.JPG" title="Endless Path by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Endless Path by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It's not too late to change…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is another reason for me
not to take that immediate leap and go all in on fully automating my business at
least not just yet, and that’s because my current collector base actually
prefer the old way of doing things. I know this because I asked them on our
regular Teams catch up. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We have a huddle once a month
where we put the world to rights and mostly end up reminiscing about the 80s.
It’s the monthly event that brings my collectors together and it’s also where I
showcase a couple of new works like it’s some virtual retro Tupperware party.
Good fun, and I nearly always get a sale, especially if I display public
admiration of their wine drinking capability. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What I found out the other
Sunday night was that they like a coffee and a chat while deciding what piece
of art to buy, they also like it when I treat them like rock stars even if
they’re only buying a sticker or a greetings card and I suspect the clients of
many other independent artists are just the same. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Art Ain’t A Widget…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As artists we’re not in the
business of selling off-the-shelf widgets and that is probably why as creative
types we need to think a bit differently to almost every other business out
there. It makes sense to automate a subscription service or when you only sell
widget-like things, but the sale of art involves the triggering of emotions, an
interaction and connection between the artist and the buyer that runs far
deeper than a tweet.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That said, going all in with
the technology and automating much of the process will work for many
businesses, I think the art world is unique enough to warrant a dual approach
between the old way and the new. Not least that there are many art buyers who
still yearn for the “experience” of buying art rather than only the
transaction.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A Brief History of Selling Art…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Throughout art history, the
sale of art has been a fundamental aspect of the art world. As artists we create
works that are not only expressions of our creativity but also commodities that
can be bought and sold. The ways in which art has been sold have varied over
time and across cultures, mostly reflecting changes in the economic and social
context of the art market but the fundamental principles have always remained
the same.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In ancient times, art was
often created for religious or political purposes, and the artists were
commissioned by rulers, temples, or wealthy individuals to create works that
reflected their power and status. These works were not necessarily intended for
sale, but rather as symbols of authority and wealth. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">However, some ancient cultures
did have marketplaces for art, such as the Greek agora, where sculptors and
painters sold their works to the public. Imagine if you will, a physical yet
antiquated version of Etsy, set up in a cobbled street with the buyers wearing</span><span style="color: #040c28; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 16.5pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> a peplos or chiton and a cloak which
would have been known as an himation. Not unlike some of the art and craft
fairs that we visit today to buy mass manufactured incense sticks and salt
lamps. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We do seem to have lost our
way with many of these popular monthly local art and craft fairs of late
because most of them seem to be filled with sellers hawking product they could
have got in bulk from Ali-Baba. Town councils in their desperation to bring
people back to the high street set these things up and call them artisan
markets but never consult with the local arts community to figure out the
meaning of artisan. If I were to set one up, I would hope the bar to openly
trade might be set a little higher than a physical version of Wish dot com.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Like I say, I am old school.
When I visit a local artisan market I like to buy random stuff made by artisans
and I like the conversation and occasionally the banter. I’m the same when I
visit an art gallery, I don’t want to see a collection generated by AI from the
stolen art of others, I want to know that an artist spent at least 20 minutes
creating something after spending 20 years working on their craft. That’s how
it as at one time. Physical events, professional artists, and not a bot in
sight.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">During the Renaissance in
Europe, the rise of the merchant class led to a significant increase in demand
for art, as wealthy patrons sought to display their status and cultural
sophistication. The artists of the time, such as Leonardo da Vinci and
Michelangelo, were often employed by these patrons to create works for their
personal collections. However, there were also markets for art in public
spaces, such as the Piazza del Popolo in Rome, where artists could sell their
works directly to the public. Once again, this would have been a period in
history where it would have been possible to buy hand crafted artisan products,
rather than mass manufactured incense sticks and salt lamps.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the 18th and 19th
centuries, the rise of the art market as we know it today began to take shape.
Auction houses, such as Sotheby's and Christie's, were founded in London in the
mid-18th century, and they quickly became important players in the sale of art.
Private galleries also emerged during this period, and these allowed collectors
to view and purchase works in a more controlled setting.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the 20th century, the art
market underwent significant changes due to the emergence of new art movements
such as modernism and conceptual art. These movements challenged traditional
notions of what art was and how it should be sold. As a result, new types of
galleries and art fairs emerged which catered to these new forms of art and
provided a platform for emerging artists.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, the art market
continues to evolve, with new technologies such as online marketplaces and
blockchain-based authentication systems once again changing the way art is
bought and sold. However, the fundamentals of the art market remain the same as
collectors and investors seek out works that they consider to be of cultural or
financial value. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWbGTVVmhyxwn7KVAiqvqFE_vJTcSBs3t3AIsPSxOMvA5LTWUJUIz7NIaMhN6fG6un8VDUeV8lhWwbhgsdE4Nfdd9nRqY3NZZaS4A8s2gLjHC1-rPJl_P8C2FPSkFcS50mJECcAII0Iyu0aaduSpxzoAJXimW0QRygt4ENj24d2AkGs8ijLzZ5qgEk/s4088/American%20Diner.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="American Diner Art Print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWbGTVVmhyxwn7KVAiqvqFE_vJTcSBs3t3AIsPSxOMvA5LTWUJUIz7NIaMhN6fG6un8VDUeV8lhWwbhgsdE4Nfdd9nRqY3NZZaS4A8s2gLjHC1-rPJl_P8C2FPSkFcS50mJECcAII0Iyu0aaduSpxzoAJXimW0QRygt4ENj24d2AkGs8ijLzZ5qgEk/w640-h640/American%20Diner.JPG" title="American Diner Art Print by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">American Diner Art Print by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But where the art market has
changed most is that a majority of the art market for the majority of working
artists is no longer confined to any of the above, for many buyers today
outside of the galleries and major art fairs, it’s a purely decorative need that
drives the purchase. The significant change is in what and why people buy these
days, not necessarily just how or where they buy it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s not to be disparaging
to most of the artwork that we’re more likely to come across in big box stores
or online, even galleries exist with the sole purpose of selling “art to the
masses” and it’s not to say that the art produced is produced with less talent
or skill than we witnessed from the Old Masters, but the art market today has
evolved to be more than the sum of its parts and there is no longer a single
art market (if there ever really was).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The art market of today is no
longer seen as a singular, it is many art markets that serve very different
needs and tastes but the principles of selling art are not fundamentally any
different today than they were back in the 1800s. Nodding back to even older
ways of selling art, there are now art markets that serve an even more
traditional method of trading works by utilising the good old fashioned barter
system and I really wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see more of this come
back. I’m always happy to consider a trade, so long as the trade is not the
promise of great exposure.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As I said earlier, for a lot
of people, it isn’t the transaction of an art sale that excites them, it is the
experience of an art sale that hooks them. It’s how we as artists deliver that
hook that turns non-typical art buyers into potential art collectors. So it’s
essential to understand how to provide that hook if you are an independent
visual artist running a small art business and it’s essential to the wider art
community that exists even within the major galleries. A new art buyer purchasing
a relatively inexpensive piece of decorative art today could easily develop
aspirations to visit a gallery and purchase a piece of high end fine art tomorrow.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Relying on online platforms…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As an artist, it can be
tempting to rely solely on online sales platforms such as Etsy, Amazon, social
media or even your own website to sell your work. After all, these platforms
offer a global reach, convenient payment processing, and a low barrier to
entry. As I have said many times on these pages, it’s far easier today to reach
a global audience than it is to reach a local one.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So while I sing the virtues of
doing things the old way I’m not suggesting that we step away completely from
our online world, not even just a bit. If the pandemic has taught us anything
it should be that we should have access to a number of baskets to place our
eggs in rather than just the one, and at least one of those baskets should nod
back to the time before digital took over the world.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You also need to have a
physical presence in real, not just virtual spaces…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Selling your work in person
allows you to connect with potential buyers on a more personal level and it
presents you with a unique gift that no online presence can truly provide, you
can occasionally create those deep connections that form between two humans
that can then turn casual buyers into life-long collectors. To do that, you
have to build a relationship with the buyer alongside a level of trust and
that’s a really hard thing to do really well online. Where it is done well,
there’s almost always a human doing something behind the scenes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The downside with offline is
that I simply can’t automate some of the numbers I need to manage my output and
influence my thinking. When I place my work online I get analytics presented in
a neat little grid. I get to see a lot of numbers and pretty graphs, but they
give me no real sense of who the people who are visiting my site really are. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Now I’m sure if I had access to
the kind of analytics that the likes of Amazon use, I would be able to tell you
exactly when someone will make their next purchase, I could probably tell what
they’ll be thinking in five minutes time, but us regular folk don’t have access
to anything quite like that.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With the analytics that most
of us will have access to, I can’t tell you that person A is more responsive to
the texture of the artwork, I can probably make an informed guess that they
like the colour blue because they looked at more works in that colour, but looking
at online analytics, I’m missing critical information that makes it easy for me
to work out not just the kind of artwork they’re more likely to buy, but the
kind of artwork that I really should be more focussed on creating.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Most of us have some level of
access to online analytics platforms that do a very good job, but everything I
do after looking through the virtual numbers is only ever going to be reactive.
A thousand people might have viewed a particular artwork during the day but
there’s nothing that I can do in the moment to try and persuade the 990 people
who didn’t buy a print or an original to part with their money, I can’t be
proactive in the way that I can be face to face.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">By participating in art shows,
gallery exhibitions, or even setting up a pop-up shop in a local market, you
have the opportunity to meet your audience face to face, hear their feedback,
and answer their questions about your work. This type of interaction builds
trust and can lead to long-term relationships with collectors who will continue
to support your art in the future.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Additionally, participating in
offline events and exhibitions can help you build your reputation as an artist.
By being present in the local arts community and participating in events, you
increase your visibility and the chances of being discovered by curators,
collectors, and other art professionals who can help take your career to the
next level.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhndKqYEQe2dK6aZWsinC0f4SAvyJ-9n_euGCzqyGpsUtEqSCpcrcD_lr5qPW-5upVu66hqdANG2ezOIgPAusyb9CHTntzFYHv9-cpad76USfowychoRoVQGEubp-2oaJ92GGSmCXjCC8zU90zhzpS--nkc0fQ-Swweq1hizNQ2Jjq161010a-CRklR/s4088/90s%20digital%20camera.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="90s digital camera art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhndKqYEQe2dK6aZWsinC0f4SAvyJ-9n_euGCzqyGpsUtEqSCpcrcD_lr5qPW-5upVu66hqdANG2ezOIgPAusyb9CHTntzFYHv9-cpad76USfowychoRoVQGEubp-2oaJ92GGSmCXjCC8zU90zhzpS--nkc0fQ-Swweq1hizNQ2Jjq161010a-CRklR/w640-h640/90s%20digital%20camera.JPG" title="90s Digital Camera Art Print by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">90s Digital Camera Art Print by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another advantage of offline
sales is the potential for higher profit margins. While online sales platforms
offer convenience and a potentially large customer base, they often charge fees
for listing, processing payments, and shipping. We might balk at the thought of
being represented by a gallery who then take 50% of the sale, but some of these
online marketplaces are happiest when you’re only making ten percent of the
total sale and you’re doing all of the work when it comes to encouraging
customers to visit. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">By selling your work in
person, you mostly eliminate these fees and can potentially make a higher
profit on each sale. You still have business costs, and there’s the matter of
your time, but adding people into the mix when few others are doing that, is
now seen as being something very different from what’s rapidly becoming the
norm. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s also worth bearing in
mind that when you market and sell your work offline, you choose the art you
are surrounded by. Online, that gift is not usually within your reach, your
closest competitor could set up shop right next door, or even on the same web
page, or even worse, you could be the only human in a page of bots.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These marketplaces have a
place, but they should be used as another outlet, a tool, rather than being set
up in the hope that they become a passive income generating gravy train, but so
many artists fall for the promise of automating an income, and from experience,
that rarely ever happens.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Relying on automation to fully
look after your business is also fundamentally deskilling you, and if you don’t
have the business skills already, they’ll hamper you when you eventually need
them. Participating in offline sales can help you hone your marketing and sales
skills but more than that, I’ve yet to come across any technology that can take
critical business decisions based on years of experience as a creator and that
all-important gut instinct. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If I take on a commission I
need to qualify the commissioner so I can feel confident about being paid, if I
left that to AI, right now, I don’t think it’s yet capable of instinctively
knowing when something is off. Artists have for a long time been targets for
scammers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">By interacting with customers
in person and observing their reactions to your work, you can gain valuable
insights into what resonates with your audience and how to communicate the
value of your work. This knowledge can then be applied to your online sales
strategy, making it more effective and efficient and that human response is
priceless, never underestimate just how much it tells you about you need to
know about what you need to include in your next creation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You might have to focus on an
offline business model in the future…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Not to scare the horses here,
but the world of social media is changing and because social media is the
bedrock on online marketing, this becomes a worry on so many fronts. Forget the
cancel culture if you inadvertently offend a bot, that’s just one issue with
the potential to sink a business. The new worry for small businesses is that
these platforms are on the brink of massive change or collapse without some
serious financial injections that will replace the pots of gold they became accustomed
too when people were less concerned about privacy and the days when people
clicked on ads.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Twitter platform under
Musk has realised what most of us on the outer fringes have realised for years,
running a social media platform is expensive and when regulation and
legislation prevent the tech giants from harvesting your data in the same way
that they were doing less than a decade ago, the monetisation of those
platforms has to come from somewhere else and the only other place they can
turn to, is either online ads or you.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Let’s face it, in some way we
have always funded social media and we have always paid a high price to use it.
We have handed over access to our lives in ways that often, even our family or
partners would be oblivious to. We shared our lives and innermost thoughts
voluntarily for years while knowing deep down it was a problem, and then it
became a problem in the open and we were all outraged that companies could take
our personal data and do a bunch of other stuff with it like sell it. It was
all too late, they already had it and then we began to find out what they
really did with it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It was the sale and sharing of
this data that funded the access we had that meant we didn’t need to reach into
our pockets and pay to post with physical cash. Online Ad spend replaced the
data sales for a while, albeit that online ads were more than likely never
quite as fruitful as the data sales, and while it was a steady income it was
one that eventually wasn’t quite enough to continue paying the rent especially
when privacy restrictions started applying to online ads as well. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With an expensive platform
left to run and diminishing income, It would be a momentous task to then ask
the end user to start paying with money directly out of their pockets because
since the very start of social media, the tech giants have done nothing but
condition end users to expect the services for free, and somehow, now it’s our
problem.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Enter from stage right,
twitter blue. Musk’s latest attempt at monetising something that everyone had
been getting for free in an attempt to pay back the millions of dollars a day
that twitter was loosing. This was partly because twitter had found itself in a
place that needed to be fed with constant hires and increasingly more
infrastructure at a time during the pandemic when infrastructure was at a
premium. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As the bubble of Twitter began
to stretch beyond its income, something that was likely happening way before
the pandemic, it was inevitable that at some point it would begin to rip at the
seams. Once the reliance on Twitter and social media more widely went back
towards pre-pandemic levels, albeit lower levels because people were fed up
with the division and prejudice and all that other stuff, there was no longer a
need for the additional hires and the number of people jettisoning the platform
would put the need for the additional infrastructure into question. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Something had to change in its
delivery and Musk’s litmus test of moving the income generation towards end
users to fund the platform rather than advertisers essentially set out the stall
that this would be the end of free at the point of access social media for
everyone. You can bet that other platforms are watching closely and we are now
heading towards a social media landscape that could very well soon find itself
in a transition towards being entirely pay to play.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So I think it’s wise to start
thinking about some of these changes as artists and small business owners.
Social media will exponentially change over the coming years and with Facebook
now rolling out paid for verification, the transition has now officially started,
even if they’re not openly admitting it. Twitter have now announced that those
who don’t pay will have no reach, to be honest, I’m not sure how most of us
would tell the difference, so if Twitter was the litmus test, the question becomes,
does this change in direction mean that other social platforms including
Facebook will go the same way?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbrE3marQb-kV3_JBMvhvQHLJNVw9LPwiD9YmjW9ih2Z5c72BEBRVYuT4RFkVS8Y98AI_VWcyGpxF04RCDDX9UsCS1DaAapdOR0whIjU-LOiOg4_4N85sNfB2EV4Z2bTefDyHEmL3pfl-BSpIxcsb1Y33bd0XxNLpzi23yRItLHiGWLHKdHh8MU09z/s4088/industrial.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Industrial abstract art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbrE3marQb-kV3_JBMvhvQHLJNVw9LPwiD9YmjW9ih2Z5c72BEBRVYuT4RFkVS8Y98AI_VWcyGpxF04RCDDX9UsCS1DaAapdOR0whIjU-LOiOg4_4N85sNfB2EV4Z2bTefDyHEmL3pfl-BSpIxcsb1Y33bd0XxNLpzi23yRItLHiGWLHKdHh8MU09z/w640-h640/industrial.JPG" title="Industrial by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Industrial by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If I was to go all out, and if
I was a betting man, and if I were to also look at the current business model
objectively, what social media needs right now is a good veterinarian to put it
out of its misery. That might sound cold and dramatic, but this is exactly what
would be needed if the same thing happened to any other business in any other
space. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Social media as we currently
know it certainly needs a reset and it really needs better PR people, not CTOs
and engineers being the public face. It also needs to start providing better
value to creators and the small businesses that have been propping it up with
ad-spend or attracting more viewers. Social media is so similar these days to
the wider media industry that it’s become more and more about getting eyes on
the content so that they can serve the ads, and it’s also become more about
dividing populations because division drives engagement. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Can anything save it, I’m
certainly not sure that monetisation by the end user can, we’re far too late
for that. I’m not convinced that the numbers will be there, especially in the
midst of a downward spiralling global economy that’s not just affecting
businesses but the people who buy from those businesses as well. We are already
saturated by subscriptions and I don’t think social media is a pick up and put
down option in the way services such as Netflix are. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Could innovation save social
media? A Metaverse has been done before with Second Life, the tundra of the
meta through the lens of Virtual Reality is currently as barren as a desert,
digital real estate hasn’t had its foundations laid even if companies have already
invested heavily in the pixelated ground, add to that, the messaging isn’t
clear about what it is, and ultimately, the technology just isn’t there at the
point of need which is exactly right now. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Where the tech is available
it’s not overly affordable for everyone, and these are barriers that need to be
removed. It’s not so much everything everywhere, all at once, it’s more akin to
everything nowhere, far too late.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I realise that this might
sound as if I’m not just attending the funeral of social media but I’m
celebrating and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>eating canapes at its
wake. I think that’s inevitable, in time we will all be attending the wake and
providing a post mortem style commentary on what went wrong. Social media will
either change beyond recognition or it will eventually fail. It will become
smaller, it might even become more focussed, both of which will be good but I
think we can see where it’s heading and eventually, sometime possibly sooner
than we think, we will have to pay to play and I’m not as yet convinced the
numbers will be there to make it worth it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As artists, I think it might
be wise to make sure any plan you have for the future absolutely includes
having an offline strategy. It’s going to be critical that it still includes
online components, but neither should be completely symbiotic with each other. If
businesses are going to find the pay to play landscape a challenge that’s a
good indication that regular end users will too. If the buyers get priced out
of using it then we’re kind of back to where we were before digital. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In some form, I think most of these
services will continue, I also think some will come to a painful end, but as
artists, if we are to make the investment in them, be that in time or money, we
really will need to know that our audience of buyers will be sticking around. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFKaavhOLc4Bps2xcE3bED48vS8j1BwKy3oOSZHvmf07dBJE5_Th_6Htlmzev5eEj2MB7uWu4SM7hz93AOt5ZivI1KpAIV7SNsdvdv55KKHbdzCoz_aIQrQpqy8NVKYTILrc8HIg2ofhGWa8C1o9QnnNjSIJzediDqKbUikTPZRGqfizYvIMs9_lyB/s4088/fly%20me%20to%20the%20moon.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Fly me to the moon art print astronaut by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFKaavhOLc4Bps2xcE3bED48vS8j1BwKy3oOSZHvmf07dBJE5_Th_6Htlmzev5eEj2MB7uWu4SM7hz93AOt5ZivI1KpAIV7SNsdvdv55KKHbdzCoz_aIQrQpqy8NVKYTILrc8HIg2ofhGWa8C1o9QnnNjSIJzediDqKbUikTPZRGqfizYvIMs9_lyB/w640-h640/fly%20me%20to%20the%20moon.JPG" title="Fly me to the Moon by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fly me to the Moon by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Supermarket Loyalty Scheme
is heading the same way…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s probably worth quickly
picking up on this point too, especially as supermarket loyalty schemes draw
many parallels with the primary purpose of social media, at least for the
companies that operate these platforms and schemes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Supermarket loyalty schemes
have been around for several decades, and they operate on a simple principle:
customers earn points or rewards for their purchases, which can be redeemed for
discounts or free products. In exchange, supermarkets collect valuable data on
their customers' shopping habits, such as what products they buy, how often
they buy them, and how much they spend. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This data allows supermarkets
to better understand their customers' needs and preferences, and to tailor
their marketing and promotional efforts accordingly and they’re better placed
to make this work, you can’t easily dismiss a pop-up ad when it’s on display in
front of the humous for the three-percenters to buy in a supermarket.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The value to businesses and
marketers lies in the wealth of data that they collect from users. The purpose
of both loyalty schemes and social media is to collect data on consumer
behaviour and preferences, but the limiting factor of any of these schemes is
that they can only observe behaviour that happens within the schemes reach and
sight. When Apple made privacy changes, and additional data protection laws
became better enforced, the value for retailers and social media companies
began to ebb away.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These schemes alongside the
data collection methods used in social media are also painfully expensive to
manage, particularly now the public are more sighted on the real purpose of how
their data is often used, as a result, people are more reluctant than ever
before to share their details and they’re much less inclined to share their
email address. Two big issues spring to mind here.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the most significant
parallels between social media and supermarket loyalty schemes is the potential
for data misuse. In recent years, there have been several high-profile data
breaches involving social media platforms which have resulted in the exposure
of users' personal information. Similarly, there have been instances of
supermarkets selling or sharing customer data with third-party marketers,
without customers' knowledge or consent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another parallel is the ethics
of data collection. While both social media and supermarket loyalty schemes
offer users the ability to opt-out of data collection, many users are not aware
of the extent of data collection or the implications of sharing their personal
information. This raises questions about transparency and informed consent, and
whether users are being fully informed about the ways in which their data is
being used.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These schemes are so
inherently similar to social media that they’re almost an exact fit inside the
same bubbles that have been bursting so rapidly in the tech industry
recently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There comes a point where you
have learned everything you need to learn, and it’s at this point when running
those schemes becomes yet another expense that eats up profit, and there also
comes a point when the data stops flowing because people now realise they have
a choice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What we can expect to see with
these schemes in the future, if they indeed do continue in a similar way, is
that the supermarkets will look towards monetisation. You’ll subscribe to a
discount club, in the UK we’re already seeing this with one of the biggest
supermarkets, Tesco, with its Tesco Plus program, you will get benefits, maybe
slightly lower prices, but what’s the real cost?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think the point here is that
the digital landscape will change for small businesses. I know a lot of my
buyers have already moved off social platforms completely having become tired
of the division and politicisation of almost every post that appears in a
timeline. The only respite seems to be from the small businesses who are doing
their best to continue to have a presence for their customers who remain online
on these platforms, but even small business posts often have their comments
hijacked by some numpty with an opinion about something totally irrelevant to
the post. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1vXJk4psUdPQgHHgcZ3O8RWbyhZnCgxtABKkPTu1dGmiFOFn7m8fiRLFNy9g98cFnACqWq4jIqAk8OJHxvkCM-u1uXyHZEdm8MFUPIaqqgCl8K5o0j4L6H1Bq_KKA4EwbZyEqitgsoxOrZAMQMIAQNwYDKVRjglyENKx7dWBPWUQ-qFOt6z66Je0y/s4088/waiting%20in%20the%20sky.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="abstract face art print by Mark taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1vXJk4psUdPQgHHgcZ3O8RWbyhZnCgxtABKkPTu1dGmiFOFn7m8fiRLFNy9g98cFnACqWq4jIqAk8OJHxvkCM-u1uXyHZEdm8MFUPIaqqgCl8K5o0j4L6H1Bq_KKA4EwbZyEqitgsoxOrZAMQMIAQNwYDKVRjglyENKx7dWBPWUQ-qFOt6z66Je0y/w640-h640/waiting%20in%20the%20sky.JPG" title="Waiting in the Sky by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Waiting in the Sky by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">How to de-automate in an
automated world…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s no real secret to this
other than we need to strip things right back to basics and follow the
principles of good old customer service and go back to treating buyers like the
superstars they are. I have so many conversations with new artists who have
pursued the online only route of sales and mostly those conversations are around
how to increase an artists online exposure. Often there’s an expectation that
the answer is you have to do something online to increase online exposure but
that’s the lowest price of entry, you need to be just as, if not even more
focussed on developing a profile and a presence offline in parallel. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Increasing your visibility
starts offline by engaging with the art community, attending physical events,
and building offline engagement by communicating face to face. I’ve never been
convinced that doing everything online is a good strategy in the art world.
Today I spend more time having offline dialogue with buyers and potential
buyers than I do creating social media posts. It’s not that running an online
campaign is futile, it’s essential for now, but it’s more essential to be where
your potential buyers are and they’re not always engaged with social media. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We can’t assume that people
will just find us, the online art space is crowded, almost saturated, so unless
you are doing something that really stands head and shoulders above anything
anyone else is doing to promote themselves and their work, I don’t think we can
make the assumption that potential buyers will be purposely seeking us or our
work out online because it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When it comes to selling art I
believe from experience that it’s way easier to sell art face to face than it
is online. That could be due to human nature, it’s way more difficult to say no
to a human than it is to say no to a screen. When I do go online, I’m not
necessarily going to social channels as a first port of call, for my retro
works I engage with potential clients through services such as Discord and
Reddit where I can find a community where the discussion is more focussed on my
subject area, or I turn up at physical events. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Never think of online purely
as the typical social media platforms, if you paint niche subjects it’s more likely
that your audience is going to be hanging around in the community areas of
specialist websites, or they’re hanging around on Discord or on Reddit. People
are looking towards alternatives to the traditional platforms and where those
alternatives don’t exist, people are looking offline. I’m very much a believer
that if you want to engage with a community, you have to be part of that
community. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaSfYqeD7xUvt6oKdtaRSzk8a0CYSdReoLvBKo0qjoRFxlnB84DWcZ6XnlhycBvnWnfBr1lst7YOVQiUI75k7Ad53_MMsPBIchd9juPLRlwGkfrWwcbGWGbgiqC4-k1Sv4cBaQvmwzKAb0pvUw58tMGge9n8lOmeL-hF25hKUGBw6j2cviz4bgnAlo/s4088/Ready%20steady%20pause.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="portable cd player art print" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaSfYqeD7xUvt6oKdtaRSzk8a0CYSdReoLvBKo0qjoRFxlnB84DWcZ6XnlhycBvnWnfBr1lst7YOVQiUI75k7Ad53_MMsPBIchd9juPLRlwGkfrWwcbGWGbgiqC4-k1Sv4cBaQvmwzKAb0pvUw58tMGge9n8lOmeL-hF25hKUGBw6j2cviz4bgnAlo/w640-h640/Ready%20steady%20pause.JPG" title="Ready, Steady, Pause by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Ready, Steady, Pause by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Be upfront…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are dealing with
people, and that might be a strange concept post-pandemic, humans, mostly just
like us, tend to favour buying from people who are upfront and honest and that
includes being open and honest about your pricing. If you sell a ten dollar
print, few people will question your pricing strategy, but if you are selling a
piece of work that would be a considered purchase for the buyer, they will often
want more information and you could find yourself in a place where you have to
justify the price you have arrived at. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s a nuance of the art
world, we rarely question how the price of a widget is decided, every time I
visit the supermarket lately I question why my favourite Cheddar cheese has
almost doubled in price over the past year, yet I still begrudgingly pop it in
the basket and then hope that there’s not too much month left at the end of the
money when I get to the checkout. I’m upset, even angry about the increased
cost, but I don’t then question it when I have to pay.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With art, the artist almost
always has to justify the price they charge. If you can do this, buyers will be
appreciative and will rarely show resentment and most people really do
understand the increasing costs that small businesses face. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">They also understand that you
get better at doing what you do and that you have to place an insane amount of
effort into keeping your skills up to date, they also understand when your work
becomes more in demand, but you have to be able to explain it so that they
understand that you’re not simply nickel and diming them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What buyers don’t really like
is when pricing is obscured or ambiguous. I have seen this so many times
recently where the price of a work is indicated but then other charges are then
added on top at the last minute. If a buyer thinks a work is going to cost them
a hundred dollars but they then find that there are additional charges for
taxes and shipping making it close to two hundred dollars when they go to the
checkout, in a world where everyone has become what I call, “Prime Trained”,
they tend to turn up their noses at the last minute and you end up losing a
sale.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Prime trained, for those who
aren’t, is the concept of buying a product with free, expedited delivery,
inclusive of taxes, and presented as a single cost. Even then it might not be
clear, shipping is generally free for Amazon Prime members, but the cost of
shipping is part of the price you pay to be a Prime member but when we see free
shipping, it’s one less thing to worry about and it takes another barrier away
for the buyer.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWOlsFeQXdqfDtO3FrJyW_t4oQR4kL1ReCElabGKzZDuirgJCBoSWgI32T68Hupi4rnlwrfLTEjUT8XZlhLy8_Pr7OALwS3vlNSo_sK6ci2Nd6EB6XSUmW-arSetCWHrHt3I3H5tJl8Zpixea2jDEF41a3v6JnLsIL0UDIeqlhtxloECUF2Rtk1E1A/s3465/one%20careful%20owner.JPEG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="1980s retro car art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3465" data-original-width="3465" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWOlsFeQXdqfDtO3FrJyW_t4oQR4kL1ReCElabGKzZDuirgJCBoSWgI32T68Hupi4rnlwrfLTEjUT8XZlhLy8_Pr7OALwS3vlNSo_sK6ci2Nd6EB6XSUmW-arSetCWHrHt3I3H5tJl8Zpixea2jDEF41a3v6JnLsIL0UDIeqlhtxloECUF2Rtk1E1A/w640-h640/one%20careful%20owner.JPEG" title="One Careful Owner by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">One Careful Owner by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Offer a guarantee…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whenever I sell anything
online buyers have 30-days to change their mind. If it’s a stock item such as a
print and they buy it directly, I offer the same guarantee when I’m dealing
with them face to face. If they want to change it for something they like
better, that’s no problem either. The only exception to this is when they have
ordered a bespoke commission, but even then, if a buyer is unsure whether a
work will match their décor then I’m more than happy to let them hang a
similarly sized print on their wall for a week or make an agreed number of
changes to the commission.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The secret to offering this
kind of guarantee isn’t in financing their poor decorative choices where the piece
in question would be absolutely out of place in the buyers surroundings, but to
ensure that the customer is buying what will work for them from the outset. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This means working with them
to find the perfect piece that they want to live with, doing something as
simple as demonstrating how they can use the augmented reality feature on the
Pixels app to virtually view the work on their wall whether they purchase the
work from Pixels or not, but more critically, taking some time to converse with
them to figure out what their needs really are. Those are all effective things
that should be done as part of what should be an ongoing dialogue during the
process of selling a piece of work to make sure the buyer remains happy. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You don’t have to offer money
back guarantees, that’s a difficult thing to do as an independent artist
running a small business when you have to spend so many hours and make so much
financial investment to create a piece of work. You have material costs,
sometimes you need to add licencing costs, shipping, and other business costs,
and the time you invest, so the stakes can be high even for straightforward
works where no client revisions are needed. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is different online where
we don’t necessarily run point on or carry the burden of the transaction, and
it’s different when it’s an open edition print that can be returned to stock, but
there are ways in which you can offer buyers some peace of mind. If you have prints
in stock then it’s easy enough to offer to swap out work for a piece that will
work better in the space that they have. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Your mission is to make sure
the buyer is happy because that’s the kind of juju that brings in more buyers.
I’m sure there was once a piece of research that found that buyers who were
happy with the product and the service were more likely to turn into repeat
buyers, and a few would even let their friends know too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In many cases, art purchases
are going to be significant financial outlays for buyers and they’re buying
something that they will have to live with for a while. It still gives me
chills after all these years when I think about that, knowing that a piece of
work I created is hanging on someone’s wall, so I will always do whatever needs
to be done to make sure they never have to live with something they resent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Never underestimate the power
of Haribo Gummy Bears…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Just not the sugar free
edition which is a direct replacement for a weapon of mass destruction
involving frequent visits to the bathroom. It’s well documented that over
consumption of sugar free gummy bears is bad for the gut and even worse for the
bowel, but regular gummy bears, they’re a diplomatic tool for good. I digress,
but we often talk about the value add, and I think that mostly it’s something
that we overthink.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A value add might come from
the after sales service that you provide, or it might come from the materials
you use, it could even be a low cost upgrade to a premium paper or canvas
stock, often there’s very little difference between budget and not quite so
budget supports. Or, it could just be adding a nice touch to the packaging when
you send the goods out. So many Etsy sellers have jumped on the Haribo
bandwagon recently, every time I make a new purchase from a different Etsy
seller I always seem to end up with a free mini-bag of Haribo’s in the
packaging. It's a nice touch.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Discounting work is never a
great idea but if you have collectors who regularly make a purchase there are
things you can do to provide extra value that doesn’t devalue the work. There’s
usually more room for flexibility with framing costs, or you can offer upgraded
mats, a hanging kit, or if the buyers local, you can deliver and hang it for
them. Never think of discounts being the only value you can add, there are
plenty of creative ways to add value without it massively impacting the bottom
line.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ej89KT7Vh1Ho7HGJr5dRlmKy_fJq8mdL6_RKaQm_D4s-JVrCPKVP3tnRflnXkAgZpL4DsezStQodyktrJenN1mQSVfDJ3MViUSvOd9G4J4YPeDlPQlA_2KqWWjoBYt6I2dGAXCDRnfrodfTONRWEr6TxUOCO1IJm9LZdNUiLRJwgPm-4epvSfImf/s4088/Video%202000.JPEG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="video 2000 art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ej89KT7Vh1Ho7HGJr5dRlmKy_fJq8mdL6_RKaQm_D4s-JVrCPKVP3tnRflnXkAgZpL4DsezStQodyktrJenN1mQSVfDJ3MViUSvOd9G4J4YPeDlPQlA_2KqWWjoBYt6I2dGAXCDRnfrodfTONRWEr6TxUOCO1IJm9LZdNUiLRJwgPm-4epvSfImf/w640-h640/Video%202000.JPEG" title="Video 2000 by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Video 2000 by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Good Service is the New Old
Way of Doing Things…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Offering good service is
something that in time will be possible to offer using automation and AI. There
are enough examples in the tech and service sector already where technology is
as seamless as a human in delivering results, but these examples wouldn’t
easily translate to the business of selling art, at least just yet. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As I said earlier, we’re
selling an experience, something that is subjective, something that triggers an
emotional response, and that’s a very different concept to selling a generic
widget or an online service.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s a huge difference
between good service and great service. To offer great service, well, I can’t
think of any level of automation that provides that and I’m not convinced it ever
will. Mostly, automation defaults to the minimum viable product. Automation
just has to do a single job with no expectations that it will deliver any level
of value over and above, it’s purpose it to achieve one single outcome for
which it is tasked which might be to renew a subscription, raise a service
ticket on a support desk, or any number of simple, usually single things that
humans no longer have to do. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With humans, we kind if like
it when they go over and above, and we like it even more when they make us feel
special. Automation can’t do that without coming across as weird, have you ever
had a chatbot give you a compliment that’s genuinely sincere? I think even with
the progress being made in the world of AI, we’re still a very long way off it
coming across as being authentically, authentic. AI is programmed to mimic
being authentic, humans have authenticity built in, well most of them do.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFru8Xi_F17vlhjGLd6Ugv13FIbkpcLdWTC8Mr1NsQufryqAZxGKKKh1DhmFVCqXE8YVWFg4kHmvjMoznzDRkShvdrFWq4JG8n3FLfDyTI8xSe8fx7dLXtvdccUVE5oxfMTxOKKFMxTLtQwMm-4N-aP3QebVL_TR-iAhywHbyRN_kS-GboTw6kMbFe/s4088/midnight%20pass.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="landscape art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFru8Xi_F17vlhjGLd6Ugv13FIbkpcLdWTC8Mr1NsQufryqAZxGKKKh1DhmFVCqXE8YVWFg4kHmvjMoznzDRkShvdrFWq4JG8n3FLfDyTI8xSe8fx7dLXtvdccUVE5oxfMTxOKKFMxTLtQwMm-4N-aP3QebVL_TR-iAhywHbyRN_kS-GboTw6kMbFe/w640-h640/midnight%20pass.JPG" title="Midnight Pass by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Midnight Pass by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Edge your bets…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI and automation is clearly
the future but my gut instincts and experience in the field tell me that it’s
still a future that’s a way off despite the massive advances and the great AI race
that’s taking place right now. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Before we get there, there
will need to be more in the way of safeguarding that will be needed, maybe the
blunt instrument of government regulation will eventually need to happen and
there will certainly need to be oversight at some level to limit the
opportunity to completely weaponise it. The problem is that AI is already being
weaponised even in its current form and the recent calls for a six-month hiatus
in machine learning models is a response that is a lot too late.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI and automation might work
really well for some businesses but I’m not convinced it will work completely
autonomously in the process of selling art for a very long time. It can assist
the process but the uniqueness and subjectivity of buying art isn’t something
that is prescriptive. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As I said earlier, we can’t
avoid any level of automation in our businesses, and I don’t think we should
even try to avoid automation if it gives us more time to spend either working
with a client or on a clients ask. But right now, the important thing is to
make sure that we are looking after the buyers we already have, we need to make
sure that we don’t alienate the buyers who simply refuse to engage online, but
the important thing is that we remain responsive to our markets wherever they
might hang out.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The lowest price of admission
to becoming a professional artist is to make sure that you do have a web
presence, a website that isn’t going away anytime soon, unlike the risk that
plagues social media. It’s also important to have a social media presence, you
need to be where your audience are. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But we don’t then have to
follow trends, mistakenly thinking that we absolutely have to become
increasingly digital, or automated, or appear to be uber cool. Art isn’t that
kind of business, and I’m sure there are plenty of artists out there who are
fans of automating much of what they do, but for the majority of working
artists that’s just not where their audience will be at. Go ahead and ask them
and you might be surprised at their response. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s one more thing to
consider too. As artists, we’re here for a limited time and hopefully our art
will be here for longer, but during this limited time we each have a
responsibility to make sure that the arts never get completely consumed into
what is often only a temporary world and for that, there will be many buyers
who will thank you for not trying to automate the creation of future art
history.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Until next time, I hope you have some creative fun and continue pushing forward with your art, you've got this!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark x</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark is an artist who
specialises in vintage inspired works featuring technology and random stuff
from the 70s, 80s and 90s. He is also known for his landscape works and the
occasional abstract.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can purchase Mark’s work
through Fine Art America or his Pixels site here: </span><a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> You
can also purchase prints and originals directly and some works are available
for digital download via Zazzle. You can also view Mark’s portfolio website
at </span><a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://beechhousemedia.com</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Join the conversation on
Facebook at: </span><a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
connect on Twitter, while it lasts, @beechhouseart or waste hours on Pinterest
right here: </span><a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0Staffordshire, UK52.8792745 -2.057186824.569040663821156 -37.2134368 81.189508336178847 33.0990632tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-65998502069460866492023-03-08T11:03:00.000+00:002023-03-08T11:03:14.823+00:00An Artists Guide To AI<p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Human Vs Machine...</span></b></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhTZkWHA9QAiDkt0chbd2iQZL1pikJ9A-SKdyToFdvN96vvE1BzrrcQrWha_0BibLCM1JoZDw-NUGr6cm4XXvpno4mmdqX5rmhpsUlkYOytd6ziHcZbJOOykJRegsRNG8zIssEFnvhlwyEuLx7hIWDcb28GGzf2wKJ3RxG-vx9xHS9frtr0_x6vXvY/s1080/AI%20cover%20Image.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="AI blog title image" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhTZkWHA9QAiDkt0chbd2iQZL1pikJ9A-SKdyToFdvN96vvE1BzrrcQrWha_0BibLCM1JoZDw-NUGr6cm4XXvpno4mmdqX5rmhpsUlkYOytd6ziHcZbJOOykJRegsRNG8zIssEFnvhlwyEuLx7hIWDcb28GGzf2wKJ3RxG-vx9xHS9frtr0_x6vXvY/w640-h640/AI%20cover%20Image.PNG" title="AI for Artists" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A Really Simple Guide to AI for Artists</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With all of the buzz around
Artificial Intelligence, (AI), I decided to see if it really could solve the
time problem that many artists face. Could it really provide answers to the
most searched for answers that artists seek, such as “what art sells best”,
“how do I run an art business” and those two all-consuming questions that so
many new artists ask, how do I sell more art, and how do I price my work. Can
AI really take the place of an experienced artist who has lived the life and
borne the scars of such a complex industry?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So Many Questions…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Could I use AI to fill a
website with content? Could I use AI to make me a millionaire, so many
questions, but the answers AI has given me since it has become more readily
available and accessible to the public have often surprised me, and not always
in a good way. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I have used ChatGPT which seems
to be the “thing” of the moment, for a while now and others for a few years
before so it isn’t my first rodeo with artificial intelligence. I have
interacted with plenty of humans whose intelligence could be classified as
artificial, and I’ve been using this technology in various forms since the days
of Microsoft’s Clippy, remember the super-smart and oh so annoying animated
paperclip from the 90s that always knew better? Clippy is a perfect example of
where we were pre-millennium as opposed to where we are now.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI isn’t new, what’s sort of
new is just how accessible it has become, and more than that, just how mind
blowing it is that you can interact with real AI from home. There have been
many iterations of publicly accessible AI platforms like ChatGPT over the years,
the more recent ones are the ones that really are beginning to move the needle
so these platforms are what I term as being, new-age AI. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Older iterations were more akin to simple chat
bots or were so convoluted to use that it just wasn’t worth it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVSbGuWucJdGKtC3B-3OTMdXyrSYv56apK9uaXmwCVMongEWlq2uztoSsWSjWNWct6hT8b9yP6oeAXmR5mPi5GlpZEoXJV7PFUNU5Aq7GIgV9VCTP2ENLH4CD8WgpSNO-DaOx45G7EXuxJwo3F_umvtUEE1cihaLyJxaTd1p5lrZiojCcB9GBjhOE4/s4088/FMV%20Baby.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="FMV Baby Artwork, computer, retro graphics card, full motion video, painting," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVSbGuWucJdGKtC3B-3OTMdXyrSYv56apK9uaXmwCVMongEWlq2uztoSsWSjWNWct6hT8b9yP6oeAXmR5mPi5GlpZEoXJV7PFUNU5Aq7GIgV9VCTP2ENLH4CD8WgpSNO-DaOx45G7EXuxJwo3F_umvtUEE1cihaLyJxaTd1p5lrZiojCcB9GBjhOE4/w640-h640/FMV%20Baby.JPG" title="FMV Baby!" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">FMV Baby! One of my latest creations celebrating the emergence of Full Motion Video in the 90s. Made possible by the development of relatively inexpensive graphics cards and the accessibility of PCs.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Before we begin it’s probably
worth me quantifying any thoughts I have about AI up front. I come from a
long-time background of technology and have been involved in AI since what
seems like forever ago. In the 80s I was writing very simple AI in my computer
game code to detect collisions in simple games on 8-bit home computers, in the
90s I was doing the same with 16-bit computers. The difference between 8 and 16
bit computing power was compelling, the difference between the AI, not so much.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, AI is way too
complicated to even contemplate building it from scratch as we did in the 80s
and 90s, instead programmers mainly rely on pre-built engines to do the heavy work,
just as they rely on pre-built engines to create scenery and even video games.
It’s not that programmers today aren’t as talented as they were, the creations
they program have become so huge that it’s no longer in the realms of
possibility for a single programmer or even a team to take this kind of work
on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When the old computers began to
be replaced with PCs, we didn’t see anything of note on the AI front for most
people for a very long time. It was more or less an out of reach science and
the stuff of science fiction for what seemed like an eternity, but things were
happening behind the scenes. Analysts were analysing, data scientists were
doing whatever it is they do, and then there were the lab folks, mostly wearing
big glasses and wild hair, who were tinkering and plotting that the machine
would one day inherit the earth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI in the 80s was basic,
sometimes even written in BASIC (A programming language that remains the
bedrock of coding today, except we stopped teaching it in schools long ago
because humans like the awe of oh shiny new, even when it’s not as good as old)
and then about five years ago we began to witness a sort of seismic shift in
how we thought about AI and how it could benefit those who could access it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Suddenly, the algorithm was
placed on a plinth for the minions to worship as if it were some kind of God. It
began to mature at a faster rate, it was harnessed by big tech, the pandemic
raised its profile in medical research, and we have slaved for it since from our
interactions on social media to our frustration in getting Alexa to answer us
even after the third attempt. Don’t get me started on all of those chatbots and
their endless mind-loops.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI has become smarter, but it
hasn’t done that on its own. AI relies on humans to code the learning and the
output. It’s not like a film where AI breeds and then takes over the world,
there’s very much a need for humans to sit behind the wheel and drive it, or at
least there is for now. It’s smart for sure, or maybe, clever might be a more
appropriate word, but the humans behind AI are mostly smarter, albeit slower, the
real problems begin with the end users who want to use it to create their very
own versions of chaos. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not convinced that AI is
the problem that it is often framed to be, it gets a bad press for sure and
there are few who truly understand it, it’s technically beyond anything we
could have imagined in the early days of computers, or anything that we might
have imagined even just a decade ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The problem with AI rests in the hands of humanity and that’s what also
makes the entire concept of AI in public hands really quite terrifying. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxppUstcQYcl_rj778VCBbHV2toi59TeA__6ZJIzCenuNqBKXH2i2RQe7EAYMB0pfrjlEjGDF1vapIVgwUkhXAzS0fZNAQW5t_9rtj-kwVP6210EtQ-Cnl5Sbnga5qU45TNQ97A9GJO9KXMtdKA0WLvhbeSu7PTQvyO15jZf_RAyABhkn3TsS54QX1/s4088/90s%20digital%20camera.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="90s digital camera artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxppUstcQYcl_rj778VCBbHV2toi59TeA__6ZJIzCenuNqBKXH2i2RQe7EAYMB0pfrjlEjGDF1vapIVgwUkhXAzS0fZNAQW5t_9rtj-kwVP6210EtQ-Cnl5Sbnga5qU45TNQ97A9GJO9KXMtdKA0WLvhbeSu7PTQvyO15jZf_RAyABhkn3TsS54QX1/w640-h474/90s%20digital%20camera.JPG" title="90s Digital Camera by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">90s Digital Camera by Mark Taylor - Hand drawn using a digital medium, this was another technically challenging piece and took around 70-hours to complete.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A Brief History of the Long
History of AI…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Machine learning isn’t new. The
concept of machine learning has been around for several decades, but the modern
era of machine learning began in the 1950s and 1960s when computer scientists
began to develop algorithms and models that could learn from data. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Prior to this, and to keep
things really simple because the world is complicated enough, algorithms were
very much a manual thing. Humans would build up a library of problem statements
with a list of viable options and then note the ones that worked. In short, AI
was a bunch of problems in an almost historical timeline so that you could see
what might work and humans then worked it out, often very slowly.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The difference between then
and now is that machines can make that comparison much faster and with more
accuracy than humans ever could. You could say that at one time AI was simply
called intelligence, but then humans decided to automate it with a computer.
Humans it seems are nowhere near as efficient as computers. Why do all that
math and cross checking when something about the size of your cell phone can make
a better decision far quicker.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the earliest examples
of machine learning was the development of the Perceptron algorithm by Frank
Rosenblatt in 1957, which was a simple algorithm that could learn to classify
images based on their features. That’s the kind of AI technology that we now
see with licence plate and facial recognition in crowds, the difference is that
Rosenblatt’s algorithm has been massively scaled and in ways that I’m sure
Rosenblatt would never have considered.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another important milestone in the history of
machine learning was the development of decision trees by Arthur Samuel in
1959, which were used to make decisions based on a set of rules learned from
data. This underpinned AI for many years, but the machines are now programmed
to learn everything.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Since then, machine learning
has evolved and expanded rapidly, with breakthroughs in areas such as neural
networks, deep learning, and reinforcement learning, which have enabled
machines to learn more complex and sophisticated patterns in data. Today,
machine learning is widely used in a range of applications, from image
recognition and natural language processing to fraud detection, healthcare and
personalised marketing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We Already Rely On AI…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For the most part, it’s
difficult to comprehend just how much AI already encroaches into our lives
behind the scenes. It’s something we use but we’re not always aware of it, and
that is how it’s supposed to be, to provide us with a seamless experience when
we interact with technology.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Algorithms and machine
learning used in artificial intelligence models are used to provide you with a
personalised music playlist or to surface the next film that you might want to
watch on Netflix, and AI is extensively used in medical research and healthcare
where it has already saved countless lives, and of course it drives those
social media algorithms that in turn drive us all crazy. Without it, it
wouldn’t just be humans that would be less efficient, the infrastructure that
essentially drives the world we live in would be too. We might not know it, but
we have already become addicted to AI.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So AI really does play an
important role in the fabric of our everyday lives whether we realise we depend
on it or not. Now AI has exposed itself to the world on platforms such as
ChatGPT and the forthcoming Bard from Google, essentially putting the ability
to drive it, firmly in the hands of everyone, good, bad or indifferent. That’s
where it becomes infinitely more useful in our everyday lives, but that’s also
where it becomes exponentially more concerning at the same time. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrxO9c-fyMcXfNBDUEfm3LfQrDOEJi9wLr6yuCI0XT8iccKYavZtDSK80LMGBC4FJmte3a8HEIRemNKa5__xkymo0zhGJ06oEXFfGN7Tljh_7Nl0KvJBw-nz-Bg7foJ6ggmc2_crWRFGDfz771-ic04g41lBkWGSDqrwz4yTbDvSrH1rG64BHP9KIt/s4088/endless%20path.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="endless path abstract art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrxO9c-fyMcXfNBDUEfm3LfQrDOEJi9wLr6yuCI0XT8iccKYavZtDSK80LMGBC4FJmte3a8HEIRemNKa5__xkymo0zhGJ06oEXFfGN7Tljh_7Nl0KvJBw-nz-Bg7foJ6ggmc2_crWRFGDfz771-ic04g41lBkWGSDqrwz4yTbDvSrH1rG64BHP9KIt/w640-h640/endless%20path.JPG" title="Endless Path by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Endless Path by Mark Taylor - another abstract inspired by the iconography of the 80s and 90s.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The bad, the bad, and the
ugly…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If the bad actors decide to
grasp it with both hands, and they’re already reaching out in droves to do just
that, then we begin to have major issues in telling the difference between
what’s real and what’s not. If we break that down further, what we will see,
and there is very little doubt that we won’t, is that public access to these AI
platforms will become increasingly weaponised. If we step back and consciously
think about that for a moment we have already seen this happen through
democratic processes, social media and even government and state propaganda, and
when machines can do the work of thousands of people to weaponise content, it
becomes massively more cost effective to fill the internet with bias,
prejudice, and intolerance or just outright lies.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The world is already blighted
by scammers but generally, the more elaborate and most successful scams are
expensive operations to run. Mostly the scammers have a couple of options when
it comes to funding their operations, either they will have an army of social
media trolls writing copy which is often grammatically incorrect making it
slightly easier to spot, but even when paying below minimum wage this is an
expensive option. Or, they can now ask an AI platform to spill out copious
amounts of copy saying the same thing in many, many different ways to give it a
more authentic and authoritative feel. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You don’t necessarily need an
army of people at this point, just a person, a laptop and some intent. People
are expensive and for things like this, there’s not much in the world of
enforcement via other AI instances that can easily police this. It’s also
something that causes some contention within social media circles, this type of
content drives division and engagement and those are the two very things that
also drive ad-revenue so you really have to ask a very simple question around
whether or not social media companies really, on a deeper level, want to do
anything over and above what they already do to stop it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Cynical me might suggest that
it would make zero financial sense to counter the negative aspects of AI driven
content on social platforms, and there’s little doubt it would be both complex
and expensive, but longer-term, I’m confident that tackling it now would make
for a more sustainable future. If they don’t begin to tackle it better than
they are, I’m reasonably confident that the blunt force of regulation might
come into play and I’m not convinced that’s entirely healthy for any of us either.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether it’s convenient for
social platforms to not accelerate the policing of AI generated content is a
question for another day, maybe another blog by another author, but until there
is a mechanism to fund and monetise mainstream social media access more
effectively than ads, and a mechanism of funding that’s adopted by the many,
well, it does make one wonder if the real issue around the toxicity of social
media will ever be reduced whilst the price of entry is free.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We are now at a point in time
where it’s increasingly and often impossible to tell the difference between
good information and bad. AI is so much more efficient and does a more
consistent job of writing copy than an army of people can and of course, like I
said, more importantly it’s nowhere near as expensive. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Add to that the role of AI in
generating new users and we take a leap into a world where it becomes a
perpetual cycle where accounts are shuttered and within five minutes a hundred
more are created. Social media’s problem is that they didn’t start charging
people from the off, and that’s going to be challenging for them to now
overcome.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRDQlTZK_RBqYXf_V206aTu4ULW6T52NgSEma4UpesvLwRoCYGKAgtCzEz0vx9D0Qc5ROhyywbtbr4-9FXYb3xMutii0c1esx2QjJbaQqcoxgtgZdGzCkVGO3ku0O0YNCfEgLEVIhbjEdHyrSHxkZ5R9d3UFbIq-dgsQUihpWC1Jm6Eh6AguA5L_eB/s4088/industrial.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="industrial abstract by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRDQlTZK_RBqYXf_V206aTu4ULW6T52NgSEma4UpesvLwRoCYGKAgtCzEz0vx9D0Qc5ROhyywbtbr4-9FXYb3xMutii0c1esx2QjJbaQqcoxgtgZdGzCkVGO3ku0O0YNCfEgLEVIhbjEdHyrSHxkZ5R9d3UFbIq-dgsQUihpWC1Jm6Eh6AguA5L_eB/w640-h474/industrial.JPG" title="Industrial by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Industrial by Mark Taylor - another new geometric abstract inspired by the brutalism style of architecture which was predominant during the 70s and 80s.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are limits…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whilst there are some
safeguards in place with these platforms, it’s usually the job of other AI
models to sort out the good and bad. Chat GPT for example will remember
conversations that people have with it, it allows a user to provide follow up
corrections (as in change the output) and it is trained to decline
inappropriate requests, but from experience it’s how you generally ask what you
ask where this particular safety net can live or die. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">ChatGPT specifically calls out
some of its limitations as in, it may occasionally generate incorrect
information, it may occasionally produce harmful or biased content, and it has
limited knowledge of the world and events after 2021. But AI models are
designed to always learn so it’s only a matter of time really as to how quickly
some of these limitations will be overcome.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So where does it fit in the
business of being an artist?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Bear in mind, AI is fallible,
it’s also often biased, AI only knows what it knows, and in the case of
ChatGPT, barely nothing about life post 2021, and sometimes, well, it kind of really
does make things up. Is it sentient you might ask, well I asked that very
question of ChatGPT and honestly, I think it lied when it told me it wasn’t. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But these platforms and
ChatGPT more specifically, can be useful as a business tool, equally they can
also be problematic, so let’s see if we can figure out what it is good for and
more importantly, will it really help us to sell more art?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI Artwork…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Well, here’s the first
elephant in the room that we probably need to look at, can AI produce original
art. The answer cuts far deeper than the question implies. ChatGPT can’t, it’s
only good for text based output, but there are neural network engines that are
driven by AI models that are really super-efficient at creating images and
there are AI models that can create deep fakes, including perfect photographs
of people who don’t actually exist.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">While AI-generated art has the
potential to revolutionise the creative industry, there are several ethical,
technical, and philosophical issues associated with its use. Here are some of
the most significant:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Originality and creativity</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">: </span></h1><p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">One
of the primary issues with AI-generated art is that it raises questions about
originality and creativity. Critics argue that machines are incapable of true
creativity because they rely on pre-programmed algorithms and data inputs. As a
result, some people question whether AI-generated art can ever be considered
truly original.</span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Bias and lack of diversity</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">: </span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another issue with AI-generated art is that it may perpetuate existing biases
and lack of diversity. Since the algorithms are often trained on historical
data, they can inadvertently replicate and even amplify existing prejudices and
inequalities. This can result in AI-generated art that is sexist, racist, or
discriminatory in other ways.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Intellectual property</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">: </span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is also an ongoing debate about who owns the intellectual property rights
to AI-generated art. Since the art is created by machines, it's not always
clear who should be credited as the creator nor is it clear from the output who
owns the copyright but generally it is without any shadow of doubt, using your
art and my art and the art of millions of other artists to do its thing. It’s
possible that if you have ever uploaded a piece of your own artwork to an
online space that an AI model has already learnt from it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Human involvement</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">: </span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some
critics argue that AI-generated art is not really art because it lacks the
human touch. They believe that true art requires human emotion, intuition, and
expression, and that machines can never fully replicate these qualities. The
counter to that could be that it is using your art and my art and the art of millions
of other artists to do its thing and there are plenty of emotions right there. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Replication and mass
production</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">: </span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Finally, there are concerns that AI-generated art could
lead to mass production and replication, which could devalue the art and reduce
its uniqueness and cultural significance. This could lead to a situation where
art is created solely for commercial purposes, rather than for its intrinsic
value as a form of creative expression. Flooding a market only ever serves to
water it down.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Verdict: </span></b></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As a
creator of art, as far as AI goes, and as much as I live for technology, I’m
not a fan. I was never really a fan of the neural network art that was being
generated about five or six years ago because very quickly we were seeing
pretty much the same art over and over. There were a number of apps that sprung
up on the various App Stores and when lots of people figured that art (can we
even call it that?) could be created with a single click of a pixelated button,
lots of people suddenly thought of themselves as artists. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The markets were flooded at
the time with similar images from the same app and virtually everyone who had
little to no previous experience in creating artworks thought that what had
been created was somehow unique to them. Many of those apps used very confined
and linear AI models so the results were almost always generated from one of a
small number of presets.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But, it really comes down to
the single bottom line that however AI is presented, it takes our art and does
something with it that we don’t particularly want it to do, and at this point,
it could be argued that this will be the time to consider an alternative career
outside of creating art because I’m not even remotely convinced there will be a
way to monetise your work if AI continues to take it off us without permission
or recompense.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM6NJD9s23OQpBtrgDloOorj-DaNgwtmYCsPMPfXPxeWa1_8V-Ml9pDP01Ns3yv3fPzg1ZvrAx6q4DqPbxnc1H8uLVviT81_a9v2H0HKe4aTI1lrRR2CM6kMAa9bNeduzXBO2KvpUvgK5_eh1bWQzpD_U918wk2odZm3akv1daP1tVn0cEZ7rOMx1K/s4088/polybius%20redux.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Geometric art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM6NJD9s23OQpBtrgDloOorj-DaNgwtmYCsPMPfXPxeWa1_8V-Ml9pDP01Ns3yv3fPzg1ZvrAx6q4DqPbxnc1H8uLVviT81_a9v2H0HKe4aTI1lrRR2CM6kMAa9bNeduzXBO2KvpUvgK5_eh1bWQzpD_U918wk2odZm3akv1daP1tVn0cEZ7rOMx1K/w640-h640/polybius%20redux.JPG" title="Polybius Redux by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Polybius Redux by Mark Taylor - the second work to be inspired by the mythical Polybius arcade game which was said to be released in a video arcade in Orgon sometime in 1982.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Can AI Be Useful For Artists
In Business…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I don’t think that any of us
will have the option to ever ignore AI and I’m confident that it will become
significantly smarter over the next decade. Its misuse will become an even
greater problem so the hope is that there are plenty of smart folks trying to
figure out ways to minimise the risk of this happening, but, I fear that even
with it’s limitations today it may already be too late. The juggernaut is well
and truly coming down the road.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Like I said just now, I’m not
a big fan of AI in art, but I have to admit I am a fan of some of the benefits
that platforms such as ChatGPT can bring in terms of efficiencies that we all
need to find when attempting to run a small business.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When AI plays a role in
Generative art and Fractal art, there is a significant difference in the generated
output in that the art is created using algorithms and fractals, rather than
from taking the work of others. This kind of art can be unique, especially if
the artist creates their own algorithms. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But whichever way you cut it,
there are plenty of unanswered questions that I don’t think we’re even close to
answering anytime soon. How will we prevent certain populations from being
discriminated and marginalised by AI, how can we get AI to take human context
into account, can we ever get to the point where we are able to teach a machine
empathy, compassion or to be ethical, and maybe one that is often forgotten,
how we address the balance of access to available data sets?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Just like our art gets taken by
some AI systems to generate a work, our data which is collected by the tech giants,
big corporations, governments and advertisers can be used to train these models
and we don’t always have a say whether our data should be used in this way.
Either way, that’s the kind of data that has a real commercial value to those
organisations which puts them at a huge advantage.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another question that seems to
be challenging the overarching concept of data driven AI modelling is how do we
even begin to control or at least rein in what is seen by many people as an
invasion of privacy. My fear beyond using the data in AI models is that the
clamber for personal data exponentially increases beyond where we are even
today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The huge amounts of what is
essentially surveillance data that links us to people, places, times, and what
we look at online, is one of modern histories greatest mass surveillance programs
that largely gets ignored for the most part by the masses, but this could
eventually lead us on to a path of social oppression.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Before AI takes a more
complete stranglehold of our everyday lives then I think we also need to start
answering some of those really difficult questions, especially as the models
evolve, the systems further develop and we become even more addicted to its perceived
benefits.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It can be used as a virtual
mentor… sort of…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I asked ChatGPT a number of
questions about running a successful art business and the responses could have
appeared on the pages of many of the blogs that like the one I have created
here, offer hopefully, useful advice to artists on running a business and
raising your profile as an artist. What I came away with though was plenty of
generic answers without any real context. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When I write I like to provide
the context and back the answers up with the scars of experience of life as an
artist in what has, especially over the past decade become a very complex
industry. ChatGPT identified some key areas to focus on when I asked it what I
would need to consider when creating art professionally. It covered quality of
work, making sure you have business and marketing skills, it also covered
personal branding and it focussed pretty heavily on making sure that you
develop networks and relationships. It made no mention of making sure you were
on top of your taxes, and just like the rest of us in the UK, it gave up trying
to figure out post-Brexit import and export paperwork.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The advice was almost there, it
just felt clinical and made everything sound way easier than it is in real life.
It offered no real world examples and certainly didn’t proffer any kind of
guidance as to how an artist might take the journey from A to B.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It did suggest that
professional artists need to be persistent and resilient, so at least AI sort
of recognises that the art world is a challenge, yet despite this being its
strongest response, it was still bereft of any practical guidance that would
guide me through some of the challenges that professional artists come across
every day. That said, it may be the way I asked the question and we’ll come to
that a little later.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With some answers in the bag I
was keen to find out more. I asked a question that I thought might be more
relevant during the current economic climate, how do I produce art more cost
effectively. I thought this was going to make it struggle with a response, but
I have to say that given the rising prices of art supplies I was eager to see
something new that I hadn’t already thought of. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The answers were once again,
relatively generic. Use recycled materials, use alternative surfaces, create
DIY art supplies, and one that I can categorically say without any shadow of
doubt is no longer cost effective, try digital art. As I mentioned a few weeks
back, the cost of creating digital art has massively increased over the past
year or so which tells me that it’s responses are at times out of date.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It also suggested that I join
an Art Co-Op, and I’ve mentioned this many times over the years on these very
pages. Where it fell a little flat was in underestimating just how many
communities have these in place already, and it woefully underestimated just
how many professional artists want to come out of their silos to work with
others, that’s always been a problem in recent art history at least.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixY_tdyttIUFPZPjZ7NMSlaXqH94VBCZcvJ0hC4i19hJ8-G_yCYAeB0y-7vABnz0nincMdgqeIgxyUGhbaTD0uHrGSYmKuTNm-r3Sta1SkFNbuKvK5JHX59KAGNieqvWXHMx65Xqg6BhAqFi31XwKiHT60yuGAsZ976whos6xcwhr9ysIjlWLwNmUD/s4088/bootleg%20gotchi.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Bootleg Gotchi art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixY_tdyttIUFPZPjZ7NMSlaXqH94VBCZcvJ0hC4i19hJ8-G_yCYAeB0y-7vABnz0nincMdgqeIgxyUGhbaTD0uHrGSYmKuTNm-r3Sta1SkFNbuKvK5JHX59KAGNieqvWXHMx65Xqg6BhAqFi31XwKiHT60yuGAsZ976whos6xcwhr9ysIjlWLwNmUD/w640-h640/bootleg%20gotchi.JPG" title="Bootleg Gotchi by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Bootleg Gotchi by Mark Taylor - inspired by the many knock-offs of the infamous Tamagotchi toy that became popular in the 90s. This was hand drawn with the detail around the edges of the plastic wrapper taking just over 11 hours to create, but I think it looks realistic!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I asked it: how do I price my
art?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Let’s be honest, this is
probably the single most asked question ever, it’s the one question that new
artists and long-time artists alike want to know, as if there is some kind of
golden ratio for pricing that none of us have ever found. Surprise, AI didn’t
find the golden ratio for pricing either.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It suggested I consider the
cost of materials, my time, the size and medium, market demand and competition,
along with artist reputation and experience. All the stuff we already know but
then tend to do nothing about, instead we revert to making a price up and spray
and pray the work all over social media. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The advice here was solid, it
provided all of the data points you need to find the data on, although still
lacking any real context, but I think that this is a question that every artist
asks in the expectation that someone will confirm that their work is worth a
million bucks per square inch. Look, even AI can’t figure this one out on its
own so I think the only remaining option is to do exactly what it tells us to
do and go figure that bit out for ourselves using the very data points it told
us to explore.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Where AI will have an impact
here is in making sense of all of the data that you collect so that you can
confidently work out how much to charge, but if you’re after a straight answer,
you’re not going to find it here.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">How do I make One Million Dollars
From Creating Art?</span></i></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I had to ask didn’t I? Well,
here’s the response:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Making one million dollars
from creating art can be a challenging task, as it requires a combination of
talent, dedication, business acumen, and a bit of luck. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Again, the answer was somewhat
disappointing. My hopes and dreams were doomed once again. A bit of luck seemed
a little on the optimistic side but it did suggest that any artist with a goal of
making a million from their work might also want to consider diversifying
beyond creating art.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Wise words indeed but there
was no real context around what the diversification ought to be. I’m sure it
could have been pressed further than I pushed it to provide better answers and
again, I’ll touch on that in a moment. If you are wondering whether it is
possible to make a million dollars from creating art, then yes, it is, but the
probability of doing that quickly is very unlikely.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And I asked it the obvious
questions on behalf of a friend…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">How do I sell more art, </span></i></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">and, <b><i>What
kind of art sells best</i></b>. The answers were once again fairly generic, but
so was the question in all fairness. I got the usual stock response to, how do
I make more sales, the answers pointed me towards covering social media,
gaining representation from a gallery,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>and to network with other artists, and from experience, these tend to be
the bare basics that you need to have in place. It failed to mention that
market research, business acumen, and an entrepreneurial attitude were perhaps
more critical than even artistic talent. I’ve said it before, even bad art
sells with great marketing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As for what kind of art sells
best, figurative, landscape, abstract, street art and pop art were the answers,
but bear in mind that these would be the same answers that anyone could give
after spending a few minutes looking through online galleries. That’s because
the answer you will get from this question is all to do with the numbers, there
are simply more artists creating art within these genres so the volume of sales
will be higher overall. You could say that those subjects are collective best
sellers across an industry, I’ll never be convinced that they’re best sellers
for an individual artist. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If ten artists create
landscapes and sell a hundred works between them, the overall numbers look good
for those who sold more than other artists, but the numbers wouldn’t be as good
as the one artist working in a niche who sells twenty or a hundred works. The
subjects are popular because there’s a wide choice, not necessarily because
these genres are financially the best to create. Again, this is why you will
always need experience working alongside AI. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqPWuWI1RuJML1SpMIfFk0rxPHH1eIpj6vzg4TXLm5xzoMLOBhqmh3nvqeOllHQfMfIn2KDDly5mlDDV5GRgqd9OzaMtjd5mg8i-2eNY4uONqn9GQSD0yAQrt6wPIGmGYe3Mo7z5FlkWniF9tFCtdd5VrTGKLXXufqrgZvxkKP3GV4rVK6ofGzspcR/s4088/video%202000.JPEG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="video 2000 artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqPWuWI1RuJML1SpMIfFk0rxPHH1eIpj6vzg4TXLm5xzoMLOBhqmh3nvqeOllHQfMfIn2KDDly5mlDDV5GRgqd9OzaMtjd5mg8i-2eNY4uONqn9GQSD0yAQrt6wPIGmGYe3Mo7z5FlkWniF9tFCtdd5VrTGKLXXufqrgZvxkKP3GV4rVK6ofGzspcR/w640-h640/video%202000.JPEG" title="Video 2000 by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Video 2000 by Mark Taylor - this VCR was released in the UK and Europe but it didn't set the world alight. It was intended to compete with VHS and had some great features like double sided recording on the video cassettes and the tape was completely internal. Possibly the most technically challenging retro inspired work I've created over the past several years, in part because there's not a lot of reference machines available!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It's not all bad, but it’s not
all good…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The example I’ve been using to
show you some of AIs capability is ChatGPT, it’s very much a work in progress
but it is about as accessible as the public can get to using what can be an
extremely capable AI tool, and it’s also the closest that the public can get to
using a completely incapable AI tool. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When I say incapable, that
might make it sound as if ChatGPT or AI in general is just a novelty that’s
unable to be used for anything serious and that’s definitely not the case. What
makes it incapable isn’t necessarily the technology, it’s that to get anything
useful out of it the user has to be just as capable in framing their requests.
The user also has to be very specific in what they want from it, more than
that, you have to be very, very, very, specific and you might need to reframe
any follow up questions to push it even further so that you get better and
sometimes more credible answers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI as an author…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Can a tool such as ChatGPT
write an article for a website like this, yes, but it’s not as entirely as
clear cut as that. I personally wouldn’t rely on it as an automated tool to
provide me with the kind of words I spend hours pouring over every time I
publish a new article, simply because readers who read what I write visit this
site to read what <b>“I”</b> write. I hope…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Without some real input from a
human, it’s not overly great at providing an article with plenty of contextual
examples. For it to do that you would need to take the output and then break it
down even further by asking a series of further questions and then, you might
be somewhere a little closer to something that’s a better read but it’s worth
remembering that AI will never be you, well at least not just yet.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As it is, without spending
just as many hours on refining the output as you would to write an article in
the first place, this kind of more generalised, publicly accessible AI is too
general and much too vague in its responses to give you something that you can completely
rely on to give you something that is close to being print ready. You have to
be careful not to rely on it to provide you with facts, some of the output will
be out of date, and it can generate responses that while factual, can be
misleading without any accompanying context.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As a tool, AI in a ChatGPT
sense shouldn’t be feared, as long as it is used responsibly. It can be really
beneficial in saving you a heap of time if you spend a little time figuring out
how to work with it. You have to look at it as a slightly smarter version of
the virtual assistant that you might use to turn up your heating, ask for a
weather report or turn on the lights, but give it time to mature and I’m
confident that these platforms will become increasingly more complex, and
increasingly more simple to use. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI more broadly beyond the kind
if AI as found within platforms such as ChatGPT is much more refined because it
is developed with one very specific output in mind. If it’s used for scanning
medical data then the models used to provide the machine learning are going to
be much more specific and detailed than the more general learning that’s been
applied to bring you something like ChatGPT. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s not intended to be
detrimental to ChatGPT, it’s models are without doubt complex, but it’s models
are also far too broad and wide reaching to be as perfect as some of the more
specialist AI systems are. It needs much more time and development to mature
but it is being rapidly developed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That said, tools such as
ChatGPT can indeed help you to be more efficient and there’s little doubt that
these tools can take some of the pain away from carrying out the mundane tasks
that we all have to perform as artists. I asked it to come up with some artwork
titles by providing an in-depth description of the art, as in, I explained it
in a way that I would explain it to a blind person and the titles were much
better than anything I could usually come up with. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I also had success in asking
it for a list of metadata labels that could be used to search for the work and
again, with a little effort on my part it was able to generate a decent list of
tags and labels that could accompany my uploads to sites such as Fine Art
America. They still needed a little human input but I think I saved about an
hours work from using ChatGPT and that’s not to be sniffed at. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I also had some success in
taking the same description and then asking it to generate a marketing
description that was SEO friendly, and again, it took just a little refining
and I had saved at least another hours work. That’s considerable when you find yourself
playing catch up and uploading multiple works, the time involved in coming up
with meta-tag labels, titles and descriptions isn’t insignificant. I spend at
least 8-12 hours each work just coming up with words when I have multiple works
to upload. With ChatGPT I saved at least half of this. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Where I found real time gains
was in asking it to synthesise data. I used it to generate a simple report
around my client demographics, historic sales, and success from social media
activity alongside a bunch of other metrics I use to keep track of where my
business needs to be and it generated a really simple report with key
highlights just from parsing the data I had copied and pasted in. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Usually I would use a platform
such as PowerBI to create reports, add the data to a data lake and hope for the
best, (I’m not a power, PowerBI user by any stretch) but this meant that I
didn’t have to fiddle around creating new report templates and I got the key
information back within minutes so that I could run side by side comparisons
with previous quarters.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ-ZKWWgEwd6V67sy7F3lF3RU-z28Csv7k0wBF_j3i3szLpkcFe6ezsMn0B638IqV3TufR3yXXOFTkxhbQVG-wgh7exs1RUUHQvZxeScm0LNfvOp1tMLaeYcFhXHGHaM-kH9umFyuqZUdDjiYFH9mf9FRvZqkkeEXKorqzO68D62iz0zz5XZg0qosi/s4088/minidisc.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="minidisc painting art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ-ZKWWgEwd6V67sy7F3lF3RU-z28Csv7k0wBF_j3i3szLpkcFe6ezsMn0B638IqV3TufR3yXXOFTkxhbQVG-wgh7exs1RUUHQvZxeScm0LNfvOp1tMLaeYcFhXHGHaM-kH9umFyuqZUdDjiYFH9mf9FRvZqkkeEXKorqzO68D62iz0zz5XZg0qosi/w640-h640/minidisc.JPG" title="Minidisc by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Minidisc by Mark Taylor - I still have mine from the 90s, the batteries were still working after almost a decade when I eventually turned it on, they hadn't even leaked which was a miracle!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There was a monetary saving
here, the results were better than I could get from PowerBI and PowerBI is an
expense I can do without, although I expect that wouldn’t be the case if my
data lake was more substantial, if it were though, I might be inclined to still
use AI in my workflow and I’m sure it will be integrated more with tools such
as Power BI in the future. As it stands in comparison with large businesses, my
data lake is merely a small pond so I can scratch at least one outgoing cost
for now.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s also really good for
creating content outlines, if I ask it to put together three content outlines
for a blog post about X, Y, and Z, it has no problem doing that and again, this
saves a heap of post-production time because I have to spend less time thinking
about the small stuff that generally takes the longest time. It’s a solid base
on which to research topics that I’m less familiar with too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For me, when it comes to topic
outlines, writing descriptors and meta tags, I usually treat this
non-productive time. Of course it is productive, it’s as critical as the
artwork and my writing itself in many respects, but it’s a detail that whilst
benefiting a client or a reader, doesn’t really move the needle on the bottom
line quite as much as finishing off a commission or creating a new piece of
work, or meeting with a potential client and if I’m completely honest, it’s the
bit of the job I like the least. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Arguably, SEO, artwork
descriptions and tags, are the essential ingredients in the sale of art, but if
some of this can be handed over to AI under at least a small degree of
supervision, then it free’s up more time to be able to focus on work that moves
the needle on the bottom line by allowing you to focus on higher value outcomes
and brings back the time you need to do the stuff you can really enjoy. Think
of AI as a new apprentice, an apprentice that still needs some hand-holding but
that can be sent off to do the jobs that don’t necessarily need to be
undertaken by the CEO.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQCEYRwSnXH0wYHczNeUijCsdrVgEEQ6GuoODCHrpflJyS82sS0OjFslbJ9W7zKuVgbDvFLQnMXllI5bHRwJZ71pDf7xb33DUjTjtUQEVVv4ccXWEW0nlkMcUrXizPm07JmOAGoyptcCKC2rwIhdx8uFvgqNDAUp3y13gj5RURX5NyNOIobcBWu4gg/s4088/y2k38.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Y2K38 artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQCEYRwSnXH0wYHczNeUijCsdrVgEEQ6GuoODCHrpflJyS82sS0OjFslbJ9W7zKuVgbDvFLQnMXllI5bHRwJZ71pDf7xb33DUjTjtUQEVVv4ccXWEW0nlkMcUrXizPm07JmOAGoyptcCKC2rwIhdx8uFvgqNDAUp3y13gj5RURX5NyNOIobcBWu4gg/w640-h474/y2k38.JPG" title="Y2K2038 by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Y2K2038 by Mark Taylor - yes, we're due another Y2K event in 2038. Don't worry, I made a bespoke sticker which you can buy alongside this print on my Pixels and Fine Art America store so you can place it proudly on the lid of your laptop and freak other people out!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI – The Verdict…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When it comes to integrating
AI in your workflow as an artist, it can be useful, even ChatGPT can save you
both time and money, more than that, it can take some of the mundane tedium out
of your workflow, at least to some extent, but, if you are thinking that AI is
some golden panacea that will allow you to completely take a back seat and
relax on a beach while it does all of the work, that’s still very much in the
realms of fantasy. At least it is for now.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">To get the most out of it
today, you have to understand its limitations. You also have to take some of
its responses with a very large pinch of salt and be prepared to take
corrective action. Like a small child near a swimming pool, I’m not entirely
sure it’s wise to leave it unattended and then rely on it to do the sensible
thing, or indeed, rely on it always giving you a sensible answer. It’s as good
as the programmers who wrote the code and it’s as good as the knowledge base it
has learnt from, but it’s not HAL folks, not quite yet anyway.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You need to give it very good,
specific, and direct inputs to get very good, specific and direct results. It’s
that old adage, rubbish in, garbage out, and it takes practice. If you are
thinking that in the next five minutes you will be relaxing with a glass of
Pinot Grigio while it does its thing, I would advise that you don’t drink the
entire bottle.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">AI delivered in the guise of
something like ChatGPT, in the publics hands is five, maybe even ten years away
from where it needs to be to do the kind of things that you imagine it will do
already. But if you set your expectations somewhere in the region of it being a
really useful tool that has the potential to save you anywhere between a
miniscule and a heap of time, particularly if you need to build some
foundations which can help you overcome that initial creative block when you’re
writing or researching, then I think it might already be where it needs to be.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Should you shy away from it or
embrace it, well, I don’t think we will ever be in a position to hide away from
it. My advice is to embrace it for the benefits that it can bring and take some
time to understand its limitations. Learn to work with it, and watch it grow,
because at some point in the future you will be relying on it even more than
you didn’t realise you already do!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark is an artist who
specialises in retro and vintage inspired works featuring technology and other popular
culture from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. He has been creating professional digital
work since the 1980s.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can purchase Mark’s work
through Fine Art America or his Pixels site here: <a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</a> You
can also purchase prints and originals directly. You can also view Mark’s
portfolio website at <a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank">https://beechhousemedia.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Join the conversation on
Facebook at: <a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</a>
connect on Twitter @beechhouseart or waste hours of your life on Pinterest
right here: <a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0Staffordshire, UK52.8792745 -2.057186824.569040663821156 -37.2134368 81.189508336178847 33.0990632tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-41158565747691196832023-01-31T12:23:00.001+00:002023-01-31T12:23:22.881+00:00Level Up Your Next Art Show<p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Getting the Most from Your Next Art
Exhibition </span></b></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSV_ugPwSSahoBZ96WmGbLTefoGCfl2q8joxWrATrSb7cb5sRfpoDurQzoUHD7gqgfPCiXnNPe99BXhyvM0O4bEldvsRPqoAv9xWuF5Ikr1mjRNTPDScyhqdUvGCu-q5SFgAcIWaDJXwi_t_pHj7GLKtoZ0EpKbSummEiP0Z9i3Zeltatvxh0w5KTF/s1080/cover%20art%20show%20mastery.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="make your next art shop pop text on neon abstract background" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSV_ugPwSSahoBZ96WmGbLTefoGCfl2q8joxWrATrSb7cb5sRfpoDurQzoUHD7gqgfPCiXnNPe99BXhyvM0O4bEldvsRPqoAv9xWuF5Ikr1mjRNTPDScyhqdUvGCu-q5SFgAcIWaDJXwi_t_pHj7GLKtoZ0EpKbSummEiP0Z9i3Zeltatvxh0w5KTF/w640-h640/cover%20art%20show%20mastery.PNG" title="Getting the Most From Your Next Art Exhibition" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Make your next event count!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Spring is quickly approaching,
and with it comes a new wave of exhibitions and shows to showcase your work and
make 2023 the year you promised yourself it would be. Make your exhibition
space stand out with my tips on setting it up. Get ready to set your sights on
success this show season.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Looking Differently At
Exhibition Spaces…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The past couple of years have
been challenging for the events industry with physical exhibitions having been
replaced at least temporarily with virtual events together with the character
building challenges that running any event online brings. It seems like forever
ago that I last walked though the doors of a physical space to view artworks
displayed in booths but when I did walk through the entry gate recently at one
particular event I was surprised by just how much had changed in the physical
event space.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If we were wondering what the
new normal would look like in the world of brick and mortar exhibitions, I’m
not convinced we would have been able to predict the level of change that seems
to be taking place within them. The success of virtual events during the rather
lengthy hiatus in live events over the past couple of years seems to have
carried over into the physical world with many events now often being
simultaneously held in a physical space and broadcast live in the virtual
world. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9TJRF-m6gnOW8BL4GPdBf4Xkx1kQ85jwEHYFfUI5wMwvzztwNL3VA1i2npRk3v0yrvE3H503zEQAdzIxN8_uiCaqwz4bdCsSXk_eMRw318CQPNPLs3mXG3oBox8y76GNrc5PDxLl0Qm64V2h18djUUEQ2gVu7JYSPqSL1isRnKPohzOyWlhjK8rfS/s4088/waiting%20in%20the%20sky.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="abstract man with paper textures and shards" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9TJRF-m6gnOW8BL4GPdBf4Xkx1kQ85jwEHYFfUI5wMwvzztwNL3VA1i2npRk3v0yrvE3H503zEQAdzIxN8_uiCaqwz4bdCsSXk_eMRw318CQPNPLs3mXG3oBox8y76GNrc5PDxLl0Qm64V2h18djUUEQ2gVu7JYSPqSL1isRnKPohzOyWlhjK8rfS/w640-h640/waiting%20in%20the%20sky.JPG" title="Waiting in the Sky by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Waiting in the Sky by Mark Taylor - One of my most recent works!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So what’s Changed?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Health and safety has always
been a priority, at least it has at well run shows and exhibitions, but event
organisers are still, thankfully, taking the pandemic seriously even if a lot
of people think it’s finally over. One of the things that jumped out to me on
my recent visit was that there was an abundance of things like hand sanitizer
still available, and the event organisers were keen to make sure that everyone
felt safe. That’s a particularly important point because there are still many
people who continue to be nervous about entering highly populated spaces,
particularly when those spaces are indoors.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Something else I noticed was
that sustainability is now more of a thing. Historically, events by their very
nature are designed to be temporary and have often failed in their efforts to
be fully sustainable. Displays, posters, handouts, the obligatory plastic
keyring, a cheap plastic branded biro or a branded ceramic mug being given away
for free, all have an environmental impact with everything being designed through
an ephemeral mindset. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">At past events I’ve witnessed
people queuing up three deep for a free plastic keyring, I have no idea why
because it’s not like anyone has ever used them. I dare say most of them from
previous shows and events are now floating above some ocean reef these days.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Something else I noticed and
possibly because the event was also being live streamed, was the increase in
the use of technology. From digital displays rather than traditional vinyl
banners right the way through to Virtual Reality experiences. Exhibitions and
events really have matured to meet the expectations of the digital age we now
live in and I think this really is just the start of how we will see technology
shape the way events are run in the future. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFlvHCgsXvcZmO4rrvy-hbvfF6o6ZeU1d4ZowDv3rffiXu_CZrGmdwyNxDoBdrn4WPjcYx-NqLgqm2MKZ1xgJj5XyZQPQrWmQiWtJAbyuOE2UIiHIAFxtSABoDQ1LQTGTdc24BQ8S2NdcTObmEfAy3zulO5J2Q7xPNS5Kwfnc27SXn7kLZu7eV9X1l/s4088/fly%20me%20to%20the%20moon.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="astronaut artwork fly me to the moon" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFlvHCgsXvcZmO4rrvy-hbvfF6o6ZeU1d4ZowDv3rffiXu_CZrGmdwyNxDoBdrn4WPjcYx-NqLgqm2MKZ1xgJj5XyZQPQrWmQiWtJAbyuOE2UIiHIAFxtSABoDQ1LQTGTdc24BQ8S2NdcTObmEfAy3zulO5J2Q7xPNS5Kwfnc27SXn7kLZu7eV9X1l/w640-h640/fly%20me%20to%20the%20moon.JPG" title="Fly Me to the Moon by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fly Me to the Moon by Mark Taylor - another new release!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Will we see the rise of NFTs
in the event space or used in a useful way?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Will live events evolve even
further in the next few years? I think so. There are so many technologies that
could be used in events but so far have been absent. Regular readers will know
that I have a passionate dislike for NFTs, or more specifically, non-fungible
tokens, yet it seems there are plenty of other artists who are seeing them as
some kind of golden panacea. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not a fan of buying a meme
and displaying it next to my small art collection, I do think the technology is
interesting and has a valid place in the art world for some things, just not
for the purchase of art. I think that it’s a trend built on hype that manages
to both tokenise and trivialise art, and it really doesn’t have the level of
trust given that NFTs and cryptocurrencies are always in the news for the wrong
reasons. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s a lot of art out there
that can already be purchased with NFTs, but we have to be honest and recognise
that much of this NFT art would likely have little to no value in the
traditional art world, and most of the work created by unknown artists without
any sort of curation simply fails to sell as an NFT, so my hope is that events
don’t begin to chase the NFT sale because that will put a huge number of
potential buyers off. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Maybe that says a lot about
the curation and quality of the art or maybe it's a lack of understanding of
how NFTs and digital wallets work alongside opportunistic attempts at following
a trend, but there is an opportunity to take that technology and utilise the
true power of NFTs in a more considered way which could even be quite exciting.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s a strong argument to
sell physical event tickets digitally though NFT technology, that would put
paid to the ticket touts buying up all of the tickets within minutes of them
going live and then reselling them on for a massive profit. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">My only other gripe with the
concept is just how un-user friendly the process of NFTs and digital wallets is
but if that problem could be solved by simplifying the process along with
better education of NFT technology, then at that point, NFTs could be the
answer to some fundamentally complex challenges that require a level of
security and validated provenance to fully resolve. Of course, there is a
simpler way for events to make sure the touts don’t buy up all of the tickets
and that would be to use a dynamic QR code that carries the identity of the
original purchaser and only ever allow resales through the events own ticketing
service.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDqmB9Xakvaj8SHiQwdZMYQnDVnwW_DEBxV5JlCYJsRv7E4APl0ZS77PHf-xrMKnSbKu3LaoXHzdNYZ4CjskvbGU7ilbrAjoN5Q6vrBspHr6OwY5aYIwNioTaayBOzNmdPOWwV6u4tu5dq1P6sXNVyi3gkvK1JV4NjhVAAMyUv6Z5qHJD7zVljdmKZ/s4088/polybius.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="abstract line art polybius" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDqmB9Xakvaj8SHiQwdZMYQnDVnwW_DEBxV5JlCYJsRv7E4APl0ZS77PHf-xrMKnSbKu3LaoXHzdNYZ4CjskvbGU7ilbrAjoN5Q6vrBspHr6OwY5aYIwNioTaayBOzNmdPOWwV6u4tu5dq1P6sXNVyi3gkvK1JV4NjhVAAMyUv6Z5qHJD7zVljdmKZ/w640-h474/polybius.JPG" title="Polybius by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Polybius by Mark Taylor - Based on the legend that is Polybius, a mythological video game that was said to be located in Portland, Oregon in 1981!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Will exhibition spaces for
artists evolve?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Whilst the exhibition I recently
attended wasn’t solely an art exhibition, the entire place was filled with
artworks for sale. I’ve said it many times before, if you have a niche and you
need eyes on your portfolio, you absolutely have to think outside of the box
when it comes to spending money on an event space. There’s a simple question
that I regularly use to gauge whether or not any investment in an event space
is worth making, and that question is, can I afford to not take my work to an
event where I know buyers will be present?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I know there are artists who
baulk at the idea of exhibiting their work outside of traditional art spaces,
but not every artist serves the same market and markets are diverse enough to
buy from many different places. Some artists who take advantage of non-traditional
spaces can find that their income significantly increases from showing work at
the point of footfall rather than limiting it to fewer people with even fewer
sharing an interest in a particular niche often mistakenly thinking that art
will only be seen seriously if it sits behind a gallery door or it’s on display
at a prestigious exhibition.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Some of my best sales in the
past decade haven’t come through typical art spaces, they have come from either
being a part of a community online or from showing my work in nontypical spaces
where I know people who are into the kind of work I produce attend. There is no
dark art to working out where those places are likely to be because they’re
exactly the same places I like to look for artwork.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For my landscapes (and yes, I
will be creating more of them, when I find some time between commissions) my
best outlets have always been high quality destination gift shops and for my
retro inspired artworks, the online retro community and vintage computer events
attended by collectors have always proven more fruitful than when I last exhibited
in a traditional gallery. If I had to change to gallery representation now, the
numbers would need to work at least as well as they do in non-traditional
spaces and most traditional galleries might find that a difficult ask.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2chqCchTfFewIFFpIog6tug7vU_OtxTO5tJmL-gPb4k_Dl2VH-JKexzJH_M4HxRalOX0fnAG_mrm8fw3Eo_xtU-jgvleHUXE0jmo4GrMS9hPg2CqnEkt7ED3wrVATjHov_nlBczbtIAZEJOluW4PGgbY1G7t3orNhqUhNuz4ICh8cL8f7eSSuhzi_/s4088/polybius%20redux.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="abstract lines artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2chqCchTfFewIFFpIog6tug7vU_OtxTO5tJmL-gPb4k_Dl2VH-JKexzJH_M4HxRalOX0fnAG_mrm8fw3Eo_xtU-jgvleHUXE0jmo4GrMS9hPg2CqnEkt7ED3wrVATjHov_nlBczbtIAZEJOluW4PGgbY1G7t3orNhqUhNuz4ICh8cL8f7eSSuhzi_/w640-h640/polybius%20redux.JPG" title="Polybius Redux by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Polybius Redux by Mark Taylor - this piece looks as if it is positioned in front of the canvas through the use of shadows and colour, representing something that's not what it seems.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">How do you approach exhibiting
in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">As artists, it’s probably time
to begin thinking about our next event especially if we haven’t attended one
for a while. We might also want to think how we can capitalise on the growing
trends that are emerging in the world of event management too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether that means becoming
more digitally literate so that we can leverage the simultaneous live broadcast
or so that we can digitally enhance our show booths, we do have to think
carefully about what buyers are starting to expect from physical event spaces and
we have to respond accordingly to meet their new expectations. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s an inherent risk when
exhibiting that you will blend into the background like some bland wallpaper if
you are doing what everyone else is doing. What has forever surprised me is
just how many exhibitors approach their event space design, very often without
any design standards in mind. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Those who do think beyond the
colour beige when it comes to having creative show space ideas will be the
one’s who stand out and we can often see this at shows like Basel, you either
have an established brand/name or you dress for the occasion and by that, I’m
talking about dressing your space appropriately and making it a more attractive
proposition for potential buyers to take pause. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So how do you make your space
pop?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Unless you attend one of the
free to enter shows that so rarely happen these days, you will be paying for
every inch of space and often, the instinct will be to utilise every inch of
that space and fill it with work. That could cost you, not only will you need
enough work to fill it which means there’s an initial upfront outlay for you,
it often confuses the buyer when an artist takes along too much of their
portfolio which could consist of a few new works and a crate or two of unsold
works in the hope of moving them rather than have them hanging around the
studio. If you sell what you really intended to sell first, you could always
leave the filler until the last day when people are looking for last minute
bargains. If you fill the space to the rafters with work there’s a real risk
that so your event space becomes more like an interactive Where’s Waldo for the
buyer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are exhibiting, you really
do need to choose a theme and firmly commit to it. Many shows and exhibitions
will have a key theme but if it’s a more general exhibition or trade show,
there might not be any defined show themes or they might be only loosely
associated with the context of the exhibition. If that’s the case, then you can
really make your space shine with the right theming.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Rather than thinking about
your space linearly along the lines of purely retail space, ideally, you need
to utilise every inch to create an experience rather than a live Pinterest
style content grid. Ding that can turn an exhibition space into a very chaotic
space and it creates a heap more work for you to do. Events can be chaotic
enough without adding complexity, and my advice to anyone thinking of showing
their work to keep in mind that less is more. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Where we can, we should be
minimising the workload, there will still be plenty to do but we can spend
months planning for our next event and still find that we’re hanging work five
minutes before the show opens. Again, this lends itself to thinking about your
space more from that design perspective instead of thinking of it purely as a
retail space.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s a risk in not planning
properly in what you then hang next to what can have a negative effect on the
overall presentation. As a rule of thumb, hanging should never be thought of as
a five minute task, nor should it be thought of as an incidental extra, what
you hang and where you hang it needs some very careful and considered planning.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Planning your space well ahead
of the event should help. You need to have some spatial awareness of just how
much space you will have when you get to the event so it’s worth checking with
organisers to make sure what you think you have is what you will have on the
day, and its worth checking where in the event the space will be, will the
majority of people be heading towards you from the left or right, things like
this can make a difference to where you hang your best work. Once you have the
dimensions you can begin to formulate your hanging plan ahead of time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you approach your layout
from a design perspective, maybe even set out works in the same kind of space
at home before you arrive at the event, things should then become a whole lot
easier on the day and it should minimise the workload and give you a little extra
time pre-show opening to settle into your space and hopefully relax a little.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz5vwczuz25bnr7M1MFhjTCg9iGWqt52vmR0zS0N5wOJP2dMq4ulIUutM4h4_KN8OGC9bWeX3lzkqBv8DO_O-cTXLMnhZycemf67ZZtadHT26dGUOZFkXRy5NHle3im01uIdUXkGV236CAzbBIAL1kFw0G-dHlaoghh-xmSkIJiJFd3jP2s93S5vyo/s4088/crisis.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Crisis artwork to support nurses in a cost of living crisis, nurse sitting in despair" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz5vwczuz25bnr7M1MFhjTCg9iGWqt52vmR0zS0N5wOJP2dMq4ulIUutM4h4_KN8OGC9bWeX3lzkqBv8DO_O-cTXLMnhZycemf67ZZtadHT26dGUOZFkXRy5NHle3im01uIdUXkGV236CAzbBIAL1kFw0G-dHlaoghh-xmSkIJiJFd3jP2s93S5vyo/w640-h474/crisis.JPG" title="Crisis by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Crisis by Mark Taylor - Created to raise awareness of a nursing and health service crisis in the middle of an economic crisis. Nurses are currently having to take industrial action in the UK to raise awareness to government that they do not earn a rate that meets increased inflation, but more than this, there is a serious staffing and resource shortage in the National Health Service that can potentially put lives at risk. Low paid NHS staff are having to rely on donated items from a food bank to feed their families despite being there for everyone during the pandemic. I wrote a short poem as the description which you can find on my Pixels website!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Think About Frames…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you need to frame your work
for the exhibition it will pay dividends if you present your work in the best
light but that doesn’t always mean that frames need to be expensive. IKEA sell
some good quality frames for very little money if you are looking for
understated. Your frame choice will need to be guided by the event, your IKEA
frames might be out of place at Basel, but they will likely be more than fine
for local exhibitions or trade shows, although to some extent your choice of
frame will be determined by the artwork it will surround. You need to be
mindful of the costs and we’ll touch on this in a moment. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Positioning your art…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">What have high-end art
galleries got in common with the discount supermarket, probably more than you
think and there are plenty of tricks and tips we can take from the behavioural psychology
of retail spaces to make sure our event spaces can leverage some of the same mind
tricks that make customers more readily reach for their wallets. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Just how effective some of
them will be in a small space is to be determined but there are proven tricks
here that have been tried and tested and will work in an event space showcasing
your art.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Hanging Time…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are hanging your own
work you really do have to consider how you will hang your work at the event.
Figure out what kind of wall or panel you will have and only use hanging
fixtures compatible with that wall. Some exhibitions have an absolute no nails
policy or they won’t allow you to make any marks on the wall. If you can’t find
out what kind of material you will be supporting the work on, it is better to
always assume that this kind of policy will be in place so it is worth taking
along appropriate hanging fixtures designed to not leave any marks or that don’t
require any drilling or nails. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are a portrait artist
or feature faces prominently in your work, make sure when you hang the work the
eyes in the work are at eye level with the viewer. This might sound slightly
strange but it’s a trick that supermarkets use all of the time, if you make eye
contact you quickly form a connection and this has been proven time and time
again by galleries who regularly place portraits on their walls. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In supermarkets you tend to
find cereal boxes that include cartoon characters will be placed at eye level
with children in the hope that this placement attracts pester power. The
psychology in play through retailers and how they leverage these kinds of
things is something that we probably shouldn’t ignore because they have entire
teams that often include behavioural psychologists who have nailed the art of
stock positioning. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Generally, you have to make
sure that your best works are hung at between 57 and 60 inches from the floor
stood on by the viewer, this too is roughly at eye level but the measurements
are an approximation of the average height of a persons eyes. Bear in mind that
some show spaces may have a step between the viewer and the work, so the height
should be taken from the floor before the step if the viewer is not expected to
stand on the step to view the work. What you will find is that works where the
viewer is expected to step up will be slightly higher than those they view from
the main floor. In short, try to keep everything at eye level in relation to
where the viewer is more likely to stand.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2VVSRJ0oWjLe0zAUQWtOEL7ryk_iyLhQ8A9_zGgHYZubMY52mfTFsSvuKQK6syNVpbi8vohx5V-7kosDZ6An0Z7kSJRqYT0QiAI2clEehswKUeBQy4dRMRMQ_o3-iJfuoYzCTlAyMuAWJOM4I1SoTVeNFYCT6fISGQrc-70BiHIq5_Yvh_WJMNnef/s4088/calculated.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="calculator watch retro art" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2VVSRJ0oWjLe0zAUQWtOEL7ryk_iyLhQ8A9_zGgHYZubMY52mfTFsSvuKQK6syNVpbi8vohx5V-7kosDZ6An0Z7kSJRqYT0QiAI2clEehswKUeBQy4dRMRMQ_o3-iJfuoYzCTlAyMuAWJOM4I1SoTVeNFYCT6fISGQrc-70BiHIq5_Yvh_WJMNnef/w640-h474/calculated.JPG" title="Calculated by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Calculated by Mark Taylor - back to my retro works, this time a hand drawn and painted calculator watch with my typical realism applied! The background is a nod to the big news stories of the 1980s.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Get floral with florals…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Supermarkets always put fresh
fruit and vegetables near to the entrance of their stores. Logically, it makes
no sense at all as fresh fruit and vegetables placed into the bottom of your
shopping basket can fall victim to bruising and crushing as you place more
items on top. There is a specific reason that supermarkets do this though and
once again, it’s all about consumer psychology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">They give the illusion of
healthiness at the start of your shopping trip and that has the knock-on effect
of uplifting people’s moods. Fresh flowers are always close by and the floral
scents emanating from the displays do the same thing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you paint landscapes or
florals, making sure that you have a bunch of fresh fragrant flowers as part of
the display will discretely bring those nature inspired images to life and it
will hopefully elevate a buyers mood and put them in a mindset of buying rather
than just looking. I guess the question is, does it really work? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I’ve tried this whenever I
have exhibited my landscape works and whilst I haven’t got a clue about how one
would scientifically measure success, I can say that every time I have placed a
vase or two of fresh flowers alongside my landscape works, the works have sold
better than without the flowers. It could be coincidence, but given that it is
a trick that big retailers use there is probably some merit in doing this.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Some tricks won’t work with
art…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">An event space is not a
supermarket. Collectively the entire space of the event might be similar in
terms of size and many of the other tricks employed to encourage and drive
positive consumer interactions might have a place throughout the wider event,
the space provided for an exhibitor will only lend itself to some of the
psychological tricks large retailers use.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In a larger space with
multiple products such as a supermarket, certain popular items are hidden away
so that the buyer has to walk around the supermarket to find them, eggs being a
classic example. As an exhibitor, you might only have a single line of products
to display, but if you do have something to offer that is popular, it is worth
placing this so that the buyer has to navigate other products first. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">You also need to understand
what motivates people to stop at your space. Are they intrinsically motivated
and base their buying decisions on practical need or are they extrinsically
motivated and make purchases based on external factors such as value and style.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Understanding these motivators
will inform you on how you should be dressing your event space. Whilst many
things motivate buyers to make art purchases, all of the motivators broadly
fall into two categories. Product motivation which are factors that drive a
buyer to choose a specific artwork, and patronage motivation, which is why a
buyer chooses a particular artists work over anyone else’s.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">You can break those categories
down even further <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and there are plenty
of useful resources on the internet that take deep-dives into the psychology of
buyer and they’re worth taking a look at before you attend the event because
how you dress your event space can sway some of those motivations and hopefully
you will be able to sell more art.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyY5Lx7C8i1grxWRO2ZONYI1mr-n62xw0flIdzfx7Iv2SniSjMg2ThIMdjywAbL3KQ_Ac6tKzuhGzCXtY8wnajFmV-aNMAYcUBZ1lldMMMz1YuRZn2p0tOrlVgQECtgEBS8WoUa9ygLayLbCuGb4TR9ImhR71rvAGj8ZyZhPMU0iS8wFBDFAgWijp2/s4088/class%20of%2086.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="1980s LCD watch retro art" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyY5Lx7C8i1grxWRO2ZONYI1mr-n62xw0flIdzfx7Iv2SniSjMg2ThIMdjywAbL3KQ_Ac6tKzuhGzCXtY8wnajFmV-aNMAYcUBZ1lldMMMz1YuRZn2p0tOrlVgQECtgEBS8WoUa9ygLayLbCuGb4TR9ImhR71rvAGj8ZyZhPMU0iS8wFBDFAgWijp2/w640-h474/class%20of%2086.JPG" title="Class of 86 by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Class of 86 by Mark Taylor - I have created a series of works within my Retro Revival Collection to celebrate the birth of the LCD watch and the miniaturisation of electronics, making them more affordable to the masses!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Think outside the box…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Physical events are definitely
more high-tech than they were a few years ago and as I said earlier, there is
an expectation from buyers that event spaces are able to adapt to the new digital
behaviours that we have all picked up from the need for remote working over the
past couple of years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For the exhibitor, high-tech
can often translate to high spend and that’s a problem in a world that is
facing so much economic uncertainty and this introduces a dilemma for artists
who want to take their show space to the next level but may not be ready or
exhibit often enough to make major investments in technology.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If we look at the ways in
which shows are evolving, namely in that they are beginning to become much more
digitally focussed and at the same time placing sustainability front and centre,
there are plenty of things we can do to dress up our event spaces so that we
stand out without breaking the bank too much. It’s worth bearing in mind that
it’s not just the physical look of a space, event organisers are <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>also focussing in on health and safety, even
more so post-pandemic, so having hand sanitiser available could be useful, just
make sure it doesn’t leave a sticky residue that might adhere to anything
people will pick up, you definitely don’t need alcoholic based hand cleaner
leaving a mark on your finest works. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAW0uWjKQAw2wnN_wv9q4jgbekXnKSKe5CRtbQgxzWKWUHqOS1c8bYfaeELV0fjAFLSIdEpSHSNcvBnTPaC28k8n5yiq6Wn5St1bTmjXlXVnNzlzzdCwDxb2B2s3e2ayZ5d7WuoZ1kMpQRd0brbpnk-ZeOaWMTUHbU_9yvXZL1-_mqAkm6Gkm-DVGA/s4088/back%20in%20time.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro artwork of 1980s watches by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAW0uWjKQAw2wnN_wv9q4jgbekXnKSKe5CRtbQgxzWKWUHqOS1c8bYfaeELV0fjAFLSIdEpSHSNcvBnTPaC28k8n5yiq6Wn5St1bTmjXlXVnNzlzzdCwDxb2B2s3e2ayZ5d7WuoZ1kMpQRd0brbpnk-ZeOaWMTUHbU_9yvXZL1-_mqAkm6Gkm-DVGA/w640-h474/back%20in%20time.JPG" title="Back In Time by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Back In Time by Mark Taylor - each of the watches are available as individual artworks or you can collect the set with a single piece! Timeless?</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Digital Signage…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I don’t think the days of
vinyl and fabric banners and traditional signage are coming to an end, they are
still useful and they’re effective ways to communicate but there are more
impactful alternatives that might be more suited to modern event spaces,
particularly if they’re only going to be utilised a limited number of times. It
makes zero sense to spend money on providing impact through signage if there is
little value in reusing it. This is where digital signage has the edge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">A digital display can change
multiple times per day, it can be used to convey any number of messages such as
details about the work or it could even provide glimpses into the social proof
that defines the value of your work. There are other uses too, particularly if
space is at a premium. The smallest exhibition space I have ever worked in was
around eight feet by six feet, hardly the space needed to place more than a
couple of my large format works and a 32 inch monitor provided a useful proxy
for many works in my back catalogue. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I tend to utilise digital
signage wherever I can to overcome space issues and not only is it more cost
effective overall, it is more sustainable than reprinting new signage between
events. I tend to not show my work at events all that often so any signage I do
use is more likely to be out of date when the next event rolls around. With
digital signage it can be updated for each event without additional expense.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">My primary artwork subject is
based on technology and life from the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990s, which gives me
plenty of options to turn any show booth into its own art installation. My
landscape and abstract works provide less of an opportunity to do this,
although as I said earlier, flowers make a difference, but essentially, any
subject can take advantage of some form of digital signage to add some impact
to your space.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For my retro inspired works, I
tend to use some old CRT TVs and monitors to display other works in the series,
it’s a real nod to nostalgia and they are frequently a talking point that help
with starting those all-important conversations. Any information is displayed
using typical 8-bit fonts from the 1980s home computers, and to make it into a
complete experience I often bring along a vintage computer that people can get
hands on with which has the added benefit of providing plenty more opportunity
to engage with visitors and have a discussion around the merits of the old
computers that feature in some of my works. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For added impact I usually add
a couple of props such as a Walkman, a Mini Disc player, and some old
electronic toy games, as a retro collector I already have access to these but
they can be picked up from yard and boot sales relatively inexpensively when
compared to what they go for on platforms such as eBay. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The signage is driven by a
modern laptop that is hidden away, the connectivity is handled by a number of specialist
cables and interfaces designed to connect modern devices to older display technologies
which tend to have either RGB or S-Video connectivity. I have now even set up a
Raspberry Pi device that I had sitting around after replacing it with a shiny
new Pi 400, and I have to say that there’s a heap of choice for free digital
signage software to run on these things and it’s often as good as the full
blown commercial offerings, all for less than $40 or so!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC8zLBZ9VoVLu_i9ds03IkjbKyYEUcuZKxjIdG1kHyDjkZE9pLOCw8KAullvxe9E_5_v89G3yObWOnyITHKWPjq4mmGGSmkuzeins09-126Q-ls8aEv93yuxa6En5kNtmo-MR0KaFEaBp7kFnIYH50CKCxWfLpJr53SS3uPiObfPYXslNAv4kK5Ixo/s4088/one%20life%20left.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="arcade flyer artwork retro art print" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC8zLBZ9VoVLu_i9ds03IkjbKyYEUcuZKxjIdG1kHyDjkZE9pLOCw8KAullvxe9E_5_v89G3yObWOnyITHKWPjq4mmGGSmkuzeins09-126Q-ls8aEv93yuxa6En5kNtmo-MR0KaFEaBp7kFnIYH50CKCxWfLpJr53SS3uPiObfPYXslNAv4kK5Ixo/w640-h474/one%20life%20left.JPG" title="One Life Left by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">One Life Left by Mark Taylor - this piece celebrate the arcade flyers of the 80s, ephemera that would encourage arcade owners to buy into an arcade cabinet, sometimes these cabinets were bootlegs of original games. This was hand drawn and painted over a period of around 50 hours!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The good news is that those
cables are fairly inexpensive as they’re made today for the retro computer
market, often they are used to connect devices such as the Raspberry Pi or
MiSTer FPGA to older displays because the image quality when viewing vintage
software is much better than viewing it on a modern display with its
anti-aliasing shenanigans and 4K resolutions. There will be expensive options
when it comes to some cables that connect certain devices to certain displays,
a composite cable for the Nintendo 64 was around ten bucks at launch is going
to set you back a hundred and fifty today, but there ae usually good
alternatives to be found at much more reasonable prices. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The other good news is that
CRT TVs and monitors are pretty much never used beyond the retro computer scene
and people who never use vintage technology tend to throw or give them away or
sell them cheaply on Facebook Marketplace, unless it’s a Sony PVM monitor, in
which case, a once $30,000 monitor will set you back around $1,000 - $2,000 used,
but you wouldn’t want to carry that beast from the car park. Beautiful piece of
equipment though!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Cathode Ray Tube displays can
handle retro really well and give an authentic vintage feel, but what do you do
when you need modern digital signage and displays? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">You could hire professional digital
signage, the downside is that can be as expensive as vinyl and fabric banners
for a one off show and you will need to book it as early as possible and well ahead
of time, but it is more sustainable and more impactful. Often, hired technology
has the advantage that someone who knows what they’re doing will also come
along and set it all up but there’s a cost that’s often bundled in with the
rental costs making hiring prohibitive for smaller shows.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Equally, you could use a good
quality TV or monitor, nothing you use needs to be overly expensive, you
certainly wouldn’t need anything too technical because there’s more that could
go wrong, and again, places like Marketplace and even eBay can be a good source
of bargains. If you use multiple displays, it’s always a better aesthetic if
you use a single model from a single manufacturer but if that’s not possible,
think about respraying the plastic bezels so they at least look broadly similar.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">One of my artist friends went
as far as gaining sponsorship from a local TV and homeware retailer on the
condition that he displays a small advertisement showing the retailers name and
by doing this he can usually borrow some of the best demo units the retailer
has. His last event included a beautiful 65inch 8K TV to display his work on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">We’re not all going to be
quite so lucky with our approaches to sponsorship, but it’s certainly worth a
discussion with an independent retailer. Just make sure that your insurance
covers anything that could go wrong, those shiny new 8K displays are still
prohibitively expensive for most people.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There are a couple of
downsides to digital signage, namely, transporting it, and wherever you exhibit
you will need access to a power supply but when you think about the
opportunities to drive home your branding using something as simple as a
PowerPoint slide deck, or the ability to display other works that you can’t
physically display due to space restrictions together with the more impactful
experience it can provide, it is a trade off that could be worth making. There
is an important tip here, if you do use a PowerPoint slide deck, leave out the
bullet points, it’s an exhibition not a board meeting.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are in a smaller space
or don’t have access to lots of power, there’s a simple solution that is likely
sitting in a box in the attic! Remember those digital photo frames that were so
popular about a decade ago, they can be repurposed and in some cases, the bezels
of those devices can be resprayed to match your theme too. If you no longer
have one sitting around, eBay is awash with them, as are thrift stores and
charity shops. It's yet another old technology that has a modern day use that
few people tend to think about. Even old tablet devices are capable of showing
photo transitions, another reason why you need to hang on to old technology if
ever there was one!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">While we are on the subject of
tablet devices, don’t forget to sign up to any of the email marketing services
that allow you to author and send out marketing emails. People tend to avoid
writing their email address down on paper but for some reason they do seem to
like entering their email address on a screen and especially if there is a
chance to win a prize. Perhaps because that’s something we are more familiar
with doing but not doing this as an exhibitor is a real missed opportunity in
an event space.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihQhbYyPgEmzFIkb2eVblDvQfLewiBOladX_NAfPf_jjgH2X7hEXfG_OO9lPovr59rBuEuMjq7fTZQBdBNw00CFpvHIW2Jw_mJWQnJK-2ScFwuudeOkUHJu899b-L4NN_lYi7VoRrCNKqpnU14b3DvELcNubg_6_DTyB3Gq6Iv_tbRl0W0UxyWWQ6V/s4088/vantage%20point.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="abstract art lines in a retro colour scheme" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihQhbYyPgEmzFIkb2eVblDvQfLewiBOladX_NAfPf_jjgH2X7hEXfG_OO9lPovr59rBuEuMjq7fTZQBdBNw00CFpvHIW2Jw_mJWQnJK-2ScFwuudeOkUHJu899b-L4NN_lYi7VoRrCNKqpnU14b3DvELcNubg_6_DTyB3Gq6Iv_tbRl0W0UxyWWQ6V/w640-h474/vantage%20point.JPG" title="Vantage Point by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Vantage Point by Mark Taylor - I love these retro colour schemes! </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Easy Access is Critical…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If a potential buyer wants to
have a conversation with me, I have learned over the years that I definitely need
to break down any potential barriers and make everything as easy as possible
for the buyer to approach me. If your space is cluttered with leaflet stands
and they feel like they need to navigate an assault course just to ask you the
price of something, mostly, people will move on without asking and without
buying. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Clutter isn’t just about boxes
of leaflets and plastic giveaways though, people clutter spaces just as much.
If you have a small space then you probably won’t need an entire army manning
the tote bags. People, and don’t get me wrong, I actually like some people, but
people are intimidating when they’re in a group. If you do need help on the
day, make sure everyone has a defined role, stays out of everyone else’s way and
wherever you can, try to keep your helpers limited in number.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYoaVQm-rXj38hkH08No3XkzS72c-cAkrdhUlOe-eYFHmj-V3Qn6N9L507-7C0nkcZMLrTGzva8HWye3JTZr0AYnE1eQeafCrl4yv3pc7yMLSCo9qksmGtB3wwUt0AUPy6MtuGGvTeB69VkNPLOek-tECDZFxuSUwc5PWvMq-q1VxUknwadk9RS8tR/s4088/neon%20nights.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro neon colour abstract art with lines" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYoaVQm-rXj38hkH08No3XkzS72c-cAkrdhUlOe-eYFHmj-V3Qn6N9L507-7C0nkcZMLrTGzva8HWye3JTZr0AYnE1eQeafCrl4yv3pc7yMLSCo9qksmGtB3wwUt0AUPy6MtuGGvTeB69VkNPLOek-tECDZFxuSUwc5PWvMq-q1VxUknwadk9RS8tR/w640-h474/neon%20nights.JPG" title="Neon Nights by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Neon Nights by Mark Taylor - clean 80s colour scheme looks brilliant on my soft furnishing range! It's bold, beautiful and oh so 80s!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Keep it simple and unique…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">With all of the emerging
trends and a desire to stand out, there are some inherent risks that by
achieving the next level of wow, you inadvertently overcomplicate your space.
Over use of any technology in any space carries the very real risk that it can
frighten people off. If you have a bank of monitors showing multiple images
there’s a danger that rather than looking like an art exhibition booth, it ends
up looking like the control centre of NASA which might be fine if your
paintings feature the Apollo rockets, not so fine if you paint portraits of
pets.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Digital signage has plenty of
positives, especially for accessibility. I’ve even seen rolling video of the
key message with a sign language interpreter in the corner but you don’t need a
lot of technology to make an impact. Minimalism looks way more elegant than
clutter, it also adds to an air of luxury so that prices can be more representative
of the artworks worth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Something else to bear in mind
is that digital technologies do not provide complete solutions, rather they
provide possibilities, especially in efficiency and intimacy. Don’t expect a
digital sign or any other kind of sign to turn poor fortune around completely,
at least not when it’s used without both a digital mindset and a strategy. If
either of those are flawed, or the messaging you display on the signage is
flawed, digital will only serve to magnify those flaws and expose them publicly
to anyone who walks past your space.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The other risk is that you go
so far down the digital event rabbit hole in an attempt to compete with those
who will always have the funding to do it better, or you end up competing with
everyone else who is trying with a limited budget, at which point you’re back
to the problem of merely blending in rather than standing out. Think of using
digital signage as a tool, apply a design mindset to your space, and that
should ensure more than anything that you achieve the goal of ultimately making
your space stand out.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_yflQFDZWLuzER_qeXA1rhEdYIt3uP0bRB0lNLk5MxzBKEEEK52iVV4sz6V_0YCBkL2MGg9o-qxE0_BvqglTDgAED5HA8GNkxeKzW-_RCUXmcpwfOCj2Se6Vw5mCL2IR16lOlOhGHY54IeHaxO4-0u40CSDhSMDMm84X2uE121o-RoO1eC3leLshe/s4088/pop%20watch.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="1980s retro mechanical watch art by mark taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_yflQFDZWLuzER_qeXA1rhEdYIt3uP0bRB0lNLk5MxzBKEEEK52iVV4sz6V_0YCBkL2MGg9o-qxE0_BvqglTDgAED5HA8GNkxeKzW-_RCUXmcpwfOCj2Se6Vw5mCL2IR16lOlOhGHY54IeHaxO4-0u40CSDhSMDMm84X2uE121o-RoO1eC3leLshe/w640-h474/pop%20watch.JPG" title="Pop Watch by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Pop Watch by Mark Taylor - another retro work, this time a nod to those fashionable Swatch Watches that demanded you collect the set!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Location, location, location…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Just occasionally the art Gods
look down and we get to pick where our event space is located at an event. More
often we will be given a space depending on theme or medium, but when you do
have a choice it is worth thinking it through before you fully commit. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There are a few decisions you
will need to make, is the location next door to someone who sells the same kind
of work, is it within eye contact distance of any breakout or rest areas, that
could be handy as groups of potential buyers tend to mingle in those spaces,
and will you be lost with your small space if you are in between two larger
exhibitors?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The question of location
doesn’t just cover the internal layout of the event, you have to consider the
location of the event and whether it is in commutable distance of your intended
market. Any good event organiser who has run these kinds of events before
should be able to provide you with at least a little comfort from previous
visitor demographics. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">What age group is your market,
are they likely to attend this event, is the event theme suited to your work,
and what kind of footfall can you expect on the day. These are all questions
that you should be asking before paying for space at any event and if the
numbers seem off, it might be best to skip the event entirely and find
something that’s more suited to you and your work.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqJ_2bmTn96IpF0mNp1UDr9MYl_o2glagvqdVl9A_qFnoSwGouel4J91waBWlYIm5TpCAeDdHDulx1Y93pty2sXMR40dnbz8RzP4urQRXsgxqfGjrd6xr0I4Z3y_G9posS0eOlOmtg_xd_1OjNAJLNZjICa5Rq0os-nfnCVIquFXH_FqbsLrkru7n2/s4088/the%20little%20black%20watch.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="1980s retro led watch art print" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqJ_2bmTn96IpF0mNp1UDr9MYl_o2glagvqdVl9A_qFnoSwGouel4J91waBWlYIm5TpCAeDdHDulx1Y93pty2sXMR40dnbz8RzP4urQRXsgxqfGjrd6xr0I4Z3y_G9posS0eOlOmtg_xd_1OjNAJLNZjICa5Rq0os-nfnCVIquFXH_FqbsLrkru7n2/w640-h474/the%20little%20black%20watch.JPG" title="Little Black Watch by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Little Black Watch by Mark Taylor - these watches were popular in kit form during the 1980s! Hand drawn, total time to complete, around 40 hours!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Hiring space for your own
event…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Artists and collectives of
artists will frequently venture onto the path of self-hosting an art show, and
whilst this is a great idea it’s also more work than you might at first
imagine. One of the biggest challenges you will face is finding a suitable
venue that is affordable. Premium event spaces carry a premium cost and that
might not be doable even when you are splitting any up front costs with a
collective of artists.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There are plenty of affordable
spaces in most towns and cities, community centres, local authority owned
spaces (although recently some of these have become just as expensive as dedicated
spaces so you do have to do your homework), and pop-up shops. Certainly here in
the UK when a retail shop closes down, the owner of the property can find
themselves paying additional taxes for leaving the premises unoccupied, so
renting the space out keeps not only the dust away, it can also mean that the
owner pays less in taxes or business rates because the premises are occupied
for a period of time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Most towns and cities with a
vibrant gallery scene will also rent out exhibition space, but you have to be
cautious that they’re not operating as vanity spaces where you essentially pay to
display your work. You also need to keep an eye open in case they<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>start bundling in additional costs for staff,
or to open any catering space. Some will also insist on you using specific
caterers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Some galleries exist solely by
renting out their entire space to vanity events but art professionals will know
that the events held in these spaces are just ways for the space to make money.
You’re less likely to then attract art critics or journalists to the event.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj7WG7HWd7I8WC5BmiTHi_vheAZxK9SBSocUWClfhenl8egqv_X8ONDUmTAdkJ8p8CsETNbz_1l5kBus0mg3PRtWNWS1iTdT6z_isNPhQ6NljdHBOtS-IRy95ze3PBHWp8I_lUtcwmXkSYDhScoEhJIrMSvjJrNOCjCPVvEdPPRROpw0lq02M6CgF7/s4088/vintage%20harlequin.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="harlequin style patter art print retro" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj7WG7HWd7I8WC5BmiTHi_vheAZxK9SBSocUWClfhenl8egqv_X8ONDUmTAdkJ8p8CsETNbz_1l5kBus0mg3PRtWNWS1iTdT6z_isNPhQ6NljdHBOtS-IRy95ze3PBHWp8I_lUtcwmXkSYDhScoEhJIrMSvjJrNOCjCPVvEdPPRROpw0lq02M6CgF7/w640-h474/vintage%20harlequin.JPG" title="Vintage Harlequin by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Vintage Harlequin by Mark Taylor - this piece looks brilliant on cushions and duvets as well as in print!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Make sure your budget
stretches…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If there is one thing I have
learned from exhibiting over the years, it’s that events are seldom as
inexpensive as you think they will be. Exhibitions set out to achieve one
single goal which is to extract as much money as possible in the shortest
amount of time. It doesn’t matter if you are attending as a buyer or as an
exhibitor. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Just attending as an exhibitor
means that you have to financially plan on covering the event costs and also
your own costs, food is notoriously expensive at most events where it’s not
provided. If you need food or drink and you probably will as you are mostly
human, you have to expect to pay a premium. If it’s a local show, unless there
are specific rules about bringing your own food, take along your own
provisions. Your aim should be aligned to the core mission of the event, and
that is to extract as much profit and value out of the time you are exhibiting
as possible so that you at least cover your costs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If display stands are not
included in the price of exhibiting, this is something else that you will need
to think about. You have options here, you can either rent modular displays
which can be increased or decreased in size, or if you attend on a regular
basis, then purchasing a modular display system might be more cost effective
but these are not inexpensive, modular units usually carry a cost premium.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">What you absolutely don’t want
to be doing is turning up to an event with a decorators table and duct tape.
We’ve all seen those kinds of spaces. If you decide to hire a solution, make
sure that you do this as early as possible, hire charges tend to increase
rapidly just before an event and you don’t really need the added pressure of
sourcing it at the last minute or wondering if it will arrive in time. It’s
also worth considering insurance to cover your costs if the event is cancelled
and just in case the event doesn’t have its own public liability insurance in
place.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Ditch the freebies…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Personally, I would forget
about bringing along boxes full of giveaways. It might be better to spend a
little extra on turning your business cards into miniature artworks and use
environmentally friendly materials instead of offering the obligatory keyring
and pen. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">A lot of galleries, especially
those in the cruise ship industry offer prize draws in return for visitor
details. Usually the prize is a print or a painting that’s relative in value to
the prestige of the event, but bear in mind that this is a cost that comes out
of your bottom line and offering a ten dollar print might not attract that many
people.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Stay as local as possible…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you get the opportunity to
exhibit at Basel, take it, no matter how far away you are but the majority of
working artists won’t ever find themselves in that kind of space. There is a
train of thought with exhibitions that you should try to punch up above your
current demographic, but that is a risky strategy unless you can afford to
spend the time at the even and spend the money to be an exhibitor in a more
prestigious space. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Personally, I tend to stay as
local as possible. This negates the need to book hotels which usually add an
event tax in the form of increasing their prices whenever an exhibition is in
town. Staying local also takes a lot less effort to get there and you don’t
then have anywhere near the same transport and shipping costs or the worry that
your inventory will arrive damaged. I’m also picky about the demographic of the
event, if it’s of no interest to the type of buyers I have, there is then no
guarantee that I will make a sale let alone cover the costs. To be totally cold
about it, if I can’t make an event pay, I’m not turning up as an exhibitor,
vanity doesn’t pay the bills, but there might be longer term benefits that you
might want to consider, it’s also about the sales you make tomorrow. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If there are options to set up
early, even if there is an extra charge for doing so, those charges usually
include someone else taking your stand from the entrance to the event space.
Some exhibitions will charge a drayage fee, and they usually charge based on
weight. If your total weight is even slightly over the limit, you could be
charged at a higher rate. Drayage usually covers taking your exhibition stand
and inventory from the entrance to the show space so that could potentially
save paying for additional help. It’s worth bearing in mind that drayage is
usually charged over and above the exhibition fee and often this work is
outsourced to non-event staff so make sure it includes insurance. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpRxoUNuynVuuR_w8hQiQy0t3GObxvTsVmutNoFW-X_cvQFZTqJL-8AMCWpdsEvMQqpndmrFXcG8fzwnFoPVKFVUA-adW1aAF9U-5iHgy_2oEf_UVhTgtgJrSbtAg-Cygq33-gOhmUj-Psr2yKYFz0a8tfewPp0lF0gJlg1MF_j__8ZJJLQKE-0ehw/s4088/welcome%20to%20the%20future.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="1980s LED watch retro art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpRxoUNuynVuuR_w8hQiQy0t3GObxvTsVmutNoFW-X_cvQFZTqJL-8AMCWpdsEvMQqpndmrFXcG8fzwnFoPVKFVUA-adW1aAF9U-5iHgy_2oEf_UVhTgtgJrSbtAg-Cygq33-gOhmUj-Psr2yKYFz0a8tfewPp0lF0gJlg1MF_j__8ZJJLQKE-0ehw/w640-h474/welcome%20to%20the%20future.JPG" title="Welcome to the Future by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Welcome to the Future by Mark Taylor - I was surprised I pulled this one off! It took an insane amount of time to create the strap - Love metallics but they're incredibly difficult to paint when only using a stylus and no short cuts!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Get Connected…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In my experience, there are three
types of Wi-Fi access you can get in an exhibition space. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><i>Free Wi-Fi</i></span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> -
potentially shared by thousands of people on an unencrypted and unsecure
network, not something you should be relying on if you need to use the internet
to take card payments. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><i>Exhibitor Wi-Fi</i></span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> –
where you pay by the day, week, hour, and you tend to pay a high fee for an
internet connection that might not be all that robust, it might still present
security issues, and there’s always a chance that you find yourself in a
wireless not-spot rather than a hot spot.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><i>Your own connection</i></span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> – you
are in control. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you have a data plan
that includes tethering, this might be your best and most reliable option. The
downside is that you will be reliant on a cellular signal that might be too
weak to use, and if you take your phone to lunch and your helper needs to take
a payment, you could lose the sale.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">My advice to anyone who
chooses to use a public Wi-Fi system is to always use a Virtual Private Network
(VPN), that will ensure that customer data can be better protected. You can
often sign up for trial periods for VPNs but a word to the wise, some of these
VPN services aren’t that secure. There are VPN services available that really
do make a bad situation worse, so only ever use trusted VPN software and
purchase it through a trusted supplier, and check if there are limitations that
might restrict you doing what you need to do, some won’t allow tethering to
other devices such as a card machine.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Electrical Connections…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Power will likely play a big
part in your space, whether it is to provide lighting so you can show your work
in the best light, or to charge your phone or run displays, any power needs have
to be considered early on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Some events will charge an
additional fee for power, some have smart meters installed and you pay by each
unit of electricity that you use, but there are still a few events that include
power charges in the price you pay for the space. You could take a portable
power bank, but these can be expensive even to hire.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Many event organisers now
insist on portable appliance testing, if you don’t have a certificate already
you might have to pay the event hosts to carry out this work for you, although
some provide it as a service and include the cost within the cost for the
space.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s always worth taking along
extra extension sockets, cable ties, and duct tape so that you can at least
tape down rogue cables but you should also make sure that you are not
introducing a trip hazard. I often use a rubber cable cover that fits over the
cable, is brightly coloured, but provides a slight slope over the cable. At least
with this there is less chance of tripping over it and less chance that
equipment will be pulled down onto the floor and damaged. Some exhibitions will
have these items for sale if you are missing anything, but if you think the
food is expensive, ask them for a price on an extension socket. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz47zthVmJJzjxhkq2kOAjl9Oeh0o6mgpmneTTTGCeRx7SEiRZYwRrWqDv82TxWMuniqZJJLTOKKq-GtGGdO0Wf74g48X41_0GtODlwruok39wyd0ng4mwBHo3FLu9e_psdwMpFqNl_Xfqnr_k9oY5qlZfdPQtL7vTrN7S2jsyBulrG9KNMt_4lUmz/s4088/ethereal%20seas.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="ocean landscape with boat artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz47zthVmJJzjxhkq2kOAjl9Oeh0o6mgpmneTTTGCeRx7SEiRZYwRrWqDv82TxWMuniqZJJLTOKKq-GtGGdO0Wf74g48X41_0GtODlwruok39wyd0ng4mwBHo3FLu9e_psdwMpFqNl_Xfqnr_k9oY5qlZfdPQtL7vTrN7S2jsyBulrG9KNMt_4lUmz/w640-h474/ethereal%20seas.JPG" title="Ethereal Seas by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Ethereal Seas by Mark Taylor - expect more landscapes soon, I have four in various stages of non-completion! </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Frame Wisely…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By paying a little less to frame some of your
works you could then invest a little more in other pieces which could benefit
from a much higher quality frame. I tend to stick with a simple white wood frame
wherever I can but do tend to take frame samples along to any event so that
buyers know they have a choice. These can be useful to encourage the
all-important upsell.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Thrift stores, Facebook
Marketplace and eBay can often be the source of good quality frames but you do
have to make sure that the frame you use is firstly, the right size, and
secondly, isn’t damaged. Beyond that, any frame you use shouldn’t detract from
the work, there’s nothing worse than someone looking at your best work and then
saying, that’s a nice frame and ignoring the work it contains. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Don’t forget that Artist
Statement…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Even at a trade show you
shouldn’t drop your standards or think that you can get away without an artists
statement. I know this is up there with the worst jobs an artist will ever have
to undertake, I’ve never met an artist yet who likes writing these things, but
they are kind of expected, kind of essential, and they will add some value to
the overall experience of buying your work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Tips to set up your own
community event…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Define
your vision: Before you start organizing your exhibition, it's important to
have a clear vision of what you want to achieve. Consider what kind of art you
want to showcase, who your target audience is, and what message you want to
convey.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Choose
a venue: Once you have a clear vision, you can start looking for a suitable
venue for your exhibition. This could be a local gallery, community centre,
library, or any other public space that is suitable for displaying art. Make
sure to consider the size and layout of the venue, and make sure it meets your
needs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Invite
artists: After you have secured a venue, you can start inviting artists to
participate in your exhibition. Consider reaching out to local artists, art
schools, or artists' organizations to help you find artists who are interested
in participating.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Plan
the exhibition: Now that you have your venue and artists, it's time to start
planning the details of your exhibition. This will include choosing a date,
organizing a reception, planning a walkthrough or artist talk, and coordinating
with the venue on any additional details such as lighting, signage, and other
logistics.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Market
your exhibition: To ensure that your exhibition is well-attended, it's
important to market it effectively. Consider creating a promotional flyer,
sending out press releases, and utilizing social media to spread the word. You
can also reach out to local newspapers, art blogs, and other media outlets to
help promote your exhibition.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Host
the exhibition: On the day of the exhibition, make sure to arrive early to set
up and prepare for the event. Greet visitors as they arrive, provide them with
information about the artists and their works, and ensure that the exhibition
runs smoothly. After the exhibition, take some time to reflect on the
experience and consider what you could do differently in the future.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">By following these steps, you
can set up a successful and memorable art exhibition in your local community. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsRCD5zjaxUrMXjue3S0K9fDOuEQzpTsdyy8_lotuhJGQMk0IJdZnahgfIMlPcF56WNfMbgga9quHh9JqmJBZsyPi9wgSilbdC9GQDjQ2AVE2Zf3fLrD_tGQQWvtKTBjRfBGg_gMVWFZrFMKJ6Xxv6P7yZJ8RweIsWlhqqkxlecjbd2y46tnfYMnZg/s4088/dry%20stone%20wall.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="dry stone wall at sunset artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsRCD5zjaxUrMXjue3S0K9fDOuEQzpTsdyy8_lotuhJGQMk0IJdZnahgfIMlPcF56WNfMbgga9quHh9JqmJBZsyPi9wgSilbdC9GQDjQ2AVE2Zf3fLrD_tGQQWvtKTBjRfBGg_gMVWFZrFMKJ6Xxv6P7yZJ8RweIsWlhqqkxlecjbd2y46tnfYMnZg/w640-h640/dry%20stone%20wall.JPG" title="Glow Over a Dry Stone Wall by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Glow Over a Dry Stone Wall by Mark Taylor - one from a few years ago, this work was hand painted using a digital medium, each rock was hand created, and it remains one of my best selling works today!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Good luck with your next event…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Event spaces are not
inexpensive and adding unnecessary costs over and above the cost of the space
is something that you will want to avoid if you can. It’s easy to be swept
along in the initial excitement that exhibiting will bring, and it’s that
excitement that can often lead to making some really poor choices especially
when events organisers begin selling you their version of the upsell. No matter
how well you think you upsell your art, experienced events teams have gone way
beyond mastering this particular dark art. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Mostly, exhibiting isn’t
something that you need to have lots of experience in doing, you just need to
be aware of the small details that will make you stand out and provide you with
more chance of having a successful exhibition. Above all, you have to manage
your own expectations around what is involved, events can be fun but they can
also be incredibly testing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So long as you expect the days
to be long, the work to be somewhere in between a little more arduous and
extremely more stressful than your regular daily routine, and you also remember
to strike up conversations, the rest is pretty much more about applying a
little thought around the detail and not letting your heart overrule your head.
Keep this in mind at your next event and you might just find that your event
space not only begins to pop but you might just make a few extra sales too!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…</span></i></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I am an artist and blogger and live in
Staffordshire, England. You can purchase my art through my Fine Art America
store or my Pixels site here: </span><a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</span></a><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Any art sold through Fine Art America and Pixels
contributes towards to the ongoing costs of running and developing this
website. You can also view my portfolio website at </span><a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">https://beechhousemedia.com</span></a><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">You can also follow me on Facebook at: </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</a></span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> where you will also find
regular free reference photos of interesting subjects and places I visit. You
can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at </span><a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0Staffordshire, UK52.8792745 -2.057186824.569040663821156 -37.2134368 81.189508336178847 33.0990632tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-86719052729816332302022-12-23T08:12:00.000+00:002022-12-23T08:12:04.791+00:00Covering The Cost of Creating Art<h1 style="text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Tackling Price Increases for Art Supplies</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXw_bs2Kh9pd7fR-mQG9lmDonIObas3cFnbXBA2nnUou2RuIrZQrrDhnv04vthaUL-B8MrIh4Mu6EItI9oaId1fMTBOkLh-hB7FBWPMJMw1ad021efCeLRpnwBkVE68TvOYbIjABIulymjhwFeHns6VpGG0Mirhu8rnyyOHJTv5khEVMEISGtjjKwQ/s1080/cover%201%20cost%20of%20art.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="covering the cost of art text on background with rising arrow" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXw_bs2Kh9pd7fR-mQG9lmDonIObas3cFnbXBA2nnUou2RuIrZQrrDhnv04vthaUL-B8MrIh4Mu6EItI9oaId1fMTBOkLh-hB7FBWPMJMw1ad021efCeLRpnwBkVE68TvOYbIjABIulymjhwFeHns6VpGG0Mirhu8rnyyOHJTv5khEVMEISGtjjKwQ/w640-h640/cover%201%20cost%20of%20art.PNG" title="Covering The Cost of Art Blog" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Covering the Cost of Art </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">With the rising cost of
inflation and a world heading towards or already in a recession, on paper at
least, the outlook for working artists might seem desperate and bleak. But,
this isn’t the first time that the creative industry has had to weather a storm
and it’s unlikely to be the last. This time, we take a look at navigating the
swelling seas of an economically challenging art world, just as many artists
have had to do time and time before. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">An end of year deep dive!</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">We made it folks! 2022 will
shortly be giving way to 2023 and despite a seemingly bleak outlook with
escalating inflation and all of the other drama the world has had to face
throughout 22, there are plenty of opportunities for artists to continue creating
art. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">This time I will be reflecting
back on the turbulent times that many artists have faced over the past few
decades and we take a deep dive into thinking creatively about how we might
respond as professional artists. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The Benefit of Hindsight…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">With the hindsight I wish I’d
had back in 2007/2008, if I had written this post back then I might have said
something along the lines of the art world is about to enter a bumpy period but
it won’t necessarily affect every market in every country in the same way.
Today, I think post-pandemic, the situation in Ukraine, I’m not so sure that
the current climate won’t be far wider reaching than other financial meltdowns
that we have endured in the past. Whether other regions fall into recession just
as we are now seeing here in the UK, is something that I’m sure will pan out in
the coming months. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Something else that I wish I
had known pre-the last recession, was that I would see a slow down on mid-price
works, smaller works would be more popular than previously but would take a
little longer to sell, but larger works would be mostly unaffected. I’m
certainly not an economist but I would go so far as to say that I don’t
necessarily see that being any different this time around because my sales
today are beginning to follow a similar path to my experience back in 2008. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiPRG_XKHZl4j01sJW7538vkZoKeu3I9QSKM5IIz3zGN-1h9KMgMEOZlDUvqA_nyLvxNi3mQRiVmKc4dE8SJokfJaoFYTGV9tGBjce12RPA-Ec65mo5gSUu10VG1or_DyW_FyAExAw8LcV4BPuRj3FvEzWoHsokPH-FKgmQW5A5gRo9ddZKbAaEoe8/s4088/ethereal%20seas.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="seascape painting with boat on calm sea and seagulls" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiPRG_XKHZl4j01sJW7538vkZoKeu3I9QSKM5IIz3zGN-1h9KMgMEOZlDUvqA_nyLvxNi3mQRiVmKc4dE8SJokfJaoFYTGV9tGBjce12RPA-Ec65mo5gSUu10VG1or_DyW_FyAExAw8LcV4BPuRj3FvEzWoHsokPH-FKgmQW5A5gRo9ddZKbAaEoe8/w640-h474/ethereal%20seas.JPG" title="Ethereal Seas" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Ethereal Seas by Mark Taylor - One of the few seascapes I produced in 2022!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I can only base my experience
on what happened here in the UK back in 2008 and the downturns I experienced
before, but if economies elsewhere follow a similar trajectory this time, I do
think at the lower price end of the art market, buyers will be more discerning
about what they buy because whether we want to hear it or not, the majority of
art at lower to mid-price points that is sold outside of galleries is sold to
provide an aesthetic. There’s often a link with any shift in house prices,
something that we last experienced in the pandemic when people would purchase
art because they were busy renovating their homes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s not to say that what the
majority of artists produce is decorative art, neither is it a statement intended
to be dismissive, but the function of art at a lower price point is more often
purchased to serve this purpose. If people are spending money on redecorating
new homes, they tend to purchase new art. If money is flowing less freely, art
sales at some price points can be negatively affected. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There are a lot of caveats
with this. If you regularly sell in a region that isn’t affected by financial
markets hitting a wall, you might not see any difference, but I think there is
one thing we can all agree on and that is that prices of art and craft materials
are definitely on the up no matter what type of art you create.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Prices Going Up, Up, Up…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are a traditional brush
and canvas artist you will have noticed pretty big hikes in the cost of art
supplies lately. Over the past few years art supplies have been increasing in
price more rapidly than ever before. Raw materials to produce paint have
increased between 50% and 100% as pigment manufacturing has moved away from
heavy metals. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Artists have for a while been
on the lookout for cheaper alternatives that maintain quality, but there is
only so much excess cost any artist is able to consume in order to maintain a
sustainable business and keep prices consistent with what they charged before.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN6ccFysfWubk_b50_o138p-Iz2quZrGtvvZGhZ8voWRXGKlFKsTNheTBvDMLPllk1Tlv1kYhP0oGTZt0gnOMmkDeg7mJewvtGDgLfGgTjJilxtJmNVOOtMg_UB9rJsKMqtK-VtB_W5RloSfR9QxENX5zKALkGZ-_IuigBmGWZGdbP0CJx7fiVhAcX/s4088/vintage%20dial.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="vintage telephone dial artwork" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN6ccFysfWubk_b50_o138p-Iz2quZrGtvvZGhZ8voWRXGKlFKsTNheTBvDMLPllk1Tlv1kYhP0oGTZt0gnOMmkDeg7mJewvtGDgLfGgTjJilxtJmNVOOtMg_UB9rJsKMqtK-VtB_W5RloSfR9QxENX5zKALkGZ-_IuigBmGWZGdbP0CJx7fiVhAcX/w640-h474/vintage%20dial.JPG" title="Vintage Dial" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Vintage Dial by Mark Taylor - Originally created as a commission, you can add your own telephone number on the dial!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Even creating digital art has
become much more expensive than it was even just 6-months ago. With rising
energy costs, increasing digital subscription prices from a nervous technology
industry, chip shortages and seemingly never-ending lead times to take ownership
of new technology, never listen to anyone who tells you that creating digital
art is an inexpensive endeavour. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In the past six months, the
outgoings to create my own digital work have mostly doubled, and that’s just to
cover things like server hosting, application subscriptions, and the constant
supply of printer inks and good quality paper and canvas stock. Add to this the
cost of shipping and export duties for the physical prints and incoming
supplies, professional digital artists are beginning to feel the pinch.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Many digital artists are
having to do things differently, like having to transfer digital assets
electronically for printing elsewhere. That can be a pain point for many
artists who will, by doing this, be forgoing quality control of the prints and
taking a risk that their assets don’t reappear somewhere else.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Recessions are rarely if ever great
for small businesses and it still surprises me when I hear that some people
still believe that small businesses have small overheads. Mostly the overheads
for any small business is usually much higher than the corporate giants and
that’s when inflation is low. When inflation is high, there’s an added burden
to business to meet the costs and explain any increases that need to be passed
on to customers. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2U4pTvtrMguGnJhGWiEFzy3Z4Cz0-6Ubyr156_mv--fSl6yrfR6N-z0lZLFMy5Zl9kjfUYPORAUlFU5CSMT3iba13H_L7gPvpsWAjS5e0hBBIC4AZqVHgWNd-CAnht1JPlgl1TuPCkDpGPxz4Fge3UTq_Bt_x0m1Txb59-dTJCIb_hiX5HSGn_QYp/s4088/spectrum.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="abstract art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2U4pTvtrMguGnJhGWiEFzy3Z4Cz0-6Ubyr156_mv--fSl6yrfR6N-z0lZLFMy5Zl9kjfUYPORAUlFU5CSMT3iba13H_L7gPvpsWAjS5e0hBBIC4AZqVHgWNd-CAnht1JPlgl1TuPCkDpGPxz4Fge3UTq_Bt_x0m1Txb59-dTJCIb_hiX5HSGn_QYp/w640-h474/spectrum.JPG" title="Spectrum by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Spectrum by Mark Taylor - Because we all need bright in our lives!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Many small businesses will
often shield buyers from the additional costs wherever they can in order to
compete with the big corporations, but it’s not a level playing field for these
often independent ventures because they rarely if ever see the same level of
supply discounts that are offered to the big players.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For most artists, increases in
production costs are costs that you can’t really pass on through
non-commissioned work, casual art buyers will only ever pay what they’re
willing to pay, and art, whether it is purchased by a causal buyer or a
hardened collector is only ever worth as much as the market is prepared to pay.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">As for commissions which are
notoriously more expensive to produce because you might have to use specialist
supplies or carry out revisions, the production costs have risen considerably
over the past year. I’m just about managing to absorb most of the extra costs
for now by offsetting the increases through print sales and second gate
activity and because I lucked out by buying a lot of supplies pre-price
increases, but it is becoming challenging when prices for everything are
increasing so quickly and there will be plenty of artists who don’t already have
established second gates to their business. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Just like many other small businesses,
my prices will inevitably need to rise at some point. For many artists working
in the non-represented space this is a pain point for their regular buyers,
even more so for casual buyers or those purchasing art for aesthetic rather
than artistic reasons. As an independent artist, increasing costs isn’t
something you will probably be able to avoid long-term in the current financial
climate. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There are usually options to
reduce costs for artists but those options right now are fewer than they were. Digital
might have been the most cost effective option few years ago and I championed
the practice for many years as a wallet friendly way to continue creating art
without the expense of buying traditional art supplies, but that’s certainly
not the case now and less so if you are just about to start out with a digital
art practice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I also paint using traditional
materials, historically this is a practice that would cost more to produce a
piece of work than creating a piece digitally, but creating professional art
using a digital medium is now becoming the more expensive option because there
are way fewer options to cut costs. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAIGepqJnM0iou_hSVfKn--NSR8PCPYnYgDxeJ-XrjuE7Sl2cMHzrrxMYLe88nMBMzyQ6FXInQmPMcVI0_ZJzcrFsPxJsLB-B6rrx0HGKK5aiRex1ONzhNPJx1h-5STogyEYb2xAn6Z0LTBgpCrBQobjASBXUugEOONqsVOY_2vo1YqArnezE83wcY/s4088/kinetic%20fields.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="wind turbines mountain landscape artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAIGepqJnM0iou_hSVfKn--NSR8PCPYnYgDxeJ-XrjuE7Sl2cMHzrrxMYLe88nMBMzyQ6FXInQmPMcVI0_ZJzcrFsPxJsLB-B6rrx0HGKK5aiRex1ONzhNPJx1h-5STogyEYb2xAn6Z0LTBgpCrBQobjASBXUugEOONqsVOY_2vo1YqArnezE83wcY/w640-h474/kinetic%20fields.JPG" title="Kinetic Fields by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Kinetic Fields by Mark Taylor - Available now from my Pixels Store or Order Directly!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">This is in part because of the
global chip supply chain issues and in part, because digital doesn’t
necessarily follow the rule of thumb around economies of scale, if you scale
digital you tend to see increases in costs rather than reductions. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So, as a digital artist you
really don’t have the same options that traditional artists might have when
choosing between say a variant of white paint. There are fewer areas that you
can look towards to cut down on essential costs, and there are very few digital
tools that now don’t require an ongoing subscription.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">When you can find the
technology you need to buy to continue creating your digital work, it now carries
what I call a technology tax that originates from that lack of silicone chips
and a pandemic when the entire world decided to go online at the same time. This
increase in buying meant that existing supplies that were supposed to last
longer in stores were rapidly depleted and couldn’t easily be replaced. It was
the perfect storm in that regard and few could have predicted the fall out in
the way that it has happened. With hindsight, the signs were there for the chip
market, but it was too late to do anything. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinGO9T1yGKr4sAaEPdXZHU0KytCnWBGOgr5NqA4SwfSfSYhI3VrydkV6dDXDwNQAMg4lC_sK6-mv5364ZYA7qyp3mLJiGCGRhbYfmGQ5bhvhP-HYV9BbORVAxSjD4YyCudQOwkpY6nI2ZqhkxuscjeHUK2aALaxdPKnliug1gdqpHpDtuf8uXClQNI/s4088/will%20work%20for%20ink.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="printer artwork will work for ink print" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinGO9T1yGKr4sAaEPdXZHU0KytCnWBGOgr5NqA4SwfSfSYhI3VrydkV6dDXDwNQAMg4lC_sK6-mv5364ZYA7qyp3mLJiGCGRhbYfmGQ5bhvhP-HYV9BbORVAxSjD4YyCudQOwkpY6nI2ZqhkxuscjeHUK2aALaxdPKnliug1gdqpHpDtuf8uXClQNI/w640-h474/will%20work%20for%20ink.JPG" title="Will Work for Ink by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Will Work for Ink by Mark Taylor - At this point, we are literally working for ink! There's nothing quite like the thud of a dot matrix printer!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">To give you an idea of just how
much digital production costs have increased, a quick look at some of the
percentage increases I have experienced might give you some idea.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Printers</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> –
2022 increase of between +15% and +20% - Printers are not built like they once
were, they’re more complex yet don’t seem to have the build quality of previous
generations. This year I had to replace a wide format dye-sub printer that was
just 14-months old because replacement parts were not available and in all likelihood,
might not be even available post-supply chain problems. It looks like the manufacturer
has completely changed the production method for new models to make supply
easier.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Printer Ink</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> –
2022 Increase - +5% to +15% for regular inkjet supplies, and up to +30% for
specialist inks for use in dye sublimation printers. If you use premium inks
that retain their colour there are few options other than to buy original inks
from the printer manufacturer. Ink was already expensive but today the premium
inks really are on another level.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Premium papers for archival
prints</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> +38% increase in 2022. This was mostly because of the
situation in Ukraine and increased shipping costs but what really affected
supply was the industrial action being taken at paper mills.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Application subscription
increases</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> in 2022 – median increase across a range of services is
+18% (annual subscriptions) Lifetime licences are now a distant memory for most
applications.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Specialist Print Masters</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> (this
is a people cost) to prepare work - +12% but I do wonder how many of the print staff
are seeing that level of pay increase in their pockets.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Power for digital production
equipment</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> +150% and increasing. Rising energy costs make it much
more expensive to run the technology.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Replacement digital equipment</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> +15%
on average but with lengthy lead times too. Where technology is in short
supply, the increases are often more. A good example of rising costs is a
Raspberry Pi 4, a single board mainly hobbyist computer which usually retails
for around £80 in the UK for the 8Gb model. Pre-used ones are now routinely
fetching more that twice that on sites such as eBay as the devices are not
currently being manufactured due to chip supplies. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">To compound matters, scalpers
who purchased in bulk as demand initially increased are now charging a premium because
production of these devices has been suspended due to the lack of chips. There
are other electronics that are currently being scalped so it’s inevitable that
we will see more increases next year. The chip supply issue isn’t looking great,
but it is slightly better than it was. My guess and the information I’m being
given right now is that 2024 might be the year we start to see any kind of
normality return.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Cloud Storage</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">
across a number of storage providers – Median +50% per year. Remember that
costs will always increase as you use more storage but base storage fees are on
the up too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Shipping</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> –
With industrial action frequently taking place in the UKs mail service, you
have to look for alternatives and some of these services are charging up to 400%
more than pre-pandemic levels. Whilst shipping looks like it will stabilise
next year, it’s unlikely that companies will drop all of their newly increased
shipping costs. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I think there is a real risk
that todays prices could become the new normal for shipping in the future and
that’s a major issue as people have been conditioned to expect free shipping. Services
such as Amazon Prime have made us expect free shipping and even though Prime is
an annual membership that covers shipping, people place the monetary cost on
Prime membership against all of the benefits that come bundled with it rather
than thinking of it as an upfront payment for unlimited shipping with added
benefits.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So looking at this, you start
to get a picture of how significant some of these cost increases are, and these
are costs that don’t just apply to artists, many small businesses buy similar
products and have similar logistics needs. It doesn’t matter to the suppliers
whether you are a small independent business or a large corporation, arguably
as a small business your costs are always going to be more expensive because
you are working with lower volumes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">What I haven’t included here
are things like hosting, and other consumables, and the day to day expenses of
running any business which have also increased. The cost of shipping is a standout
example of excess costs because while the prices have massively increased for getting
product from A to B, the speed of delivery has massively decreased, especially
here in the UK.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The big one here in the UK is
Brexit. Forget the land of opportunity that Brits were promised, a lot of my
paper stock originates in Italy and import taxes now also have to be considered.
With Brexit came the additional burden of bureaucracy, import duties and
additional taxes, and the increased time to get things delivered due to added customs
checks which has created some serious challenges for many businesses based here
in the UK. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So the next time someone asks
you to justify the cost of producing digital art (there are a lot of people who
still believe we pixel pushers just press a button!), tell them to come and
read this blog!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlSS3qMYxpkOy9vOk_ewB4D_FGDNeM8vcRjs4_nIDEcjtyFjRMSjR2GzN2tD6ChmSttbdgP_XB4fCc7aroT7c8IHqGtKtNumGaUiR3O9sT87R8JpooR3CEfYbKZ6U05iHYkDenu8R6ZBfdmlRY7H6-0TBq2v0Q5fMnspWUzvsxvnivUBIoHab4O4Un/s1219/adrift%20under%20a%20neon%20sky.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="sunset over beach with boats" border="0" data-original-height="1044" data-original-width="1219" height="548" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlSS3qMYxpkOy9vOk_ewB4D_FGDNeM8vcRjs4_nIDEcjtyFjRMSjR2GzN2tD6ChmSttbdgP_XB4fCc7aroT7c8IHqGtKtNumGaUiR3O9sT87R8JpooR3CEfYbKZ6U05iHYkDenu8R6ZBfdmlRY7H6-0TBq2v0Q5fMnspWUzvsxvnivUBIoHab4O4Un/w640-h548/adrift%20under%20a%20neon%20sky.PNG" title="Adrift Under A Neon Sky by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Adrift Under A Neon Sky by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The Major Art Markets are
Fine, Mostly…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s not just the cost of art
supplies and materials that have increased, there is some good news in the art
world as a result of higher costs. Some sectors of the high end market are
seeing more positive signs with prices going up as a result of demand. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Major artworks have been
seeing a leap in value with collectors who have an eye on rising inflation and
then bidding big money at auction. Works priced at over $1 million nearly
doubled in sales from 12% in 2021 to 23% in the first half of 2022, those
figures are on a par with levels last seen in 2019. If the market turns out to
be anything like it was in 2008, it might fluctuate up and down for a little
while longer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Recessions almost always have
a positive impact on art prices at this level because collectors tend to hold
on to works. It is literally the classic tale of supply and demand. For a few buyers
at this level, it really is about the art, for others, art is seen as little
more than a commodity to be traded down the line. It’s a cold world this art
business, at the high end there’s little appetite for emotion, it purely a
transactional process.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In practice, the reduction in
supply tends to keep prices stable for established artists who sell into the
major primary markets. The one problem with art, is that it is a
sentiment-driven asset that is mostly tied to surplus wealth, it’s not a widget
that solves a problem. The art market is pretty resilient at this level because
it is one of the very few industries that self-regulates supply and demand both
in times of a financial slump and in times of financial excess.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">During the 2008 crisis, some
aspects of the high end fine art market eventually succumbed to a depression,
but only in certain areas and genres. Established artists and genres held out
really well before eventually recovering completely, but works with a shorter
history or from less popular artists and genres struggled for a while longer
before recovering, although some never did quite recover to previous levels.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Recession Rich…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In recessions, there will
always be a number of people who do extraordinarily well, but, there are also
usually more people that don’t do very well at all. I always think of a
recession as a microscope that amplifies inequality.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There are also people who sit
somewhere in the middle, the recession rich, yet they’re still a long way off
being a high earner. These are people who just happen to be slightly better off
and are able to afford slightly more than those around them. They are people
who find themselves in a position where they might have access to a greater
cashflow or credit than most other people around them do. Those investing in
top-end artworks priced a million and above also tend to have enough of a
financial buffer behind them to weather the storm better than most and they
tend to be the most able to self-regulate supply and demand too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Visit a show such as Basel
during an economic downturn and you won’t see people shying away from major
purchases, and besides, those buyers are coming from a place of power and
galleries, whilst not admitting it openly, absolutely know how precarious the business
can be at times like this.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">During the pandemic, many
galleries had to pivot to online sales but where gallery owners retained
physical spaces, they’re not immune to energy price increases, nor are they
immune from inflationary costs of running a business. The galleries and artists
that survived in 2008 and during the pandemic, were galleries and artists who
continued to move works out of the door. Many of them had to discount work to
make this happen and I suspect the same will be true this time around.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkdaVIVsbKPeFGZmoYIxWojrEcWk3y_hNzjMPU15T20g_oqJIz5OPEUcukrkveH6KnmApPfugyXzhPB_glxdJ8QoA__QlZ-6GJIQnOwEggB3jj8VoWBi0seZa4NDkae7K0ybjX1FOM4wEPBlpQ7ZD2c3C2AP6oiOZ4o_UB0KvlUcdWbXUF5R2tM9fV/s4088/1984.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="1984 artwork cables and eye" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkdaVIVsbKPeFGZmoYIxWojrEcWk3y_hNzjMPU15T20g_oqJIz5OPEUcukrkveH6KnmApPfugyXzhPB_glxdJ8QoA__QlZ-6GJIQnOwEggB3jj8VoWBi0seZa4NDkae7K0ybjX1FOM4wEPBlpQ7ZD2c3C2AP6oiOZ4o_UB0KvlUcdWbXUF5R2tM9fV/w640-h474/1984.JPG" title="1984 by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">1984 by Mark Taylor - This looks brilliant printed on acrylic block!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Whilst few gallerists like to
admit that prices are lowered at times like this, because that’s akin to a
cardinal sin in the art world, the place of power when you do have access to
money puts the recession or cash rich buyer in a much better position to
negotiate deeper discounts behind closed doors. That’s not peculiar to the art
world, those who can least afford excess are the ones more likely to have to
find it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Technically, the discounted
artworks are never offered for less than their original value and discounting
is never an openly admitted practice in public. In challenging times you can
bet that there will be plenty of gallery owners who will be quietly negotiating
better offers or offering deeper discounts than at any time before. If you are
in the market for fine art, now is probably a good time to buy if you can find
what you are looking for and can afford it, but if it’s not on the market
already it might be a little too late.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The depth of the discount you
might find will vary between galleries. If you were expecting a 5% discount
before for loyalty to a gallery or an artist, in times of economic turmoil you
no longer have to be loyal to either. In the past month alone I know of
collectors who have been offered double digit discounts to switch from their
usual galleries and a couple of collectors I know have been doing deals that
have realised discounts as high as 20 - 25%, something unheard of even a few
months ago. But bear in mind that in many cases, the discount is usually coming
out of the artists commission, not necessarily the galleries profits. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Flippant Increases Year on
Year…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The here and now at times like
this is frankly, for most working artists more about survival, and to an extent
we have generally had a good run over the past decade at least up until the
pandemic. Some artists and galleries have had it even better than most whereby
they have unjustifiably raised prices for the weakest of reasons and they have
continued to make sales, and they have been really stretching the bubble.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The physical galleries and to
some extent artists, that won’t survive will be the galleries and the artists
who would, during the good times, regularly increase prices on a whim without
any real justification. If an artist won an award, a social post went viral, there
was a Y at the end of Wednesday, prices would be increased.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdUscH_Jvbbu090skt8ohe-kmWeLKIS4QvrDSqcvhdZ48ENavOvn_XzBcIjmRUcNLmsXj_yZWLcFT6pbe7fC6nbbEFK85QbyRJOjO9pmsO91oY6mQj2WJd75bjj8rJEA2Qlk1fAgVdICtU9mg-SFxSVcPG1WHv5b3KXGtiHNmGXX0hn-nghhdvglG8/s4088/insert%20coin.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Insert Coin coin op door" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdUscH_Jvbbu090skt8ohe-kmWeLKIS4QvrDSqcvhdZ48ENavOvn_XzBcIjmRUcNLmsXj_yZWLcFT6pbe7fC6nbbEFK85QbyRJOjO9pmsO91oY6mQj2WJd75bjj8rJEA2Qlk1fAgVdICtU9mg-SFxSVcPG1WHv5b3KXGtiHNmGXX0hn-nghhdvglG8/w640-h474/insert%20coin.JPG" title="Insert Coin by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Insert Coin by Mark Taylor - Thanks to the many buyers who have purchased this print recently - More coin-ops on the way!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you raise prices, they have
to be justifiably increased, never artificially inflated which can and sadly does
happen all of the time in the art world. In a cost of living crisis when small
businesses are facing massive hikes in overhead there are legitimate reasons to
increase prices for some works as production costs have risen, but the more
casual buyers might not fully appreciate that it’s a supply driven cost for
materials and the artist isn’t suddenly making more money. It’s not that the
art is worth more, it just costs more to produce and the excess costs are
passed on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">At the opposite end of the art
world, the end where the majority of working artists work and who are not
repped by a big gallery, the competition is fierce with more people than ever
before turning to the creative sector after seeing it as the ideal work from
home gig during the pandemic. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Of course, not everyone who
started a side gig in the creative sector during the pandemic will still be
creating today, many would quickly find out that while it’s a great gig when
the sun shines, it’s often easier to do anything else when the sun goes back in.
But, there will certainly be more competition today than there was during the
recession in 2008, not least because it is easier to surface your work today
with all of the services that have appeared online over the past decade or so
that make it easier to become published.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">This sector of the art market it
is a much more volatile market to work in than the high-end, high-value gallery
markets. At the lower priced end of the market there will be fewer buyers who
are immediately immune from the effects of a recession, no matter how small or
big the recession is. At this level there is a choice to be made by buyers, do
they spend a hundred bucks on a new print, or save that hundred bucks to
counter rising inflation. If there’s a limited pot of money to start with the
options become clear. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">How to weather the storm…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If there was one thing I learnt
during the recession back in 2008, it would be to keep a level head, try not to
panic, and definitely don’t start lowering prices as if you are having a fire
sale. If your market needs you to reduce prices, price sensibly and be
respectful of what your market will be willing to pay, but don’t make reduced
pricing your new norm. Before the purists begin to scream that you should never
lower prices, mostly I would agree, but in a recession, in the art world that
isn’t repped by the major galleries, as an independent artist your goal should
be to survive. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-JCG_TsyJ_F5YrwxvkATy3ZNdGo1cfZKTxE7jolbw1MIJhTQaIyDRL4NHI4C9NoNdXeXrfIAFZ12RbwP6X0lYEwTKfG6DGL_Hktw1rQZvLb7Pz4wiFKf5vUUEXrU_cr4ey_VjNjKy1D-yhWCWGHPPcem0LwuDr8pqR2F8gXAcFMDxwHgja-PTgOrV/s4088/adrift%20on%20a%20building%20sea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="ocean art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-JCG_TsyJ_F5YrwxvkATy3ZNdGo1cfZKTxE7jolbw1MIJhTQaIyDRL4NHI4C9NoNdXeXrfIAFZ12RbwP6X0lYEwTKfG6DGL_Hktw1rQZvLb7Pz4wiFKf5vUUEXrU_cr4ey_VjNjKy1D-yhWCWGHPPcem0LwuDr8pqR2F8gXAcFMDxwHgja-PTgOrV/w640-h640/adrift%20on%20a%20building%20sea.jpg" title="Adrift on a Building Sea by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Adrift on a Building Sea by Mark Taylor - One of 2022s most popular seascapes!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In good times I would always
advocate never offering a discount or at least a discount where every work becomes
a loss leader, and at any time, good or bad, you should try to never place
previous collectors in a completely precarious position whereby lowering your
prices means that you have irrecoverably devalued what they have already
purchased. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Many artists though, won’t
necessarily be completely affected by this, reducing a fifty dollar print to
forty dollars isn’t going to make a major difference either way but it might
tempt someone with forty dollars to buy it. Selling a previous thousand dollar
print for a couple of hundred dollars, that’s slightly different. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">That said, you do have to have
a pricing strategy that makes sense, puts the work within reach, at least for
those who find they still have a little more to spend, but I think more than
that, ensures that you can continue to move enough work to survive. That’s
surely in the interests of previous collectors too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The Art of Diversification…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Diversifying your portfolio is
never an easy thing for an artist. We are taught early on that work should be
consistent, follow a genre, follow a theme, follow a medium, and every piece
you work on should look exactly like every other work you ever created. You
know, you probably attended a similar class, and I mostly think that’s the
right advice for artists repped by big galleries who are deeply rooted in
historic practices and who are stoic in their outlook. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">But the majority of working
artists are independent and there are no rules that say you absolutely need to
be glued to one thing or another. I might even go so far as to say that will
harm any chances you have of finding commercial success outside of a gallery if
you are so completely rigid. One thing that I might say though, is that if you
do diversify, it should make sense to any existing buyers, but it’s totally
fine to stretch your creative wings and reach entirely new markets. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSKWJs6lBRXg5UObPw2FU_0wt9zykvkJAXkyl8WD8STeN-997i9wztvr7SE96MGYQYFq5me1G7P8Z1W137ToTG9EpZ-7LYdMLQTdSx9_Bnbbg5OQkdr31RFL2hjXzFUKfnibOdjmJb_D9YeiKpFbV3fBIDgdCoucLOIvEIs0IKjiZ2VTaNJEyvm2Xy/s4088/A%20perfect%20day.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="deckchairs on a beach art" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSKWJs6lBRXg5UObPw2FU_0wt9zykvkJAXkyl8WD8STeN-997i9wztvr7SE96MGYQYFq5me1G7P8Z1W137ToTG9EpZ-7LYdMLQTdSx9_Bnbbg5OQkdr31RFL2hjXzFUKfnibOdjmJb_D9YeiKpFbV3fBIDgdCoucLOIvEIs0IKjiZ2VTaNJEyvm2Xy/w640-h640/A%20perfect%20day.jpg" title="A Perfect Day by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A Perfect Day by Mark Taylor - Still one of my favourite works, just how I remembered a beach in Jamaica a few years ago!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The trend of the trend…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Looking for trends is one way
a lot of artists diversify their portfolio but in my experience, trends are only
ever short term fixes. Ideally, you need to start a trend rather than join it
otherwise the fruits are short lived, but starting a trend, well that’s not an
easy ask.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Diversification can also be
making smaller pieces at more affordable prices, offering smaller sized pieces
in editions and in limited numbers, or it could mean offering something
completely new. If you venture down this route though you really do need to do
your homework. A limited edition is just that, limited as in available to the
few not the many, and the size of the edition should never be more than you
would usually sell as an open edition. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">As a rule of thumb, limited
editions in very small numbers are more prized by collectors, but if you are
looking for volume, personally I would never create an edition any bigger than
10% of the regular number of works I would expect to sell in an open edition. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">A lesson I certainly learnt during
the 2008 downturn, and a couple of downturns before that, was just how
important it is to look at second and third entrance gates which buyers can
continue to afford to walk through. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For a while, galleries have
created second gates by opening bars or coffee shops in the same physical
space, it’s another reason for people to arrive at your door which in a
financial downturn could turn out to be your primary entrance gate until things
become more like business as usual once again.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Second gates are really
important for independent businesses of any description. If you can find the
right product or service it can provide continued cash flow so you can continue
to focus on your main body of work. Your primary work might be aspirational for
some for a while during a recession but the really important thing to do is to
continue to sell aspirations to own your work when things become financially easier
again so if you can provide a second gate that reminds them of your primary
business, that’s a win.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">You have to think creatively
when it comes to offering a second gate. It doesn’t have to be something that
you sell, a second gate could just as easily be a blog, or a podcast or a
YouTube channel, maybe even offering training. Monetising these things isn’t
easy, online ad-spend is generally down and for most people, and online
ad-revenue was never great to begin with, no one likes or even expects
advertising to appear all over a blog post these days, they might expect it
with podcasts but it probably won’t be enough to cover all of the costs. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">But remember that continuing
to sell the aspiration to own your work is important and these are well trodden
paths that have proven to be a life source of many an artist to raise and
maintain awareness of them and their work.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijHyiSs9lizut8FjjGxwLEDoUDpw64ei3eWonrqB8o7Chklbo3we68LG0GJa3_NncpLacP0SopsqFsAnqDRxi8ppmqo9VGE4USjbA-91h4ig1YCqSMtdMM9XqiuAT39R0tCSoY02-Bjfz1NLB_RUn1WHo1XRQ3BDqAJDGjFK2Sc-1lG8xVAZpk2z1V/s4088/chase%20Stag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="watercolour stag" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijHyiSs9lizut8FjjGxwLEDoUDpw64ei3eWonrqB8o7Chklbo3we68LG0GJa3_NncpLacP0SopsqFsAnqDRxi8ppmqo9VGE4USjbA-91h4ig1YCqSMtdMM9XqiuAT39R0tCSoY02-Bjfz1NLB_RUn1WHo1XRQ3BDqAJDGjFK2Sc-1lG8xVAZpk2z1V/w640-h640/chase%20Stag.jpg" title="Chase Stag by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Chase Stag by Mark Taylor - A work inspired by my local area!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Increase Prices, Find New
Markets…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Before we carry on with second
gates, it’s worth looking into diversification of markets a little more
broadly. The notion of a starving artist might seem romantic to many looking in
but the starving artist badge isn’t a badge that you should ever feel compelled
to wear as an artist. It is a right of passage that should remain optional, but
mostly, remember that you need to eat.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">It is a good idea during any
downturn to revaluate your position and your place in the art world, I would
even go so far as to say that you should be at least reviewing your current
position at least every year. I know of artists who did just this back in 2008
and came out of the experience in massively stronger positions by repositioning
their work and surfacing it in front of new audiences. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Art is no longer something
that has to be sold through a brick and mortar gallery in the back end of
nowhere, you can migrate to new audiences relatively easily these days with the
power of the internet, so long as those audiences understand and appreciate
what you have. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">You might even have to
revaluate what you present and make it more relevant to other audiences and
cultures, but this is all part of becoming more entrepreneurial, something that
you absolutely have to become during a recession. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Changes in your work, style,
audience or practice, shouldn’t mean that you have to completely turn your back
on what you did before or your previous markets, you just have to find that same
connection with something else and with someone else who can afford to pay either
your regular prices or even a little more. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I know that for most people,
that’s easier said than done. It’s a bold if not even a brave move for any
artist who takes on this shift in direction but the rewards could be
significant. When I did this back in 2008, and again in 2014 when I first sold
prints online through print on demand, I had no idea at all if I would ever be
able to connect with a new audience yet despite some very long hours over a
couple of months I was able to find some new connections in new markets.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">With this in mind, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>if you take the opportunity to reposition
yourself and your work to enter new markets there is some consideration that
needs to be put into the prospect of raising prices in the new market,
particularly if you have experience of other markets prior to entering any new
space. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">This might sound
counterintuitive in a recession, but there is precedent set by many artists
throughout history to move your game up to meet higher end markets where the
effects of inflationary price increases are not as impacted as they might be at
the lower cost end of the market.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s a risk in doing this,
mainly in alienating all of those people who previously purchased your work at
lower prices. But remember, we are repositioning here and potentially
introducing a second gate in a new market, maybe even in a new region. The
beauty of a second gate is that it can be very distinct from your primary
market, so long as you don’t introduce confusion.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Ultimately, when the recession
is over and things begin to normalise, if sales are going well in your new
market with higher prices, you absolutely don’t have to go back to lower cost
works. Those who purchased your work at a lower cost than you currently sell
work in the new market might at this point even be elated that they now own
work that is worth more than it was.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">It's best not to sugar coat
this strategy as being easy or suggest it might even be feasible for everyone. It’s
a challenging approach to take in regular times. In a recession, not only will
you need to scout out new markets and figure out your place in them, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>you are to some extent starting from scratch
albeit with the benefit and hindsight of working in previous markets, so whilst
it can be incredibly challenging, it should also be a little easier the second
time around. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I took this approach back in
2008 with over a decade of previous sales and experience and some existing collectors,
and I have to say it was one of the most challenging times I had ever faced in
an art world which for many years had enjoyed the benefit of people having
slightly more disposable income year on year. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I hadn’t planned to make any
change on the spur of the moment, I had spent almost 12-months before I made
the leap looking into other markets to find a second gate that I knew I would
be able to offer. I had to find new tribes, make my work relevant to those new
markets and cultures, yet despite this planning and preparation, it was at
least initially, a very slow burning candle.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="yin and yang clockwork art print" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7ClZd32Yk--JIyqsal8fpbhrp5ARIIrE6zCRFG9Ql89mnfJwCOdr9wgpw8ltbr9HM-zgArPRi-evnYdKwqykorESv6A9WpJRlO92_ta7S2jEVc0MqfwA-rJbJSip9yZUkDBMuGWlN_J7Pjb3lzkw_uKE9zM-KxklKx529eNgOi93Y9-P7DdCzE5iv/w640-h640/clockwork.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Clockwork by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Clockwork by Mark Taylor - a technically challenging work, every piece was hand drawn!</span></td></tr></tbody></table></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7ClZd32Yk--JIyqsal8fpbhrp5ARIIrE6zCRFG9Ql89mnfJwCOdr9wgpw8ltbr9HM-zgArPRi-evnYdKwqykorESv6A9WpJRlO92_ta7S2jEVc0MqfwA-rJbJSip9yZUkDBMuGWlN_J7Pjb3lzkw_uKE9zM-KxklKx529eNgOi93Y9-P7DdCzE5iv/s4088/clockwork.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></a></div><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Create new inventory…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are still looking for
ideas on how to diversify your offer, especially if you do want to take on the
challenge of looking into new markets, then you might want something different
to offer them. This is something else I found myself inadvertently doing a few
years ago when I began to create art work out of waste electronic components
which led to me becoming even more involved with the vintage computer community
who were eager for technology related artwork very much like the artwork you
can see on this site today, but this had the knock-on effect of raising the
profile of my regular retro art. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The Cricut…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">You can use your creativity to
offer something different that still makes sense to your buyers by creating
similar works but maybe on new products. If you are looking at markets such as
those through Etsy, you could even offer personalisation as an option, or
create accessories. My daughter owns a bakery yet her second gate is to supply
cake toppers to other bakers or as an upsell to her usual buyers. There are all
sorts of options here and there are plenty of devices that can make creation really
easy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The Cricut Maker 3 is a very
good example of an incredible cutting machine that can cut out from more than
300 materials. Machines such as the Cricut are essentially, with some
imagination and a few good ideas, businesses in a box. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Sure, you are going to need
some practice and some up front investment, but the end result is that you get
to retain the relationship between you and the buyer and there’s no need to
introduce a third party to create the products for you. The whole point of this
is that you get to be involved in the wider hand made community and your
imagination is the only block to finding new things to create for new audiences.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">With these kinds of machines
you can also enter the world of personalisation, create small gifts, add logos
to clothing and shoes, create stickers, and with dye-sublimation and the
addition of a mug press, you can even create a range of dishwasher and
microwave safe mugs for every occasion. In short, you can relatively
inexpensively set up a small Etsy business to produce smaller gifts that might
provide you with a lucrative second gate. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The downside, the initial
outlay can be prohibitive for some, the Cricut, mug press, and some materials
and tools to get you going might need somewhere in the region of £1000
UK/$1,000 US, before you make anything, which definitely isn’t insignificant,
but once the investment is made, you essentially have the tools to build an
entire business. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">My advice if you do think
about doing this, is to shop around. You can usually pick these kinds of
machines up for less than the recommended retail price if you look online, and
there are cheaper alternatives from Cricut, they’re just slightly less able.
One area I would advise not skimping on is by buying cheaper Far Eastern
produced machines with questionable power supplies, kit like the mug press gets
hot and that’s a potential problem with dodgy electronics.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">As for the mug press, I’ve
tried various mug presses over the years and most have one major flaw, as soon
as the mug goes in the dishwasher the print starts to peel off. The Cricut uses
dye-sublimation, the print becomes at one with the mug and the process is much
quicker than many of the other presses I’ve used over the years. The flaw with
a lot of them is that they often tend to not heat up too well, they overheat or
they never quite get consistent heat across the surface. If you are looking for
any equipment that uses a heat transfer process, it is worth paying a little more
and not having to then replace it over and over again.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYlSHzIJvZ0Mfc5NVzMEwboSH9dIikBZp3EXcAkyA4F-PKHNj83B2CxLXq9tUxARlggQFx_XGrcyYqy-QP41l1B91KPTvOECFXdwG7y4axRjEVJIvtXtylzX6j1KlouAffMH3FxJPH7IbvBemAU3UOMDYfbb6DKkj5yX8ZU9--rVoMxWuPyxMttLl9/s4088/Adrift%20Under%20A%20Glowing%20Sky.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="adrift under a glowing sky artwork by Mark Taylor ocean boat" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYlSHzIJvZ0Mfc5NVzMEwboSH9dIikBZp3EXcAkyA4F-PKHNj83B2CxLXq9tUxARlggQFx_XGrcyYqy-QP41l1B91KPTvOECFXdwG7y4axRjEVJIvtXtylzX6j1KlouAffMH3FxJPH7IbvBemAU3UOMDYfbb6DKkj5yX8ZU9--rVoMxWuPyxMttLl9/w640-h640/Adrift%20Under%20A%20Glowing%20Sky.JPG" title="Adrift Under A Glowing Sky by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Adrift Under A Glowing Sky by Mark Taylor - thanks to the more than 500 people who purchased this print in 2022! Love you all!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Change to a subscription model…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">With platforms such as Patreon
it’s easier than ever to consider reviewing your business model or at least
offer alternatives to the way people currently buy your work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I wouldn’t recommend artists
start up a Patreon in the expectation that people will subscribe to receive a
piece of full price art each month but this is where editions and smaller works
begin to make a lot of sense. If you could come up with a range of
collectibles, maybe with the use of something like a Cricut machine, there are
options that could provide you with a regular income if you offer the right
rewards. Even in an economic slump, people will still buy things that make them
feel good, your mission is to make sure that what you offer is what they want
and what they’re able to still afford. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">When offering a subscription
model through something like Patreon, you need to make sure you can commit to
the time needed to fulfil any pledges made. Time isn’t something that should be
underestimated and it can get complicated once you begin to offer more and more
reward tiers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">You need to be mindful when
setting up any rewards that pledges might come from overseas so you might have
additional shipping costs to consider, but it can, if managed properly, become
a lucrative side business especially if you work with digital mediums which can
then be sent electronically. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There are other rewards that
you can offer that don’t always mean that you have to commit to sending out
product via the mail, many of the podcasts that I listen to are supported by
Patreon campaigns and they offer exclusive access to early episodes, an
invitation to a community discord server, Patreon only web chats hosted on
Google or Zoom, but you also have to turn up which might be more of an issue
for some people who don’t particularly enjoy the people thing, and there are a
lot more people post-pandemic who no longer like the people thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">You need to be mindful that
you won’t be the only artist offering their work through Patreon too, so have a
look at what others are offering as rewards and see if you can provide a value
add with your offer. Make no bones about it, it’s a competitive space but as I
say, the rewards for those who are committed can be lucrative and you don’t
especially need that many subscribers to take the edge off any financial
pressures.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqSwYBdvv4KiECzasrFPt7kJJjQiNEg7T7ZoSu5-cr4A7nUuGoV9I2nmqAjr4e2VobBZRjSvGMu-87iLiCLYymey2LysklGjmMhsNniDrLkGtTkg7fu6A5UPG7eCKbFJZo2FijPH0R7EYJOBRrGSXxv-b5jBy32G7BhwwWiQdJxCeAaK2HUNnXaAkH/s4088/Happy%20Summer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Abstract tree art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqSwYBdvv4KiECzasrFPt7kJJjQiNEg7T7ZoSu5-cr4A7nUuGoV9I2nmqAjr4e2VobBZRjSvGMu-87iLiCLYymey2LysklGjmMhsNniDrLkGtTkg7fu6A5UPG7eCKbFJZo2FijPH0R7EYJOBRrGSXxv-b5jBy32G7BhwwWiQdJxCeAaK2HUNnXaAkH/w640-h640/Happy%20Summer.jpg" title="Happy Summer by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Happy Summer by Mark Taylor - available now to brighten up your day!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Offer Prints…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you only sell original
works it might be time to look at the print market. There are lots of options
here from print on demand services such as Fine Art America, but there are
other options if you have the time and can afford the equipment you need to produce
your own prints. Utilising an e-commerce platform such as Shopify would allow
you to take orders online and fulfil them either by outsourcing the printing or
fulfilling the orders yourself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The benefit of producing your
own prints is that you are able to control quality and you can more easily
create, and more importantly, control limited editions. There’s only one POD
company that I have ever come across that allows limited editions, although
signatures through this service would more than likely be applied remotely with
an auto-pen and right now, auto-pens are becoming controversial with the recent
news that Bob Dylan used one of these devices to sign his latest book. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There are a few things you
need to consider when setting out in the print business, firstly, print on
demand is a lot more work than you think it is despite many promises about how
easy it is from the services who fulfil the orders. It’s not an easy gig and is
possibly more reliant on building relationships on social media, and that could
very well turn out to be problematic in the long-term with the way social media
is changing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Irrespective of whether you
use print on demand or your own website to take orders, you still have to bring
the people to your work as none of the print on demand services conduct any
marketing on your behalf, unless you’re a really big name with huge sales
potential. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The good news here, if you
make the right noise in the right places, have an idea people can rally behind,
and get some positive press, there is nothing that can really stop you from
finding new markets. But, because there’s always a but with these things, print
on demand isn’t for the faint of heart. For most artists, it will be a single
tool in a much bigger toolbox.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The main benefit of print on
demand is that payments are processed by someone else, the order is then fulfilled
and then sent directly to the customer, it is a zero touch business beyond
creating the work, uploading it, and promoting it. But that’s also print on
demands weakness from an artists perspective, the service owns the relationship
with the customer and you are unlikely to ever find out who the customer is.
That makes future sales with the same buyer next to impossible unless the buyer
reaches out directly to you.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Another consideration is what
can you realistically produce with your own printer if you want to handle the
printing in house. You will ideally need a good quality dye-sublimation printer
and if you want to offer anything above copier paper size, you will be looking
at a wide format dye-sublimation printer and the investment that needs to be
made in this level of technology isn’t insignificant. You also need to consider
the cost of replacement inks. If you are only receiving infrequent print orders
then print on demand or outsourcing your printing to a local company will be
more cost effective if you can live without owning the relationship with the
buyer. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I use a mixed economy of
printing in house, outsourcing to a team of specialist print masters and print
on demand. It takes a little more planning but for the most part, most of my
work is either printed directly by me or a local print company who specialise
in fine art prints and this means that I tend to get the benefit of owning the
majority of the relationships I have built over many years with existing
collectors. Just make sure that your pricing is consistent across every channel
you sell through.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Maybe more importantly right
now, I can offer the biggest range of print mediums to meet any budget and
there’s an inbuilt access to a more global audience with print on demand. The local
print company I use is one that I have complete trust in and have worked with
for a number of years. They have access to an encrypted Cloud based service to access
my digital files and they have access to the relevant ICC profiles that go with
each work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">All I then have to do is
provide the size and filename for each print and decide the medium before I
collect the work and send it on its way. If you can build a relationship with a
local printer you do get added benefits, and it contributes to the local
economy. I can’t overstate how well this works if you can build that initial
relationship and establish trust with someone who can offer you affordable,
quality print services.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe13L9GKMHBR6H0PzjMoedZkEwZNKc1BBntUU7GkA7ksJjwJOAYNOThX55o8au-pm811JWeby01yyrPX-MdRcHfSg2RvaMH9dpzdoAUJpB_sN8q1lyay7GUWkvu18-qilDbI2dog2Q5bSb7-BS4MjB5nNLufPmHT4fKMZ3GWva0kYShuR3buIpTjLa/s4088/brit%20pop.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="electric guitar in front of British Union Jack Flag artwork" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe13L9GKMHBR6H0PzjMoedZkEwZNKc1BBntUU7GkA7ksJjwJOAYNOThX55o8au-pm811JWeby01yyrPX-MdRcHfSg2RvaMH9dpzdoAUJpB_sN8q1lyay7GUWkvu18-qilDbI2dog2Q5bSb7-BS4MjB5nNLufPmHT4fKMZ3GWva0kYShuR3buIpTjLa/w640-h474/brit%20pop.JPG" title="Brit Pop by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Brit Pop by Mark Taylor - Another one that looks brilliant on acrylic block</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Content Creation…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There is a huge demand for
online resources to support teaching and learning, there’s also a demand for
the creation of assets to use in computer generated environments and user
interfaces. If you are a digital artist then creating content and digital
assets can prove quite lucrative, even in a recession as more and more
organisations look to transition some of their learning and services online.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Using tools such as Articulate
360, Rise 360 or Storyline, whilst initially expensive and with an ongoing cost,
you can easily learn how to create interactive materials for use in all sorts
of tasks. Learning the nuances of platforms such as Unreal Engine (ideally Unreal
Engine 5) will also give you a platform that you can utilise without any
initial costs for the development platform. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Unreal Engine 5 will become
the default environment for environment and character creation within the next
few years. At the end of the recession you will also have a healthy second gate
and a bunch of new skills to continue to create from, and I think that’s a
really important takeout, take every opportunity to develop your skills so that
your future options are never quite so limited.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Own Direct Relationships…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I can’t begin to tell you how
important it is to have a direct relationship with your clients. One thing that
I have discovered during my own career is that it is much better to have 10
collectors than to have 50 casual buyers. If you own the relationship directly
with those buying your work you have an opportunity to keep them up to date
with everything you do and if you look after your tribe, they will become your most
vocal ambassadors through word of mouth advertising and that’s advertising that
is not going to cost you a penny.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Many of my existing collectors
have been with me through thick and thin, there are even a few who have stuck
with me since the 1980s when they first purchased some of my earliest pixel
work I had created on 8bit computers. In the years since I have supplied them
with everything from book covers to restaurant menus and many have gone on to
continue collecting my retro works and landscapes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There have been times when
they have been less able to afford work but during these times I have always
made sure they haven’t been forgotten. Those who have purchased work from me
over the years have become firm lifelong friends who might just call me for
some advice on setting up their own computers, or they have continued to
commission the same kind of 80s inspired work they were purchasing back in the
80s. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I know that by looking after
them and hopefully being a good friend the money and more importantly, the work
will continue to come when money isn’t quite so tight as it is during a
recession.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My key takeout here is that
you should take any opportunity to connect with your tribe whether they’re
currently buying or not, and definitely, be sensitive to when they might and
might not want to buy. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu6ckN_UNUe9v8pO-uF7quacBMMirKJwzDc_gaUUOB1SaBST4iEAayU5L02LpIJ5GJ5_3CTaMqsgx0lYqNvGUPxdSzUIr5AQLBRdT3gzUfIDOwJn66d6mTBmCN9CLOPZXRvQiZLcfTBK6qzEY7JsPfPzrYU0BNx-33zAeIsDrJfgs5n687C6YCL9Fi/s4088/eihties%20toy%20keyboard.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="eighties toy keyboard musical instrument" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu6ckN_UNUe9v8pO-uF7quacBMMirKJwzDc_gaUUOB1SaBST4iEAayU5L02LpIJ5GJ5_3CTaMqsgx0lYqNvGUPxdSzUIr5AQLBRdT3gzUfIDOwJn66d6mTBmCN9CLOPZXRvQiZLcfTBK6qzEY7JsPfPzrYU0BNx-33zAeIsDrJfgs5n687C6YCL9Fi/w640-h474/eihties%20toy%20keyboard.JPG" title="Eighties Toy Keyboard by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Eighties Toy Keyboard by Mark Taylor - If you didn't own one of these, you missed out on making soooo much noise! They're used in professional music tracks today because of the distinct and unique noise/sound!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">What you definitely shouldn’t
do during rocky times…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The benefit of age is
experience, I can’t really think of any other benefit right now, but experience
has certainly guided me away from making some pretty huge mistakes, mostly
because experience reminds me of the pretty huge mistakes I’ve previously made.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Vanity Galleries…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The vanity gallery model was
more prominent pre-pandemic where you could rent wall space to display your
work alongside other artists. The galleries still exist, some are good, but
there were and probably still are, a number that are questionable. I honestly
haven’t looked into vanity galleries since before the pandemic because I learnt
enough back then to avoid them in the future, but each to their own and maybe
you can find one of the few good ones.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The upside is that you get to
display work in a space where in theory, footfall would be expected to flow.
The downside, most of the vanity galleries I came across in the past required
you as the artist to do all of the work to bring that footfall into your space.
You would need to hang the work, be present to take payments or be charged for
the service, and then you either paid rent for each piece, or you paid for an
area in which you could display your work. In addition, some would also apply a
commission on each sale. If you go down this route, figure out up front what
the real costs are likely to be. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Another downside to this model
is that it would be rare for the gallery owner to do any kind of marketing,
where they only charged rent and didn’t take a commission they would be paid
whether the work sold or not so there really is no incentive for them to do
anything except take your money and keep the doors open. Any marketing would usually
be done by artists or the artists would be charged an additional fee for the
gallery to perform any marketing duties.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Bear in mind that with this
model, usually it would be down to the artist to bring in foot traffic but in
doing this, you are also bringing in traffic for everyone else in the same
space. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Many of these places were
never curated, this meant that your work would be displayed next to work that
you wouldn’t ideally want it displayed alongside, or there would be sub-par
work that generally put any visitors off before they came across the good work.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I spent a month in a vanity
gallery before taking my work out and moving it into a local coffee shop. In
that first month I sold one piece of work in the gallery, but more than 20
pieces from the coffee shop during the following month. I paid something like
30% commission to the gallery and a hanging fee, yet only 20% to the coffee
shop. Both still better than traditional gallery fees, but the vanity gallery
really didn’t earn any of the commission at all.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN7iCvRoh2ZMOPVpMa5ESbUXRKbtPzW-FlgV5GXj4DTAIXMXZyhweeuZ_-MqbiYR73pggsp9JvuizAZ6j5-Z-qSxrJLceGWcNe2FqbcXpkByh_Gv7CCFBmQrxglQE-K5YcjFjeHAwLf9bg_jGlUEvob3gB0L_Gz24zKxi3RL3IAMaN_6RJ_QrU5gs9/s4088/information%20superhighway.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="information Superhighway art print vintage technology modem" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN7iCvRoh2ZMOPVpMa5ESbUXRKbtPzW-FlgV5GXj4DTAIXMXZyhweeuZ_-MqbiYR73pggsp9JvuizAZ6j5-Z-qSxrJLceGWcNe2FqbcXpkByh_Gv7CCFBmQrxglQE-K5YcjFjeHAwLf9bg_jGlUEvob3gB0L_Gz24zKxi3RL3IAMaN_6RJ_QrU5gs9/w640-h474/information%20superhighway.JPG" title="Information Superhighway by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Information Superhighway by Mark Taylor - Remember the noise? Remember how fast we thought it was? There's nothing quite like the sound of a modem from the 1990s! All hand drawn, even the texture of the cardboard on the box and a little nod to Memphis Design!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Avoid the get rich quick
schemes…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Another area to avoid is the
get rich quick Ponzi-like schemes that appear frequently online with promises
of rags to riches in one or two easy steps. These are usually portrayed in a
way that almost makes it a no-brainer to sign up, and just as I have been saying
for the past couple of years, this includes falling for the lure of things like
those non-fungible-tokens (NFTs). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Sure, some people have made a
lot of money through NFTs and good luck to those who have, but they’re rare.
We’ve all read the headlines, “artists are being lifted up out of a life of
poverty through NFTs”, or, “this technology will revolutionise the art world”,
and then back in April 2022, NFTs crashed, big time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The lure is often how much on
average an artist could make if they minted a new collection of NFTs, but the
problem with averages, and bear with me here because math really ain’t my super
power, is that to find an average you need to add up a whole lot of numbers and
divide that by more numbers and you will find that the final number is pretty
high. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">But averages are fallible,
they are skewed by numbers that are high and numbers that are low and you only
need a couple of high numbers to influence the low and make everything seem
better than it really is. As a metric to measure the economy, an average is
about as reliable as a chocolate fire guard.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">While we were looking over
here at the averages, the real story was being shown over there by the median,
those were the real numbers no one wanted you to see. This is where all of the
numbers are listed in ascending order and the mid point is the median. What you
might find when you look at the median is that there are relatively few numbers
that are high but there are plenty that are low, and the high numbers are
eye-wateringly high. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you then look
at the median and see how far away it is from the top, you begin to realise
that your chances of hitting those high numbers is relatively low.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Lots of artists who have
created NFTs haven’t made anything at all after taking into account things like
gas costs, not the gas you put in a car but the fee you pay to mint the NFT,
and that’s not including the environmental impact from the power needed to
perform this task. A lot of lower priced NFT based art is sold, yet more often
than not it is sold for a price that ultimately the artist might, with a very
high probability have to subsidise.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The gas fee is frequently
framed as the cost of doing business, but in some cases the gas fee and wallet
approval fee can turn out to be more than you make, meaning that at the end of
the sale you owe more money than you earn especially where in some cases the
gas fee can be 105% of the sale. Unless you sign up to what we regular folk in
the UK now call the Kwasi-Truss school of economics, there’s no sense at all in
spending ten bucks to make eight or more likely, six.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCSBTF-PvKEAaedw1UkE9jZp7yyoC32L9QyPGaH-IOuE4hmw2sHDXQnTg7KOhPc0O1e5NqzsksyI3cpAv7iXBrc2P3BSMwi0DAUgWK-QJOtbKA8OxoqD1qdU6_9WhoBFn8qr9EcA7C0IFBQPcD4CLRKmwMRtUkkA1eaB0QQ6SdVQUciGiSHzDTKhTO/s4088/retro%20peripheral.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro vintage technology" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCSBTF-PvKEAaedw1UkE9jZp7yyoC32L9QyPGaH-IOuE4hmw2sHDXQnTg7KOhPc0O1e5NqzsksyI3cpAv7iXBrc2P3BSMwi0DAUgWK-QJOtbKA8OxoqD1qdU6_9WhoBFn8qr9EcA7C0IFBQPcD4CLRKmwMRtUkkA1eaB0QQ6SdVQUciGiSHzDTKhTO/w640-h474/retro%20peripheral.JPG" title="Retro Peripheral by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Retro Peripheral by Mark Taylor - did you know they're still making compact cassette tapes today! Not an NFT in sight!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The promises<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and testimonies proffered by many of the
crypto-based online services seen online represent a miniscule number of
artists making a considerable amount of wealth off a small number of high value
sales. In short, there are a few people who are making serious bank but many artists
are losing out <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">However, the majority will
find that their work never sells and there are a lot of artists who mint a
series of NFTs which never find any market traction at all. Those artists will
still need to promote their NFTs just as they would with any other platform
they sell on. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Mostly, what you are more
likely to find in the NFT space is that there will be a lot of artists who are
making very little if anything and in some cases, are having to pay for the
privilege of being able to say their work is available as an NFT. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The problem, which in fairness
is a problem shared by any service that is by design, complex for the majority
of regular folk to fully understand, is that none of the NFT services are very
transparent about the hidden costs or the amount of sales previously made. If
it’s clarified at all, it’s often in the small print that is buried within the
small print of the small print or it is presented as a range (you’ll pay
between X% and Y%).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">These issues aren’t especially
peculiar to the crypto-industry, it’s the same story we hear in every market
where the few amass the greatest wealth. That’s kind of how the art world
works, it’s not always fair, but the difference with the markets for NFTs and
such like is that there’s a heap of hype that has encouraged many artists to
climb on board without fully understanding the complexity of what they’re
entering into and what tends to happen is that very few will go on to make any
real financial gain from it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Add to this that some crypto
currencies used to purchase NFTs rely on the greater fool theory. A good
example is when you buy Ether which you can’t actually buy anything with (it’s
a transactional token), so it’s value is only determined by the demand for
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can sell it at a higher price
than you paid for it but only if you can convince someone else to buy into it,
but this sounds very much like every Ponzi scheme in the history of ever.
Again, in the UK, it’s a bit like British politics, where inflation is now
measured by the eye watering cost of a Freddo Frog chocolate bar. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There is no scarcity in Ether,
there’s a never ending supply, and when there is a never ending supply of
anything and the people following stop buying into it, the bubble will
eventually burst, even my bad math recognises this. If you’re that gullible, I
have a bag of air you might be interested in. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you think that the recent
news about a certain ex-politician creating NFTs is news you can comfortably
hang a future NFT business on, I wouldn’t be minded to hang anything on that
one with regards to potential future value. They will increase in value short
term, longer term however, most likely not. Like I said, much of this is really
about the greater fool theory and that particular sale of NFTs demonstrates
really well that the greater fool theory is still a model people buy into. I’m
British, that statement shouldn’t divide us, it’s an observation from
experience of NFTs and we have bad politics here too, but still, here’s another
bag of air you might be interested in…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">That said, the technology
behind NFTs and Blockchain has always shown promise, but it needs to evolve and
mature into something that the technology can be used for that more people can
easily understand. If people begin to understand it they’re more likely to get
behind it or at least be informed enough to make a more informed decision.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">More than that, the technology
also needs to resolve the issue and clean up its image around its use in
elaborate pyramid schemes and those promoting it need to address the public
need for them to be better educated in what it is, and what it isn’t because
the evangelists who need followers to buy into it are drowning out the noise of
it doing anything good. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi383U5EKQwQzVzJ-fbvMSED1eLf1m7ApyK51RRql4rqBhj1FIKDAPeDFridjWHNtFJEkU2gQtqOx2J4t_xkrFCfoEkzPh5bOSHgpq5edt8Xb6x9vtFM3_ohV8JqRrVvJfyshXIgFCAoKMwp58KCqob_VJqHYCbUOFsrhywuWtLY5-ltTz6K2hT2FCa/s4088/winter%20is%20coming.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="landscape painting snowy valley with trees and mountains" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi383U5EKQwQzVzJ-fbvMSED1eLf1m7ApyK51RRql4rqBhj1FIKDAPeDFridjWHNtFJEkU2gQtqOx2J4t_xkrFCfoEkzPh5bOSHgpq5edt8Xb6x9vtFM3_ohV8JqRrVvJfyshXIgFCAoKMwp58KCqob_VJqHYCbUOFsrhywuWtLY5-ltTz6K2hT2FCa/w640-h474/winter%20is%20coming.JPG" title="Winter is Coming by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Winter is Coming by Mark Taylor - My official landscape for Winter 2022! </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Right now, the technology has
a trust problem, people don’t understand it because it is complex, overly so in
most cases, and no one has explained it in very simple terms so that the public
could feel comfortable in understanding it or confident enough to get behind
it. It’s a PR problem that all sorts of cloud services encounter but NFTs,
Crypto, Blockchain, there will be plenty of people who think they are one and
the same.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">That in itself is a problem in
that the public hear the same words to describe these technologies in the same
sentence as scam. As much as you listen to the hype around NFTs in the art
market, more art is sold outside of the NFT eco-system than within it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Its PR problem is maybe its
biggest downfall. There are plenty of people who don’t trust either their smart
speaker at home or the cloud service they use to upload the photos they shoot
on their phone, so expecting them to trust something that has so much negative
press with the potential to lose so much money is a very hard ask. Its very
complexity automatically locks regular buyers out of the market.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Blockchain technology (which
is not a crypto currency) can be useful but it too needs to mature and find
someone who is really good at PR to lead the charge. None of this technology is
some kind of golden panacea that promises and delivers immediate riches, but
the concept behind its use for proof of stake and provenance is commendable. Even
Blockchain is not without its own problems right now. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If people were thinking these
would be democratizing technologies, what crypto currency businesses have
mostly done is create a parallel universe that’s a duplicate of the one we’re
already in and then it has managed to go even further and give it the image of
some really dark mafia plot. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">From experience, the lesson we
should maybe take from earlier financial crisis’s would be to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hold your nerve and avoid getting sucked into
the evangelistic over-hype of promised riches or British politics it seems.
You’re quite correct in thinking that I’m not a fan of either or Ether. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Become More Social Savvy…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If I had to make one prediction
for the next decade it would be that social media as we know it today will either
change unrecognisably or die, and if I were to pick one, as it is currently on
life support it’s only a matter of time before that support is switched off. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If we can find something new to
fill our time and keep our scrolling fingers busy before then, its final days
will be lonely with tumbleweed rolling through data centres around the world.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I might have said this in an
article I wrote a few years ago, but social is clinging on to the cliff edge
with its finger nails and it might just be worth taking advantage of any
downtime through a recession to rethink how you might connect with your
audience in the future. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If it stays, it will change
almost unrecognisably so. There’s little doubt that monetisation will only ever
be sustainable from those who gain the most value from using it and the
introduction of monetisation from users should have happened years ago. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">We have become so accustomed
to having access for free, blindly and conveniently ignoring that we are the
product, that to pivot and charge users real money now will be a massive uphill
struggle for all of the platforms unless they offer a value that guarantees
amplification, and that will only work while users who access it for free or at
less cost choose <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>not to turn down the
volume.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnZyJvzccj0ficcnOFfebr3Efd2uMJBPtuPTISgn9paEHAW7BEs9KfdE-L5mz4LWHinjECiTh31-rM4wdFe4DwCnnQ59rZbiPxHvtXb13xcXp7JdzW1QvLZ6giHU-GqfbnJTDOMfsrfhyF_macGH9tt1jA11dnCU7dCji1jzTg0rb7OGfaswBqGCIb/s4088/retro%20snake.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="vintage phone with snake retro game" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnZyJvzccj0ficcnOFfebr3Efd2uMJBPtuPTISgn9paEHAW7BEs9KfdE-L5mz4LWHinjECiTh31-rM4wdFe4DwCnnQ59rZbiPxHvtXb13xcXp7JdzW1QvLZ6giHU-GqfbnJTDOMfsrfhyF_macGH9tt1jA11dnCU7dCji1jzTg0rb7OGfaswBqGCIb/w640-h640/retro%20snake.JPG" title="Retro Snake by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Retro Snake by Mark Taylor - One of my latest Retro Inspired works! I remember playing this over and over, but the graphics were nowhere near as good as this! Time for a remake... anyone!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I think at the moment every
other social network will be looking towards Twitter as some kind of litmus
test to see if pay to play is a viable option. If ad-spend is down, there’s
literally almost nothing that can bring in the revenue needed to support these
platforms, at least at their current size. The only other option beyond people
is whether any of these platforms could potentially find a way to harness a
users technology power to harvest cryptocurrency whilst they use the platform
but beyond that I have zero idea how you pivot from free to paid without losing
big numbers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Maybe we might get back to
basics and reintroduce the idea of real community, but there are already a lot
of community based portals that face similar challenges around ad-spend and the
very idea of community seems to be becoming more and more like some antiquated
idea. Ironically, the divided world we live in today could really do with some
community love, but I can’t see technology fixing it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Your lack of privacy on social
media is exactly the product the tech giants need to sell in order to fund your
free ride. Their revenue right now is generated a lot less by large business
ad-spend and more by small business small ad-spend so again, even my almost
non-existent math skills are screaming, recession, small business and
precarious. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">With this in mind, thinking
about raising your online presence in other corners of the internet might be a
wise move. Podcasts which I have covered a number of times before on these
pages, are increasingly popular in a world where the only downtime most people
have is on their commute. As a business, it has to be up there in the top five
of great ways to make a connection with an audience.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you’re looking for ideas, I
think there’s a niche for a podcast that isn’t too much up its own derriere
when it comes to the art world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
majority of working artists aren’t too interested right now in the high-end big
spend art markets already covered by a number of fine art websites and podcasts.
Most artists might raise their eyebrows when a piece sells at auction for tens
of millions, but the majority of working artists will be more interested in how
to generate more leads on platforms such as Etsy, or figuring out new ways to
go about their creative process. Independent artists who want to own the
relationship with their customers might also be looking for tips on setting up
their own e-commerce sites.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There are a few podcasts that
do this already, but not many. Most that spring up are fleeting when the
initial listener numbers are in the single digits. The trick with podcasts is
to not provide something that sounds a too much like radio, they should be more
like a conversation amongst friends. You have to maintain quality but equally,
I think the best ones I listen to on a regular basis also manage to add in a
touch of authentic humanity too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">When it comes to listener
numbers we’ve come to expect immediacy a little too much in this world so we
expect that if we build a website or deliver a podcast the viewers and
listeners will come, except they don’t, at least for a while. Those with a
value add and who keep going are the ones that will eventually build a
following, and this can then lead to a third gate in the form of subscriber
power.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_0-kBJymMNdeO6u27xpBJVoPyvxzA5Wj9MCS8XxeMbE4Au1uEFO1IV-FMyGR25ENdJWn84sSxxHZk-yrbMoVnKeS6yjdxo25Cw70JGMmcjzNViCoYSKN8QKCFztdSJb7Hq8NVU9P8ezTVqtG4FKz-BwNw5cPSVIslcMR8At_CLm1fS6uyj7mE_2Sz/s4088/y2k.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Y2K artwork computer millennium bug label" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_0-kBJymMNdeO6u27xpBJVoPyvxzA5Wj9MCS8XxeMbE4Au1uEFO1IV-FMyGR25ENdJWn84sSxxHZk-yrbMoVnKeS6yjdxo25Cw70JGMmcjzNViCoYSKN8QKCFztdSJb7Hq8NVU9P8ezTVqtG4FKz-BwNw5cPSVIslcMR8At_CLm1fS6uyj7mE_2Sz/w640-h474/y2k.JPG" title="Y2K by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Y2K by Mark Taylor - Back in the days when all we worried about was the Millennium Bug!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So what next…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">During a recession, it’s
inevitable that things will become slower. It’s a tough time for any small
independent business and especially a small independent that is focussed on
selling a product that isn’t essential to either life or death. Unfortunately
that’s the category art falls into.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I mentioned earlier that
prices should be reviewed but not lowered to a point where you are neither
covering costs or having to live a life of resentment towards your buyers,
neither are healthy options for artists. But you do have to be flexible and you
need to be flexible quite quickly after the immediate onset of any downturn.
From experience, the first weeks and early months of any long term recession
are going to be critical in how well you then move forward.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In any recession,
discretionary spending reduces for the majority of people. Even when life is
rainbows and glitter, art is often an incredibly hard sell and in the art world
where regular artists work hard to sell every print or every hand made gift,
being flexible is about survival.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether you decide to raise
prices or lower them, whatever price you sell your work for doesn’t change the
artwork, its message or intention. I think you do have to remember that it’s
the same painting, painted by the same artist, the difference is that you can
either sit on a thousand dollars worth of collecting dust or a thousand dollars
that see’s you through the tough times and at least gives you back the material
cost of the work. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwsU-mw82_Z7IrXGliE2bgjyNnx2tWc3g46ki63Ht5jjpstIvvpJUMGIKKJ247T6afmRtJBapkKnRUhsjHqtJ2wCqqLe7ShNDv0gsDU7PGfUeJauexnzbUNYK-vTNRVB52RibsVKfb3jTNYpG3dQFnmrgltgRFFhuVEjxazNDWG4aKDHt48xRZR0qJ/s4088/storage%20wars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro storage mediums art print" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwsU-mw82_Z7IrXGliE2bgjyNnx2tWc3g46ki63Ht5jjpstIvvpJUMGIKKJ247T6afmRtJBapkKnRUhsjHqtJ2wCqqLe7ShNDv0gsDU7PGfUeJauexnzbUNYK-vTNRVB52RibsVKfb3jTNYpG3dQFnmrgltgRFFhuVEjxazNDWG4aKDHt48xRZR0qJ/w640-h640/storage%20wars.jpg" title="Storage Wars by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Storage Wars by Mark Taylor - Hello World! With the exception of punch cards, I use all of these mediums almost every day! Each piece is individually hand drawn and painted, the original drawings of each item here were at least 6000 x 6000 pixels at 300dpi!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Have a plan B...</span></b></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">One
of the things that always struck me as amongst the strangest things I took from
art school was that there was always a reluctance to talk about having a plan B
as an artist. That might have had a place in the days of the gatekeeper, the
thinking was that you needed to only focus on the one goal, but the art world
and the world more generally has moved on. People buy and consume art very
differently today. Having a plan B is as critical as having a plan A.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Art is a gift from artists…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Artists are incredible. At
least the hundreds I have ever met are. They have unique talents, are able to
communicate the complex and the contentious, make a statement, and send a
message, in a way that few other professionals can. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">We often talk about art
becoming democratized, but here’s a thought, it’s not NFTs, or Ether, or even
online platforms or social media that have democratized art, it’s not the
mega-galleries and the gatekeepers,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>they’re all simply tools an artist might choose to use. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">What has democratized the art
world is the dedication of artists themselves, the support they provide to each
other, and the opportunities that they often share. It’s the positive impact
that they have on society, and above all, it’s their resilience that has done
more than anything else to democratize the art world and move the needle
forward.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Art is more accessible then
ever, it’s part of our fabric, it is a foundation of society, and more people
than ever are beginning to view art not as some stuffy elitist society that can
be enjoyed by only the few, but as a significant part of our culture that is
needed not only to provide some aesthetic or investment opportunity, but
something that has the power to bring people together in ways that no
government or regime ever could. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">It builds bridges between
cultures, opens dialogue and conversation, it can embody values that are
meaningful to everyone. Artists have the power to do all of that and make an
impact. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So in these dark days where
recession and contraction are the most popular trends of the day, remember as
an artist you can and do continue to change the narrative and make a
difference. Focus on that and you will get through this just as so many artists
have done so many times before.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFBYx_yLVf2IQqsm-vwrWTVfwFV_AJH-Z2QUFfBaC0SAnkYoqxdZgD8QpXIeD-ckaxwceaVRVKdg9MrP7nvPhnvVD-4Qb9DiMFuAYrsQAUgrmnY-8VLKV6Twhho-Pg80uWBOPGhDZ0FpZxAGRL447ICCVsfpk4YrbiDuY8jSpJQC6fCx2JeJ0UpJMM/s4088/highland%20nights.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Highland Nights art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFBYx_yLVf2IQqsm-vwrWTVfwFV_AJH-Z2QUFfBaC0SAnkYoqxdZgD8QpXIeD-ckaxwceaVRVKdg9MrP7nvPhnvVD-4Qb9DiMFuAYrsQAUgrmnY-8VLKV6Twhho-Pg80uWBOPGhDZ0FpZxAGRL447ICCVsfpk4YrbiDuY8jSpJQC6fCx2JeJ0UpJMM/w640-h474/highland%20nights.jpg" title="Highland Nights by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Highland Nights by Mark Taylor - Still one of my favourite landscape works, I really must create a follow up in a similar style! </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Happy New Year!</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">2022 has been quite a year for
all sorts of reasons but as we move in to 2023, just know that as an artist,
you’ve got this. Until next time, stay creative, look after each other, and
Happy New Year!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark is an artist who
specialises in vintage inspired works featuring technology and is also known
for his landscape works and the occasional abstract! He lives in Staffordshire,
England. He has been creating professional digital work since the 1980s.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">You can purchase Mark’s work through
Fine Art America or his Pixels site here: <a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</a> You
can also purchase prints and originals directly. You can also view Mark’s portfolio
website at <a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank">https://beechhousemedia.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Join the conversation on
Facebook at: <a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</a>
connect on Twitter @beechhouseart or waste hours on Pinterest right here: <a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</a></span></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0Lichfield, UK52.681602 -1.83167224.371368163821153 -36.987922 80.991835836178836 33.324578tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-44224651185254822732022-11-10T12:24:00.004+00:002022-11-12T13:38:29.681+00:00Back to the Eighties Pushing Pixels<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Back to the Eighties – Pushing
Pixels<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b></b></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmU_1AsJy8AQa8z4QV6KyXmtsES5mgq3JZ-A_w90BdtHABiVZFM6gp21AAcIrk03-gGlEXv5oY01tQ7YyQUAktTeaRt4QYa_eFoLXlVrIl20dA6L0KfmGFf7JScXcT-Lj8WOhh24Y8O4IC3We4nA8SOIQO0kLRHXARB91AvyOXDr-A0GOEHdlFxh1Z/s1080/cover%2080s%20retro.PNG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Back to the Eighties" border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1080" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmU_1AsJy8AQa8z4QV6KyXmtsES5mgq3JZ-A_w90BdtHABiVZFM6gp21AAcIrk03-gGlEXv5oY01tQ7YyQUAktTeaRt4QYa_eFoLXlVrIl20dA6L0KfmGFf7JScXcT-Lj8WOhh24Y8O4IC3We4nA8SOIQO0kLRHXARB91AvyOXDr-A0GOEHdlFxh1Z/w640-h336/cover%2080s%20retro.PNG" title="Back to The Eighties cover image for blog post by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Back to the Eighties - Pushing Pixels</span></td></tr></tbody></table><b><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">This time, we take a step back
in time to the 1980s, the decade that provides the subject matter of many of my
own artworks. It was also the decade where my life as a professional digital
artist began, one pixel at a time. In my latest discussion we take a deep-dive
into what it was really like creating digital art in the 1980s and why todays image
editing tools and modern equipment can never quite achieve truly authentic
retro recreations. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The Future Was 8-Bit…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Being what some would call, a
dinosaur of the 8-bit era, I tend to get asked more and more of late what it
was like creating digital art in the early days of home computers and whether
or not it’s easier today with all this new-fangled technology. I’ve been
surprised at just how many people are now taking an interest in a decade that
many of them were born way after, but it’s easy to figure out why, for a new
generation it’s just like a previous generations fascination for the 1960s.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So to answer that question
about whether things have become any easier with all of this brand new
technology that can seemingly be made to do anything, in short, it is massively
easier to create anything today and do so with so much more precision but it’s
also massively more difficult to create digital art if you want to create a
specific or authentic vintage look. Sure, you can make a facsimile but that’s
not quite the same.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So this time we will be going
on a journey through time. We will take a look at the early home microcomputer
market and how it gradually began to influence how the production of art would
make the transition from canvas to screen. We’ll also take a look at just how
much digital art technology has changed since the early 1980s. It’s a deep dive
for sure, but one that merits the three months or so that this article has
taken me to write because those early moments in tech-history are worthy of
preservation. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">We’ll also take a look at how
early digital art was created and why recreating authentic vintage style art
today for retro and vintage collectors is massively more complicated with
modern tools than it was back in the decade that also gave us Rick Astley and
Madonna. To top it all off, we’ll also be exploring the very reasons why so
many people are suddenly finding comfort in collecting pixelated memories from
their childhoods, a trend that continues to keep us original pixel artists busy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLGYae3dop2BtaJmBvbk1W-QOqpB81gW8o51jeKZ6W5RC_uxpW7bLxxUW8ITbz6yj4Atqy7tN2ydEwiyYjayadBd5RujFi71B1aTW371rf2Lnt7kcAjV7IrFcmc0AOlhHA-sw72YY5iVCbrcmmaw7RqL8voPnCYtd_OFSyOHqprSS0ycjpHUjQOp51/s4088/eighties%20toy%20keyboard.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Eighties Toy Keyboard artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLGYae3dop2BtaJmBvbk1W-QOqpB81gW8o51jeKZ6W5RC_uxpW7bLxxUW8ITbz6yj4Atqy7tN2ydEwiyYjayadBd5RujFi71B1aTW371rf2Lnt7kcAjV7IrFcmc0AOlhHA-sw72YY5iVCbrcmmaw7RqL8voPnCYtd_OFSyOHqprSS0ycjpHUjQOp51/w640-h474/eighties%20toy%20keyboard.JPG" title="Eighties Toy Keyboard artwork by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Eighties Toy Keyboard by Mark Taylor - I think every kid had one of these, this one doesn't make any noise!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">But first, </span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Everyone who knows me will
know how much I love the 80s. It was a decade that presented me with career opportunities
that would last a lifetime, or at least a lifetime up until now and I hope it
will continue for many years to come. The 80s was also the decade that handed
me a collecting/hoarding habit that makes my studio and office feel more like a
museum at times. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I collect everything from 1980s
video games to the ephemera that came alongside them, right the way through to
early editions of some of the most iconic early computer magazines and of
course, I collect the artwork from the period. Much of that artwork from the
80s was inspired by The Memphis Movement, a style which defined the eighties
and is still used today. The eighties gave us a lot of history that we don’t
always necessarily or immediately associate with the decade and its importance
in society, art and design and popular culture.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">It was a bit bleak too…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I probably need to be clear
here, I don’t view everything 80s through a rose-tinted lens. The modern age
has a couple of positives over the 80s, I was younger for a start. We did have
bleak times, plenty of them, and to an extent, we’re seeing some of the same
things happen again today that we witnessed happening back then. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In the 80s we had stock market
crashes, the threat of extinction from a Cold War, general strikes and workers
just like today, were mostly disgruntled with the rising cost of inflation. So
I think there’s more than a direct comparison you can make with many of the events
taking place today. The world might feel different than it did a couple of
years ago for those who weren’t around in the eighties, but for those of us who
were around, I think we’re once again in familiar territory. Maybe the 2020s is
the 80s part two? Life was hard in the 80s but hey, at least we had great
music.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMLpOPbUOfLK7ceamC7hVAbZCzHqdeP5d-Yk1C4bOjz2C8tk-y69b0nGgHIxIzd9mrDomHkglN_g6eOG6lTkZL7_TS_SGBf_BCT5fh8llUWPibdSVRNYsUV-nz64G_kz1NLXtWDbljbdUQyZ__RC6sGDrTR6rnBRoihfzHiL5nvOabQlt42V3bBmNT/s4088/History%20repeating.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="History Repeating artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMLpOPbUOfLK7ceamC7hVAbZCzHqdeP5d-Yk1C4bOjz2C8tk-y69b0nGgHIxIzd9mrDomHkglN_g6eOG6lTkZL7_TS_SGBf_BCT5fh8llUWPibdSVRNYsUV-nz64G_kz1NLXtWDbljbdUQyZ__RC6sGDrTR6rnBRoihfzHiL5nvOabQlt42V3bBmNT/w640-h474/History%20repeating.JPG" title="History Repeating Artwork by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">History Repeating by Mark Taylor - kids were oblivious to the political turmoil and stock market crashes of the 80s, but it could be bleak!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The decade wasn’t all about
shell suits and pop music, technology was being rapidly miniaturised and we
would witness a technological revolution just as important as the industrial
revolution that took place between 1760 and 1840. The 1980s were pivotal in the
evolution of technology as the decade would go on to shape the technology we have
come to now rely on every day. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx2FNAqoXhnVpnkf0CM4KuGIFVtNJ-5aTu4rYpiyRYIfmp_yDyvQ7i7YgV6PXqAWgjr537ZwHcQF6K8tsaYUTuVGoi-aQZxTLvgx1zvJcofulCuxQ0UsXcJmjjLD57UAaOGsVcVZOaTzHQ6ciuwrrGHttLzu0fmdlBaTISIdJrxjd8slFppbdT7Kic/s4088/dialling%20for%20dollars.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Dialling for dollars artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx2FNAqoXhnVpnkf0CM4KuGIFVtNJ-5aTu4rYpiyRYIfmp_yDyvQ7i7YgV6PXqAWgjr537ZwHcQF6K8tsaYUTuVGoi-aQZxTLvgx1zvJcofulCuxQ0UsXcJmjjLD57UAaOGsVcVZOaTzHQ6ciuwrrGHttLzu0fmdlBaTISIdJrxjd8slFppbdT7Kic/w640-h474/dialling%20for%20dollars.JPG" title="Dialling for Dollars artwork by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dialling for Dollars by Mark Taylor - Innovation and turmoil, oh, and answering machines were a thing...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">We have to understand the past
to recreate it…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m all about preservation. My
retro collecting habit is borne out of a personal need to preserve historic
moments that were mostly never documented at the time. The only experience we really
have of the decade today is the experience that was around at the time, and a
lot of that experience is fading away year after year. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">This need to preserve the 80’s
and especially the technical revolution is partly what has driven me to focus
more and more on my 80’s inspired works recently, although they have been a
staple of my creative output since the late 1980s when I would create commissioned
characters and supporting artwork often for fans of computer games. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">My landscapes and abstracts
continue but what many people probably never realise when they view the work
that most people know me for, is that whilst I’ve managed to scrape a living
creating abstracts and landscapes, my bread and butter has always been rooted
in my work in pixel art, retro-inspired collections and commissions from a
group of tech fans who have never lost their enthusiasm for the period since
the golden age of the eighties and the decades either side.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLxkUmQ0m3hsTZx-T70siHuhWP1QTBzYS9Lb5kW-NN1NYSdemkDcDSNKiiMiLtEZMfAxmDAo6A4cEoo9YjabJCavX9GeiU4enxKv6QCPazt_gz5uoGjiEpqbUmDFZ-ayBV4YoQ1YRLldCBl7ZnBdN5O5kYpz-OG9TTP4IgqSYZU7q1BnZBr6sLhPga/s4088/kinetic%20fields.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Kinetic fields artwork, wind power, energy," border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLxkUmQ0m3hsTZx-T70siHuhWP1QTBzYS9Lb5kW-NN1NYSdemkDcDSNKiiMiLtEZMfAxmDAo6A4cEoo9YjabJCavX9GeiU4enxKv6QCPazt_gz5uoGjiEpqbUmDFZ-ayBV4YoQ1YRLldCBl7ZnBdN5O5kYpz-OG9TTP4IgqSYZU7q1BnZBr6sLhPga/w640-h474/kinetic%20fields.JPG" title="Kinetic Fields by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Kinetic Fields by Mark Taylor - my landscape and abstract works continue. We didn't have wind power in the 80s, at least not like this, but many of us had bicycles with lights powered by a dynamo!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">My retro artworks all depict a
period of time through the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, and this pictorial
preservation and celebration of history and innovation is becoming more
important too. The internet has grown exponentially and it has paradoxically
become smaller at the same time. We would once browse the web and explore the
new frontiers of the digital age, we could explore historic moments through the
lens of all those people who had set up their first websites using sites like GeoCities
and we were asking Jeeves for advice. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Today we visit virtual shop
windows that have had their displays dressed specifically for each of us
through the use of tracking cookies and everything else that didn’t exist even
in the days of bulletin boards, ARPANET and a hundred free hours of AOL. Early
search engines searched through content rather than adverts, and the results
would often be returned in all of their neon glory.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, the first pages, let
alone the first page of any search engine has become an advert. It’s next to
impossible to find useful information because we are now only served what the
tech giants think we want to see and we’re now at that place where they only
think we want to see adverts. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Maybe this website is too
old-school to be cool, I never ask anyone to sign up for anything, I self-fund
the whole shebang, I don’t run adverts and I try to provide useful information
which is rapidly eroding from our searches and to an extent our first thoughts,
and when you do find anything that is, you know, actually relevant, it usually
exists only on the outer reaches of internet servers and no one has any time to
find it because we expect immediacy today. Hey, you know the cloud is just
someone else’s computer right?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The subject matter during the
three decades that much of my work represents is broad, I paint everything from
skateboards (because they were cool yet dangerous) to the earliest electronic
gadgets, and for anyone else who lived their formative years during this time
or even younger fans of that time period in general, many of us remember exactly
how we felt when we picked up say an electronic game for the very first time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Hopefully my vintage-inspired art
triggers a memory or two for many who view it, but that’s not necessarily the only
point of it. I really wouldn’t want such an important period of our technological
history to be lost because someone couldn’t be bothered to document it!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">We Remember The Time When…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For those of us of a certain
vintage, we remember the emotions we displayed and the feelings we had at the
time and we even remember the distinct smell of ozone from new electronics, a
smell I never come across today but one I wish I could find again and bottle. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyNPC_20xulZlDw4bUD1x2YrvjgXU7XnrJqXBf9nXmiKUVQ8EvoDKo1WJq3sRI2tSCsxdZl2t2IshMuwwGCys5_fTa5qmdxaUU44tvwdgamkoAkjOF-uQ20uhebIbQdgyReUSc41gUKcs0E0GiaF37gW626NluggA20ah98sXv8qHGwkqpvV3vgK6C/s4088/eighties%20entertainment.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="80s entertainment, electronic gadgets of the 1980s, artwork," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyNPC_20xulZlDw4bUD1x2YrvjgXU7XnrJqXBf9nXmiKUVQ8EvoDKo1WJq3sRI2tSCsxdZl2t2IshMuwwGCys5_fTa5qmdxaUU44tvwdgamkoAkjOF-uQ20uhebIbQdgyReUSc41gUKcs0E0GiaF37gW626NluggA20ah98sXv8qHGwkqpvV3vgK6C/w640-h640/eighties%20entertainment.jpg" title="Eighties Entertainment by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Eighties Entertainment by Mark Taylor - every new device had a great smell of ozone. I think it was great, I remember it well, I think I liked it, maybe my memory is filling in the blanks?</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">We remember how the device
felt, how heavy it was, and how it made us feel. It was magical because no one
had ever seen anything quite like it before and there has never been a time
since when the same feelings have ever been replicated with new technology in
quite the same way. Today, we have come to expect innovation and I think we
take it for granted a bit too much.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I even remember visiting a
store with my parents and seeing a home computer for the first time as if it
were only yesterday. The smell, the display, the excitement, the shelves and
shelves of games, and the ring bound manuals that would teach you how to write
simple code. Those memories were made at the same time I was in school so
subconsciously even that triggers further memories of friendships and times
when the responsibility monster wasn’t lurking around every corner. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The Rabbit Hole of Nostalgia…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The rabbit hole of nostalgia
runs deep in many of us, but this wonderfully complex paradoxical experience
doesn’t affect all of us, at least in the same way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Nostalgia is a powerful form
of reminiscence that often takes the form of a first-person memory reminding us
of something, usually an event or experience when we were surrounded by friends
or family or we experienced moments of personal happiness. These moments can
become our anchors to happier times that can give us hope for the future.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Nostalgia wasn’t always seen
so positively though. More than 300-years ago it was commonly seen as a
disorder of the mind that had potentially damaging consequences. It was seen as
a form of depression where the person experiencing it would be unable to live
in the present. A Swiss medical student coined the term after observing the low
morale and spirits of mercenaries fighting overseas. The word itself originates
from Nostos, which is Greek for homecoming and algos, which translates to ache.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">When we experience nostalgic
recall, not everything we remember is a perfect replica of the time, the
moment, the thing, or the event. Our minds do a very good job of adding mental
edits that make the memory more appealing which is why sometimes we feel
slightly disappointed when we find out that something from our childhood either
hasn’t aged too well or isn’t quite how we remembered it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">As time passed, the negative
connotations of nostalgia were replaced as numerous studies eventually linked nostalgia
with the human desire to reflect on happy memories of the past and some of
these studies have found that nostalgia is more akin to a coping mechanism,
often finding that <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>this mechanism works
to counteract any feelings of depression. Rather than being a negative, today
nostalgia is seen as a positive.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmIjoZxL4w8YDNA42kYUotTTRVc9pyduwiJ7R2p_f7dhDC4QbsJoKiOSOzNr8GjwWn4HndBYBjU7VzFWyKbmxPFx4FR9w-FNRrtutJgeiAB3zsdG39oejk5UMXsx4HK6X94wVr900MGwD_hjT3o12FM78ox1dyVGyz18r2XFNO3DdjOF_rwOqCT88H/s4032/prepping%20art%202.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="artwork preparation" border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmIjoZxL4w8YDNA42kYUotTTRVc9pyduwiJ7R2p_f7dhDC4QbsJoKiOSOzNr8GjwWn4HndBYBjU7VzFWyKbmxPFx4FR9w-FNRrtutJgeiAB3zsdG39oejk5UMXsx4HK6X94wVr900MGwD_hjT3o12FM78ox1dyVGyz18r2XFNO3DdjOF_rwOqCT88H/w480-h640/prepping%20art%202.jpg" title="Artwork preparation" width="480" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Did you know when you order directly from me, each print is signed, has an holograph applied, and comes with a printable version of the file on a USB memory stick. Some of my editions also come complete with collectible art cards, certificates of authenticity, and all prints are expertly printed by Master Printers on archival quality materials.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Many modern studies describe
nostalgia as something that helps us to reflect on better times rather than
specific things, and many of these studies have identified nostalgia as being
something that can help lift our moods and reduce stress and it is able to
boost feelings of hope and optimism and provide us with memories that provide
hope that better times can be repeated again. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think that is exactly the reason why we are
seeing such a surge in popularity around collecting retro right now.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Some of these studies suggest
that it can even come to the fore as a defence mechanism but for many, nostalgia
I think, is mostly a force that provides us with an emotional experience that
can unify and unite. Certainly for me, collecting 80s memorabilia, culture and period
specific technologies, is as much about the surrounding community of
like-minded people who are collecting the 80s as well. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Being a collector of all
things 80s has not only put me in touch with many people from all walks of life
who are doing the same, it has taught me more than I ever learned in art school
about how and why art produces such strong emotions in people. When we create
artworks, whatever subject they depict, as an artist, the ultimate wish is to
produce something that resonates with and connects the viewer to the work. It
doesn’t have to be vintage or retro inspired, it just needs to subconsciously
speak to the viewer. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The art needs to take them
somewhere, remind them of something, it needs to trigger an emotion and
hopefully provide the viewer with a connection either to the artwork or the
subject the art depicts, art is from this perspective, exactly what we are now
seeing amongst so many retro collectors, what they are collecting is often a
connection to the past and better times.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So alongside the need for
preservation, I always hope that someone can find some helpful nostalgic recall
and be reminded of the past to provide at least a glimmer of hope for the
future. Arguably, this should make the creation of art much simpler when
recreating memory invoking images of past times, but in my experience I’ve
found it anything but simple. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Whatever work you create has
to hit the sweet spot of believability, just enough to trigger a memory so that
the mind can then take over and apply its own set of filters. That’s when it
becomes a little more challenging, if you add into the mix some of the most
discerning and authenticity seeking collectors that I have ever come across, you
will find that many of these collectors will have an insatiable appetite for
authenticity, so recreating past times on canvas or screen isn’t quite as easy
as you would think.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSg247IU7wsMc1jCzX1RVnS1rnacFWzkJRkYpa7EQQbCjvp9Wwy0NM-nX_728g8dK9EHXeAv41YqVhQPgM1ywG1oKJWxE4Eaai9lfzOmJOMglShtgzeCpnTVh4FgdB2PO53C5BkKmP1VViN2M80Ol5-yAqxFa-vGpsvC7E_Rv4T7WD0rtjiWagbu6I/s4088/eighties%20rock%20guitar.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="80s rock guitar artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSg247IU7wsMc1jCzX1RVnS1rnacFWzkJRkYpa7EQQbCjvp9Wwy0NM-nX_728g8dK9EHXeAv41YqVhQPgM1ywG1oKJWxE4Eaai9lfzOmJOMglShtgzeCpnTVh4FgdB2PO53C5BkKmP1VViN2M80Ol5-yAqxFa-vGpsvC7E_Rv4T7WD0rtjiWagbu6I/w640-h474/eighties%20rock%20guitar.JPG" title="Eighties Rock Guitar by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Eighties Rock Guitar by Mark Taylor - This is the guitar I really wanted back in the 1980s!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Recreating Retro…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">With the 1980s pixel art style
becoming an increasingly-popular artistic trend, if not close to being seen in
the mainstream as a movement, the use of modern technologies to recreate
vintage graphics leaves those of us who lived through the 8-bit era a little
empty. Sure, the work is often a nod to the formative years for those of us of
a certain age, but for a real nostalgia hit I always find myself looking for
something well, a little more authentic than most of the recreated memories I
see hawked as being retro on marketplaces such as Amazon. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">When I say that pixel art and
retro more generally is becoming a trend, the reality is that in some circles
pixel art and that vintage aesthetic have been an artistic staple for as long
as I can remember, it’s certainly nothing new. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Pixel art is now becoming more
popular in the media and certainly, the style is being increasingly used in
graphic design partly because the world loves nostalgia and it’s a great way for
a marketing team to build a connection, but looking back through the history of
digital art over the past four decades, I would say that pixel art has been a
legitimate artistic movement for a while, some of my own collectors have been with
me since the 80s. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So why is it suddenly so popular,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think mostly that it’s just that the press
didn’t cover it quite like they do today, and some consumer products from the
decade are beginning to turn up in auction houses and fetching eye-watering prices
for stuff we often think we still have somewhere in the attic before realising
we threw it away when we last had a clear out. 80s prices can be a media frenzy
of shock and awe.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Many of us original pixel
pushers have already made decades long careers out of creating this style of
art and many of the processes I use today are no different to the processes I
used back in the 1980s and 90s. Indeed, many of the commissions I get today are
commissions to do the same things I was doing in the 80s and 90s. To some, that
might sound as if my career has never moved on to doing something new, but that
couldn’t be further from the reality, there is always something new to do and
something new to learn about the three decades I cover.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether it’s the side art for
a video game cabinet or pixelated assets used in a retro-inspired video game,
or even recreating the ephemeral content that was packaged with 1980s products
and games, I can’t really think of anything that I do today that is all that
different to when I first started out, except I’m now doing more of it, with a
far greater appreciation and understanding, especially now there are an
increasing number of people looking to collect everything 80s and 90s. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3btgPAfkUIaX55abPcSmEa4zrRiaU6Zo9L91T3zQsIg3oX3alhHUIJMJDVDAsV4jwPkAe903ozlM8CV1Cllz-awaNECieEjwgfyIppqvnbiNdXhpK7CBd16Y0Z-K_DnSOVOw10t_4D8WPi4UfKHoPQNMGSD06bvfOd2-mkztFA8fb7D-MwR63jfMj/s4088/geometric%20emotion.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Geometric emotion artwork, polygon art," border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3btgPAfkUIaX55abPcSmEa4zrRiaU6Zo9L91T3zQsIg3oX3alhHUIJMJDVDAsV4jwPkAe903ozlM8CV1Cllz-awaNECieEjwgfyIppqvnbiNdXhpK7CBd16Y0Z-K_DnSOVOw10t_4D8WPi4UfKHoPQNMGSD06bvfOd2-mkztFA8fb7D-MwR63jfMj/w640-h474/geometric%20emotion.JPG" title="Geometric Emotion by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Geometric Emotion by Mark Taylor - an 80s colour pallet and he mainstream introduction of Polygons at the back end of the 80s and early 90s was the inspiration for this piece.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">How do you begin creating
pixel art and vintage inspired works in the modern age?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are serious about
creating retro/vintage-inspired works, you really do have to convey a sense of believability
for the work to resonate with the viewer. I’ve been painting 80s life and have been
involved with 80s technology since the 80s and I have to say, creating vintage
style art with any level of authenticity with modern tools can be challenging
because the tools we have today are simply, too good. We didn’t have the
distraction of 8K BS, we had fuzzy and noise and overheating power supplies.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The equipment used to create
this type of art and graphic design in the 80s was minimalist compared to
todays technology, and by minimalist, that’s a massive understatement I think. This
creates a challenge for any artist who wants to create truly authentic looking
work with modern technology, it’s not even on the same level. Nowhere even
close.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So much of the pixel art that
is created today looks brilliant, it’s clean and crisp, usually very colourful,
and it mostly has a very distinct look and feel. But what it doesn’t have is
any authenticity at all. This is fine for many casual fans of the 80’s genre,
it nods back to a period in time, but if your collector base is built from
vintage, rather than retro collectors, (there’s a difference we’ll touch on
later), this modern approach and the look of modern day 8-bit graphics feels
too much like an abstraction and it can fail to connect those harder-core
vintage buyers who are looking for authenticity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Just to clarify and recap very
quickly from one of my earlier retro articles, and I will paraphrase here for
brevity, retro is a modern interpretation or recreation of something of
vintage, though the terms are often used interchangeably. Collectors of retro
computer games for example are really collecting vintage games if they are the
originals, they would be collecting retro games if they were made more recently
to look or act like the originals. Generally, in the collector world,
everything comes under a retro heading just to confuse and bemuse!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s one thing I have had
to learn over the years and that is, to persuade buyers of retro and vintage
inspired works to choose one work over another, is that you have to add that
believable layer of authenticity to the work. What I’ve generally found is that
buyers are usually buying it to add to a collection of similar works from the
period they’re collecting, or they’re buying to provide a period specific
aesthetic alongside a retro or vintage collection. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Something else I have learned
is that dedicated vintage collectors are willing to pay more for authenticity
which is pretty awesome as an artist, but that does bring a level of complexity
that might make it more challenging for some artists to serve that particular
market.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Vintage, as opposed to retro
collectors are also a very vocal bunch when it comes to this ask for authenticity.
Ideally they would be buying genuine work from the period in time but that’s
not always possible. That might in some cases be down to the often
over-inflated expense of buying almost anything vintage, or down to scarcity. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s not to say that most
things from the 80s are in short supply these days, you can easily find almost
any technology from the era, but finding mint condition examples is difficult
and when you do find a good example, there are plenty of people willing to sell
so long as you also pay what has become known as the retro tax.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The media hype around retro
has made collecting anything vintage, trendy. What you will see as a collector
today is that there will be many people scouring their garages and attics to
dig out items from the 70s, 80s and 90s, and then they will promptly upload
photos of those items to eBay and describe them as super-rare. Honestly, there
is very little from any of those decades that is super-rare when it comes to
technology. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIg_MHP6PuRHZiFQUeEcNmyKhMc8mO1P182TvDr5Yd0TajnZPw3ZsMjng83wnZi-Jq_NDvZVY_xvmUX8T_Jw7g9Q9sSNa7z4f211_7fd7JPH8IzmxmQKxcF0Hkeh-PW90j7t7uPGF7OOfFzYtqLR0q-KtHVH16cV9hJvGj1RX9Koqy4rKsq4kY0YaM/s4088/high%20density.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="high density artwork by Mark Taylor, floppy disc art" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIg_MHP6PuRHZiFQUeEcNmyKhMc8mO1P182TvDr5Yd0TajnZPw3ZsMjng83wnZi-Jq_NDvZVY_xvmUX8T_Jw7g9Q9sSNa7z4f211_7fd7JPH8IzmxmQKxcF0Hkeh-PW90j7t7uPGF7OOfFzYtqLR0q-KtHVH16cV9hJvGj1RX9Koqy4rKsq4kY0YaM/w640-h474/high%20density.JPG" title="High Density by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">High Density by Mark Taylor - The floppy disc evolved and became less floppy by the end of the 80s. They were inexpensive but just how much plastic did they use to create them? The 80s was a very disposable era.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Those same people then apply
what we hardened collectors call the retro tax, a premium that doesn’t always
come out of demand and supply, but out of media reports telling everyone that
everything is more valuable than it is. There is then the media hype when
something seemingly once popular but is actually an especially rare example
such as a prototype or something that is factory sealed in original condition
sells for an eye-watering amount at auction. Made in the eighties isn’t a label
that also says it’s automatically rare or valuable.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Case in point, I continue to
use cathode ray tube TVs and monitors to create some of my retro and vintage
work on and I still use them whenever I exhibit my retro/vintage works as part
of my display. I can buy a good quality, working CRT TV for less than twenty
bucks quite easily, Facebook Marketplace is full of them, but as soon as the
seller calls it a retro CRT and maybe adds a line that suggests the TV is ideal
for use with old computers, the price can jump ten-fold, and there will be some
unwitting individuals who will buy into the hype. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are recreating vintage
work for collectors who are collecting an aesthetic trend rather than anything
more authentic, the modern-day abstraction/representation created with modern
equipment is usually going to be fine. If you want your work to appeal to a
much more niche collector base, and a collector base that will happily pay more
for that added authenticity, you need to be firstly become much more creative
in how you produce the work, and secondly, you often have to think beyond the
use of modern-day equipment to achieve results that the more niche collectors
will be happy to take over an original item.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I’ve had the same conversation
with many artists over the years about collectors of period specific work. From
experience, buyers of this work can usually be split into two very distinct
camps. The first camp is made from collectors who, like I said earlier, are
looking for the 8-bit retro aesthetic, it’s a trend, a nod to an age, it
provides a flavour of the past, and the second camp is looking for an exact <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and authentic look. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">This is no different to
collectors of other art genres, there will be people who will be happy to own a
poster and others who only want the original work and a few who will be happy
with a compromise in between or at least a really good fake, not that I endorse
fakes, in my ephemera recreations I state on the images that it is a facsimile
of the original or a recreation, but mostly what these collectors are looking
for is an authentic recreation that provides the same kind of detail found in
the original. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1A79p8dqBG8Je4vGsqyiuQkke_uspTSIafPUHKgSDbpg8WrymKzWC1pqzkzhJ7Au5i_tKdqekiLoMQyfiatpy8UpRri4f-c4T31Oloszr3uQWehHVGDazVfCKvCltwwNYu5BsFxmcZM0LyunaKKNgxxdH53LPrqRA-_RvQxbMxv0CEohv5BUev9LB/s4088/old%20school%20math%20calculator.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="calculator 1980s art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1A79p8dqBG8Je4vGsqyiuQkke_uspTSIafPUHKgSDbpg8WrymKzWC1pqzkzhJ7Au5i_tKdqekiLoMQyfiatpy8UpRri4f-c4T31Oloszr3uQWehHVGDazVfCKvCltwwNYu5BsFxmcZM0LyunaKKNgxxdH53LPrqRA-_RvQxbMxv0CEohv5BUev9LB/w640-h640/old%20school%20math%20calculator.JPG" title="Old School Match by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Old School Math by Mark Taylor - you might not immediately notice the level of detail in these pieces, below is a close up of the LED matrix on the screen.<br /><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ_ves8-kbs0fgAEgH76UiXH9QudB0bHIRvmTRaV5al_vw9rI2mu1G1TAAWcooHaIQ95j_ZPBKz0N0JPI0IKn4PekIfL5q2TjUhfc8TzuKnqkq-XLyRZ7oR8A8YlXKebE7T2u1hmsj8r1ZyIkGvKMfx9rEz9_wH5ZocC3JXzbmBYPn23pO6Tvxi894/s2246/old%20school%20math%20detail.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Calculator display artwork by Mark Taylor LED Display" border="0" data-original-height="1532" data-original-width="2246" height="436" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ_ves8-kbs0fgAEgH76UiXH9QudB0bHIRvmTRaV5al_vw9rI2mu1G1TAAWcooHaIQ95j_ZPBKz0N0JPI0IKn4PekIfL5q2TjUhfc8TzuKnqkq-XLyRZ7oR8A8YlXKebE7T2u1hmsj8r1ZyIkGvKMfx9rEz9_wH5ZocC3JXzbmBYPn23pO6Tvxi894/w640-h436/old%20school%20math%20detail.jpg" title="Calculator detail" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">All LED screens will have some level of visible matrix - it was very noticeable on 80s technology.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGnkILlX0-D4wvk7oq8s2os83FopR_MfK5MfXsIfgKRXqCSvu071C-hyXjH3xXIRJgOn2ZxahIbIy3YGVne58GCOgJ-NGO-cD_9W75uaGa5wStrNz9FzS5ZwlzTw7SjiL8yAJueYLrK5YxtvTcs34ljFDWOltHyykEZIrlSaQJI8lI-uKrNmwI4glW/s2281/electronic%20game%20detail.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Electronic Game Art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="1520" data-original-width="2281" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGnkILlX0-D4wvk7oq8s2os83FopR_MfK5MfXsIfgKRXqCSvu071C-hyXjH3xXIRJgOn2ZxahIbIy3YGVne58GCOgJ-NGO-cD_9W75uaGa5wStrNz9FzS5ZwlzTw7SjiL8yAJueYLrK5YxtvTcs34ljFDWOltHyykEZIrlSaQJI8lI-uKrNmwI4glW/w640-h426/electronic%20game%20detail.jpeg" title="This shows another method used in 80s LED screens, this is another artwork asset I created and it appears in a number of 80s works!" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This shows another method used in 80s LED screens, this is another artwork asset I created and it appears in a number of 80s works! Gaussian Blur is applied between layers using a luminosity brush and the LEDs are slightly offset from the lines as the artwork nearly always appears at an angle... this is what you would see on the original device. There is also a small level of motion blur applied here too.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The critical difference for
collectors who are interested in the 1980s is that the 1980s, and even the 70s
and 90s, were very disposable decades. Sure, you can buy almost any technology
from the time, as I said, none of it is really super-rare and it might have
been built at low cost at the time but it was usually built to last, hence I
still use 40-year old computers today. The ephemera on the other hand, the
boxes, the stuff that came packaged with the thing you are buying, most of that
stuff was thrown away. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Another case in point here, if
you take video games from the 80s as an example, most kids would take the game
cartridges out the box and throw the box and the instructions away. That’s
exactly why there is such a huge market for recreated boxes and packaging these
days. Last week I found an original box for an early home computer without its
contents on sale for £400 (UK), the computer that went inside was available for
£80 (UK) unboxed, and I have little doubt that someone made the purchase of the
box, now whether they will get the whole £480 back if they were to sell both
together is another story, collectors of vintage technology tend to hold on to
it rather than sell it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">A recreation of a Colecovision
video game cartridge box will probably set you back thirty bucks or more in
some cases and that’s without the game cartridge or any manual included, an
original empty box for the console, and one that’s in nowhere near pristine
condition can set you back at least a hundred bucks, if it’s pristine or a very
good recreation then you can expect to double or even triple the value
depending on your location. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">As an American console, here
in the UK the Colecovision console box could fetch considerably more in mint
condition because the console wasn’t as popular over here, I did own one and
regret selling it on every day. A recreated console box with polystyrene
inserts can cost just as much as a console, often more, and these things sell. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">This is the level of
authenticity that the more niche collectors will be looking for. Most artists
who recreate vintage packaging are now having to place customers on wait lists,
I’m even having to do this at the moment for some items of my recreated
ephemera, especially manuals where the wait list can be even longer if I need
to track original reference copies down.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Why would I create
retro-inspired works as an artist?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are looking at art as a
means to provide you with a living wage, there is a living to be made from
nostalgia. I know a number of artists who make a healthy living creating the
aesthetic look and feel of the 80s using modern technologies, but if you are
prepared to put the work in and, at this point I have to say you do really have
to have a passion for the period, the real living to be made is in the more
niche market of vintage collectors who are looking for that certain level of added
authenticity and products that enhance the collectability of products they
already own. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">This is the retro world’s
equivalent of the high-end fine art market, where a pristine and factory sealed
example of a mass produced and hugely popular video game (Super Mario) can set
you back upwards of a million bucks. Although, I’m not convinced that the
market for that game wasn’t well and truly played a little here. We’re now in a
time when video games can be graded and encapsulated in the same way we might
grade rare coins.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I would also probably add that
unless you have a real passion for the eighties, you might not ever find any
real level of traction with the high-end 80s collectors unless what you are
offering is above and beyond what’s already available. If you are simply
looking to create art that sells in volume, the retro aesthetic might be as
good as it gets, it’s still a tough and crowded market to enter but there are
plenty of buyers. If you are looking to engage with more serious collectors, it
becomes less about the money and more about the art and recreations that you
create and your knowledge and passion of the period they are collecting. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">It's also worth bearing in
mind that creating 80s vintage works isn’t just about recreating images from
video games or the technologies of the day. The eighties was responsible for
the Memphis Design movement which continues to be used in many retro-inspired
designs today, and I suspect in many cases, it is a style that is used without
any depth of knowledge about the movement itself. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s not to cast any
dispersion on the ability or skill of the artists creating it, it was a look
that defined the 80s as much as anything else and there is nothing that screams
1980s louder than the patterns used in the MTV logos used throughout that
period in time. But, it was a relatively short-lived style that is too often
only remembered for its visuals rather than its origins.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, it’s a design style
that is often used in the wrong way on the wrong products, but understanding
how and when Memphis Design styles were used can make your retro-inspired works
and recreations much more appealing to collectors of period works.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Memphis Design began with a
gathering of architects and industrial designers in Milan, Italy, in 1981. They
were dismayed at how creativity had stagnated and become corporate and uniform.
They looked back to the works of Kadinsky, the abstract shapes and colours of
cubism, De Stijl and Harlem renaissance art and the pop-art movement of the
1960s, and they then incorporated elements of popular low culture into a very
distinct style which was of liberation and joy, yet today it is often
associated with rebelliousness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">After the inception of the
style there was<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>an exposition of these
gaudy, outlandish works and in a parody of high class culture it caused massive
disruption in the design community and even its haters found it difficult to
avoid this new artistic trend of neon pallets and swirly patterns. It was intentionally
created in bad taste to fit in with a decade that gave birth to glam metal and
shoulder pads, and was in sharp contrast to the austerity of the Reagan
administration in the USA. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The Memphis group closed its
doors in 1987 after Black Monday but its colourful style persisted well into
the 1990s where it gained even more traction after being integral to TV show
sets such as <i>Saved by the Bell</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">As an artist, there’s a fine
line in creating anything from the period with any authenticity and creating something
that just looks either dated or too modern. This is why as an artist it is
important to make sure that you do your homework and pay attention to the
detail. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Research is a very useful
skill to develop which will help enhance your historic knowledge of whatever
period your work depicts. Having that knowledge will make your creative process
much easier and your creative output will stand up better to what I like to
term as, collector scrutiny. The details as I’ve mentioned already really do matter
to high-end collectors, I can’t stress that enough. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnMpWBsxWsx3p4FQBptXaSXqqj-SsNFlVfL_44SNwYWZh7o5qI8WjGxgcL3IQpLeYoQgJPDxEag2VQHR1lIROjnH1M-OqYZASXDJLIIk_nf2HaLVyX7mtcBUYOFA4uHQmYYbHat0HonZgOfQi3SiAuQqX7GfvQC2eYnQrmuhhcqArl2DoDvh5z8cdX/s4088/life%20in%20stereo.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Life in stereo artwork, Walkman art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnMpWBsxWsx3p4FQBptXaSXqqj-SsNFlVfL_44SNwYWZh7o5qI8WjGxgcL3IQpLeYoQgJPDxEag2VQHR1lIROjnH1M-OqYZASXDJLIIk_nf2HaLVyX7mtcBUYOFA4uHQmYYbHat0HonZgOfQi3SiAuQqX7GfvQC2eYnQrmuhhcqArl2DoDvh5z8cdX/w640-h474/life%20in%20stereo.JPG" title="Life in Stereo by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Life in Stereo by Mark Taylor - Those headphones were great... at the time. Today, not so much but they are still popular on eBay!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">It's all in the detail…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">When I look at old technology
I distinctly remember its subtle nuances, but technology has changed
exponentially and many of these nuances have been lost through iterative innovation
over the years since. To a collector, it is those tiny details that can make a
wealth of difference in triggering memories and evoking any kind of emotion for
times past. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Pay attention to the detail as
an artist and this can negate the negative comments on social platforms and it
can be the difference between collectors selecting your vintage-inspired work
over someone else’s. Whilst there is a lot of great work already out there,
very little of it drills down into the level of period specific detail that high-end
collectors want. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The Digital Dawn…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If I could offer one piece of
advice to any artist looking to create retro-inspired works and vintage
recreations beyond creating retro-themed designs that have more of an aesthetic
rather than collectible function, that advice would be to get your head
completely in an eighties (or any other period specific) space. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For retro works that depict
the output from old technology, such as recreating those pixelated 8-bit images
that have become so popular, it’s worth understanding how much different the
technology in the 80s was compared to the technology we use today.
Understanding the nuances of 8-bit graphics compared to something you could
produce on a modern PC with Photoshop will help you to recreate some of that
authenticity that is often missing and with a little period knowledge, it’s not
especially any more difficult to create a more authentic piece of work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I think to an extent, it’s
also worth understanding how the industry operated too. Many of the graphical
styles came about as a result of how the machines had been built. They were usually
to retail at a low price point, and partly, due to the businesses practices of
the day which focussed on pushing product out in the shortest possible time
frame. This often had an impact on the quality of the visuals meaning that more
often than not, you really don’t have to overthink some of this type of work. The
detail is often more about what’s missing rather than what’s there.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Magazines of the period are
interesting in that the screen shots they would print would usually be of
moving images that couldn’t be paused. What the magazine photographer would
need to do is to build a dark housing and use a traditional camera, capturing
multiple shots to hopefully capture the shot they are looking for. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In some magazines, they would
build contraptions where the camera could be operated with the foot as the photographer
played through the game, so anything published was usually published not as
clearly as you would expect from a magazine today, but with added noise, maybe
a few light trails, and certainly never at the resolution we might expect to
see in a magazine today.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Understanding Vintage
Technology…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My professional art story began in the early
eighties not too long after I received a home computer from my parents as a
Christmas gift. The year was 1980 and the home computer I was gifted one
Christmas morning arrived under the tree as a kit that needed to be built. Once
assembled, it connected to the TV and well, it didn’t do very much. If I had
been thinking that it would compete with my Atari VCS and allow me to play
video games and listen to the exciting beeps and well, beeps, I would be
mistaken. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There was no sound, there was
no colour, it displayed text, often not very well, it had way less oomph than
the Atari console which by then was woefully underpowered itself, (it was
purposely underpowered on its own release day) but the excitement came from
being able to do something other than move abstract pixelated representations
of stick figures around in a video game. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I was finally able to create these
abstract representations, well, sort of. I was able to place characters on a
screen and interact with them and as a naïve child, that seemed to me to be the
future. By now we were still only a few steps beyond the original Pong video game
that made history during the 70s, but it was the control given to the user that
took it to a new level.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Exactly a year later I found
an upgraded computer under the tree and this time it had been assembled in a
factory, it didn’t flicker on and off each time a key was touched, and I say
touched, this was touch well before we had touch screens. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The keyboard was a plastic
membrane with printed keys for the keyboard, just like the last one but with a
little more added oomph that had been missing a year earlier. It still had no
sound and it still only had two colours, either black or white but it had a
whole 1Kilobyte of memory. (Yes, 1024 of those kilobytes are needed for a megabyte,
which is still not enough to store a music track). Thinking back, I can’t even
contemplate how we even managed to fit so much in so little, an entire game
could run in less than 1 kilobyte, 16 or 48 kilobytes if you were lucky, you
had no choice other than to be efficient at coding and so often that efficiency
wouldn’t leave any room for overly complex images to be displayed. There would
be no work for digital artists in this arena for at least another couple of
years but that didn’t stop us from pushing the pixels around.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgePO7wpu8H88Y0dFUn556ZcRu8zGEimhAuTYjdI1_z4fslBXnN2hkaZOO1kis1ChK6zeRasXu8A1pGYcqDztL_jI78z-JuFqmLYkxsH3-7r9aCQ9ti7OJ_iCK2Bw9lwjlT_hwDWsard1gTZgtTuY5ov0vNaI9JRTFRMDQXgcZNmQCowA3KexAHQzxr/s1080/ZX81.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Sinclair ZX81 Keyboard" border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1080" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgePO7wpu8H88Y0dFUn556ZcRu8zGEimhAuTYjdI1_z4fslBXnN2hkaZOO1kis1ChK6zeRasXu8A1pGYcqDztL_jI78z-JuFqmLYkxsH3-7r9aCQ9ti7OJ_iCK2Bw9lwjlT_hwDWsard1gTZgtTuY5ov0vNaI9JRTFRMDQXgcZNmQCowA3KexAHQzxr/w640-h336/ZX81.png" title="Sinclair ZX81 Keyboard" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Sinclair ZX81 Keyboard - Touch before touch and slightly ahead of the chicklet style keyboards often made from rubber or small plastic keys that hardly moved when pressed. Note the BASIC commands could be entered by pressing a single key rather than typing each command in manually. The endless loop of 20 GOTO 10...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Not wanting to raise too many
expectations here but that added oomph still seemed to be less than the Atari VCS
which had been released in around 1976. The earliest home computers by around
1980 technically had more power, but they didn’t have cartridge based software
where the cartridges would often have additional components included that would
provide added functionality and more power to the console. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So whilst the early
microcomputers were technically more advanced they were also often less capable
and more limiting, rarely displaying their output in colour and they frequently
had no sound. But they did have a keyboard and a programmable language, and
that was all that was needed back then.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">It was these limitations that
drove the initial creativity in the home computer industry and those very
limitations taught me and many others some very early lessons in efficiency
that would lead to forming the foundations that would later introduce me to a
wide range of programming languages, BASIC, Forth, Fortran, PASCAL, and 6502
and 6508 Assembly. Bear in mind that early digital art wasn’t created in
packages such as Photoshop, each pixel on screen was programmed in using
whatever code the computer understood. At first this would be something like
BASIC, later it would be assembly, today we just fire up Photoshop or we’ll
turn to AI.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Getting to grips with any of
these early and simple programming languages would be useful to understand the
languages in use today. When coding in HTML or C or any other modern day
programming language, having a grasp of those early languages has been
massively useful as it is those old languages that underpin pretty much every modern
programming language of today. If you are about to learn C or anything else,
grab an emulator and learn BASIC or Assembly, the modern language will be way
easier to get to grips with!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Maybe what’s more remarkable
is just how much you could do with 1kilobyte of memory. Today, modern coders
are nowhere near as efficient in their programming because they have the luxury
of almost exponential power. If more RAM is needed then it’s a simple upgrade
using relatively cheap components, back in the 80s, we would have no option
other than to become really creative in how we got the machines to carry out
instructions so that the need for additional and expensive RAM would be
negated. Contentiously, I’m going to go there, modern programmers have it
almost too good and that makes modern code generally pretty sloppy and
inefficient.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, my process frequently involves
setting limitations and working within them. Of course, it’s not always
possible to do, we have higher resolutions, different display technologies and
we don’t all have access to working vintage technology on which to create new
vintage works, neither would that be entirely practical for most artists to do.
But setting limitations around colour pallets, resolution, and even brush sizes
will bring you closer to achieving a more authentic look.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">By 1982, things had changed
and technology was in comparison to at any time before, almost abundant in
supply, massively more inexpensive than ever, and the missing oomph had by now
been included. The game (literally) began to change in every conceivable way,
especially when it came to pushing pixels around the screen. The beeps had
matured to beeps that could vary in pitch and duration, and by the end of 1982,
we had powerful on-board sound chips that would sound almost orchestral. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Today there is an entire
demographic who buy chip tune music tracks, tunes created on an early computer,
mostly the Commodore 64 with its phenomenal SID chip and the Commodore Amiga.
The US really missed out on the Amiga through some bad business practices made
by Commodore at the time, yet it is a machine still used by many DJs and digital
artists even today, not least in part due to Andy Warhol’s mid-eighties works
created on the Amiga 1000. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">This leap in technology wasn’t
the same story everywhere though. Small home microcomputers that were wallet,
and relatively user friendly might have been popular here in the UK where
almost every week a new model would come to market, but elsewhere and
especially in the US, Atari still dominated alongside Apple. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Despite new home micro’s being
introduced the same kind of buzz for microcomputers across the pond was
somewhat different to the buzz for home micro’s here in the UK. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXGK70TSF-uus8Rs07ujwnJTVzZaz38wGs-MOn1ZXaXTO6qKuTWfIKt8alL4Ri5gG3A2wUdoBwU0aObGWJCea8wUSjQ7S0tP9ei2_A5JlaJW1z8Ut3mUCznq_88iA_mCIB-FbbkHLzgTAwbwPYMksWnLiMvA9blzpOzawce4MdKw19YTKDFJK4skcq/s4088/hot%20coco.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Coco color computer art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXGK70TSF-uus8Rs07ujwnJTVzZaz38wGs-MOn1ZXaXTO6qKuTWfIKt8alL4Ri5gG3A2wUdoBwU0aObGWJCea8wUSjQ7S0tP9ei2_A5JlaJW1z8Ut3mUCznq_88iA_mCIB-FbbkHLzgTAwbwPYMksWnLiMvA9blzpOzawce4MdKw19YTKDFJK4skcq/w640-h474/hot%20coco.JPG" title="Hot CoCo by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Hot CoCo by Mark Taylor - broadly compatible with the UKs Dragon 32, which was built in Wales. The CoCo was pretty epic for its time and available from Tandy/Radio Shack - the artwork was inspired by the CoCo!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Apple and a few others such as
Tandy’s Color Computer (CoCo) were steadily making inroads into the market. We
did get the CoCo here in the UK alongside the Dragon 32, a Welsh computer
broadly compatible with the CoCo, at least until Dragon was acquired by a
Spanish company. Apple with the original Apple and later the Apple II were
mainly focussed on the US markets.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Apple II was a powerhouse in comparison to
most other machines, as was Commodore’s effort with the Commodore 64 a little
while later, and even its predecessor, the VIC-20 and Commodore PET, but then
the gloss fell away from a saturated US video game market and the industry
seemed to flounder for a while between 1983 and 1984. Business computers didn’t
have quite the same fate, but those marketed for the home became less popular
for a while.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Video games suddenly lost
their cool factor in the USA between 1983 and 1984, but we limped along quite
well in the UK and Europe, in part because the market was awash with affordable
home micro’s and there was a relatively strong academic program supporting the
use of computers in schools here in the UK. We also had an abundance of budget
video games available from the likes of Mastertronic, everything remained affordable.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">When we talk about the great
video game crash of 1983, the crash was mostly confined to North America, we
certainly didn’t see it here in the UK or indeed in Europe more widely. It was
an especially vibrant time for the industry outside of the USA and much of the
retro-influence we see today isn’t always predicated on what would have been
popular in the USA, but elsewhere in Europe. Many of today’s retro aesthetic
works are very much of a European influence.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I’ll take a quick opportunity
to digress here, just as a point of reference, the UK and Europe influenced
much of what we see today in part due to video games such as Grand Theft Auto
and Tomb Raider being developed originally here in the UK. Even Nintendo would
use a British developer to produce historic classics such as Goldeneye on the
Nintendo 64. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">A UK video game company, Rare,
was chosen by Nintendo to work on multiple titles and was based not too far
away from where I live today but they would be known before this as Ultimate
Play the Game. They were seen as a leader in developing titles for early
British home micro’s that are more and more in demand these days in the USA
where the vintage computer collector base is becoming massively focussed on
British home microcomputers of late. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Digressing over and back to
the 80s when Atari took most of the brunt for what is now known as the great
video game crash. More specifically, the crash is often wrongly attributed to
the poor job and oversupply Atari had done with the release of their ET game, a
game that became almost folkloric in that twice the number of game cartridges
were produced than the number of consoles owned. Added to that, Atari sent the
overstock to a desert landfill, although the real story is a little more
complicated than that. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Here's the thing. It wasn’t ET
being labelled as the worst video game in history that paused the market in the
US, neither was it Atari, it was a combination of oversupply from dozens of
manufacturers joining the silicon gold rush alongside some ropey industry
management practices and sketchy quality control within the sector as a whole
and the emergence of many, many, new platforms, too many that would quickly
become unsupported or would bankrupt the manufacturers when coupled with all of
the other poor management decisions being made at the time. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The ET game had been developed
in five weeks so it was never going to be a triple A title, but hype and Steven
Spielberg together sold silicon. As a game, it wasn’t completely terrible and
it does retain some fans even today, but let’s be clear, Atari’s ET game was
made into a scapegoat that just so happened to take the focus away from the
real issues in the valley. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, the Atari ET game
cartridge can be picked up for small pocket change, the box on the other hand,
that’s a different story and again this has presented many modern-day artists
with a revenue stream in recreating the ephemera and packaging and much of the
retro work that is seen today is often based on the look of the graphics that
were made famous by Atari’s late 70s and early 80s games consoles.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">That said, there was no
industry blueprint for anyone to follow in the 80s, least of all those at the
front who were introducing new technologies to the world. It was an era of
digital pioneers when no one really understood the market and the market was
struggling to truly understand the technology. People were literally making
things up as they went along.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Consoles would eventually revive
the US industry with Nintendo’s introduction of the N.E.S (Nintendo
Entertainment System). Every American friend I had at the time and have spoken
to since seemed to own the N.E.S, to the extent that I did ponder for a while
if it was part of some government program that gave them away.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">But these consoles were not
user programmable computers which had remained popular in the UK and Europe. We
didn’t get sight of the N.E.S here in the UK until a while later which gave British
and European brands such as the likes of Commodore, Sinclair, Acorn, Oric, and
later, Amstrad, some room to breathe. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The US did get to see at least
a couple of these brands but in the case of Sinclair, it would have been known
in the States as Timex following a deal that had been done with the UK brand
owned by Sir Clive Sinclair. This didn’t change the fact that home micro’s were
nowhere near as prevalent in the States as they were in the UK and Europe
during that time and as a result, pixel art in the States was a little more
complex and somewhat less accessible and massively more unaffordable to create than
it was in the UK and Europe where affordability played a major role in selling
home computers and encouraging users to become creative.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtUzmXrLiCIBJL9ycjC-cXiK9NzC9xZt_8xw0DvQ8tqwctFvsdFr5rTt7NkmwXNL1Mi5fDGas5dXGTVlfGFmGKsIKnfX06OLsRVPldO9a7fvA4stphVIohcUAeFyOoi8rwAEQsyCyXFh6UjCV9HqwJKgt5n560zLmAbdNpdb9hMMv7qTd0oNzh0Cei/s4088/three%20point%20five.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="3.5 inch floppy disc art print with calculator" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtUzmXrLiCIBJL9ycjC-cXiK9NzC9xZt_8xw0DvQ8tqwctFvsdFr5rTt7NkmwXNL1Mi5fDGas5dXGTVlfGFmGKsIKnfX06OLsRVPldO9a7fvA4stphVIohcUAeFyOoi8rwAEQsyCyXFh6UjCV9HqwJKgt5n560zLmAbdNpdb9hMMv7qTd0oNzh0Cei/w640-h474/three%20point%20five.JPG" title="Three Point Five by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Three Point Five by Mark Taylor - another work featuring the 80s calculator - the detail here includes detail on the page, my signature appears in the text on the page!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In the UK things were vastly
different…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">When I say that in the UK
things were vastly different in the home computer industry, that doesn’t mean
that things were necessarily always better. We struggled in the UK and Europe with
oversupply, poor quality, and bad business practices within the industry just
as much as anywhere else. Possibly more so as everyone was suddenly in the
business of supplying software that was often rushed and publishers desperate
for new IP would lap it up and pay for almost anything so long as you could
keep supplying them with code.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In truth, they would take
pretty much anything and place it on a store shelf safely in the knowledge that
someone would buy it. I know because even I created a game for one of the Atari
8-bit micro’s that never really went anywhere commercially, hey, I was about 14
when I wrote it. It wasn’t a great game even for the time on reflection, it was
rushed, it took me around a week in the evenings and it didn’t particularly
sell very well even though publishers never shared sales numbers with the
creators. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Yet the game I created, along
with a rudimentary image editor, a basic inventory tool which had originally
been created for my father’s business and another small game written entirely
in BASIC had all ironically sold a little better than the game written in a
much faster assembly language. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Some people were earning some
significant sums of money from generating some pretty rubbish code, others were
earning slightly less for better quality, but what I had produced at the time
still gave me enough to pay for a car in cash when I was 18 years old. Financially
the rest of the world was in turmoil but in the 8-bit world of microcomputers,
I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. If anything from the 80s
could magically happen again, I would have to say I would hope it would be the
8-bit gold rush because plenty of us were making bank for creating small 8-bit
images and coding very simple games!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">What seemed to happen in the
UK and Europe was that a different direction had been taken than the one being
taken everywhere else. Very few of the home micro’s were being marketed as
games machines instead they would be targeted towards an education market, and
much of that was simply down to the government recognising that computer science
should become more established in early years schools. Yet those schools never
taught people how to create digital art, that was just a side-benefit that
happened out of necessity, games needed graphics, and programmers slowly
learned that they weren’t artists.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There seemed to be a different
view in the UK around how computers could be used for creativity. That’s not to
say that the value of the computer was not recognised elsewhere, MIT for
example gave birth to some of the most prolific coders of any generation before
or since. US developers were prolific in their support for the early Apple,
Atari and Commodore computers as well as the huge arcade industry born in the
USA.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Inadvertently, the arcade
industry helped to shape the creative industry by bringing art and technology
even closer together. That multi-million dollar industry that would be fed on
quarters spawned a whole generation of artists who would mostly remain
anonymous for many years. In the background they would work on graphics for the
arcade games in an ultra-competitive space, but they would also be instrumental
in designing the arcade cabinets and side art, most of which would be silk
screen printed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Here in the UK, I was
beginning to establish myself as a creator of digital images, but for the most
part, artists were never really an absolute requirement in the home computer or
video games industry. Coders tended to create their own art, usually badly, and
it wouldn’t be until the 90s that digital artists would really begin to come to
the fore and at least occasionally get some kind of mention in the credits. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">My entry to the art world has
been documented before so I won’t reexplore it fully here, but suffice to say
that during the 80s I had begun the transition from creating art on traditional
mediums to pushing pixels around on a screen, and with the innovation we
started to see in printing technologies, having the ability to sell prints of
that work meant that I was able to turn what was once a mere childhood hobby
into a fully fledged business. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Remember, this was the very
early eighties and even way before Warhol had touched the Commodore Amiga home
computer and recreated the Campbell’s Soup Can in a digital form. Yes, people
did create digital art before Warhol, he was simply way better than anyone else
at grabbing peoples attention. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">We were the Original Pixel
Artists…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">It would be another three
years beyond 1982 and another couple of microcomputers before I took on my
first paid commission to produce digital art, a genre so new that we had really
only just started to call it digital art in a mainstream sense, although
earlier digital art goes back to the early 1960s and even a little before.
Neither did we call it pixel art as it is sometimes referred to as today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Looking back, even though the
term digital art was being loosely used what we were doing with computers
wasn’t really recognised as artistic, certainly not in any meaningful way or
even close to being recognised in the same way that digital art is recognised today.
Very few people understood what digital art was and others would dismiss it as
non-art. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Only recently, and maybe even
in the past five or six years has digital art become more ingrained and
accepted as art in the mainstream and there are still those who continue to
hold out that digital works cannot be art. This might surprise many people but
despite digital art’s long history even before the birth of the 80s home
computer market which would make it more accessible to artists, it’s often seen
as something new that requires little to no skill to achieve, which couldn’t be
further from the truth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Commercial digital art was by
and large, even in the mid to late 80s still very much a traditional and mostly
manual process of laying things out on paper. Image editors were still few and
far between and professional publishing applications were rare and expensive, and
they weren’t that great compared to todays applications, they would only really
be used in the high end media industries and the press until we started to see
releases such as Delux Paint on the Commodore Amiga.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEHthYuz87atW8IagiAsIs0sYq_Vrug0pXuz-x4HrYQXDS5MjuJJLcYFYszUkWgPSloVRB8FZJ4hN0vc79vsrhYRVZfm3K0U2ChmVIy-F-8Sx__UwDo4ltf_6MUQ8H5mJ16dGnEuqTq7pxdNPbmus1sM6Yu9viVez8hO4It5z-nYBk4dZyGS588xlh/s2103/atari%20boxes.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Atari box art 1980s" border="0" data-original-height="1191" data-original-width="2103" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEHthYuz87atW8IagiAsIs0sYq_Vrug0pXuz-x4HrYQXDS5MjuJJLcYFYszUkWgPSloVRB8FZJ4hN0vc79vsrhYRVZfm3K0U2ChmVIy-F-8Sx__UwDo4ltf_6MUQ8H5mJ16dGnEuqTq7pxdNPbmus1sM6Yu9viVez8hO4It5z-nYBk4dZyGS588xlh/w640-h362/atari%20boxes.jpg" title="Atari Box Art 1980s - Copyright Atari" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Atari Box Art 1980s - Copyright Atari - These boxes are in demand today and recreations are available! Amazing artwork on every one!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Before the digital art
application, if you needed an image to appear on screen, you mostly had to
learn how to program it either through early programming languages such as
BASIC or you would need to learn assembly language which was specific to each microprocessor.
Few programmers would take their work to the next level and design their own
image and sound editors but by the mid-80s, I had fallen in love with Delux
Paint on the Commodore Amiga, a machine that was completely misunderstood
outside of the UK and Europe, but one which now has thousands of users and fans
around the world.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Mostly, pre-Commodore Amiga, we
were dealing with 8x8 blocks of pixels and trying our very best to make that
small area pop with colour, mostly the same colour, and we were also trying to
be as photorealistic as possible which was impossible with the technology we
had, but like I always say, eighties kids had the best imaginations. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Nothing we could do with the
technology we had was even close to being photorealistic back then, all we had
were pixelated structures with jagged edges, it was a look that defined the
video games scene of the eighties and well into the nineties, but still a step
beyond the earlier consoles such as the Intellivision and Atari Video Computer
System, and with this new-found power, digital art was beginning to emerge in
its pixelated glory. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Chunky pixels were the only
option and would be until much later when we saw the introduction of 16-Bit
computers and later PCs, but it was never the intent of any of the original
pixel artists to be pixel artists, we were just creating pictures and artworks
with a purpose, the purpose usually being to convey a message to the viewer or to
provide a playfield or character whilst all of the time trying to make the
images not look like they had been created on a computer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There was a graphical leap
forward in the 90s and this made things easier and graphically, closer to
photorealism. For a while developers had been stitching together four unique sprites
to create bigger animated characters and manufacturers had begun to turn to new
technologies such as graphic cards for the PC and alternative graphic modes
such as mode 7 on the Super Nintendo. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In most cases where cartridges
would be used, additional chips would be included – pushing the price of the
cartridges up in price, but by the end of the 90s consoles began to utilise CDs
which saw the introduction of 3D environments, probably way too early for most
developers who found it a real struggle with some of the hardware to produce
anything convincing in 3D, but that’s what the paymasters in the industry
thought the world wanted. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">64-bit technologies would
become the game changer that 3D needed but the underpinning CD technology was
still considerably more expensive than the floppy disc or even the compact
audio cassette that had been used for much of the 8-bit, 16-bit and in the
early days of the 32-bit era. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In the 90s, 128-bit
technologies were being explored by some manufacturers but this would put the
technologies that took advantage of it out of reach for many and when higher
bitrate technology was introduced in the popular hand held devices of the time,
it would come at the cost of battery life making them less portable because you
needed to remain tethered to a power supply. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Graphically at the time,
128-bit wasn’t always as good as the earlier and lower bitrates for graphics. Developers
really struggled with the complexity of the systems and creating 128-bit
graphics would need even higher end development systems putting them out of
reach of most developers. As a graphic artist, I certainly couldn’t afford to
make the move to 128-bit systems on my own, so larger teams would be parachuted
into development houses and development costs became eye watering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">By this time we were beginning
to see advances in rudimentary graphic tablets that had been used before,
although for 8-bit artists, the TV screen would become the tablet for a while
as a light pen could be hooked up with the aid of an expansion card plugged
into the computer in most cases. Graphically, I never gelled with the light
pen, TVs were always upright meaning that they were just not conducive to
creating art. So what we did see at the time was that most programmers and by
now, a handful of dedicated digital artists who would continue to create art
using either a joystick or later in the 80s, a mouse. Still on 8-bit, 16-bit or
occasionally 32-bit systems.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The introduction of graphics
cards pushed the boundaries of creating digital art, but the downside was that
there were really no agreed standards. Game developers had a difficult time
optimising their code to work with the literally dozens of differing
technologies available, but we were by now beginning to see digital art that
was far beyond the limits placed on earlier work by the technology.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, retro art is a movement
but it’s not really vintage…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s some level of irony in
that modern digital artists strive to recreate that 8-bit, retro, vintage,
pixel style. In the eighties it was a style we couldn’t wait to move away from,
yet today I see so many artists painstakingly setting up grids in Photoshop or
Illustrator in an attempt to achieve the same kind of look that we once had no
choice other than to use. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The challenge we have today is
that the modern way of creating pixelated images in a retro/vintage style
doesn’t quite achieve any level of authenticity when directly compared to
vintage pixel art that runs natively on an original 8-bit or even 16-bit
microcomputer. To start with, there was little use of dithers that would allow any
kind of gradation of colour until a much later period in time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In the eighties, any gradation
between colours firstly had to be done with a very small colour pallet, usually
either 8 or 16 colours and mostly if 16 colours were available it would really
only ever be an 8 colour pallet with dimming turned on or off to give the same
hue a brighter appearance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that’s
how you market the same thing twice. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_nXa5fWnmF3gVYiH9yWUPlBvJwZ_BMvZ3-ArKV_w64pWAay4SB7ZoZucjSZDyL9lmpuPyvvT8UJwbRhEt71f0xZyiT0kiuFZKHvQQvxBdlVXdi08rfGi8OOIB0cE8IzVytjihBkjpW8mG-XEYM6o6CP1cYAJ-ruvkRH82LdZ_0loNSLiuciCD8Kqm/s320/Zx-colors.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="ZX Spectrum Colour Pallet" border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_nXa5fWnmF3gVYiH9yWUPlBvJwZ_BMvZ3-ArKV_w64pWAay4SB7ZoZucjSZDyL9lmpuPyvvT8UJwbRhEt71f0xZyiT0kiuFZKHvQQvxBdlVXdi08rfGi8OOIB0cE8IzVytjihBkjpW8mG-XEYM6o6CP1cYAJ-ruvkRH82LdZ_0loNSLiuciCD8Kqm/w640-h480/Zx-colors.png" title="ZX Spectrum Colour Pallet" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">ZX Spectrum Colour Pallet - that was all we had!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For those unfamiliar with
dithering, in short, it means that an applied form of noise is introduced to
the image to approximate a colour that is not available from a mixture of the colours
that are available. By the time that the early home microcomputers of the 1980s
came out, dithering was already being used, it was even used during World War
II for bomb trajectories and navigation, and also in comic books and colour
printing which overcame the limited pallets available on earlier printing
presses. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Dithering really came into its
own on the early home micro’s but to create<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>any form of dithering was often a manual process as opposed to using an
algorithm to apply noise as we would do today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, dithering is an
essential tool in the creation of many digital works, it’s also used in many
printer models to reduce the cost of printing. The inkjets spray microscopic
dots on the paper or print surface and even monochrome printers use the
technique to overcome the limitations of using only black ink. Dithering is
also the reason why you can still make out the detail of a colour photograph
when printing in monochrome.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Dithering is also massively
useful on the web even though most of us will have vastly more bandwidth today
than at any time in the past, the technique means that fewer pixels are needed
to build up the image so there is a reduction in the bandwidth used which means
that images can load much faster from a much smaller file size.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Even if you are taking
advantage of modern tools, what makes a lot of modern pixel art look too modern
to be totally convincing is in the simple things such as restricting the colour
palette. On vintage 8-bit computers and even early consoles, pallets were
limited as I intimated earlier, and it also depended on whether those pallets
were being displayed in a PAL or NTSC format so whatever format was in your
region would determine the output and the colour that you would see. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJrHztigRgKp1YilDKwDoPnA9rFxrTbCMCvvptgvfII0QpbUZhYSC57VIjsuQ6uWDHgQp4cwy_-bjCKAOksSTapTn2rJ8JFrSS_YqjkN3yLrcOeE1siLZ8mw2yOM5Zgm566BfGiYBxuZvx7pd_S_jVdjTVzldfHdpnhvM4U4hk5UukIPwP_kY7rjxK/s320/monochrome%20Zx-colors_sw.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Monochrome Pallet ZX Spectrum" border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJrHztigRgKp1YilDKwDoPnA9rFxrTbCMCvvptgvfII0QpbUZhYSC57VIjsuQ6uWDHgQp4cwy_-bjCKAOksSTapTn2rJ8JFrSS_YqjkN3yLrcOeE1siLZ8mw2yOM5Zgm566BfGiYBxuZvx7pd_S_jVdjTVzldfHdpnhvM4U4hk5UukIPwP_kY7rjxK/w640-h480/monochrome%20Zx-colors_sw.jpg" title="Monochrome Pallet ZX Spectrum" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Monochrome Pallet ZX Spectrum - Also demonstrate how dithering would work.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Bright and dim colours on a
machine such as the Sinclair ZX Spectrum (Timex in the USA) and other micro’s
with limited palettes would be achieved by altering the voltage input of the
video display. On an NTSC video output you would also find that some machines
would display black only as a dark grey. Another factor that would change how
colours were output would be the actual display screen the image was being
output on, and the method with which the display screen was connected.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Display Technologies would
Change the Look of Digital Art…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Output display resolutions and
technologies were vastly different too. There is simply no way that an original
eight by eight pixel character would have any impact today on modern 4K or even
8K displays, each pixel would be far too tiny to see and it would look like a
speck of dust on the display, it’s even problematic on a 1080p HD display or
even the lower HD resolution of 720p. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, images have to be
upscaled or stretched to fill a high resolution screen and mostly, they look
pretty horrible unless the effect of a single pixel is recreated with multiple
pixels and scaling up is quite challenging. Increasing the resolution would,
and still does to an extent, produce pixelation that would make the image look
terrible. Today, upscaling is possible and there are all sorts of algorithms
and techniques that can reduce the pixelation, but in truth, it’s still there.
You are seeing a reproduced copy of the original image even using hardware
upscaler’s.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMt2oUQ_UhgGVN9rF3jLqhtykpfxjXBAldqCmmQ0nZABE_pFPIf8F5yYWu4zmFyDhtfxkw25Vxu099ptWYTpm5lfF8qTnlf0UR4oBeeKX_NDrd9H_BHzpIF3Hw_TBrAtW_xV8GiBRPjuNmZFTghnS7TKfP2tNQEbitP-clOPfjQ3Tpz8zBSbBdxWDz/s1282/Spectrum%20hex%20codes.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img alt="ZX Spectrum Colour Pallet Hex Codes" border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="1282" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMt2oUQ_UhgGVN9rF3jLqhtykpfxjXBAldqCmmQ0nZABE_pFPIf8F5yYWu4zmFyDhtfxkw25Vxu099ptWYTpm5lfF8qTnlf0UR4oBeeKX_NDrd9H_BHzpIF3Hw_TBrAtW_xV8GiBRPjuNmZFTghnS7TKfP2tNQEbitP-clOPfjQ3Tpz8zBSbBdxWDz/w640-h280/Spectrum%20hex%20codes.png" title="ZX Spectrum Colour Pallet Hex Codes" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">ZX Spectrum Colour Pallet Hex Codes</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Mostly during the 1980s we
would rely on graph paper and manually plot out the pixels that would appear in
whatever resolution the output would be displayed, in the case of the Sinclair
ZX Spectrum, the entire display was just 256 by 192 pixels and this was the sum
total of screen real estate that you had to play your game, view your art, or
type in a program listing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Another issue with vintage
computers was that there could be what was called colour clash. Mostly, you
could only utilise a single colour in any character block so if the block of
colour moved over another colour, the colour of the block would appear over the
background colour. It was also known as attribute clash or more commonly today
we would think of it as colour bleed. 8x8 pixel blocks could only ever appears
as a single colour.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigCZcpnYy1gW1ZwM9e-SCczQIWI5bDEcD-GkCTYbvU-Bh54VhyYUZDpy4KzerAQ75Il3pv0wiAod30fugTqKz5U8JEaCCS5-Ow1bOIFK_FkcTeGheC3hS7bnD5HLqnWQRlEvsmx0pEGnd41ol_yZIU2o6Te4GStNmag-WwuEwbF8eGfUhXuJWgu154/s576/ZX_Spectrum_standard_palette_with_8x8_dithering.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="ZX Spectrum Dithering 8 bit pallet" border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="512" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigCZcpnYy1gW1ZwM9e-SCczQIWI5bDEcD-GkCTYbvU-Bh54VhyYUZDpy4KzerAQ75Il3pv0wiAod30fugTqKz5U8JEaCCS5-Ow1bOIFK_FkcTeGheC3hS7bnD5HLqnWQRlEvsmx0pEGnd41ol_yZIU2o6Te4GStNmag-WwuEwbF8eGfUhXuJWgu154/w568-h640/ZX_Spectrum_standard_palette_with_8x8_dithering.png" title="ZX Spectrum Dithering 8 bit pallet" width="568" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">ZX Spectrum Dithering 8 bit pallet - created manually often with code!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">This did provide for a unique
look and feel to anything appearing on screen and where modern takes on 8-bit
pixel art are clean, often with each pixel defined with its own colour, vintage
8-bit microcomputers, even the best of them could never achieve that kind of sharp,
clean, look. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The question for pixel artists
today is whether they go for a completely authentic look by limiting the colour
palette and include the effect of attribute clash, or whether they should
create a clean, modern representation. The choice is really down to the
audience, hardcore collectors are looking for that kind of raw detail,
collectors of fan art or an aesthetic nod to vintage, probably not so much.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Other factors that would
affect the look of your art…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The old displays that were
historically used generated a technically compliant NTSC or PAL signal.
Depending on your geographic region you would either see 480i or 576i
resolutions but the images would only be sent to one field rather than
alternate between two fields. This created a 240 or 288 line progressive
signal, which in theory could be decoded on any receiver that could decode
normal interlaced signals. If that sounds technical, I’m not sure any of us
original pixel pushers understood it either back in the day. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">We would see horrible
horizontal lines on the display. Today these scan lines are seen as being a
charming and nostalgia inducing necessity in the reproduction of authentic
pixel art so it’s more likely today that you might utilise a transparent PNG
image of horizontal lines to place in front of the image when you are creating
vintage inspired artworks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The scan lines were a result
of the shadow mask and beam width of regular cathode ray tube televisions and
monitors having been designed to display interlaced signals so the image would
appear to have alternative light and dark lines.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXPfqwA93ypR7YinF79ghpFib2ApRDV7xy_nQ-h1030EaXHk09LLsJUJ0r5usXvl9dTGTx0VYaImsKhKZSdCvMjbQvbc1q8Ek7KpMQuRVcTVh4HpsSr_Kj-gNatux32sSQxcF_kOAkJhEqY2DrGPn-yN5NcHJqVot1Vq7X9UuQEyyGcyb-XFOIVJPK/s4088/now%20we%20can%20play.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="RF Modulator art print" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXPfqwA93ypR7YinF79ghpFib2ApRDV7xy_nQ-h1030EaXHk09LLsJUJ0r5usXvl9dTGTx0VYaImsKhKZSdCvMjbQvbc1q8Ek7KpMQuRVcTVh4HpsSr_Kj-gNatux32sSQxcF_kOAkJhEqY2DrGPn-yN5NcHJqVot1Vq7X9UuQEyyGcyb-XFOIVJPK/w640-h474/now%20we%20can%20play.JPG" title="RF Modulator - Now We Can Play by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">RF Modulator - Now We Can Play by Mark Taylor - We did HD fuzzy. Originally created as a commission for a long-time collector, this RF modulator was the thing to have in the 80s.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Creating Authentic in the
Modern Day…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">When you need to create more
authentic looking pixel images, you have a choice of either creating a modern
representation using modern tools or you go completely down the vintage rabbit
hole and begin to use ither original equipment or even emulation. No modern
tools can even come close to matching the visual limitations of 80s and even
90s technology, it's simply too good, no matter how skilled you are. It’s not
really about having a high level of competency with modern skills or tools,
everything is already stacked against you when you are attempting to recreate
any level of genuine authenticity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Any technology today is
designed to look clean, sharp, and be reproduced in a large format, often that
means 4K and above and a modern display just cannot get even close to
reproducing the phosphorous glow of an old CRT TV or monitor. At best, you can
hope for a facsimile of authentic pixel art but it will never be quite the
same. I actually feel a pang of sadness when I see vintage art displayed in art
exhibitions on modern displays, it’s not anywhere close to original without all
of the original limitations, not forgetting the phosphorous glow of a CRT or
the scanlines.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">To counter this with my own
work, I tend to use a heap of layers, using gaussian blur tools over luminous
brushes in between layers before applying a scan line filter I created which
took me somewhere in the region of three months to produce. The filter template
I created has a slight curvature in the lines and every time it is used, I
alpha lock the layer and then apply a blend to provide the darker shadows
towards the edge of the screen before once again applying a luminous brush
stroke or three and using gaussian blur again to provide further reflection on
any layers above and below the scanlines. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">You’ll notice this if you look
at any of my works that feature a screen, so long as you are looking close
up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have licensed that template for
commercial use by other artists in the past, alongside a CRT colour pallet that
works in either Photoshop or Procreate, so again, there are so many potential
entrance gates for artists to offer buyers in the retro scene. You can see the level of detail in the LED Matrix on the calculator above. CRTs have similar levels of detail!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">When there is a need for me to
tackle 8-bit art and even 16-bit art, there are some techniques that I always
fall back to because I know they will help me to achieve a more authentic feel.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Modern displays also have a
very different aspect ratio making it even more challenging to recreate
authentic images that would have originally been presented in a 4:3 format. The
technologies are vastly different which makes it a challenge to make a modern
display look like it’s an old display and this is why scanline filters are
often used to give images a vintage feel.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Transparent PNG images of
scanlines can be created relatively easily if you have enough time and with
tools such as Illustrator or even Photoshop, but these can still give an
entirely flat effect to the underlying image. Many of the freely or even
commercially available scanline filters never quite achieve a true
representation of the original look of a CRT, simply because CRTs had that
curvature and scanlines if they have no curvature applied will always look
flat. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Confine Your Creativity…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I think to an extent, any
artist who wants to tackle vintage-inspired work and who wants to maintain an
authentic feel in the modern day with modern tools, will have it way harder
than we dinosaurs had it back in the day. We didn’t know that the future would
be 4K, hey, we were pretty amazed at what we already had. I also think that any
artist wanting to produce this style of art needs to work within some very
constrained limitations.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">A lot of the work I currently create
doesn’t need to have any specific effects applied to it because most of the
time I’m reproducing memories of the eighties as opposed to a replica of pixel
image that would have been presented on screen. Having said that, there are
plenty of nods to old technology and in some of my works you will find individual
assets within the artwork that have been created on vintage computers, and
whenever I paint a screen, you will always see scanlines or the matrix used
within an LED display. Most casual users never notice this detail but for me,
it’s critical and for collectors who want authenticity, they expect nothing
less.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For me and my work, scanlines
are really as complicated as it gets for representational vintage inspired
work, but if I am working on individual assets that absolutely need to look
authentic, say for a retro-inspired video game that needs to retain an old look,
my process can be very different depending on what the commissioner needs. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Surprisingly, the easiest
commissions I tend to get these days are to develop images for homebrew indie
games that continue to be released on 40-year old microcomputers such as the
Commodore 64. They’re easy because I literally power up my Commodore 64 and
create the images on that just as I would have done some 40-years ago either
using a rudimentary image editor or I will program it in BASIC or Assembly
language. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnfmZYt6Qgdf2o_z_271Y12lZdaT1qWjdFzrd8mrV1llBlcv-7xCtd3c1g_IUUs0o5wgt0Je88ou6TsaoZCq-lMnH1DmaVOjE8XN4yMGhCWToWcknxfDSgAwPNYLhIoJOdtOPyUtqF-qFNQDRq8AyKONUJa3fhtsUEtX_FZH7-QnrmnmcIVzH1Hzm0/s4088/new%20formats.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="New Formats Disc camera artwork" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnfmZYt6Qgdf2o_z_271Y12lZdaT1qWjdFzrd8mrV1llBlcv-7xCtd3c1g_IUUs0o5wgt0Je88ou6TsaoZCq-lMnH1DmaVOjE8XN4yMGhCWToWcknxfDSgAwPNYLhIoJOdtOPyUtqF-qFNQDRq8AyKONUJa3fhtsUEtX_FZH7-QnrmnmcIVzH1Hzm0/w640-h474/new%20formats.JPG" title="New Formats by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">New Formats by Mark Taylor - the specification for the disc camera was better on paper. They looked really cool, the photographs were very poor compared to earlier formats.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">It becomes significantly more
complicated when you have to recreate old looks on new technology, I can spend
maybe as much as three or four times longer working in Photoshop than I spend
on creating the assets on vintage tech and that’s even after I go through the
process of bringing the final image over to new technologies for use as assets
or within an artwork. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Whenever I am create authentic
looking vintage-inspired that will be displayed and generated on modern
equipment or on canvas, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tend to apply
some very strict limits to the colour pallet being used. I also reduce the
resolution as far as I can to make sure that I can work with at least some of
the limitations from the past. For me, that’s kind of important because it’s
the limitation that drives my creativity, and for the most part I try to avoid
using Photoshop or Illustrator and instead use some fairly basic tools and
dedicated pixel editors for this kind of work, and where I can, I will use
original technologies or even emulation. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the more complex
effects I have to constantly reproduce is dithering. Sure, there are plenty of
tools that can dither the image automatically or reduce the colour depth and so
on, but if I have a commission that needs to be out of the door anytime soon
and I need the believability of authentic vintage images, I switch off
Photoshop and its multitude of distractions and fire up an old computer. <span style="color: red;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Bit Depth…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For all of the beauty that my
8K behemoth of a display foists upon my often weary eyes, I have to say that it
doesn’t touch the beauty of a quality CRT TV or monitor. LCD is great for most people,
I don’t even disagree that it is the right way to go, but LCDs on modern
displays just aren’t great at either colour or speed. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I recently watched a football
match (you call it soccer in the US, but this is real football my friends) and
I could literally hear my screen screaming for help as the Wrexham FC players
(the Wrexham FC owned by Ryan Reynolds of Hollywood fame) ran around the pitch
in their battle to escape the National League.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">LCD displays have three layers
of coloured dots that make up a pixel. Electrical current is applied to each
colour layer in order to generate the required intensity that produces the
final colour. The problem is that this takes time, generally between 8 and 12
milliseconds of time which might not sound like a lot, but in a fast moving
scene, it can be headache inducing and jarring. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The transition between off and
on states mean that pixels that should have changed colour lag behind the
signal resulting in motion blurring. To overcome this, manufacturers have
reduced the number of levels each coloured pixel can render as a way to reduce
the motion blur, but this reduces the number of colours the pixel can display. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">You might also come across
terms such as bit depth, this is something that quantifies how many unique
colours are available in the images colour pallet but in 0s and 1s, which
translates to either off or on. The depth doesn’t suggest that the image
utilises all of the available colours, but it can specify the level of
precision given to a colour. Generally, the higher the bit rate or depth (audio
uses a similar principle of bits), the better the quality.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, you might expect to see
a camera with a colour depth of 8-bits which equates to a total of 8x 0s and
1s, which translates to 256 intensity values for each primary colour. If you
combine all three primary colours (red, green, blue as in RGB), this means that
once combined, would provide <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>16,777,216
colours or what is known as True Colour, 24-bits per pixel since each pixel is
composed of three 8-bit colour channels.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Adding transparency would take
the bit depth to 32 and 48-bit colour depth would give you 281 trillion
colours. That’s nothing like the old days of the early home micros, remember
when I said earlier about a 16 colour pallet being made up of 8 colours either
showing as bright or dim, that should put all of what I’ve written here today
into some perspective. Modern technology is just too good to feel real if you
are looking for an authentic vintage vibe and besides, the human eye can only
discern around 10 million colours so for viewing purposes anything higher than
this is overkill even for today’s technology. Where higher bit rates become
invaluable is if you are doing any kind of post-processing of the images but
mostly, modern technology has already gone beyond human limitations of sight.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioXkBPzZ7FNUvR4IDJaDhtDJFBjUA3DPHlzg2OoGJEnHNMEY2amaBzzIqIssTmvMu7K0QN6zvcUghSnb0pgiqX5lSV1AZsb6ztMGk5X10N0i1GT9w0jGIFN228EYEecMCkuM-T5TyTsJcJfd6Elg2AhJmBZ0GAnIMYepirlnyfls6PTXSY5sA3R-B3/s4088/y2k.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Y2K Art Print computer millennium" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioXkBPzZ7FNUvR4IDJaDhtDJFBjUA3DPHlzg2OoGJEnHNMEY2amaBzzIqIssTmvMu7K0QN6zvcUghSnb0pgiqX5lSV1AZsb6ztMGk5X10N0i1GT9w0jGIFN228EYEecMCkuM-T5TyTsJcJfd6Elg2AhJmBZ0GAnIMYepirlnyfls6PTXSY5sA3R-B3/w640-h474/y2k.JPG" title="Y2K by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Y2K by Mark Taylor - by the end of the 90s we had bugs, and panic had set in around Y2K - The Millennium Bug that wasn't.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Vintage Outputs…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">When it comes to recreating
graphics in the modern day, it has become a lot easier to create images with
photorealism, but due to the excess of power available today, things have
equally become much more difficult if the aim is to achieve believable 8-bit
images. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There are differences in the
way that modern technologies utilise their display output compared to vintage
technologies which were often output from the computer to the cathode ray tube
TV or monitor using a range of technologies such as RF (Radio Frequency) often
using a modulator. Remember those little black and silver steel boxes with a
cable that you plugged into the antennae socket on the TV, they would often
have a slider to select between TV and Game. You can see my representation of an RF Modulator above!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Those really weren’t ideal,
they gave us a fuzzy picture that would be prone to interference and the TV had
to literally be tuned to the correct frequency. If the frequency was even a little
off the picture would be distorted and you would see noise. Later, here in the
UK, we began to use SCART connections but this was pretty much confined to
Europe and the UK on our 50Mhz PAL displays, whilst in the USA the preference
was to utilise RCA phono connections on their 60Mhz NTSC displays. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The regional difference
between PAL at 50Hz and NTSC at 60Hz can be seen if you ever get to play a
vintage video game. What you will find is that the game will run markedly
faster on the NTSC version, the PAL version would run slower and sound was also
generated more slowly creating a further distortion due to the output speed of
the device. However, the opposite can also be true in that a game or program
developed in a PAL region would run fine as it would have been optimised for
that region. Hey, the world was smaller back in the 80s right?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Video games are one thing, but
if you work in animation, this variation in speed can be a huge challenge, as
can the differences in screen resolutions. NTSC and PAL are two types of colour
encoding systems that affect the quality of content viewed on analogue
televisions and monitors. PAL offered automated colour correction and NTSC was
manual. There was also a third contender, SECAM, or, Sequential Couleur Avec
Memoire or Sequential Color with Memory, although it was confined to Eastern
Europe and France.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Again, these are differences
that we don’t really have to think too much about today but all of them would
display the same thing differently, imagine if we faced as many of the same
constraints today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There are a couple of
interesting observations around the connectivity of analogue systems and the
quality of display from whichever connection was to be used. SCART was
allegedly the more advanced option of many when it came out in 1977, it would
later become a mandated standard for TVs from 1980 but only in France, other European
countries then adopted the connection throughout the 80s and 90s. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">SCART, in theory, would also
allow other devices to be controlled through remote switching. Similar to HDMI
CEC today, turn off your VCR and the TV would also turn off, but in practice,
no one I ever knew at the time, or since, has ever utilised that functionality.
I’ve yet to meet anyone who isn’t seriously into home theatre take full advantage
of HDMI CEC today, I’m sure there will be fans of the format, but it’s not
something everyone uses. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Personally, I couldn’t wait to
move away from SCART and its propensity for bent pins and migrate to RCA and
later, composite and S-Video which I always found to give much greater
reliability and a way better picture. Thankfully, today we have multi-region
capability in most technologies out of the box and when we don’t, there are
plenty of quality suppliers of weird cables that can hook your 8-bit baby up to
a modern display. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkTA00HjWdUm_wFo3je69eLK161B7tqD7JR3cPqCg_dfqKrDB3WnpNgHScBendRuIqNEKgEtTpuuswTNYHCFUeqzeuEL6WflexZj_0qSFGRwl6LuxhC_38vEp77MGxtEoHJUDIHGZ0_0HFkp_n5c1ZyCpftonr9O6jZHgJ86pAtWJZyKBiag6E-zCp/s4088/will%20work%20for%20ink.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="dot matrix printer" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkTA00HjWdUm_wFo3je69eLK161B7tqD7JR3cPqCg_dfqKrDB3WnpNgHScBendRuIqNEKgEtTpuuswTNYHCFUeqzeuEL6WflexZj_0qSFGRwl6LuxhC_38vEp77MGxtEoHJUDIHGZ0_0HFkp_n5c1ZyCpftonr9O6jZHgJ86pAtWJZyKBiag6E-zCp/w640-h474/will%20work%20for%20ink.JPG" title="Will Work for Ink by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Will Work for Ink by Mark Taylor - notice the dot matrix paper and lines. A larger view is available on my store!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro and Vintage Printing…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Printing technology was
different, even the ink was almost affordable but we didn’t have the complexity
built into many of todays ink cartridges which alongside the costs associated
with modern research and development for ink technologies, make them more
expensive than the finest caviar in relation to weight, pricier than a gallon
of 1985 vintage Krug Champagne and by weight and volume, modern printer ink is
more expensive than gold. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Environmentally, ink
cartridges that cannot be refilled and contain microchips to prevent refilling,
make absolutely no ecological sense at all. Things are changing with the likes
of Epson providing refillable tanks, but this isn’t anywhere close to a
mainstream practice. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In reality, there’s not that
much more you can do with printer ink to make it better than it is today, good
quality inks used on a dye-sublimation printer can make prints last for
generations, many are now waterproof and the vibrancy of ink has never been
better, assuming you use good quality inks. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Printer manufacturers don’t
make money on printers, in my experience, most of them don’t really care about
offering customer service on printers beyond 6-months, as I found out when a
13-month old dye-sublimation printer I purchased for a significant sum went
down in the middle of a print job. For years the printer manufacturers have
been pushing the consumer towards ongoing spend and subscription models for ink
replacement and sadly, we’re mostly buying into their model. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s partly the reason why so
little of my work is printed in house, I can source printing more cheaply and
not have the hassle or expense if I use specialist print centres who utilise
printers that wouldn’t even fit through the door of my studio. They also work
with high volumes so the overall costs are massively lower than anything I
print in house.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">That said, I still do have a
need for printers but I run a mixed eco-system. A dye sublimation wide format
printer and original cartridges for one off print jobs, an inexpensive inkjet with
third party inks for general day to day stuff and proof prints. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Here’s the thing, I turn back
to retro technologies for my every day printing needs. Mostly, I still use a
dot matrix printer, albeit one that has been manufactured in the past two years
and is still available and still manufactured, with ink replaced from a bottle
for any day to day text. I really don’t need to spend the cost of a gold nugget
on printing out an invoice. I also have a thermal printer for labels which is
also handy for printing receipts which never really fade. So the 80s is well
and truly ingrained into my process and my costs are lower as a result.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Printers were never as fancy
back in the eighties, nowhere close. While I had been dabbling with ASCII
characters and creating passable images for the time, the upgrade in graphics
technology throughout the 80s made it easier to create an artistic abstraction
on screen and then print that same abstraction out on a roll of silver thermal
paper using a small thermal printer. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The world upgraded to dot
matrix printers eventually but these didn’t offer any massive leaps in
graphical output over and above the thermal printers that were much less
expensive. I actually preferred the thermal print rolls to regular paper
because of the metallic sheen, and because the images didn’t tend to fade when
they were exposed to daylight. I still have some original printouts that have
outlasted many inkjet prints I have created since.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">With the dot matrix printers
you could use larger sheets of paper but the paper was usually perforated and
fed through the printer using a daisy wheel which meant that any paper had to
be continuously fed and each piece had a series of holes on each side. This
wasn’t exactly the quality you would be able to offer as a commercial grade
print but it was fine for home and business use if you were only printing text.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Printers evolved quite
quickly, but the underpinning dot matrix technology would still be the most
common and most affordable for a while. The first consumer grade inkjet printer
had been released back in 1976, although the principles of inkjets had been
muttered about in the 1950s yet it wouldn’t be until 1988 when inkjet
technology became more readily available as a consumer product. The HP ThinkJet
released in 1984 was still far too expensive for most consumers and it still
wasn’t quite good enough to offer commercial prints, even for the time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I remained with thermal
printers for a while before moving onto near letter quality dot matrix
technologies and then I remained with those technologies until the late
eighties before finally making the leap to inkjet technology in the early 90s. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Inkjet was by then, a leap
forward but it was still limited, and most of my digital output from the
Commodore Amiga and by the 90s, the early PC, would still need to be printed by
a specialist printer with the lead time often measured in multiples of weeks
even for a single print. There was no such thing as print on demand, it was
more akin to take your file to a specialist and join a waiting list and it was
incredibly expensive for small print runs. It made commercial prints of digital
work prohibitive for most people. When I create work today on vinyl sheets it
costs around a tenth of the price to outsource the work. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">By the time the early PCs hit
the market I now had the ability to shape images on screen and print them out,
and this was to be the game changer that meant I no longer had to be creative
with only a box of pencils and a sketchbook. I was able to produce digital art
professionally on canvas using a combination of the Commodore Amiga and an
early PC. It was at this time that I would be able to take on commissions at a
time when relatively few other people were offering digital art commercially.
This was the closest we ever got to the gold rush during the days of creating
8-bit computer games, but the outgoing costs were now much higher.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The biggest issue with modern
printers is that for retro aesthetics they can be great but for authenticity,
you still have to look at older technologies, not least because of the expense.
A modern printer cartridge contains less ink today than ever before. <span style="background: white; color: #121212;">For example, the Epson T032 colour
cartridge (released in 2002) is the same size as the Epson colour T089
(released in 2008). But the T032 contains 16ml of ink and the T089 contains
just 3.5ml of ink. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #121212; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Hewlett
Packard (HP) cartridges have seen the same diminishing quantities over the
years. A decade ago, the best-selling HP cartridge had 42ml of ink and sold for
about £20 (UK). Today, the standard printer cartridges made by HP may contain
as little as 5ml of ink but sell for about £13 (UK). There hasn’t been a
massive leap in yield from ink cartridges either, we’re at this point now paying
not for the ink but the plastic cartridge and a microchip that keeps us within
a genuine eco-system. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #121212; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I
really don’t buy into the R&D spend any more because they’re just not
innovating like they were in the 80s, all of my modern printers rapidly die
soon after a new model gets released. My original dot matrix from 1988 was
still going strong in 2019, my Sinclair Thermal from around 1982 still works,
but I’m down to my last roll of thermal paper and it is becoming a challenge to
find new old stock.</span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">With my retro and vintage
inspired work, I now insist on making sure whoever prints it can capture the
detail I put into the artwork, and if needed, some work is recreated on aged
paper which I keep supplies of, it’s useful for recreating some of the ephemera
that was originally found in the 80s. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Some of the papers I currently
have were genuinely created during the 80s, although it is becoming more of a
challenge to purchase genuine aged paper today, some people do continue to
carry stocks of it which has been properly stored. For more specialist work I
often find myself in a conversation with a hand made paper supplier who does a
really good job of recreating the look and feel. Again, it’s about
authenticity, especially when recreating ephemera.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are looking to produce more
authentic work, there are plenty of sellers on platforms such as Etsy and even
eBay who can supply home made aged paper stock, it’s never quite like the
original paper but it’s also a lot less delicate and a lot less expensive.
Expect to pay around three or four dollars per sheet and up for really good
quality papers, genuine 80s papers can go for triple this and even more so it
will also depend on the price point your audience will pay.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZadZDWd7Zv-Q-sgID9ybLvN33dJwKAFHXh0Kx4vJYzV7IPCMPRbUF0csdPtnt5hp3dcvNMHe_yvn4todCQkUm2nXch6ZZsuYahZUEAkj0-f7fKYXGfDAUMtzi-fDMdjMbUhYbSSSA3P6lHQUiqTK3D8WZumU4w13xnGW-m88C1hKd35t7-vRLXM68/s4088/handheld%20game.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Handheld electronic game art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZadZDWd7Zv-Q-sgID9ybLvN33dJwKAFHXh0Kx4vJYzV7IPCMPRbUF0csdPtnt5hp3dcvNMHe_yvn4todCQkUm2nXch6ZZsuYahZUEAkj0-f7fKYXGfDAUMtzi-fDMdjMbUhYbSSSA3P6lHQUiqTK3D8WZumU4w13xnGW-m88C1hKd35t7-vRLXM68/w640-h640/handheld%20game.jpg" title="Handheld electronic game art print by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Handheld electronic game art print by Mark Taylor - again the matrix is visible on the print.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Using Old Technology Today…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Like I mentioned earlier, old
technology that works is not quite yet in short supply, with a few exceptions.
The downside to using old tech to create authentic period digital art is that
it does come with the potential that it will fail at any time and unless you
are comfortable with a soldering iron and carry enough spares you might find
that getting older tech repaired can be problematic, no one really understands
this stuff quite like us older dinosaurs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Most old technology isn’t
overly expensive even now with a growing popularity in collecting it, but I
suspect it won’t remain quite as affordable for much longer. Back in 2012 much
of this stuff was being given away or worse, thrown away, but if you are
looking for unboxed working technology, it is still within reach of most
budgets if you are looking to create more authentic looking work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">What isn’t quite so affordable
will be the rarer games consoles, or those systems that failed to gain any
commercial traction. A few hundred pounds/dollars will provide you with a
40-year old working Commodore 64 and either a tape or floppy drive, but if you
are after console such as a working Vectrex, you will be paying two or three
times as much.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">That said, there are
alternatives to using older technologies that will still ensure you can provide
that greater level of authenticity, and to an extent, negate at least some of the
need for your workflow to rely on increasingly expensive modern technology, not
completely maybe but certainly enough for you to be able to minimise your
outlay. Every year we see new specifications emerging to run applications such
as Photoshop and it’s just not practical or affordable for many working artists
to keep on top of the tech. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">That said, some of the
alternatives are not what you might call inexpensive, but they will provide you
with equipment that will get the job done and you will be able to get closer to
authentic looking work than you can with a traditional computer with Photoshop
or Illustrator installed.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyXnlzCAav-Rjk-mkDuSR-QkXUQb7iVA0AUBHrQFE-EEGcgxcrjLIB2L0jU5ou0tuh21JnW_4gMy0VRnBYV0apb2PqxK4LcZryNi_TwE8q3GII7Ad0OabhUwGRR1wl9X88mVnqMFx3c4oWc8KDBsF32hr1tNy7qIFlGmZ1QXCRStUW93pAS5EI5gjO/s1024/Pi%204-8GB-Images_1_1024x1024.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Raspberry Pi" border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyXnlzCAav-Rjk-mkDuSR-QkXUQb7iVA0AUBHrQFE-EEGcgxcrjLIB2L0jU5ou0tuh21JnW_4gMy0VRnBYV0apb2PqxK4LcZryNi_TwE8q3GII7Ad0OabhUwGRR1wl9X88mVnqMFx3c4oWc8KDBsF32hr1tNy7qIFlGmZ1QXCRStUW93pAS5EI5gjO/w640-h640/Pi%204-8GB-Images_1_1024x1024.jpg" title="Raspberry Pi" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A Raspberry Pi - currently in short supply but I will paint these as retro devices one day!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">FPGA Vs Emulation…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I collect vintage technology
but there is always that risk that it will need some periodic TLC to continue
working. It’s always a good idea to use new power supplies rather than the
originals and it’s also a good idea to find someone who is able to recap old
computers so that you don’t find yourself with leaking capacitors which can
destroy the printed circuit boards rendering the equipment useless.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There is a compromise that
comes in two forms, either emulation which can be done either on a Raspberry
Pie or modern PC and to an extent, even a Mac. The good thing about emulation
is that it doesn’t always need overly powerful equipment to work. Emulation is
just that, it emulates a past system, and some emulators for some systems work
better than others.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The second method is to utilise
an FPGA based device such as the MiSTer FPGA which is based on the DE10 Nano
development board, although you will need other components alongside the DE10
to get the most out of recreating vintage graphics.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">FPGA or Field Programmable
Gate Array, essentially creates a system on a chip. It’s not really emulation
because you are loading an original core onto the programmable chip and at this
point you will have access to an exact replica of the original hardware running
at a hardware rather than emulated software level. It’s as close as you can get
to running the original device but without the headaches and it comes with all
the benefits of using brand new equipment every time you power it on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Various cores are available
for download, you can replicate an arcade video game machine and then switch to
a Tandy TRS80 Colour Computer from the 1980s, or pretty much any other vintage
computer or console and run the original software or the modern software
created today for old systems. It’s a couple of levels above the Raspberry Pie
in terms of the learning curve but many levels above a Raspberry Pie in terms
of what you will get out of it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The downside with either of
these options at the moment is that the global chip shortage has impacted
manufacturing of both the Raspberry Pie and MiSTer FPGA DE10 Nano boards and
finding them for close to their regular retail value is next to impossible. If
you plan to go down this route and don’t already have the equipment, you will
be paying over the odds, possibly for a little while longer too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Either of these options will
allow you to run the older image editors such as Delux Paint for the Commodore
Amiga, so you can create original graphics using the original software loaded
from a ROM and have the benefit of being able to more easily transfer the
created assets over to your PC. Using emulation or FPGA is hugely beneficial
when it comes to file transfers back to a modern PC or Mac.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">A note about ROMs, there is a
legal grey area with the use of ROMs and unless the software is now available
through open source channels you might need to own the original copy of the
software to legally run it. Also bear in mind that in some cases owning the
original files in order to use the image files with emulators might still be
outside of the copyright laws applicable to the software and its use. If you
can satisfy the legality of running ROMs, then the internet is a vast resource
for tracking the ROM images down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">In my humble opinion, the
MiSTer is the way to go with vintage technology, but getting one is another ask
entirely. If you do get one, you will never need to buy any other vintage
technologies because it really does do it all and it does everything really
well and you don’t need the space for a lot of vintage kit.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Recreated Vintage Technology…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There are a handful of vintage
computers that have been specifically recreated for use in the modern day,
namely the ZX Spectrum Next, but just like other FPGA devices, these things are
extremely rare in the wild and the second Kickstarter campaign remains to be
fulfilled due to the limited availability of the FPGA chips needed. It is a
great machine though and it also goes beyond the capabilities of the original
8-Bit machine and there is no doubt that the second wave will be fulfilled because
there are some great people behind it who can absolutely be trusted to deliver.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There is also another FPGA
Sinclair Spectrum, the ZX Spectrum Next N-GO, which is a smaller version of the
ZX Spectrum Next, but again this is FPGA and well, the chip shortage is making
life difficult for those who want to buy one of these too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8yvOM1dX8VwUZ9JLe-i4fIQSJPcV7Edb_9vSaoP0UCltPleIgG6-Tv81gqaxDW8ciLfoljHF8kPvkphQJHggDLwOU0mYuKNPxhPhd0D75kWA1BDwW20BovnoAVv9HHoWy-_e-ob36wbl8u3mF2TZ7c6obsas9frcE-DLOBQvls-BhqfzISnI5lzx8/s4088/together%20in%20electric%20dreams.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="1980s retro technology" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8yvOM1dX8VwUZ9JLe-i4fIQSJPcV7Edb_9vSaoP0UCltPleIgG6-Tv81gqaxDW8ciLfoljHF8kPvkphQJHggDLwOU0mYuKNPxhPhd0D75kWA1BDwW20BovnoAVv9HHoWy-_e-ob36wbl8u3mF2TZ7c6obsas9frcE-DLOBQvls-BhqfzISnI5lzx8/w640-h640/together%20in%20electric%20dreams.jpg" title="Together in Electric Dreams by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Together in Electric Dreams by Mark Taylor - best decade ever!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are looking to
replicate either the Commodore 64 or Commodore Amiga, which is essential if you
are looking to run something like Delux Paint, then you can go with either the
C64 (mini without a working keyboard, or Maxi – with a working keyboard) or the
A500 Mini, both from a company called Retro Games, and all of their machines
are available pretty much globally. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The compromise here is that
whilst the machines look and act just like the originals, they are running
software emulation to perform their magic. In the case of the A500 Mini which
has a non working keyboard, (a USB one can be added), you can use WHD Load
which means that once you have a WHD load ROM file, you can place it on a USB
stick and you won’t have to swap the discs or load in multiple ROMs for the
multiple discs that the original application used on the original hardware.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For most people, all of these
devices will be mainly be being used to play retro games, but they are all more
than capable of creating original code and graphics. I own the original
Commodore machines but now use the recreated versions to create authentic
Commodore based artwork, purely because I want to preserve my original 30 and 40-year
old computers for as long as I can.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The Preservation of Retro is
in Our Hands…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">As I said earlier, hardly
anything was documented back in the 70s, 80s, or 90s. The knowledge we have
today comes mainly from those who were either involved with the industry or
consumed from the industry and from the publications of the day that did manage
to capture a lot of what was going on but by no means everything. Instead, we
rely on a dwindling number of people to recall events from 40, 50, and even 60
years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course we have seen this throughout art
history too, there is very little historic documentation in relation to the
number of historically important artworks hanging in museums, where it’s often
the case that any provenance or record of the time has to be painstakingly researched.
Today we are more inclined to record important moments, historic events, things
and places, we live in a slightly less disposable era and we’re less inclined
to dispose of history. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s also another
consideration in that video games, music, and other digital mediums are finally
being seen in the mainstream as legitimate art forms and I think that’s the
right way to view them. If we look at how traditional art is created, it is by
hand, often from the imagination or interpretation of the author and that’s the
same process that creates all of these more non-traditional art forms. 8-bit
graphics are the technical equivalent of hieroglyphs, and maybe people might
disagree that they are nowhere close to being as important, but this was how
society communicated in the early days of using the technology we know today.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The technology we see today
and the technology we go on to see in the future and its journey will become
historically just as important as artwork in time, just as the beginnings of
the industrial revolution have become. I do think that maybe some of the uptick
in retro collecting might not only be stemming from the need to feed the
current hunger for nostalgia, but for many of us who collect vintage
technologies and the ephemera that goes with them, it is widely regarded that it
is often more about the importance of preservation and being able to make sure
that the technology story isn’t lost.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Are there really opportunities
for artists to become part of the community?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For artists who have an
interest in retro/vintage (I wish there was a term that could be used to
describe them better), and for those who have an interest in producing period
work, there is a growing market that consistently devours quality artwork and
recreations that represent the time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Artists do have opportunities
in this area, it’s perfectly fine to create work that is a representation and
there is a healthy market to feed and a decent living to be earned from
providing an aesthetic reference to the time. If you are looking to engage in
the higher value collector market, there are plenty of options here too but the
difference is night and day in terms of what those collectors expect. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">With that expectation comes a
revenue stream that is significantly higher than the retro aesthetic market and
the initial outlay to create the expected level of detail both in terms of
finance and knowledge of the period is relative to that. In terms of finding
those collectors, it can be a completely different social circle that you might
need to engage with. You might want to test the waters by joining retro
enthusiast communities and visiting some of the many retro events that now take
place across the globe to see what the more serious collectors collect. Think
high quality art prints, reproductions of ephemera alongside the originals. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I remember visiting some of
these events five or six years ago and less than a hundred people and often way
fewer would turn up. Today the events are usually packed to the rafters with
tickets selling out weeks and sometimes months in advance. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For those interested in how
the technology in the digital art space has changed in the past forty years,
anything produced using the technology we have today is incomparable to what could
be achieved in the past, yet many of the principles and techniques we use today
were invented in the 1980s and even before. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Today we automate many of
those techniques which arguably could be seen as a method of deskilling a
workforce but if we are to preserve a practice just as we strive to do with
other historic artistic practices, then it becomes critical that more artists
take a look at the retro and vintage scene for digital art and embrace the old
way of doing things. Not because we can, not because it’s not as easy, but
because it is a craft and a history we are in danger of losing and that will
make it challenging to evolve even further. More than that, hey, it can only
make you a better artist right!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZcSf9aquhHI_cNX9SEVcfKruPzt5sBqi8Er2NAJCutuVgfk8UgUXoHbthd6NK0cF3Q1D4Pv8WZP-tc-rDr4GMEb8a-X-ftinttX1maCL17b8msBDTvq3qgY1xaZAjIWiKk3evmLWdchi6ijUtGG7QovOOYLpZq4V3wyUVro5gPvm5pK-LdeQdXwCR/s4088/the%20underdog.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Betamax art print" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZcSf9aquhHI_cNX9SEVcfKruPzt5sBqi8Er2NAJCutuVgfk8UgUXoHbthd6NK0cF3Q1D4Pv8WZP-tc-rDr4GMEb8a-X-ftinttX1maCL17b8msBDTvq3qgY1xaZAjIWiKk3evmLWdchi6ijUtGG7QovOOYLpZq4V3wyUVro5gPvm5pK-LdeQdXwCR/w640-h640/the%20underdog.JPG" title="The Underdog By Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Underdog By Mark Taylor - Betamax was superior to VHS but the length of tape was shorter. By the end of the 80s, Blockbuster had become the church of many people.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Until Next Time!</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Hopefully you will have found
this one an interesting glimpse into the early days of microcomputers, the
current retro collecting trend, and the real dawn of digital art becoming more
accessible to more people. It’s hard to comprehend sometimes that digital art
hasn’t been around even longer, though there were examples of digital art going
way back well before the eighties, it was the 1980s that truly set it on a path
to what we have today.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The eighties is a fascinating
decade even beyond the technology it gave us. Steven Spielberg said when his
Ready Player One film was released that the 80s was a stress free decade, I
think if you sugar coat it, it very well might have been but there was a lot
going on. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The age of MTV, a time-travelling
DeLorean, and synth, also oversaw Cold War escalation, the Iran-Contra affair,
the crack epidemic, and the AIDS crisis. The decade’s televisual and
computational innovations alongside cable television, VCRs and game consoles,
it wasn’t entirely stress free and less so for those who were involved in the
politics and the innovation, there were plenty more casualties for every good
news story. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">More than this, the 80s was a
defining era for the art world more generally, there was a blur between art,
advertising and entertainment and a question as to whether artists could simultaneously
commodify themselves and critique consumer culture? We’ll be exploring more of
the 80s as I create even more new vintage inspired works, and the hope is that
my own works will provide a pictorial backdrop to what has to be the decade
that really did have it all. Until next time, stay safe, stay well, and always
be creative!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark x <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…</span></i></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I am an artist and blogger and live in
Staffordshire, England. You can purchase my art through my Fine Art America
store or my Pixels site here: </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Any art sold through Fine Art America and Pixels
contributes towards to the ongoing costs of running and developing this
website. You can also view my portfolio website at </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">https://beechhousemedia.com</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">You can also follow me on Facebook at: </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> where you will
also find regular free reference photos of interesting subjects and places I
visit. You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at </span><a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</span></a></span></p><p></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0Staffordshire, UK52.8792745 -2.057186824.569040663821156 -37.2134368 81.189508336178847 33.0990632tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-63372197153624144092022-08-08T13:36:00.002+01:002022-08-08T13:36:54.719+01:00The Distraction of Art<p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><b>The Distraction of Art</b></span></h1>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Old School Art Advice from a
Non-Influencer</span></b></h2><div><b><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcgM49tKYSpPHQJNd_oXGRZqgU8mrkhwBBjthajX56uhF_xDTOwNuXM58fcgtWWnO66X0CTk9X57s9u8mNLv2v-NkIjLCQkNxf9TXXJ_vhwHXAi6W6h0c1DHtgdayewiAOEWewB9hmAUnF8kEKUoAGCjxNNDkoNx4lMa8J_2qLX5u2diRvvw4dJRv3/s1920/the%20non%20influencer.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="painting, art, paintbrushes, blog title image, the distraction of art," border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1920" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcgM49tKYSpPHQJNd_oXGRZqgU8mrkhwBBjthajX56uhF_xDTOwNuXM58fcgtWWnO66X0CTk9X57s9u8mNLv2v-NkIjLCQkNxf9TXXJ_vhwHXAi6W6h0c1DHtgdayewiAOEWewB9hmAUnF8kEKUoAGCjxNNDkoNx4lMa8J_2qLX5u2diRvvw4dJRv3/w640-h426/the%20non%20influencer.PNG" title="The Distraction of Art" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Old School Art Tips from a Non-Influencer</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s no secret that selling
your artwork is much more challenging than creating it, even artists as far
back as Van Gogh and before, realised this. Yet, we don’t have to make the
process even more difficult than it already is by jumping on every bandwagon
that promises to turn our paintbrush cleaning rags into riches.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Rise of the Influencer – A
warning to the rest of us…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Let’s start with a warning. If
you are an influencer, thought leader, or you are a celebrity with an opinion
on stuff you really have no idea about, this ain’t going to be the most
comfortable of reads. Hey, you can read right?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This week…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A month or so ago I started
writing a blog post about how the cost of art supplies had increased, it was
going well apart from the rising costs for everything and a feeling of sadness
as I realised just how difficult it is to be an artist these days. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I even created the now mandatory list (because
lists are an internet thing) of cheaper alternatives that still accomplish the
same results for a lower cost and without compromising the quality. Today, that
article is a work in progress and as soon as I find that elusive thing we call
time, and I’m able to tick more things off some random internet list, I’ll get
around to finishing it off and because according to my fuel bill, we’re all
heading to economic Hell in a handcart real soon.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">By the way, the four horsemen
of the apocalypse are now known as, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and Putin. I digress
but you at least now know where I’m heading with this. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I like to research every
article I write, that’s why some of my articles are long, I never want to just
give you one view of the world. The art supplies article was about 80% done when
I decided to change track after one particularly lengthy research session when
I stumbled across some advice online that I honestly think couldn’t have been
any worse had it have been a photocopy of a photocopy of the most pointless
advice in the history of ever. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
mattered not, the author had absolutely nailed the SEO and that stuff really
matters apparently.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI7okL4V6R_2VMjbIWQVKrH3D0QPoJ0OXO9O9dyfHwMofwvQ53p4bfQDMdXVPbAO_IY_YQvWdbQ03OPU3LwGUOSyFl6ZF3Lw2moCZfrj1EuhMRKbQBv0Y7fu9SHuoY6ewD4E20CBMZAULIVWpKBNS96YWQNDvPJDkUXm-FJgBXeQ0g9c-5OfwYo40D/s4088/the%20last%20arcade.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="the last arcade artwork, boy standing in front of an arcade cabinet, video game art," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI7okL4V6R_2VMjbIWQVKrH3D0QPoJ0OXO9O9dyfHwMofwvQ53p4bfQDMdXVPbAO_IY_YQvWdbQ03OPU3LwGUOSyFl6ZF3Lw2moCZfrj1EuhMRKbQBv0Y7fu9SHuoY6ewD4E20CBMZAULIVWpKBNS96YWQNDvPJDkUXm-FJgBXeQ0g9c-5OfwYo40D/w640-h640/the%20last%20arcade.JPG" title="The Last Arcade by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Last Arcade by Mark Taylor - Available from Fine Art America and my Pixels store now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The advice in question was
that <b>every</b> artist <b>must</b> have a successful YouTube channel, <b>must
</b>be present on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, <b>must</b> network at major
shows including such gems as Basel, (good luck getting an invite), and <b>must </b>leave
comments with links on every blog and forum post you can find. Try doing that
here and you’ll quickly realise that my spam filters are going to deal with it
before I even see it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s the wrong advice
however you want to cut it and it sounds like a heap of work that will either
burn you out or burn everyone else out. As an artist who still believes that at
least some of your time in the profession should continue to be dedicated to the
noble act of creating art, I wouldn’t even begin to guess what compromises I
would need to make to fit that lot in. I’m exhausted with the little I do in
comparison, and that little I already do can easily consume 16-hours a day. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The internet isn’t all bad
advice, scams, propaganda, and NFTs, I absolutely adore well written websites
from artists sharing their musings that come from experience. I can relate to most
of those and many of them offer some real nuggets of advice that could only
come from someone who has lived at least a part of their life in the art world
but even then, someone who has the lived experience of being an artist might
not have the lived experience of also being the teacher. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So where should you turn to
for advice as an artist? There are plenty of artists and others who have the lived
experience of being inside the art world, you just have to look at that advice
and determine whether or not the advice they offer will work for you. Good
advice could see your business bloom, the bad advice or the advice that is only
applicable to businesses that are poles apart from yours, well, that could see
you fall over a cliff edge, or at best, forever run in circles which we’ll get
to a little later. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO8cwV8lbhBrApg2bbPvkFdo0AEiHexl3t79eeUHw9iUL4MaXbJBZ7cKnBBFLOCWTdgD9sIhX3ozBZmITbMCQXegyYUZr_is_PRRBJVWsRtwlT-BT4JWxTChmtVIHAefUgb1FUQsSpDayYDnHTkzC7MOQ-noL2yEc0dtg4A0UXZIwu9QnImu_1hYFx/s4088/spectrum.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="spectrum artwork, circles, abstract, art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO8cwV8lbhBrApg2bbPvkFdo0AEiHexl3t79eeUHw9iUL4MaXbJBZ7cKnBBFLOCWTdgD9sIhX3ozBZmITbMCQXegyYUZr_is_PRRBJVWsRtwlT-BT4JWxTChmtVIHAefUgb1FUQsSpDayYDnHTkzC7MOQ-noL2yEc0dtg4A0UXZIwu9QnImu_1hYFx/w640-h640/spectrum.JPG" title="Spectrum by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Spectrum by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The way I run my business
probably wouldn’t work for someone else with a different audience. I think I
have always been careful to point this out throughout the hundreds of posts I
have written over the years but what I do hope my posts achieve, is to raise an
awareness that you can decide if something fits into your business delivery
model or not, and to make you think about the uniqueness of your own art and
business and more importantly, where you and it fits. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The real issue I have with
many of the generic business advice websites out there, some of which I am sure
are well intended, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is they just don’t
provide the answers that have a good fit with the business of art, make you
subscribe to their Patreon, or they lack any sort of context. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I can’t ever recall the last
time I sat down and drew a Venn diagram to demonstrate to my imaginary shareholders
how well I understood the lesson on Venn diagrams for diagrams sake. I tried
demonstrating this to my two dogs with one responding, he’s got my favourite
ball, make him give it back, – Yes, I know, but no one should think it’s odd to
have a full on conversation with two Shih-Tzu’s, they’re full of inspiration
and hugs but mostly the stubborn aloofness that only really small dogs can pull
off so well.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That said, there are plenty of
websites written by artists and others who have been in the industry for some
time and who really do get the nuances of the industry, they understand that
they are sharing their experiences rather than imparting the absolute rules of
art, or they have a track record within the sector and they go to great pains
to explain how they went about making changes that worked or didn’t work for
them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are fewer who can take
those experiences and present them as some kind of masterclass, they exist, but
they’re a rare breed who mostly have a really good grip on the business of art
and understand the difference between selling an artwork and selling a widget.
Anyone who says that selling art is no different to selling a widget has most
likely spent a little too much time puffing on a bong. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The only advice I would stand
by for any artist is to develop a sense of being able to take any information
that you get and to carefully consider how that advice might or might not help
your business. Even advice from the greatest living artist of all time might
not be suitable advice for your art business. Honestly, if Van Gogh were alive
today, I’d be a little dubious of listening to his top ten fortune 500
companies to back because y’all just know that Buzzfeed needed another list. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMWa4UUsTNlXr_skv1-dx0OVYsh72Q9X8pU1hTI5sBUMdj1-PqhywfNJCSOITqVgwAnCgisoJiE8MGRg-3LnGOzwwSDgNFAu7R3Z2uvgeM3UfNfsArflpzWmvKfCJjkz7kjbAeUw3sazWcy5r3wZCN7cLYHnQjwmYwbUWTy0g7esPD9BNIoKUS-vVC/s4088/cable%20management.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="ethernet cable art, art print, ethernet cables, abstract" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMWa4UUsTNlXr_skv1-dx0OVYsh72Q9X8pU1hTI5sBUMdj1-PqhywfNJCSOITqVgwAnCgisoJiE8MGRg-3LnGOzwwSDgNFAu7R3Z2uvgeM3UfNfsArflpzWmvKfCJjkz7kjbAeUw3sazWcy5r3wZCN7cLYHnQjwmYwbUWTy0g7esPD9BNIoKUS-vVC/w640-h640/cable%20management.JPG" title="Cable Management by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Cable Management by Mark Taylor - available now from my Pixels and Fine Art America stores!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Too much and too little…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I get it. The art world has
never been an easy career choice, sales can never be guaranteed, and because
there is no one size fits all master blue-print to follow we soak up all of the
information and advice that the internet can throw at us and then, at least for
a little while, we dabble with ways that we can better engage with our audience
in the vague hope that we stumble across a secret formula that will catapult us
quickly towards success as defined by the same con-fluencer who wrote the top
ten couscous recipes to make on a budget.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That very definition of
success is different for every artist, or at least it should be. There is no
bar, nor flag, nor anything etched in some biblical stone to suggest that an
artist must achieve some level of greatness proven only by a solid sales record
or because of some, in the know contact written in an address book. This is
what the gatekeepers would once have us believe we needed to do and we would
all dutifully chase the mythical unicorn we call ‘becoming discovered’ so that
the gatekeepers would allow us passage through the gallery doors. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When the internet met the art
world, the very barriers that would once prevent the majority of us from
pursuing our creative dreams would begin to ebb away. It was suddenly easier to
reach a global market than a local one and at the same time, the art world,
through this new found simplicity, became a little harder to navigate too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The internet soon became the
promised land of opportunity, sales platforms, direct access to the masses, gave
us some shockingly bad advice for everything and it introduced the birth of the
click-hungry influencer. It’s little wonder that so many artists fail before
they even begin.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><i></i></span></p><blockquote><i>Along with the internet, the
accepted norm of the art world we once knew had now become disrupted where a
hive mind of twenty-something self-styled celebrity influencers collectively tried
to convince us that everything we thought we knew now needed to be relearned to
conform with the branding guidelines of their latest sponsor.</i></blockquote><o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEn0gEh-9VYT2FKHjL2f6sWMtZYUZO7_s8SEBKjc0d3X9ae1abCHtSCRHLWsNY5-Hsc0pkgksZyGMNhacITvVuDm9mX-lFMd-ujBrt6PuebfyMLWgpkqF3Vzw444puN_2bv3cmW4G4_FqLcX8THSUF5rN5SPQ-kga3TgHyvbuA__O-eFM5u0D4ucYK/s4088/cabled%20up.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="abstract, ethernet cable art, art print," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEn0gEh-9VYT2FKHjL2f6sWMtZYUZO7_s8SEBKjc0d3X9ae1abCHtSCRHLWsNY5-Hsc0pkgksZyGMNhacITvVuDm9mX-lFMd-ujBrt6PuebfyMLWgpkqF3Vzw444puN_2bv3cmW4G4_FqLcX8THSUF5rN5SPQ-kga3TgHyvbuA__O-eFM5u0D4ucYK/w640-h640/cabled%20up.JPG" title="Cabled Up by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Cabled Up by Mark Taylor - Available now on a wide range of print mediums and products - this looks fabtastic on steel plate and acrylic sheets!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For those artists who look only
to the internet to solve all of their problems when they struggle to sell their
first work, the click-winning whims of the influencers and so-called thought
leaders (whatever they’re supposed to be) can make us believe that we always have
to follow entirely new paths. Become a YouTuber, become an affiliate marketer,
read the latest top twenty ways to sell more art, and they make us believe we
need to do this at the same time as being our best selves when simply being
human is perfectly okay.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whatever the top twenty things
are that Guru Internet tells you to do in these constantly regenerated copy and
pasted generic lists, you absolutely don’t have to complicate the art world or the
business you conduct within it any more than it already is, not when there are
real artists and art world experts who frequently share their lived experiences
but who might not show up on the first page of Google.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Don’t overcomplicate the
already complicated…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’ve chased those unicorns,
tried every novelty trick in the book, bought the T-Shirt, even designed one on
Zazzle, and after the best part of almost four decades in the business I’ve
come to one conclusion, I get way more sales from spending time with my tribe
instead of spending countless hours editing video that very few will watch, or
chasing whatever this weeks version of the unicorn of success is.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We are human, we can be
influenced…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Heavily influenced by the
influencer, there’s an inherent risk that your creative process, your first
love, the very reason you are exploring the internet for new ideas, becomes
demoted to a secondary side hustle while you’re chasing the unicorns of sales, success,
and discovery. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Copying worthy hashtags,
repeatedly checking your notifications, or any number of hashtag relevant
things that have been suggested by the pre-teenage master of marketing currently
trending and presenting 10 minutes and 7 seconds of footage that just so
happens to align with the required length of time favoured by the algorithm.
All in an attempt to reach, well, we don’t quite know who, with, we don’t quite
know what. There’s rarely any specificity that we can apply to some of this
almost random advice, they tell us what to do but never quite get to the point
of telling us exactly how to do it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Art, or what is now known as,
that thing which at one time really was your first love, has now become the
distraction that you no longer have time for. It has been replaced by the chase
and it’s a spiral. Let’s try this, okay that didn’t go well, so let’s try this
instead. Instead, how about let’s try something really simple.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPO4N0tR7lzik4o-PXXWL3HinTCer8aK0yA1bhBW9hUTYO1ATTl1oIhdPxeSBLmQjIjkfgyQiKvRAW75yLm_utJIybVnVlK2GkRIySL0bCBD_TAMukOmTjZPah9P02w2Ovk6QvuwDi4S0S2AIKBqHOwnWMnTp4CT0LcrmQnHkOgMGwK3kyess9rGjZ/s4088/Britains%20best%20bike.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="British bicycle, Raleigh chopper, art print, 80s art prints," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPO4N0tR7lzik4o-PXXWL3HinTCer8aK0yA1bhBW9hUTYO1ATTl1oIhdPxeSBLmQjIjkfgyQiKvRAW75yLm_utJIybVnVlK2GkRIySL0bCBD_TAMukOmTjZPah9P02w2Ovk6QvuwDi4S0S2AIKBqHOwnWMnTp4CT0LcrmQnHkOgMGwK3kyess9rGjZ/w640-h640/Britains%20best%20bike.JPG" title="Britain's Best Bike" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Britain's Best Bike - Although I never owned one which also makes me sad. You can order a print online from my stores.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s easy to be swayed but the
numbers don’t lie, mostly…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">No one can argue that the
traditional way we once sold art has changed. We no longer only have the option
of walking through a physical gallery door, we can walk through any number of
virtual ones, or even alternative physical ones. Galleries are no longer
exclusive to galleries, they can even be found in the local coffee shop.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">No one can argue either that
video isn’t a thing, people consume everything differently in the internet age
and we’d be fools to think that they don’t. As artists, we need to respond to and
address these things but we also have to find a balance that allows us to find
our people while still having enough time to create whatever we create while
staying physically and mentally healthy, so we really shouldn’t be making it
more complicated than it already is.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Instead, we need to think of things
like the internet, and in this day and age, dare I say it, even gallery
representation, only as tools in a toolbox. They are incredibly useful tools if
they’re used in the right way at the right time, but should we always reach for
a screwdriver to crack a walnut?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The way people consume and
purchase art might have changed but the overarching principle that sells art is
just the same as it always was. Art sells when relationships are built, and it
is those relationships that turn people into buyers and buyers eventually into
collectors. That’s as true today as it always was despite the economic mess the
world is in, but you don’t have to become a slave to the online world to make
those connections.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are looking for any
kind of secret formula, I think it could be that you really do have to build
relationships with people, whether they’re buyers, gallery owners, or anyone
else who takes a second or two out of their lives to give you a love, like or
wow. Now this takes effort, and building relationships and maintaining
engagement with those who you build a relationship with, is frankly, hard work.
Hey, no one ever said art was easy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Where art is sold might be
different today but the process of selling it continues to follow a very
traditional path, it really is all about the relationships that you can build.
Sure you can sell to casual buyers with little to no relationship, but this
will often be random, more often than not it’s unsustainable and those buyers
will quickly move on and that’s not great if you’re looking to build up a
collector base. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Despite what we’re told, the Holy
Grail for an artist should never be gallery representation, neither should it
be some kind of temporary YouTube celebrity status, it should be being able to
have a direct relationship with the buyer, on your terms, where you can
absolutely keep inviting that buyer back.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXYhkdhqcwogWBe4zD4uSqIUx9O7jtaCZHb2qOu5ZqPvL3C3hECgjm_Cdg7bRduEQIha3rUOzAmgPN1CWWuMj05s1UFGOHym5a3_Ks_7Kf8bkDmMcYLgbeCBk0VuAkcQ_fb4ZIV5yPHhbyGr6TSgdOzqWuxDzGrgu8irn428Dx3IkI-lWy9f6nucDH/s4088/british%20fish%20and%20chips.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="British flag, Red telephone box, fish and chips, London skyline, art print," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXYhkdhqcwogWBe4zD4uSqIUx9O7jtaCZHb2qOu5ZqPvL3C3hECgjm_Cdg7bRduEQIha3rUOzAmgPN1CWWuMj05s1UFGOHym5a3_Ks_7Kf8bkDmMcYLgbeCBk0VuAkcQ_fb4ZIV5yPHhbyGr6TSgdOzqWuxDzGrgu8irn428Dx3IkI-lWy9f6nucDH/w640-h640/british%20fish%20and%20chips.JPG" title="London Pride by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">London Pride by Mark Taylor - a retro view of Britain that still mostly exists today - aside from the iconic Red Telephone Box!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">They’re just tools…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The number of likes, loves,
wows, views, emoji’s, emotions, or even having a social post reach viral levels
of success, isn’t any guarantee that you will make a sale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is where frustration can creep into the
business of art, or rather, the lack of business from your art. There’s a real
risk that by chasing the trends we begin to rely too much on specific things
that are ultimately only single tools that should be used alongside everything
else in the toolbox.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We place so much effort into
creating a carefully crafted social post, a YouTube video, a podcast, or any
number of things that the influencers, advisors, or anyone with a passing
interest tell us we should do to raise our exposure, but unless we ask the
fundamental question of “who do we want our work to be exposed to”, any advice,
good, bad, or indifferent, is fruitless.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is something I often
discuss with friends and the many new artists I get to work with when they tell
me they have tried everything they can think of to market their work and close
a sale. That chase often includes setting up a YouTube channel and investing
hours into yet another venture that requires as much effort to market as
selling the art itself. I’ve been there in the past and all too often what seems
like a good idea at the time can frequently turn out to be another major drain on
that elusive thing we call time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The fundamental problem isn’t
that setting up a YouTube channel is completely wrong, it could well be the
very best strategy you can have, but unless you know exactly who the audience
is and what the audience wants, you are more likely to spend as much time
chasing the exposure unicorns to promote your YouTube channel as you’re already
spending chasing the other exposure unicorns to sell your work. That’s also the
one piece of advice that I wish I had listened to when I first stepped into my
career.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Numbers often lie in the art
world. At best it’s a world that’s not overly keen on being transparent, and
just because some artistic leaning influencer is telling you that you could be
earning ten thousand bucks a month with a YouTube channel or posting on social
media, doesn’t firstly, mean that you can, and secondly, doesn’t mean that they
are making that kind of bank either. Hypothetically, anything is possible, hey,
it's even possible that the ten bucks of ad-revenue I made in the first three
years of this blog will get paid out for finally hitting the threshold.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Equally, it doesn’t mean you
can’t or shouldn’t, you could be one of the however few, in every one thousand
it is these days, who go on to find some kind of celebrity status funded by
masses of advertising revenue, but be warned, it’s exactly this chase for the
ad revenue that takes over the art, demoting your primary business to little
more than a hobby in the process.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN4I2PNblqy2oqHHzOJy0QgR-X5tR3uaP9APy06cvm2lqsne9tHYroyStj5xQMKzmxkiXjFCWQ10ld9ZXiqoyg1BRfTeNnXaBaet_VaGaVfEaAUtiTAiEbPz4Ut4ZqvObVMtSI8Ucu5X-WPSlBSheUCIc-ie4A_BKCh3gveHxyuK8WobXo6xuJU9uk/s4088/80s%20technology.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="1980s technology, telephones, telephone box, British flag, 80s art prints," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgN4I2PNblqy2oqHHzOJy0QgR-X5tR3uaP9APy06cvm2lqsne9tHYroyStj5xQMKzmxkiXjFCWQ10ld9ZXiqoyg1BRfTeNnXaBaet_VaGaVfEaAUtiTAiEbPz4Ut4ZqvObVMtSI8Ucu5X-WPSlBSheUCIc-ie4A_BKCh3gveHxyuK8WobXo6xuJU9uk/w640-h640/80s%20technology.JPG" title="Telephone Exchange by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Telephone Exchange by Mark Taylor - A retro inspired juxtapose of eighties communications - available from Fine Art America and my Pixels store!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So what are we to do?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are lots of things that you
can do to raise awareness of your art without having to go down every rabbit
hole, and mostly, the things that you need to do are the things that centuries
of artists have found to work before. Sure, there will be modern things that
you can do to help you find your tribe on the way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Fundamentally, the basic three
elements are always going to be the same three elements that every successful artist
has used before.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Hook</span></i></b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">, as
in the message that you want to communicate with your art.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Grind</span></i></b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> – how
you communicate the message your art is telling to your tribe.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Your Health</span></i></b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> – not
just your business health, your physical and mental health too. The endless
chase to find the unicorn can play havoc with all of these.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One thing you definitely don’t
need to do is to replace one set of complicated marketing efforts with another,
or worse, find you now have twice as many things to market. By all means, set
up a YouTube channel but be mindful that a YouTube channel is no different to
art when it comes to letting people know that it exists. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ask any successful YouTuber
what the early days of finding viewers were like and they will tell you it was
a grind that involved plenty of creative marketing, a heap of learning about
algorithms, and at least some blind luck. There’s a real risk that any
promotion of your new channel could become nothing more than a doubling of your
existing effort to market your art with the same level of little reward but if
that’s where your tribe hang out, that’s kind of where you need to be.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If your strategy begins to
look at all of the tools available today simply as tools that can be used
either individually or in tandem with other tools, in the right place, in front
of the right audience, and at the right time, you are much more likely to start
seeing some success. If you mix those tools with tried and tested practices
that artists have relied on for years such as making sure that you build on the
relationships and engage with people when they engage with you, the chances of
success will exponentially rise. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi53i0M2DsAQUdH1DSWN2HnqyP-b-56ByS5iRFDor0wMUmwEWgBqjQmZxmnjSwB_GP_kqBIm-WbOsh8GSlvo7tBFfefSbL14RP2SDeODJgGAqkKguQYz8vxJInxtJEX39aCX-cNIL3BqDdgk5hFWjnKHcYq320YHCjfxN5Cjd6hInLmSFQ38-b1qtFP/s4088/80s%20tech%202.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="spectrum, art print, 80s technology, prototype art, personal computer, British flag," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi53i0M2DsAQUdH1DSWN2HnqyP-b-56ByS5iRFDor0wMUmwEWgBqjQmZxmnjSwB_GP_kqBIm-WbOsh8GSlvo7tBFfefSbL14RP2SDeODJgGAqkKguQYz8vxJInxtJEX39aCX-cNIL3BqDdgk5hFWjnKHcYq320YHCjfxN5Cjd6hInLmSFQ38-b1qtFP/w640-h640/80s%20tech%202.JPG" title="Britain 1982 The Prototype by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Britain 1982 - The Protype - Home computer innovations of the 1980s - available from Fine Art America and my Pixels store!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Exposure Bandwagon…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">From experience, it’s worth
being mindful that exposure doesn’t always equate to sales, or at least
immediate sales. If you have been in the business of creating art for any
length of time you might very well of heard that line where the client says, I
have no budget but I can pay you in great exposure. No, mostly they can’t. I
was probably the original case study in the art of being duped by these
charlatans who then go on to produce T-Shirts featuring your work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Increasing your exposure has
to be a part of your business strategy, but it should never be a strategy
determined and set by others whose only interest is in obtaining free art.
Exposure is a slow burning candle that takes time to develop, and it needs to
targeted to the right audience where you can then deliver the right message,
not all at once, exposure needs room to grow over time and you need to be able
to sustain it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">No one else knows your
audience like you do and after a while, you will instinctively come to know
what messages resonate with your people, so one question to always ask of
others who promise to give you this exposure they talk of, is whether they also
understand the message you are trying to convey. The only time great exposure
via a third party might work is if the third party has a similar audience to
yours and they absolutely have the ability to influence that audience.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In short, it comes back to
that single question that answers so many things, you have to know exactly who
you are trying to reach with your marketing message, then you need to follow
that famous Aristotelian "triptych" - tell them what you are going to
tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We’re artists not marketing
professionals…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not going to sugar coat
the next bit, but being an artist in the modern age means that you also have to
be everything else. Where you can’t find the spark to move into that place
where you need to be to wear the marketing hat, you might have to look towards
other options such as paying someone else to run that side of the business for
you because no matter what they say, art doesn’t sell itself.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This marketing thing is
challenging for any artist, and one thing that certainly struck me in the early
days of my career was just how overwhelming it could all be. When I started out
I was told I needed to network but no one told me who I needed to network with,
or how I needed to network with them. Turns out that just showing up cold at a
gallery with a portfolio and an expectation that they would immediately
represent me wasn’t an acceptable networking strategy in the art world. I distinctly
remember the advice I got from one prestigious gallerist who suggested that I
might need to be careful on the way out so that the door didn’t smack me in the
ass. He later represented me but that was three years later.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the things I did back
then whenever I hit such an obstacle, and something I regularly see new artists
fall into the trap of doing, is to go away and look for the next piece of
advice and then I would rinse and repeat until I either found something that
worked, or more often, something that landed firmly in my comfort zone. I later
realised that there’s really no such thing as progressing out of that comfort
zone if I would forever only look for excuses to remain within it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">None of this is easy to
master, no one is born a natural marketer, neither is anyone born a natural
artist, these things are learned and mastered and the things we do and the
experiences we collect influence how we learn and master those things over
time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">They often say it all comes
down to practice which in itself is a piece of advice that I have often
struggled with. If you want to learn to draw then the consensus of advice on
the internet often points to you protecting some time and drawing every day so
that you become better over time. What I really struggle with when hearing this
advice is how few people giving out that advice actually go on to tell you what
to draw, or the where, or the how and the when. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The advice is often simply,
draw every day. The problem is if you are drawing circles every day for a
month, at the end of the month you will be brilliant at drawing circles but not
very good at anything else. Advising someone to practice drawing, practice
their marketing skills, well, yes absolutely, these things can only ever be
truly mastered through doing them, but the how, the process, the why, those are
all important things to understand too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6DAGeiBvmW9ynEF9ucftgtilHV7RRwGnFAO9eb4XRxJOHFBBP46AcHd8vXtgHXKxw-CQVJQhW6hDOQ1igyYNT5LvRC78BAmTEDDla8jVmPwgy6R7_gPCyKjv4WRl6d17sCDhs20gLJfhngSEYwhNB5BYSfAampt93HvLawxb2S0C1M99Aid2fmSmq/s4088/british%20payphone.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="British phone box, red telephone box, British flag, Union Jack," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6DAGeiBvmW9ynEF9ucftgtilHV7RRwGnFAO9eb4XRxJOHFBBP46AcHd8vXtgHXKxw-CQVJQhW6hDOQ1igyYNT5LvRC78BAmTEDDla8jVmPwgy6R7_gPCyKjv4WRl6d17sCDhs20gLJfhngSEYwhNB5BYSfAampt93HvLawxb2S0C1M99Aid2fmSmq/w640-h640/british%20payphone.JPG" title="Great British Phone Box by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Great British Phone Box by Mark Taylor - mostly today these are listed buildings where they survived being sold off by the Telecoms companies, some are local lending libraries, some accommodate defibrillators, others are just for show. Available from my Fine Art America and Pixels stores now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The best thing you can do…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The single best thing I ever
figured out, and in the pre-internet days before we even had dial-up and a free
America Online disc, was that you absolutely must figure out who you are
creating your art for. If the answer to that is everyone, as it sometimes is
with eager young artists, then you are doing art all wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you can work that out, the
reliance on generic advice will lessen, the non-generic advice from those in
the know will become infinitely more useful, and you will also discover the
answer to so many other burning questions such as, how do I price my work. Art,
or the business of art then becomes, dare I say it, a little easier.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrz8r4nfzFMSbPFwCGSLAlHObadvIG3detJsVge8QQzsMhGqJ6jHtLm6omEFLzdafvBvicGMHpaXNZOFT9lCBQv-_uVesu3Gpx6PfYQpQXae-ytAbFE9oQ9RtqePLXYonmmBn8JOeuVqOMq8VBc_g7anDeBmHo7VSeUCVBuWjAoPRq45sS1iQa9Yn4/s4088/great%20british%20payphone.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="red telephone box, British payphone, british history, telephone dial," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrz8r4nfzFMSbPFwCGSLAlHObadvIG3detJsVge8QQzsMhGqJ6jHtLm6omEFLzdafvBvicGMHpaXNZOFT9lCBQv-_uVesu3Gpx6PfYQpQXae-ytAbFE9oQ9RtqePLXYonmmBn8JOeuVqOMq8VBc_g7anDeBmHo7VSeUCVBuWjAoPRq45sS1iQa9Yn4/w640-h640/great%20british%20payphone.JPG" title="The British Payphone by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The British Payphone - the centre of the dial was in itself an iconic image from the 80s and before! Also, available now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Should I take the advice of an
influencer or from a generic business tips website?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When I started out in my art
career I made sure I found a mentor who had been involved in the art world
since, well, let’s say he remembered the last of the dinosaurs. But, here’s the
thing. I didn’t always take his advice. Sometimes, gut instinct can be your
very own inner influencer and you will instinctively know if something will
work for you and your vision of where you need to be, but it takes time to
trust your inner instinct. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ultimately, your business and
any decisions you take fall well and truly under the heading they call, your responsibility.
The internet really has become a self-styled promised land of advice for everyone
and everything and it’s easy to get swept along in the latest marketing trends
and get rich quick shortcuts that are anything but, particularly if the advice
describes a solution to a seemingly insurmountable problem you already have. We
humans have this uncanny ability to always listen to what we want to hear but occasionally,
we need to hear what we need to hear, but hey, the internet has always favoured
emotion over logic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The internet certainly has its
place, but unless any advice is actionable and is firmly rooted in already well
established art marketing practices, there could be very little benefit from
the additional chase that many of these trends suggest they will deliver.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This doesn’t mean that setting
up YouTube channels, having a presence on social media, or any number of other
modern day things are a complete waste of time, if that’s where your tribe
hangs out then of course it makes sense to do those things but because someone
tells you that MySpace is making a return for hipsters and this is where you
need to be, doesn’t mean you have to have a presence there.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwGb3MlVng7jVAOGMQgJHMWrmuc_okTlk8oxnhsFI7Ya6b9lU8hglrcWqnH_QXh_J8OFQeFYxf_PJ10vlCrE14pNapkOJmXx7G0tHKZyreyGnB8moAgCMKrdXg2ImTwq_iZjx7Uiju0Eq3OvG39PMs31H3YZSddXqf_qGTPz3alxf1k1MznKtn6FlO/s4088/Electric%20Dreams.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="boy sat at computer, 80s technology, home computers, vintage computers, retro art print," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwGb3MlVng7jVAOGMQgJHMWrmuc_okTlk8oxnhsFI7Ya6b9lU8hglrcWqnH_QXh_J8OFQeFYxf_PJ10vlCrE14pNapkOJmXx7G0tHKZyreyGnB8moAgCMKrdXg2ImTwq_iZjx7Uiju0Eq3OvG39PMs31H3YZSddXqf_qGTPz3alxf1k1MznKtn6FlO/w640-h640/Electric%20Dreams.JPG" title="Electric Dreams by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Electric Dreams by Mark Taylor - 1982 was the year that created bedroom coders who made millions or nothing! Available now from my Fine Art America and Pixels stores!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Like so many other things in
life, running an art business is essentially a balancing act. You need to juggle
everything from creating your art to maintaining your health and you have to do
these things simultaneously. There seems to be quite the knack to this life
thing, extra points to those who figure it out.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you feel you can find some
value in following the advice of someone who expresses themselves purely in the
internets vernacular, then by all means follow it. The art of marketing and
selling art could never be conveyed in a single blog post or a ten minute seven
second video, less so if it’s written by an influencer who turned a hobby into
work and transitioned their opinions into personal brands, and bear in mind
that even ‘tone deaf’ has been turned into a brand by more than a few of these
so called influencers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As artists, we absolutely don’t
need to complicate the art world any more than it already is and as the
internet age matures even more, it’s likely that the future of the art world
for the majority of working artists will become even more complex to navigate.
That shouldn’t put anyone off from becoming an artist, as difficult as the
industry is, it also has a whole heap to give back to those who don’t
constantly chase the shortcuts. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcybUjuo_jI_0pI9qmY_gSiWqRUTNbN7wIeW4Yjen0PGIxtdXJA2rn2uLdWpeFyqbnwT5GJvi-p4e3VF0fCZ83AvEUS7hOtEOQ1McRzwl57DmyCch-mPdPNRK2lsehV9XO_BOhmNghmlNIgYrHLownNE-WXWXzQ7QnWyjM9idFVtnQHyJw7ugnJzxU/s4088/console%20gamer.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="boy in front of tv playing video games wearing headphones, 80s art prints," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcybUjuo_jI_0pI9qmY_gSiWqRUTNbN7wIeW4Yjen0PGIxtdXJA2rn2uLdWpeFyqbnwT5GJvi-p4e3VF0fCZ83AvEUS7hOtEOQ1McRzwl57DmyCch-mPdPNRK2lsehV9XO_BOhmNghmlNIgYrHLownNE-WXWXzQ7QnWyjM9idFVtnQHyJw7ugnJzxU/w640-h640/console%20gamer.JPG" title="Console Gamer by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Console Gamer by Mark Taylor - There was nothing quite like getting a new game cartridge and plugging it in, no massive day one updates, just fun, fun, fun!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The non-generic Top Ten of
Learning the Business of Art…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">They say that any blog post
that doesn’t also include a top ten list of things to tick off isn’t worth a
read, so for what it’s worth I have assembled one and added an eleventh point
to tick off as a bonus. Also, the things on this list are in no particular order
but by ticking each off, you might just finally get a little closer to closing
that elusive sale!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">11… </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Apply
the human filter more frequently. If something screams too good to be true, it’s
usually too good to be true. Influencer marketing in the internet age can often
be mistaken for promises.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">10… </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Don’t
try to sand down complex marketing with trending hashtags – they only ever
trend for a limited time, sometimes hours or minutes, art is forever right?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">9… </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you
are setting up a YouTube channel, set it up for the right reasons and find the
right audience. Never confuse attention for personal or business growth. Find
your tribe people!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">8… </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Remember,
you don’t have to be hyper-online, face to face communication and relationship
building can bear way more fruit than chasing ad-revenue unicorns.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">7…</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> You
don’t need permission to paint. Remember that success can be fleeting
especially if you are seeking validation from online strangers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">6… </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Are
you looking for alternative income streams to eventually replace your art,
because they might offer more longer-term reward, because you want an audience,
because on paper it sounds way easier, or because you can provide a value add
to your work that has a fit. Make sure that any additional side hustles aren’t
going to be another endless chase for unicorns and that you are doing it for
the right reasons. Be honest about why you’re doing these things and your
honesty will provide you with a much clearer direction of travel.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">5… </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Seek
out those with first-hand knowledge of the art world when you are looking for
advice rather than giving too much truck to the many generic articles written with
every business in mind, or at least copied and pasted from every other website.
Searching the internet for the gems isn’t something you can afford to be lazy about!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">4… </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Stop
asking the questions that you already have, or need to find the answer to. Unless
you can answer who you make your work for, no one can give you any real sense
of, A) whether there is a market, B) How much you should charge for your work,
C) what art sells best. For what it’s worth, the answer to C is landscapes and
nudes, and if neither are in your wheelhouse, don’t sell out.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">3… </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you
can’t commit the same amount of effort/work/hours into the side hustle as you
put into your current art and marketing, you won’t make much headway. Unicorn
chasing side-hustles often require more than doing a little something on the
side!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">2… </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Never
lose sight of the value that going old school can provide when it comes to
communicating with your tribe. Contrary to popular belief, a small ad in a
local newspaper can provide you with more exposure than a social media advert
to that hard to reach local population – as surprising as it seems in the
internet age, physical newspapers remain the preferred choice for many. Leaflet
drops can work too, they’re less spammy and local newspapers still love to
cover a good local business success story.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">1… </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s
not a battle between becoming an influencer or the influenced. You can be your
own person, your own artist with your own style. In truth, that’s exactly how
art movements have been formed for centuries. The art world at every level
wants unique, well, unless the viewer has been influenced by the celebrity
influencer.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKDp0Ai9BO2WyGrorvdApTE9tAyT6smoOleLIlMX9ioobww3MIq5e7UHMBYLhFjqw1qO5VTRnQL_5uYHdKSUSD3mjviWFlBFpYoza4tWxnO6JsZQmsBliWVuWraW6ymYE6KH8gg850To4GWvarU2tpy_avKOTiEcbpprO6C8MrXo3ZoS2wJTJu42yo/s4088/flow.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="fluid abstract art print, orange, blue, yellow, wood grain," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKDp0Ai9BO2WyGrorvdApTE9tAyT6smoOleLIlMX9ioobww3MIq5e7UHMBYLhFjqw1qO5VTRnQL_5uYHdKSUSD3mjviWFlBFpYoza4tWxnO6JsZQmsBliWVuWraW6ymYE6KH8gg850To4GWvarU2tpy_avKOTiEcbpprO6C8MrXo3ZoS2wJTJu42yo/w640-h640/flow.JPG" title="Fluid by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fluid by Mark Taylor - an unusual return to abstract works, each grain was hand painted in the wood effect!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Have a great week!</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Yes, I know I disappeared for
a while, unfortunately I was struck down with that dreaded bug after avoiding
it since the very start, and my eighties work took on a whole new pace that I
have barely been able to keep up with. In between, I hopped on a cruise ship to
take up a vacation that had been cancelled annually for the past three years
and had a brilliant time sailing the Norwegian Fjords, visiting what was
perhaps the most expensive coffee house anywhere, thirty Euro’s for three
coffee’s and a bottle of water. Talk about buyers regret, the coffee wasn’t
that great.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For those of you who have
reached out to me to ask about the possibility of me creating a colouring book
of vintage technology, I am looking into it but who knew there were so many
different uncoated papers. If I do go down this route then of course I will
document the process and let you know if it really is as easy as they say it is
to self-publish these days!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Until next time, I hope you
all have a brilliant and creative time and you all keep safe and well!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark x<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…</span></i></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I am an artist and blogger who continues to live in
the 1980s. You can purchase my art through my Fine Art America store or my
Pixels site here: </span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Any art sold through Fine Art America and Pixels
contributes towards to the ongoing costs of running and developing this
website. You can also view my portfolio website at </span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">https://beechhousemedia.com</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">You can also follow me on Facebook at: </span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> where you will
also find regular free reference photos of interesting subjects and places I
visit. You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at </span><a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> because who even
uses Pinterest any more?</span></span></p><p></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com2Staffordshire, UK52.907932 -2.14404531.417487503464542 -37.300294999999984 74.398376496535462 33.012204999999987tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-92177454983247243862022-05-11T16:26:00.003+01:002022-05-11T16:26:56.416+01:00Technology and Artists<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> <b><span style="line-height: 200%;">Making Technology Easier For
Artists</span></b></span></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_6TGrPoIr2wWBHGuSJZIvfsl-fdYNu7ovkvYqdIpJntvlS-cHfGQ5n8jK7QFRoWOiZ-cFjcZAdznbB2_XeGR2sDuNj6jWthW7hoDRAa63Fgt-FGxn-Aeq89uoc0ExGpXW5lT4O3yeFtb-gnWdppAs8VwWBCx8hWafYdm6FtBToncFOnbo7eiIbhgi/s1200/technology%20and%20artists%20cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Technology and Artists text with computer cables" border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="1200" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_6TGrPoIr2wWBHGuSJZIvfsl-fdYNu7ovkvYqdIpJntvlS-cHfGQ5n8jK7QFRoWOiZ-cFjcZAdznbB2_XeGR2sDuNj6jWthW7hoDRAa63Fgt-FGxn-Aeq89uoc0ExGpXW5lT4O3yeFtb-gnWdppAs8VwWBCx8hWafYdm6FtBToncFOnbo7eiIbhgi/w640-h334/technology%20and%20artists%20cover.png" title="Technology and Artists Cover Image for Blog" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A guide to buying technology for artists and creatives!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-large;">How many times have you become
frustrated by the ever-growing complexity that technology brings to your
workflow as an artist? I have been using technology as far back as I can
remember, maybe even longer and there are still times when I think it would be so
much simpler to just use a regular paper notepad instead of this device that
always needs an update.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">What we will cover this time…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">This week, I am hoping to give
you a little respite from some of the frustrations which as an artist you might
encounter from using technology in your process of creating art. Whether you
are using a computer to keep your paperwork up to date or creating digital
images, as an artist you can’t really avoid using digital tools, they are as essential
as a paintbrush for most creatives. The problem is that technology often gets
in the way of our creative flow.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">So, in order to keep your
flow, flowing, I will also be sharing some tips and tricks to keep both your
wallet and your sanity secure! <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">From Windows updates to
understanding cables and getting the most out of your existing phone camera,
this week, there is so much to cover. We will also be looking into the classic
SD Card scam, and I will be giving you some useful pointers to make sure you
buy the right tech at the right time to make sure you can squeeze the most
value out of it. If it’s technology, I have you covered! <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I make no apologies for the
depth and detail included in this feature, everything is becoming exponentially
more and more expensive and when you are a small business owner, which many
artists are, it’s unwise to spend money needlessly or on the wrong things when
it comes to buying new technologies to support your creative practice, the
world is expensive enough. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4DWXuS6T0L4m7GXFQjnln4B_I4fIDukGUX-N2qMtIE5kj7mggTF1UfVcl92q4hFQp99jZ5szIWMimElXzyZGOCOnpJDm_yPb-_7QUnhcRGMw8Pa_RJWbp8cJ3NgJxRo4F91CMEEkocmNNhmacbLT203YSmoF1YoPRoIHMM-n5gJx7ktSUXZGx_X18/s4088/fractured%20peace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="fractured peace abstract artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4DWXuS6T0L4m7GXFQjnln4B_I4fIDukGUX-N2qMtIE5kj7mggTF1UfVcl92q4hFQp99jZ5szIWMimElXzyZGOCOnpJDm_yPb-_7QUnhcRGMw8Pa_RJWbp8cJ3NgJxRo4F91CMEEkocmNNhmacbLT203YSmoF1YoPRoIHMM-n5gJx7ktSUXZGx_X18/w640-h640/fractured%20peace.jpg" title="Fractured Peace" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fractured Peace - one of my latest abstracts and seems relevant when we talk about technology!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">A Global Chip Shortage…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Technology is undoubtedly expensive
in regular times, even more so when you are using it in a professional capacity.
When it comes to using technology to create digital art, depending on your
creative process you could be talking about costs that begin to look more like
telephone numbers particularly when it comes to buying technology that often
needs some level of ongoing subscription to support it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Even if you are only using
digital tools to support the creative process rather than to perform the
creative process, there is also a global chip shortage and a post-pandemic
slump in manufacturing output that is adding to the expense that we are seeing
in technology today. That’s aside from the rising costs associated with all
manner of subscriptions that seem to have become a way of life in the 21<sup>st</sup>
Century. We have transitioned from owning technology to essentially renting it
but without the usual benefits that traditional rental models would bring.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If we believe the marketing
hype we would immediately think that technology is an enabler that makes life
easier. Technology is certainly an enabler, but it doesn’t always make your
life easier. It’s not just you, we professionals, even the ones who write the
code to make things happen get just as frustrated with it as anyone else.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Technology, no matter how
great it is, has to have inbuilt frustration, it’s the law. Technology also has
its own mind and there’s nothing you nor the greatest computer programmer in
the history of ever can do about that because no matter how dumb that dumb
terminal makes you think it is, it is actively thinking of new ways to provide
new versions of stress for you to endure. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">As a primarily digital artist
these days, I rely on technology for almost every aspect of my workflow. Beyond
that, those who know me will know how heavily I am involved in the retro computer
scene and in high-end enterprise IT and cyber security. In my spare time, I
relax in front of anything from a vintage Commodore 64 home computer from the
eighties to a modern-day PS5, so it’s not unusual to see me in person and think
that I followed a different evolutionary path and developed mobile devices in
place of hands. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I literally use and rely on
technology from morning to night and my frustrations with it can last just as
long. I eat, sleep, and dream technology but occasionally that dream becomes a
nightmare as I am greeted with either a message that translates to computer
says no, or I sit and scream at a screen that is technically known as the
screen of digital death. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Technology is just like a
toddler, you have to give it attention and feed it with expensive food and it
will still throw a tantrum while you are walking around the grocery store.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The traditional digital
artist…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I don’t think I know of any
artists today who never have to use at least some form of digital technology in
the business of creating art. Even artists who have never created a work of ‘digital
art’ won’t have been able to avoid using technology somewhere in their workflow.
From using social media to making a sale, writing up your artist bio or
accessing your online sales platform or website, every road will lead back to
some level of digital touchpoint. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Technology is a critical
component in the process of artists who probably thought that they would forever
be able to get away with only a brush, some pigment and a canvas. For hybrid
traditional/digital artists like me, there’s absolutely no way to avoid it. Having
used technology since the late seventies, a time when computers came in kit
form, there hasn’t been a day since at least 1980 when my fingers haven’t
touched a computer even when I have been creating non-digital work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Because we humans as a species
have such a dependency on technology, it also means that there’s very little
you can do to change the inherent frustration lovingly/sadistically delivered
by almost every device. If you want a life where you never have to update your
computer you will need to go back in time to the eighties and get your hands on
a Commodore 64 or any of the 8-bit home computers of the time in a pre-internet
era where the useful life of a computer was often measured in multiple years.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Whilst the technology back
then had nowhere near the level of capability that it has today, computers
tended to only be upgraded when newer models were released, and then only if
you could afford it. There would always be a legacy of users hanging out from
the last generation to ensure the systems continued to be supported and there
was almost no yearly upgrade cycle with any technology. The expectation today that
tech is re-released annually with only minor iterations and advances is a
relatively new thing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In the eighties and well into
the early millennium, manufacturers took time between generations of computers
to develop newer models whilst building excitement in the market for the next
new thing. Imagine if all of the new features found in today’s annual upgrades
were stacked and then released every two or even three years with modern
technology, the small iterations we see between models of anything that has an
annual upgrade today would seem so much bigger and it would probably sway those
who usually sit on the fence to buy into the upgrade. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I think we can all agree that
technology is tedious and that’s coming from an all-out technology geek, but it
is also essential. Despite levels of frustration higher than a hippy at
Woodstock, you can take steps to reduce the number of hours you will need to
spend with your head in your hands as yet another update needs installing. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmZW8ppl85lOnx44Xrf_kwBY695oFG2QTZ0Z8FJNxr-RhLAKIkfFj2c8-HW7XVdRfKgZakR5SvZlIvQqzWHVynYHKnL4eDywGp089h6LOToZUiKdz20kyQwYgIfXSFPu0s4aj93oA3hnGABjoS7XaEE4dwbOk2-durFSo0k746H9zaM0IM154yK_XJ/s4088/PCB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="PCB, printed circuit board artwork" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmZW8ppl85lOnx44Xrf_kwBY695oFG2QTZ0Z8FJNxr-RhLAKIkfFj2c8-HW7XVdRfKgZakR5SvZlIvQqzWHVynYHKnL4eDywGp089h6LOToZUiKdz20kyQwYgIfXSFPu0s4aj93oA3hnGABjoS7XaEE4dwbOk2-durFSo0k746H9zaM0IM154yK_XJ/w640-h640/PCB.jpg" title="PCB by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">PCB by Mark Taylor - This almost industrial work is a nod back to the early days of home computing, when technology was easier, simpler, and could do less...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Reduce the Frustration from
Windows Updates…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you use a Windows device as
part of your workflow you will know just how many updates need to be applied
each month. These updates are essential to making sure that your device is
protected from cyber risk and the many bad players who prey on the unpatched
masses of the population who think updates are for wimps or because they simply
don’t have the time. If you think the time it takes to apply an update is too
much, think about the time it takes to fix the problem from not applying the
update and the lost creative time that you will never get back.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">You need to think about updates
in a similar way you would think about life support. If you turn it off there
is a good chance that your device will die a slow painful death taking your
digital life with it in the process. You might notice that your devices begin
to run slower, it might start to generate more errors and in some cases, it might
display a blue screen suggesting that your device ran into problems and needs
to send a report to its master and then restart. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Technology then slips into a
never-ending loop. From the first update it becomes a perpetual cycle of
shutdowns, restarts, and more updates and it still won’t ever be quite the same
as it was when you first took it out of its box.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In the good old days, most of
the speed issues experienced by computers could be easily solved by
defragmenting your hard drive but with modern devices which use solid-state
drives, the process is a little different and is called optimisation. Modern
solid-state drives work very differently from the mechanical drives of the past
and they need a completely different life support care plan. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">However, optimisation alone
isn’t some golden panacea to speeding up your device and solving every error,
it is just one more thing of many that will contribute to a range of other
things that work together to keep everything ticking along, or at least until
they don’t. All you can do with technology is try to stay in sync with the
updates because you will never find yourself in the position of being a step
ahead.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Even keeping everything up to
date doesn’t give you any guarantee that the update will fix every glitch. The
applications you use may contain bugs and will themselves need updating
frequently too, and more often than not, updating an operating system will mean
that you then have to update all of your apps. Life is one long process of
updates and restarts and mastering the art of patience. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">We also need to add new
features into the mix, apps and operating systems rarely stand still. Even if
you only want the latest features to make life a little easier, keeping
everything on the latest version will usually give you the best experience. I
say usually because day one releases are rarely perfect and may need another
update or three to get anywhere close to working as expected. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Updates are rarely without
issue but sometimes it’s not a technology thing at all that prevents something from working, it’s the human that sits between the chair and the keyboard and the
problem usually stems from something technically known as being impatient.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Sometimes updates fail. If you
are using a Windows-based device you will want to be aware of something called
the <i>update connectivity measurement</i>. This essentially means that your
device will need to be connected online for much longer than you think in order
to guarantee a successful or at least, an almost problem-free update. I say
almost problem-free with a caveat that assumes the update actually fixes a
problem in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Even though a computer goes
through a restart process, the process isn’t usually over, the computer only
makes you think it is. The entire update will often require somewhere in the
region of two hours to download and begin the initial update process but this
will be dependent on your internet speed, two hours is really a minimum even
with really fast internet. Apparently, it’s not the size that matters.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It will then take at least a
further six hours or so to successfully apply the updates and add any new
features. During the entire eight hours or so that the process is running, your
device should remain connected online and powered on. Most of the time you can
continue to use it during this time but always make sure that you are regularly
saving any work as the device could randomly restart at any time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjQSrnoAgnf0h7vGWVSqcdYNaj0NgZOb9wVGyQasn3SsUNTjtSsBITtJ-xvP7lOkQbs_4uGP42ly9sSbkobJp0JcsIi4Us4qoy45Cxhb6ZeYVODseJdWxVHA9-_0a6UopCCPS8QuVM7XvCt7_vauUyFaiOIDgmhHkiGzDA32rb08krhROo62kRi9XB/s4088/retro%20peripheral.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro computing peripherals, mouse, cassette, disc, labels, circuit board," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjQSrnoAgnf0h7vGWVSqcdYNaj0NgZOb9wVGyQasn3SsUNTjtSsBITtJ-xvP7lOkQbs_4uGP42ly9sSbkobJp0JcsIi4Us4qoy45Cxhb6ZeYVODseJdWxVHA9-_0a6UopCCPS8QuVM7XvCt7_vauUyFaiOIDgmhHkiGzDA32rb08krhROo62kRi9XB/w640-h640/retro%20peripheral.jpg" title="Retro Peripheral" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Retro Peripheral by Mark Taylor - from the Tank Mouse to the floppy disc, this work just pops. Each element has been created as its own artwork and then juxtaposed with an industrial twist.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Antivirus Updates…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">There will also be updates
that rely on you to have previously installed all updates before them. If you
take a manual approach to update your devices then you will risk missing out
on important updates and more vitally, critical security updates that help to
prevent bad threat actors from taking over your PC and ruining your day. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It’s not just operating
systems that have a reliance on the internet, antivirus tools have an
insatiable appetite for being forever connected too. Bear in mind that having
an up to date antivirus tool on your PC is only a small part of the bigger
picture that helps to keep your computer alive. Antivirus packages are
absolutely essential even if you only use a computer occasionally but once
again, they need to be used in conjunction with lots of other good practice too
and they have to always be kept up to date. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Antivirus programmes are
completely reliant on having access to the internet for real-time updates with
some antivirus packages checking almost by the second to ensure they have the
latest threats identified in their dictionaries along with a fix for them. Most
of the time these updates will be seamless and will run in the background, but
be wary because even a small operating system update could upset the
equilibrium of an antivirus package and turn off any protection that you
thought you had, without you lifting a finger.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Just as you would check the
tyres or fuel level on your car before you embark on a long journey, it is
worth checking at least periodically that everything is running as it should
be. Take a few seconds to open up your Windows update settings to make sure
that everything that should be updated has been downloaded and installed correctly, and
also open up your antivirus application to make sure it is actively working and
up to date. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">This is a must-do following
any update of the operating system because updates can play havoc with your
antivirus package. You can never guarantee that the computer will always notify
you when something is amiss and you certainly can’t guarantee that your
computer will automatically turn the antivirus back on. Remember, in-built frustration
is the law.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkfCIKTRTiLxL-fd3Am7JjiAtqXrbDaeMChpQMokxK1LSZHIpyp18pL82hB-V2nsChJlO8Y0HXnVBpmIfKIWgUjTnqKTdBqhScRttB15If_pvjf_H8c3N6GpNQdiuXWNM2JxaxYfnY4AdqwtAEiY_dvYTKK5HZs6nTX9jAfRQyAgvQd2wcV0psU0Sl/s4088/please%20stand%20by.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="testcard artwork, abstract artwork" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkfCIKTRTiLxL-fd3Am7JjiAtqXrbDaeMChpQMokxK1LSZHIpyp18pL82hB-V2nsChJlO8Y0HXnVBpmIfKIWgUjTnqKTdBqhScRttB15If_pvjf_H8c3N6GpNQdiuXWNM2JxaxYfnY4AdqwtAEiY_dvYTKK5HZs6nTX9jAfRQyAgvQd2wcV0psU0Sl/w640-h640/please%20stand%20by.jpg" title="Please Stand By" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Please Stand By - By Mark Taylor. I wanted to create something both familiar and almost uncomfortable, with added glitches!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">About those auto-updates…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Automatic updates are great,
but they don’t really work like you think they do. They are automatic, they’re
just not always automatic immediately. A great example of this can be seen on
Apple devices whenever you have auto-updates from the App Store turned on. You
might find a new update is available and despite you having auto updates
enabled, the update might not actually have been downloaded and installed on
your device until days or sometimes even a week or two later after it has been
released.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">There’s nothing inherently wrong
when this happens although some updates are going to be more critical when it
comes to security and you might want them a little sooner. Manufacturers who send out updates like to
control deployments in stages so that millions of people don’t suddenly
overwhelm their servers all at the same time trying to download the latest
version of the operating system or the update that promises seventy additional
emojis, because new emojis are really what it’s all about.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Everyone connecting to the
upgrade servers at the same time would be extremely problematic for the
manufacturer's hardware to deal with, so if you want the latest and greatest
sooner than the auto-update delivers it, you will need to manually request it.
You can still manually request updates even if you leave the automatic download
settings in place. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Delaying updates isn’t always
a bad idea if you can hold out for a day or two. The first iteration of an
update can sometimes break more things than it fixes and a new update then gets
pushed out sometimes even within a few hours of the original update going live.
In other words, initial updates can be bug-ridden examples of bad coding that
only dummies like me make sure are downloaded within seconds of them going
live. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">With non-critical updates, it
is usually worth hanging back for a day or two if you can because more often
than not, updates will need to have glitches resolved fairly quickly and if
this is the case, holding back a day or two will limit the chances of you being
unable to do what you need to do because some bug stops the thing you need to
do from working.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">As for all of those additional
emojis and half-useful extra features that you get excited about when any new
update comes along, chances are that you will completely forget about them
within a few days and then you will rarely if ever use them. Features such as emojis and other quality of
life improvements to the software are usually added a few days or weeks and
sometimes months after the primary version of an update has been released. This
is so that the initial version can be quickly fixed if it contains any bugs.
When the initial update goes live, it’s very rare that it will be the finished
product as developers will still be working on iterations of that version often
for many more weeks. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The other reason that these
fun elements are added later on is to keep you engaged with the upgrade process.
Minor iterations of an update will appear between major updates and these are
more likely to contain the fun, quality of life features that you might have
been expecting from the initial release. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If a minor update contains a
benefit that you are more likely to use, you are more likely to download it.
Everyone using the exact same version of software makes life considerably
easier for the developer and adding these additional features in between major
releases encourages people to remain on board with the upgrade process. In the
eyes of the developer, they want everyone on the same version of the same thing
because it makes their life so much easier with fewer support calls and it
makes for a more consistent experience for everyone. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEp8HYfjDzUX1jy_kzvYmvF4Wt48ppoF9PkG4QKEhx5RPfItSfZJ9FgQPSJ2READTs0EgIlghquj0lfG_HfWpnp6l3E-EBn6Vpf3QzqYyjrlaRSLIVWFQfWzC_eTvG-f9p-GJ56AeanSQf7c1966b5-pR5YXo8nrmud_6lnqvlkJlSjA5numuJfvED/s4088/pixel%20art.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="floppy discs on colourful background with cables" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEp8HYfjDzUX1jy_kzvYmvF4Wt48ppoF9PkG4QKEhx5RPfItSfZJ9FgQPSJ2READTs0EgIlghquj0lfG_HfWpnp6l3E-EBn6Vpf3QzqYyjrlaRSLIVWFQfWzC_eTvG-f9p-GJ56AeanSQf7c1966b5-pR5YXo8nrmud_6lnqvlkJlSjA5numuJfvED/w640-h640/pixel%20art.jpg" title="Pixel Art by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Pixel Art by Mark Taylor - The irony of this work is that almost 300 floppy discs would be needed to store the original file of this work!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></b></span></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Update History…</span></span></b></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If everyone were to use the
exact same version of a software release, it would make the experience better
for everyone, but the world doesn’t quite work like that so we have differences
to contend with even from devices using the same platform. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Android is a good example of
multiple versions of what seems to be the same thing. When you purchase an
Android mobile cell phone it might tell you that it is up to date, in truth its
probably not. The issue is that the advice it gives you is predicated on
whether or not the manufacturer of your device is up to date. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The Android operating system
is constantly updated but it then has to be seeded to the hundreds of
manufacturers who create Android devices who then have to run their own testing
before allowing owners of their devices the opportunity to download and install
it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In some cases, especially if
you are using a carrier-branded device, you could have two of the exact same
devices with only one of them being able to receive an update. With
carrier-branded devices, the carrier will also need to carry out testing and if
a feature is made available that is incompatible with either their network or
their business plan, the update is less likely to appear or will appear much
later than release. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">To add to that, any updates
that do make it onto carrier-branded devices might also have to have further
work carried out if, for example, the carrier is using their own proprietary
user interface. This can also add to the time delay in getting updates out.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It’s quite possible that you
might not get the update at all in some scenarios, or it might take weeks or
even months until you see that an update has been made available. What this
means is that some devices are more likely to reach their useful and usable end
of life prematurely despite other devices carrying the exact same specification
and model number having a little more life left in them. Life expectancy can be
more to do with the cellular carrier than the manufacturer in some cases. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">My advice, regardless of
whether you decide on the Apple/Android or another eco-system entirely is to
always go for the most recent and most well-supported device you can afford
from a major brand and be a little more cautious about purchasing carrier-branded devices. Before signing up for a cellular plan with a carrier-branded
device, ask questions about the frequency of updates and make comparisons with the
devices that originate directly from the manufacturer. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">There’s usually very little
that’s different between the manufacturer's original device and the carrier-branded device that is based on the same model, other than maybe having the carrier
branding etched into the casing, and maybe a slightly different user interface,
although the carrier branded device could cost a little less. Checking out the
onward differences such as update roadmaps could save you considerably more
cash and pain in the long term.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiceKB91SbyO2xCFJBbiolO5iCptjMz-MSIt0U5EyNMbZeYwudhnN4rVVdk3STbsM0bB49yO12qIU-ZQOhm94MJpbALRp_0wrgRYZ7B0O66SthrMx4OYSXCl1R54-_500egnb2iRIRnBzE01HH38wA7B46xsBnZhgwXn98zSBxT0EjzaxJOnuHRvkPr/s4088/1984.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="abstract computer cable and an eye, artwork," border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiceKB91SbyO2xCFJBbiolO5iCptjMz-MSIt0U5EyNMbZeYwudhnN4rVVdk3STbsM0bB49yO12qIU-ZQOhm94MJpbALRp_0wrgRYZ7B0O66SthrMx4OYSXCl1R54-_500egnb2iRIRnBzE01HH38wA7B46xsBnZhgwXn98zSBxT0EjzaxJOnuHRvkPr/w640-h640/1984.jpg" title="1984 by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">1984 by Mark Taylor - I wanted to create a sense that technology is always watching, it sees us but isn't like us, nor does it understand us.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The Frustration of Cables…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I cannot for the life of me
tie a clove hitch knot but all of my cables can. Throw two cables up in the air
and they will magically tie themselves together and multiply into four. The
same thing happens when you place a cable behind the TV, no matter how much
cable management you use cables can be a huge frustration and especially when
you are a digital artist. They can seriously get in the way of your creative
flow.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Cables really matter when it
comes to digital art and video editing but they can also be a source of
frustration and just when you think you have got to grips with them, standards
change and new capabilities are added to both the cables and the devices they
plug into. I know, most people will find it really difficult to find any level
of excitement from a cable, but some cables really are game-changers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The problem is that many
cables look exactly the same and their descriptions often suggest they serve
the same purpose, but not all cables are anywhere near equal and understanding
cable technology could save you a lot of money down the line.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It feels like only yesterday
when we needed to change the HDMI cables that plugged into our shiny new 4K
TVs. They needed to be faster than those used in standard high definition TVs,
they had to be able to carry much more data more efficiently and more
expediently. Whilst every HDMI cable will look identical other than maybe being
a little cosmetically different, they’re nowhere close to always being the
same. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you are in the market for a
new TV or monitor for your creative workflow, knowing the latest cable standards could save you a considerable amount of money in the
future. Whereas not too long ago we might have been influenced into making a screen
purchase by the number of HDMI ports on the device, today we also need to
consider how fast those ports will work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">There’s a risk that by saving
a little money on buying last year's model of TV or monitor you might find that the device
you are buying might not be compatible with the latest HDMI standard which is
now HDMI 2.1. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">With previous iterations of
the HDMI standard we didn’t see the sudden technology leaps of anywhere near
the scale that has since been introduced with this new standard, and whilst it
might not be all that important for your workflow today, it will be very soon.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">4K TVs might seem like a
recent upgrade but visual technology is quickly heading towards 8K resolutions
as the standard. Right now, none of the streaming services provide content in
8K resolutions but this was also the case when 4K started to appear on the
scene too. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It will only be a matter of
time before we see the likes of Netflix hiking up their prices once again and
offering us a super-duper-premium-plus-deluxe-plus option to take advantage of
the three shows filmed in 8K. It will then take approximately five minutes for
8K to become as mainstream as 4K is today and a further 2.6 minutes for Netflix
to then cancel the show.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Whilst buying an 8K monitor or
TV is still overkill for today’s needs, by ensuring your new display has HDMI
2.1 capability you will be able to take advantage of the many other features that
the cable and the standard will bring. If your new device doesn’t have at least
one HDMI 2.1 port, you could find yourself changing last year's screen model
sooner than you might have originally planned means that the small saving you
made on last year's model will now need to be spent and then some on yet another
upgrade. I’m all for saving money when it comes to technology, but making the
right choices at the right time is the only way to continue saving. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Before we go on to the
benefits of HDMI 2.1 it’s worth noting that if you are considering upgrading
your display, not all displays labelled as being HDMI 2.1 compatible will offer
all of the benefits that the standard can bring. In terms of the benefits, the
primary benefit that comes from the new standard is around resolution and
refresh rates. In theory, HDMI 2.1 can handle resolutions up to 10K at 120Hz,
incredibly detailed, blisteringly fast, but nowhere even close to becoming
mainstream maybe for a decade or so and it may be a while longer before they
are affordable outside of specialist commercial use.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">What HDMI 2.1 will bring you
out of the box today is 4K resolutions at 120 frames per second or 8K at 60
frames per second which is brilliant news for digital artists and gamers. If
you aren’t sitting in either of those camps, life just started costing a lot
less because you will most likely find that slightly older technology will be
good enough for a while longer unless you absolutely must have that not yet very
content-filled experience that 8K currently brings.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The new standard also allows
VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) which means that the display will seamlessly
transition between display resolutions depending on what’s happening on the
screen. This allows a much more detailed output by changing from a slightly
lower resolution to full resolution on the fly, and of course, HDR will be able
to be displayed at the same time. In simple terms, it just looks great and
keeps everything flowing at the best resolution and speed available and you are
less likely to experience shearing on the screen.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The numbers above might seem
over the top for creating digital art, but if your process includes creating
output for screens such as video game art, concept art, or high-end
illustration and animation, HDMI 2.1 is now the absolute minimum that will
become the defacto standard within the next couple of years and within eighteen
months it will almost certainly become your default choice when buying a new
screen.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">HDMI 2.1 also upgrades the
audio experience meaning that you can move away from systems such as Dolby
Digital and utilise systems such as Dolby Atmos. If your HDMI 2.1 device also
happens to have eARC capability, then you will find an enhanced audio return
channel for connecting things like soundbars and home theatre systems. The
downside, of course, you will need a compatible audio system too. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The quality of the cable is
finally, better…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">No matter what manufacturers
say on their marketing hype, for the average HDMI 2 cable there is very little
discernible difference between different makes of cable, and in most cases, no
difference at all for most users, even between discount and premium brands. You
might experience a little noise with some cables if they’re not well-shielded but
it's not always the discount cables that have the problem. If you are using a
certified cable you are less likely to see any difference between brands.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Cables always come preloaded
with marketing hype but to officially meet the HDMI 2 standard, they have to
actually meet the HDMI 2 standard which unlike HDMI 2.1, is much more common on
today’s screens. There can be a huge difference in price between HDMI 2 cables
but it’s just not worth paying over the odds for the exact same thing that
already meets the exact same standard and does the exact same thing. Unless you
really are only spending relative pennies on a cable, they’re all much of a
muchness at this level.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">HDMI 2.1 on the other hand is
a very different story. The speeds are much higher than previous HDMI
standards. HDMI 2 maxed out at 18Gbps, the new HDMI 2.1 or 48G cables max out
at 48Gbps. In simple terms, the new standard is exponentially faster and can do
more things at the same time. A certified HDMI 2.1 cable will be able to get
the most out of the HDMI 2.1 port, and there are already some differences in
quality emerging between manufacturers. The new cables can still be used with
HDMI 2 but they won’t really make that much difference to the older standards
output, they won’t, for example, turn an HDMI 2 output into HDMI 2.1.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY1MLizvNOul_pRcaok9MG2iPT3oSVmru6Dyp_qrNgfvO2YVymgjrb9ChDMPHers95urp9nxacnKO-C6lEDlaeq_GA8ANIY_whZI40QbYNFCWmiVkyZI-zVL_iSfDaGuveDT3MGaN1nRbH6AI26-hrImjjLYys8EGfsqdMVfAMb_N_66pv0lpd1mdp/s4088/that%20eighties%20thing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="80s technology artwork" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY1MLizvNOul_pRcaok9MG2iPT3oSVmru6Dyp_qrNgfvO2YVymgjrb9ChDMPHers95urp9nxacnKO-C6lEDlaeq_GA8ANIY_whZI40QbYNFCWmiVkyZI-zVL_iSfDaGuveDT3MGaN1nRbH6AI26-hrImjjLYys8EGfsqdMVfAMb_N_66pv0lpd1mdp/w640-h474/that%20eighties%20thing.jpg" title="That Eighties Thing by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">That Eighties Thing by Mark Taylor - Depicting standard definition in high definition - what a decade the 80s was for innovation and invention!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">HDMI 2.1 in summary…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you want to save money on
your next display purchase, save it on the right things. That means looking for
devices which offer full HDMI 2.1 capability rather than saving a hundred bucks
buying last years model which may only have the standard HDMI 2 or limited HDMI
2.1 capability. In two years time you will probably need to upgrade again if
you go with an older model now with the intention of using it in your
professional workflow.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">When it comes to cables it
doesn’t matter all that much which HDMI 2 cable you go for, this is an area
where you can save plenty of money. With HDMI 2.1, make sure that it is fully
HDMI 2.1 compliant and check out reviews from reputable sources before you make
the purchase because there is very little money to be saved here and a good
quality HDMI 2.1 cable is still relatively expensive, compared to its older
variant. It will take maybe three to four years before we begin seeing quality
lower-cost options in the HDMI 2.1 arena.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Network Cables…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">When it comes to network cables,
the quality of the cable can make a huge difference not just to your pocket,
but to your internet speeds too. You might have heard the terms, Cat 6, Cat 7,
or even Cat 8, and they can all be useful if they’re used in the right places.
Previously we had Cat5 and Cat 5e, but these are now fairly limited in their
use and the cost difference between Cat5 and 6 is negligible. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">These are the cables that
usually provide you with wired access between your device and your internet
router, they’re also the cables that are hidden in walls to provide network
ports in an office.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">With network cables, they’re
not all close to being equal. Cat 6 cables will provide you with 1Gbps speeds
over a distance of up to 100 metres. In practice, I would never use it for that
kind of distance, mostly I would recommend a total run length of a maximum of 60
metres to ensure your speeds are more consistent and less if your cable needs
to go around corners as crazy as that sounds!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Cat 7 cables offer greater
speeds to your device from your router, but both Cat 6 and Cat 7 can be
affected by noise, hence there are specific rules that mean these cables have
to have a certain number of pairs (wires inside), and they must be shielded to
prevent signal loss from noise. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Cat 7 provides 10Gbps of speed
across a similar distance to Cat 6, although again, I would recommend using
fibre optics if the total length of the run is greater than 60-metres. It’s
also surprising just how long a cable needs to be, even in smaller homes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Cat 8 is the fastest, allowing
blisteringly fast speeds of up to either 25Gbps or 40Gbps, but these cables can
only be used for distances less than 30-metres before the signal degrades to
almost being unusable.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">There is often very little
difference in price between all of the categories of cable, and depending on
what you want to use the cable for there would be far greater benefits in using
Cat 7 as a standard or ideally, if you only need the cable to cover a short
distance, Cat 8 because that will save you money in the future. For most
smaller networks where distance is less of an issue, Cat 8 will become the
standard soon.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I recently upgraded my home
and studio network to utilise Cat 8, each run was short enough to allow this
and I also began using a short Cat 8 lead to connect my devices to Cat 8
enabled network sockets on the wall and suddenly, I was getting almost the
entirety of my gigabit internet connection available on my MacBook Pro and my
PS5 despite having more than 30 other devices connected on the same network.
Everything from printers to game consoles and a power-hungry Mac Pro which
looks more like a cheese grater than a computer. With the previous Cat 7
cabling, I wasn’t getting anywhere close to this speed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Quality does matter with
network cables and especially when you begin to look towards Cat 8. Some cables
will be able to be used both internally and externally and having a weather
proof cable means that they’re less likely to be affected by changes in
temperatures, some of these cables will be more robust if you do plan to use
them outside. If you pay a premium you can even have armoured cabling
protecting you from the other issues you typically get from using external
cabling. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Whilst many people will be
relying on Wi-Fi for connectivity, the benefits of hardwired connectivity will only
become more evident in the coming years as devices become hungrier and hungrier
for faster bandwidth. New Wi-Fi protocols such as Wi-Fi 6 promise faster
speeds, but you have to take into account that faster speeds rely on signals
travelling over much shorter distances than they would have done with earlier
iterations of Wi-Fi technologies which were slower but had a wider range.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVsWdu6Xq40GxNq04Y1zCuK84NpJy35dmMwD8whqwFKW49ZKcj0jPNf24LXmiR71EvQQ_bxRoKgqSgMDy2uoBPLaoPGEc68l_BrF5wiHd47rZOFFx-OpReFQpyPIbghxRsGVyObyvkH4YfWqeLk_a6rMFqVwsonv06cadlg-kw1mNVhZ38_U_F6Hsu/s4088/ordered.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="ordered abstract artwork" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVsWdu6Xq40GxNq04Y1zCuK84NpJy35dmMwD8whqwFKW49ZKcj0jPNf24LXmiR71EvQQ_bxRoKgqSgMDy2uoBPLaoPGEc68l_BrF5wiHd47rZOFFx-OpReFQpyPIbghxRsGVyObyvkH4YfWqeLk_a6rMFqVwsonv06cadlg-kw1mNVhZ38_U_F6Hsu/w640-h640/ordered.jpg" title="Ordered by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Ordered by Mark Taylor - the chaos of Wi-Fi signals maybe?</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Sometimes your internet
service isn’t at fault…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It's worth thinking about just
how your internet works too. Slow Wi-Fi often gets confused with slow internet
and upgrading your internet service provider's speed is never a guarantee that
your Wi-Fi will be better, it could even turn out to be worse. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The same factors that slow
Wi-Fi down will still be there even with a faster broadband line. Wi-Fi and the
internet often get conflated as being one and the same thing but the
differences are like chalk and cheese. Wi-Fi is not the internet, which most
of you will already know, but you would be surprised at just how many people
swap their internet packages for faster ones only to find no difference in
speed at all when they connect wirelessly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It's also worth remembering
that your internet speeds or more specifically, the speed you load web pages is
often dictated by the website you are trying to reach, not by the size of your
pipe! Slow speeds don’t always mean that there is an issue with your internet
package or your Wi-Fi. Slow speeds can be caused by many, many things, and
figuring out exactly what’s slowing everything down can be like trying to find
a specific needle in a haystack of needles.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">You can have a 1Gigabit
internet connection but if the website is only serving content at 20Mbps, in
very over-simple terms, that’s the very best speed you will see from the
website although your internal speeds between your router and device will be
faster although this will make only minimal difference to the experience, so minimal you might not even notice.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you regularly check
broadband speed websites, remember that these are served from the exact same
internet as the rest of the content you see so they will be affected by the
exact same problems. This means that speed tests are often an estimate at that particular
second rather than being a definitive and exact speed. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Real network bandwidth monitoring is carried out using other technologies and some complex maths. For most home users, there is an expectation that it will all just work. If you do utilise one of the many speed test services you need to make sure that it is one that is less inclined to give you erroneous results. Netflix's speed checker is one of the best with minimal overhead. You can find it <a href="https://fast.com" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">When you run a speed check, make sure you carry out tests over multiple days and at multiple times. This will provide you with more consistent results than a one-off test could bring.</span></span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjghKGhnUih1K1nruz-ylxhVrO7QWjleVAyK9ICUaVG2Ri-vua4PWlGzzt_SqSOhyhmqjDLnBu0490D_oRBBsmhdMdCCfQKoX6GCkD_LevIsg9JW-Zc7LjHmFfJDrr71LOOQRgnIvvQxlkOcYY4JpJQcbjekZUck5SAwIfjZSc_QkCS3VDMsZGCZO7/s4088/eight%20bit%20eighties.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="80s vintage retro technology artwork" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjghKGhnUih1K1nruz-ylxhVrO7QWjleVAyK9ICUaVG2Ri-vua4PWlGzzt_SqSOhyhmqjDLnBu0490D_oRBBsmhdMdCCfQKoX6GCkD_LevIsg9JW-Zc7LjHmFfJDrr71LOOQRgnIvvQxlkOcYY4JpJQcbjekZUck5SAwIfjZSc_QkCS3VDMsZGCZO7/w640-h640/eight%20bit%20eighties.jpg" title="Eight Bit Eighties" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Eight Bit Eighties by Mark Taylor - some artistic licence with the technology of the eighties. We even had 16-bit technology in the early 80s but it was never what it seemed. The industry was brilliant at making numbers look more powerful than they were. They still do that today!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Recap…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">So far we have covered a great
deal of the many things that can frustrate your creative flow. Slow internet,
error-prone updates, getting the best display experience from your screen, and
for the most part, these are things that you can easily put right. What you
might be able to do less about are scams and as a professional creative, you
could be more susceptible to scams than most.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Watch out for SD Card scams…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">This is probably one of the
most underrated, yet vital aspects of digital art and photography, and the
following section is detailed because it is the one area that I am asked to
advise on all of the time. It is also an area that affects artists who rely on
having SD Cards on hand to operate their business. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">When I began to utilise this
new fangled flash memory the world used things like Compact Flash cards which
were huge, yet stored only a minuscule amount of the data compared to what can be
stored on a much smaller SD-Card of today. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Compact Flash cards were also
very, very, expensive, unlike today when you can buy almost a hundred SD Cards
for the price that would have been charged for an older and exponentially
slower CF card when they first came out. In short, SD Cards today are a bargain
at whatever price you pay and you really shouldn’t scrimp on quality for the
sake of saving pennies when it comes to trusting something the size of a
postage stamp with hours of your work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">SD Cards are truly amazing
little things, and with the most recent versions having gigabyte capacities on
something smaller than a stamp, it’s almost like witchcraft, I mean what a time
to be alive! However, and just because the world is the way it is, even memory
cards can take front and centre place in scams designed to take your money and
leave you without any way at all to access possibly hundreds of hours of work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">At one time, the biggest
middle-class problem you would have had with these things would be that too
many modern cameras didn’t include dual memory card slots meaning you would have
to swap out full cards on the fly. It’s a huge problem for some people who rely
on capturing millisecond-by-millisecond photos of events, but it’s really not a
problem for those who can wait for a few seconds. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The problem today is that
there are now way bigger problems to contend with when it comes to memory cards
and you need to be switched on to the pitfalls of buying cheap because it could
cost you more than money in the long run.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Photographers and digital
artists often spend the GDP of a small country on SD Cards, despite their
relatively low cost and coupled with the sheer number of them that most
professionals will use, it’s easy to see why this is an area that is looked at
when you are looking to save a few pennies. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">SD Cards are an area of technology
that can bring unexpected problems in the form of fakes. Even buying from
reputable retailers is not always a guarantee that what you will get is what
you originally paid for. If you are anything like me then you might scour sites
such as Amazon for SD Card bargains but even those might not actually be
originals. It’s not at all that Amazon knowingly sell fake SD Cards, it’s that
they are a huge company that also allows third-party sellers to offer goods on
their platform and this is usually where the problems begin.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I’m not singling Amazon out,
eBay, even Etsy, and a multitude of other services that allow third parties the
ability to sell anything can be unwittingly making scammers' lives easier by
giving them a platform on which they can sell their wares. If you are thinking
of buying pre-used SD Cards, there are about a million and one reasons why you
should avoid doing that, but also in terms of the images that might have been
previously stored on them which could hypothetically at least, be recoverable
by law enforcement.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In the worst case, it could
mean that you might suddenly have some explaining to do if illegal images are
found on your SD Card and proving your innocence might be difficult when buying
through services such as Facebook’s Marketplace where the transactions are
usually completed with cash. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It’s also a problem for those
selling used SD Cards, even if the seller believes they have wiped them. Unless
that wipe process involved some complex, almost military-grade and multiple
write and wipe procedures to make sure any previous data had been fully
overwritten, it is often possible to recover deleted files which might include
personal information. It’s often cited that as many as two-thirds of pre-used
SD Cards hold recoverable data, how true that is I have no idea, but I would
suspect from experience that this is highly likely just on the basis of how
many traditional hard drives I have been able to recover over the years.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe-nLCY-Uhi2Inmioe_wLb5X37d-auvub58uiFr7Lf4jjp7375N3-IzF4tKqj7Dc425CtcJqHdxCMdc0ShMn11DtFXOPQf26Omn6OvshPU1iFt3WjGfPqk6mRpG5OvTBSzwCwJVz5gGVobuTla7WH1ltUQr33WHoIhQJdhy6rUe1wqiQbVXZWXblnA/s4088/eighties%20music.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="80s music technology artwork" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe-nLCY-Uhi2Inmioe_wLb5X37d-auvub58uiFr7Lf4jjp7375N3-IzF4tKqj7Dc425CtcJqHdxCMdc0ShMn11DtFXOPQf26Omn6OvshPU1iFt3WjGfPqk6mRpG5OvTBSzwCwJVz5gGVobuTla7WH1ltUQr33WHoIhQJdhy6rUe1wqiQbVXZWXblnA/w640-h640/eighties%20music.jpg" title="80s Music Technology by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">80s Music Technology by Mark Taylor - today, all of our music can be stored on a piece of plastic smaller than a postage stamp. What a time to be alive! (or at least it was in the 80s!)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The differences between fake
SD Cards and Originals…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">A five buck memory card is no
less likely to be a fake than a hundred buck memory card. This is because
smaller low-value scams are the new big thing and these low-value scams are on
the rise in other areas too. Unwitting buyers are less likely to return or make
much of a fuss about low-value items, instead, they will put the sale down to
experience and move on. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It makes more sense for
scammers too, many of those who would once utilise stolen data sets to carry
out high-value crimes are turning to smaller scams in higher volumes and
they’re making more from them. A five buck scam carried out by someone who
lives in a region where five bucks is the average weekly wage, is a substantial
haul for the scammer who now faces less scrutiny from unwanted attention. This
is true of other scams too which are for the most part, happening online and
especially through social media.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">How to spot fake branding…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">What you might see with fake
memory cards is that they often look almost identical or even the same as the original
manufacturer's cards, in some cases, the cards might have even been produced in
the same production facilities. This makes it almost impossible at first glance
to determine whether or not you have a fake in your hands. To find out, you are
going to have to do something that I rarely advise anyone to do, and that is to
put it into a device to confirm either way, but you really should only ever do
this as a last resort. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you have any suspicion that
the device might be a fake, you shouldn’t put it into your device at all. In
some cases, it could be filled with viruses or ransomware, or even a small piece
of code that allows a backdoor into your system. Hence, buying memory cards,
USB memory sticks or any media that can accommodate the storage of code, you
need to ensure that you make the purchase from a reputable dealer and you should
in all cases, even with cards you trust, scan the card with your anti-virus
program before using it. Most AV applications will give you the option of
scanning removable media, always make sure that setting is enabled.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It looks good and even the
packaging looks great, but that’s still only the surface detail. What you need
to find out is how well the card works in comparison to the specification of
card you purchased. Counterfeit and fake memory cards can be made to look and
perform just like the originals, even when you insert them into a device and
whilst they do a great job of acting just like the original card on the
surface, there are a heap of unknowns going on below.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The mere fact that these cards
are designed to hold data also means that scammers can include their own data
which may or may not open up back doors. It is more likely that some scammers
will place small snippets of code on the card before you purchase them and
there’s simply no easy way to find out if you have a card that has been tampered
with. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Looking for obvious signs of
tampering around the packaging is one way that could help you to identify a
card that has previously been used, although there will be cases where
legitimate cards are sold even without packaging or in very simple original
manufacturer packaging that is usually reserved for trade sales. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Online adverts might even make
a thing about how the cards use OEM or even renewable packaging or that the
packaging will vary depending on the location of sale. They might even suggest
that the packaging is usually only used in certain stores or territories. The
problem is that this in itself is part of the scam and it is designed to make
you question everything a little less. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE-MTI1IqZ8DLx4-WWS4y96FZ7dmc91MTkkEaylCaLqzFU27XqIcDJhn_mJF8OP_FZbT1XFtxyN38ifi2gkY-Zjxx5_aYxu-t1jxq6QhYV_nHUYqncCDQp5O-G8zB1Fc8WEwMjZTdDHYLtr-nnDnlnOYiNzkKnFlTIbD7cCFqJm6ARfLd6IAUWaC1b/s4088/80s%20pop%20music%20culture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="80s music technology pop culture artwork" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE-MTI1IqZ8DLx4-WWS4y96FZ7dmc91MTkkEaylCaLqzFU27XqIcDJhn_mJF8OP_FZbT1XFtxyN38ifi2gkY-Zjxx5_aYxu-t1jxq6QhYV_nHUYqncCDQp5O-G8zB1Fc8WEwMjZTdDHYLtr-nnDnlnOYiNzkKnFlTIbD7cCFqJm6ARfLd6IAUWaC1b/w640-h640/80s%20pop%20music%20culture.jpg" title="80s Pop Music Culture by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">80s Pop Music Culture by Mark Taylor - forget Warhol, this is where pop culture is today. </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">So, how do scammers scam?</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Often, they will advertise
memory cards with high speeds and high volumes of storage, and for very little
money in comparison to buying from elsewhere. When the card arrives you might
also see the same specification written on both the card and the packaging, but
this is where the similarity to the original card ends. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Small scripts are added to
much smaller and much slower memory cards that make them appear to be what it
says on the tin. What you end up with is usually a card that is much slower
than the original, or has a massive difference in storage capacity. You are
more likely to see the latter on higher capacity cards so if you purchase one
of the ultra-expensive 1Tb cards for less than a competitors 128Gb card
thinking that you have found a bargain, what you could end up with is a
smaller, and much older, 32Gb card or even smaller that has been hacked to
display fake memory allocation results.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The real issue with this is
not just that you have a much smaller card, the script used makes your device
think that the card has a greater capacity than it really has and so the device
will continue writing to it not realising that the script also deletes
previously contained data at the same time as it writes the new data, so that
the computer never displays a message informing you that the card is full
simply because the card can never be filled.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The only time you will find
out about this is if you either expose the usually hidden script file, or you
realise that the work you had on the card from a year ago is no longer there.
Scripts are notoriously difficult to spot, and you really do need to know what
you are looking for. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Many official cards contain
all manner of other legitimate files from the manufacturer to create encrypted
spaces for example, and it’s likely that any bad script has either been hidden
within the legitimate files or it has been renamed. Often, the script is
essentially telling the computer to only ever store the most recent files up to
the official capacity of the card and to delete anything older. It’s an easy
hack that even those without masses of technical know-how could probably pull
off after watching an online tutorial.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It's a speed thing…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Blisteringly fast says the
marketing hype, and the card even comes with sterling recommendations from
professional photographers, but not all memory cards are anywhere close to
being able to achieve the speeds that legitimate modern cards can achieve.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">When I create digital art I
rely on having fast equipment, deadlines for commercial commissions can be
punishingly brutal and every second counts. If I need to backup a digital
artwork or more frequently, many instances of the same work, I simply don’t
have the time to wait around for the SD Card to take longer than it needs to
take. In some cases, this can be significantly longer, by tens of minutes and
even hours which is time that I can’t always continue to use the device to do
other things.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The scammers advertise higher
speeds and they will replace the original stickers or printed information on
blank SD Cards with stickers showing the wrong specification. Often, scammers
will purchase thousands of reject cards from manufacturers without labels and
then they will create new labels that exactly match the original. In some
cases, they omit to put any specification data on the label at all, and this is
a super-easy scam if they’re then selling onwards and using OM packaging which
tends to be very plain.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">You might have purchased a
card that suggested real world speeds of 95MB read and 90MB write speeds, what
you could end up with are cards that have 95Kb read and 90Kb write speeds.
Whilst that difference might sound extreme, you are certainly never going to
achieve anything like the speeds you were sold with a counterfeit or fake card.
When this happens, the only thing you can do is to carry out real-world read
and write tests on the card to find out if yours is fake but my advice, if you
have a bad card, treat it as a fake and return it to the seller, it’s just not
worth your time or the risk it brings in finding out.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Branding SD Cards…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">We’ve all heard that some of
the supermarket home brands are the exact same product as premium brands made
in the same facility, it’s the same with medications too. Whilst home brand
medications are easy to identify as being a premium product (by the special
codes on the packaging that contain the ingredient and medical information),
the same is not true of memory cards, it’s not always obvious by looking at a
card what it is. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">You should also be mindful
that premium doesn’t always mean premium. Some of the more reputable home brand
cards are developed to an even higher specification than an original
manufacturer might make available so it’s worth checking out reviews from reputable
sources and looking closely at any real-world speeds advertised with the cards.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">There’s real money (and risk)
in faked and forged art, but there’s just as much money in fake and forged SD
Cards, they’re low value and sold in high volumes but they don’t quite have the
journalistic grab that a good art heist will have. Even home printing today
makes it possible to recreate an almost perfect replica of the original label,
and because the label is placed on a relatively low-value product, it’s also
less likely to be spotted. Couple this with the fact that some manufacturers
produce different cards for different brands, and it becomes easier to think
about how faster, larger capacity cards might be switched at source or early on
in the supply chain, or slower cards are dressed up as faster cards.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The same thing happens with
electrical equipment and particularly high-end networking equipment. I have
known major organisations save money on buying premium network switches only to
find that the switches have been mass-produced fakes that bypass the original
manufacturer's high-end security features which prevent legitimate devices from
booting if certain conditions aren’t met. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In my other life, I have even
found dubious practices that place backdoors into electrical devices so that
they are able to listen to the traffic passing through them and report it back
to a man in the middle which is usually a hacker waiting in the wings or at
worst, a rogue state. Counterfeit devices are ripe for hackers to attack and
compromise systems and yet the savings generally realised by buying fakes
aren’t always that significant, it’s just the same with the lowly SD Card.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The problem you might have
beyond unrealised expectations and a loss of time, money, business, and data,
is that the supply chains for these things are murkier than a mud infested
river. I tend to split my purchases into business critical and non-business critical,
with anything needed to be purchased for business-critical jobs going through a
supply chain security test. This is something that in my other life I am able
to pass on to a whole team of people to support me, in my life one point
zero which focuses on creating art and design, the onus of carrying out due
diligence is solely on me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Checking the provenance of any
supplier is something that you can easily do without a team of people, making
sure that third-party sellers have a long history with the platforms that they
offer their goods on and also looking through reviews, although steering away from
reviews that exist on the same platform. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">You can also contact the
company before making a purchase to find out if their contact details are
correct, and if there is any suspicion that the seller might be a bad player
it’s simply a case of finding another seller. If I purchase on a B2B (Business
to Business) basis, I always carry out checks on high-value purchases and ask
for verifiable references, and if I am purchasing from a third-party reseller
of high-value items, I generally check with the manufacturer that the seller is
listed as a channel partner. These are low effort high yield things that anyone
can do with a few minutes to spare.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">This might seem over the top
just to purchase a memory card, so I tend to pay a little more for lower value
items to ensure they come from a reputable seller who I know and trust rather
than saving a few pennies and then having the headache of backed-up work not
being backed-up. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">For higher value items and
where the savings can be much more significant, twenty minutes of phone calls
and an email usually get me the information I need to have full or no
confidence in the supplier. In my other life, I would be making visits to
production facilities and distributors and would have a legal team conducting a
credit check. Now that might be overkill for an SD Card.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiETgY8AX6QL4GniaehNBrRb5Cn2soJW_XrVxbk6Ut-o0GHu7V0MsQBP3vM2J-wTTsoFREFxe6tZ_X59UFwxE-tijdxfJjZA_xFDrU6dxGjsMcwJWOdMdrPt7mRBrBvy0ZZdaaGjU40XoI3RJZwCAlR0aOZ8jyLWvYYuTEQqCHEE07QKgMMFYGpgA5g/s4088/eighties%20entertainment.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="eighties entertainment technology artwork" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiETgY8AX6QL4GniaehNBrRb5Cn2soJW_XrVxbk6Ut-o0GHu7V0MsQBP3vM2J-wTTsoFREFxe6tZ_X59UFwxE-tijdxfJjZA_xFDrU6dxGjsMcwJWOdMdrPt7mRBrBvy0ZZdaaGjU40XoI3RJZwCAlR0aOZ8jyLWvYYuTEQqCHEE07QKgMMFYGpgA5g/w640-h640/eighties%20entertainment.jpg" title="Eighties Entertainment by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Eighties Entertainment by Mark Taylor - I really do miss the trips to Blockbuster, the VHS videocassette and my low-tech audio players. I miss my 8-bit computers more! Each element of this work was hand-drawn on a digital medium and then collaged into this single artwork! </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Physically checking the card…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Having become somewhat of an
inadvertent expert on figuring out if a Warhol is real or fake and being asked
frequently to provide some insight when the odd gallery is about to make a
significant purchase, my eye for dodgy details has become more refined over the
years. I do the exact same thing with high-end electronics too.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">For the most part, fake and
forged SD Card packaging falls into two camps. It’s either very good and could easily
pass as the original or it’s really, really bad, in which case the contents of
the packaging are almost definitely going to be fake too. Packaging is
generally the first line of defence in spotting ropey SD Cards, but beyond this, you are going to have to inspect the SD Card for signs of tampering.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The front label of the SD Card
will either be a sticker or more recently, it will be printed directly on the
card itself. If the sticker has been misplaced it would be a red flag that
something isn’t quite right. The labels are almost always placed on in the
cards with uniformity as the labelling process is often automated and the work
carried by robots who don’t usually place stickers in the wrong place!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Check for spelling errors,
slight differences in the branding, and colour. Reds are usually much darker
than the official branding or they’re very washed out, colouring is notoriously
difficult to replicate with accuracy without the official colour profiles that
any brand would have. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Any physical stickers should
be quite difficult to peel off, and there should be a serial number printed on
most cards from reputable brands if the cards are relatively recent as in being
produced certainly within the last four to five years. If the serial number is
the same on multiple cards it’s a fake. You also need to take notice of the
plastic too, good quality memory cards are almost always very stiff and very
difficult to bend, a fake can often be bent easily without too much force.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Equally, SD Cards come with
storage limits that are predicated on existing technology being available, so
if a card is offering you a capacity that doesn’t fit with the norms usually
supplied by the manufacturer, it too is likely to be a fake. I have seen older
cards which had capacities measured in megabytes being sold in place of cards
that hold gigabytes. A 128Mb card is not even close to offering the capacity of
a 128Gb card and the size prefix can easily be overlooked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Surprisingly, fakes and
forgeries are big business and because of the low value of the originals,
they’re rampant on online market places. The major brands such as SanDisk and
Kingston have security features visibly present on their cards ranging from
watermarks to colorshift technologies, and the major manufacturers will almost
always have sections on their websites that go into detail about how to spot
fakes. It is the same with big technology companies who often have entire teams
of people actively working in this area to spot and shut down bad players.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">There are lots of steps you can
take before you insert the card into your device to determine if it is the real
deal or not, but generally, when a hundred buck high-speed card is being sold
for significantly less than a competitor's lower-priced, lower specification
option, it’s a case of buyer beware. That’s not to say that some fakes are any
cheaper than the originals, if you see the same price displayed on every card
you see online the automatic assumption is that this must be an official card
so you do have to tread this path with some care.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you do find that you have
inadvertently purchased a fake, get in touch with the manufacturer. There’s not
much they are responsible for if you didn’t purchase the card directly from
them so any replacement will almost always be sent to you on a good faith
basis, but if you can provide them with purchase details they will usually do
their best to shut the bad players down. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Most of the good manufacturers
will send you an official replacement, they see it as a good business practice to
keep artists and photographers coming back to their brand, I’ve even had
replacements of older, official cards sent to me when they have produced the
odd error even many years after purchase and that’s partly why it’s worth
paying just that little bit more. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It's worth being mindful that
it’s not always the seller's fault. If they’re not intentionally scamming you,
chances are that they have had stock swapped out on route or they have also
been scammed. This happens with all manner of electronics, and there are some
quite complex scamming operations taking place that involve everything from
redirecting transport to having an inside source to make the switch. If you do
contact the seller, make sure you back it up in writing that the goods are
either fake or have been previously used, you might need that evidence later
on.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicAIcnHiKWaIS-YP4BbHrvbanb6nFKKYaIoodg1kAa6P8HY2JHQP6vj9o-_DgB6Nr3CDxZgoKpWZ8-6Qez4bbotl8yKQIemQg4p3IrHWL0BaxSoGECp24wkB6joxlZJhgeRV_4P8K64Aylsq4nt1N_OK2WVuEXw6LBWgLOk7OFtjI2atFmJacEkB3X/s4088/floppy%20disc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="floppy disc artwork with cables" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicAIcnHiKWaIS-YP4BbHrvbanb6nFKKYaIoodg1kAa6P8HY2JHQP6vj9o-_DgB6Nr3CDxZgoKpWZ8-6Qez4bbotl8yKQIemQg4p3IrHWL0BaxSoGECp24wkB6joxlZJhgeRV_4P8K64Aylsq4nt1N_OK2WVuEXw6LBWgLOk7OFtjI2atFmJacEkB3X/w640-h640/floppy%20disc.jpg" title="Floppy Disc by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Floppy Disc by Mark Taylor - I still use floppies today! I have never used a punchcard though! Why the clothes pegs? They're great for holding PCBs while you solder them and better than bulldog clips, every geek needs pegs!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Pre-Used Equipment…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I get it, technology has
always been expensive and it is becoming even more expensive post-pandemic (I’m
still not convinced it’s over despite what Borris tells us…) and because of the
global chip shortage. Tech is in demand and there’s only a finite supply of the
good stuff in the world's supply chains at the moment. That situation looks like
it will become slightly better towards the end of 2023 and that’s exactly when
you might even find an over-abundance of chips with prices that are starting to
drop back down closer to pre-pandemic levels. That’s assuming that the chip
manufacturers can actually resolve the current issues.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">To add some context to that
and to give an indication of just how bad things are at the moment, the order I
placed three months ago for a brand new dye-sublimation printer has now been
updated with a new delivery date and it should be with me sometime in early
2023. The long wait times for technology and the limited supply are also
currently driving an upsurge in demand for pre-used technology, meaning that
even prices for older equipment are currently going through the roof. This is
having a massive impact on businesses as well as consumers but it is especially
difficult for small businesses right now.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In normal times, whatever
normal now is, pre-used technology with plenty of remaining life could be found
at considerably cheaper prices than it can be found today. The limited
supply and high demand have suddenly driven up prices and bargains are becoming more
difficult but not as yet, completely impossible to find. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you are in the market for
pre-used or pre-loved technology, there are a few things that are worth
thinking about before you make any kind of purchase. Firstly, it’s worth
bearing in mind that pre-owned technology that still has plenty of life
remaining is unlikely to be the bargain that it would have been had it not been
for the global chip shortage. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">More and more home users and
businesses are having to turn to the used market just to get their hands on
essential technologies that they need to either carry out their business or to work
from home. The difference in price over previous years is reflected by the
current demand and in some cases, some technology is now being sold for very
close to the original retail price and sometimes even more where brand new
technology is currently impossible to get hold of. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">There is less demand for older
technology which might still just be within the window where it can continue to
receive updates and patches from the manufacturer. Windows 10 for example won’t
stop receiving support from Microsoft until 2025, but what happens then?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">At some point in the
life-cycle of technology, the original manufacturer stops supporting older
devices. It makes sense because they will want you to invest in the latest and
greatest technology and much like mobile phones, they would love it if all of
their users were using the exact same platform with the exact same version of
whatever software is installed. They ideally want everyone to jump ship to the
latest model the second its released and in a perfect world, they would also
want everyone to apply every update on release too.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Technology doesn’t happen that
way though and manufacturers set expectations much earlier than they once did
to inform users about the dates when support can be expected to come to an end.
This gives consumers and businesses time to plan for upgrades and it also gives
users an early warning about just how much life is left in a product and this
is really important for those looking towards the pre-used market.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">You also have a choice when it
comes to buying older technologies that you won’t necessarily get when buying
new. You can either go for pre-used or refurbished or reconditioned. Pre-used
devices generally come with an element of risk in that they will rarely be sold
with any guarantee. Refurbished and reconditioned devices are usually sold
either by the original manufacturer or retailer or a channel partner of the
manufacturer, although there are also quite a few independent suppliers who
have their own refurbishment programs in place. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">These refurbished devices
generally come complete with some level of warranty, with the major
manufacturers often giving a warranty that is equal to the one supplied when
buying a new product. The devices are often graded too, meaning that you can
pick up a device that shows very little in the way of wear and tear and save a
little cash in the process. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you are buying a pre-used
device say from a private seller who wouldn’t usually be expected to supply any
kind of warranty with it, there are some risks in doing that. Unlike buying a
second-hand vehicle, you won’t receive any kind of service record with it.
Technology can be tetchy at the best of times but with the second hand market
there’s not really any way to find out if the device has displayed some
intermittent fault previously that could turn out to be something more drastic
a little way down the line. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">On the upside, you can usually
find a bargain on the second-hand market as buyers tend to want to offload old
technology whenever they buy a new replacement and they usually want to offload
it quickly. The other significant risk about buying from any of these markets
is just how much longer will the device continue to receive support from the
manufacturer with device and firmware updates and more importantly, any
critical security updates that if not applied could leave you vulnerable to
bad players who are constantly looking out for weaknesses to exploit.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">By 2025, what you can expect
to see is a pre-used market flooded with relatively new-looking laptops
alongside a slew of older ones and desktop PCs for the simple reason that
Windows 11 is only compatible with devices containing a Windows 11 compatible TPM
chip unless you use Microsoft's update which bypasses the need for it. That could, however, result in a severe loss of overall performance. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Any device that doesn’t have the option of upgrading to Windows 11 will
be to all intents and purposes, at the literal end of its life with the only
remaining options being something like adding a Linux/Unix distribution but
that will have an impact on its usefulness as an artists tool for creating
digital art with traditional image editing tools. To go down this route you
will also need to master Linux which to be fair, you probably should be getting
to grips with anyway, it’s the future.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Another factor that you might
want to consider is the age of the device which is not always apparent from
just looking at it. Manufacturers only tend to make slight cosmetic differences
to the external bodies of the devices between generations, but it is what sits
under the hood that really matters. The microprocessor for example might be
listed as being an Intel i5, a processor still very much in use and advertised today,
but the microprocessor in the device could very well be a first-generation i5
that was introduced in 2009 meaning that the modern-sounding laptop in the
advert could already be well past its best at 13-years old. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">In 2022, we are now on the 12<sup>th</sup>
generation of i5 processors from Intel so a lower cost but much more recent i3
Processor would be way faster and more capable. Another case of buyer beware.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrLpYzJ5qA__E-ZnxFyXDaDrRj6i7dLG09_tXJd6qZ67ooWhn1_o3NHwJ93t3qjgOBUmuMLgFzEjTJBl2qYHwJ25C-Lhc2u9sW5hUpBXlVubz7Sk9ySUtBHrqSqa_XVJJWK6fRWHNQL-BJOJROuIAmOIqNG4Ax8LWwsjxneNIeKWY8bYl99UI5ecw1/s4088/hello%20world.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="80s computer and floppy disc artwork" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrLpYzJ5qA__E-ZnxFyXDaDrRj6i7dLG09_tXJd6qZ67ooWhn1_o3NHwJ93t3qjgOBUmuMLgFzEjTJBl2qYHwJ25C-Lhc2u9sW5hUpBXlVubz7Sk9ySUtBHrqSqa_XVJJWK6fRWHNQL-BJOJROuIAmOIqNG4Ax8LWwsjxneNIeKWY8bYl99UI5ecw1/w640-h640/hello%20world.jpg" title="Hello World by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Hello World by Mark Taylor - when hung on a plain wall, this feels as though the cables are leaping off the canvas. That's the exact look I wanted from creating this. Again, every element has been hand-drawn and painted using only a screen and a stylus!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It’s easy to dress a used
laptop up in sheep’s clothing…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Desktop computers, laptops and
tablets can be a minefield if you plan to purchase a pre-used device to create
digital art. Applications such as Photoshop CC just won’t run at all on older
devices or at least if they do, they will run like a legless dog. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">As the life-cycle of computers
has evolved so have the minimum specifications for serious applications such as
Photoshop and the other Creative Cloud applications. Even applications which
are now predominantly cloud-based still need to use local resources on the
device and will have minimum entry requirements to operate without issue.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The hard disk and storage
capacities of older devices can also be a bone of contention when running
modern applications. As devices have become smaller, the need for storage has
become greater and for the most part, casual storage is taken care of using
cloud-based technologies so the relatively small storage capacities usually
included with modern base model devices are less of an issue if you are using
the device in a casual manner and aren’t reliant on having access to large
applications. Great for the office and school, but not so great for a digital
artist who needs to be at the pinnacle of the latest technology and who will
consume storage like it’s going out of fashion. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">For casual users who don’t
have to rely on technology to create digital art, this isn’t too much of an
issue. For professional users, things get complicated quite quickly. If you are
installing a package such as Creative Cloud, the package relies on local
storage being available to install the application on and as and when
additional updates are released, the need to have larger capacity local storage
becomes an ever-growing issue. Applications rarely become smaller in size and
especially as they are updated.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Another issue with any device
that has limited local storage is that the device can perform sluggishly as it
reads and writes data constantly. As most modern devices are
non-user-serviceable it can also be problematic even to attempt to install an
upgraded storage medium. My Surface Book for example would need to have the
entire touch screen removed to get anywhere close to the on-board storage
device, or anything else that makes it work. A desktop PC in a traditional case
would have more options to keep up with any future demands placed on it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Modern laptops are just not
designed to be upgraded, they’re designed to be thrown away and that’s
something that’s not only environmentally problematic, when you are talking about
a $2,000 device it's not unlike a subscription if you really think about it.
Having said that, if you are a busy user you could expect a laptop to serve you
well for 5-years or so on the outside if the operating system support is still
in place. Still, throughout this time the software availability at least for the
latest versions will begin to diminish over time. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I still have a 2014 MacBook Pro
that continues to run the latest OS from Apple, for now at least, with none of
the keyboard issues that my recent MacBook Pro initially had. The downside is
that for anything other than general browsing, it has become massively more
limiting over the past year and the way overpriced Mac Pro is now taking the
heavy load of Creative Cloud while I am at my desk.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMahq6ujyoOYYPH_wt70CpgkeR9_tqiz_kNDTRX55qN5nTHgnJCurWue7hnNKDV1XrFlxxbV6y83MIoC5yZ61dbCiQyRNaAkhCr3q0d1N8_4UaLa6ScJA54DTv80VBjrGi5vUne_ibMDeQs_mOdgA3dDrmwPRGD-n1H7x-l2-_YngrI8p8x6VPairB/s4088/eighties%20innovation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="80s technology artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMahq6ujyoOYYPH_wt70CpgkeR9_tqiz_kNDTRX55qN5nTHgnJCurWue7hnNKDV1XrFlxxbV6y83MIoC5yZ61dbCiQyRNaAkhCr3q0d1N8_4UaLa6ScJA54DTv80VBjrGi5vUne_ibMDeQs_mOdgA3dDrmwPRGD-n1H7x-l2-_YngrI8p8x6VPairB/w640-h640/eighties%20innovation.jpg" title="Eighties Innovation by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Eighties Innovation by Mark Taylor - the 80s had it all, from pocket TVs to low-cost computers. Then tech grew up and became both bigger and smaller at the same time.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Check the power supply,
cables, ports, and the discount…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you are buying a pre-owned
device you should check the power supply and cables. Inevitably, with any
device that is designed to be portable, users will carry them around often in
bags containing everything else you need on your travels. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">When the cables are
repeatedly plugged in and pulled out they tend to become worn over time and the
cost of replacing the power supply can wipe out any savings you made. Power
supplies are often bespoke to a specific manufacturer and in many cases, they
are specific to a particular device. Generic power supplies are available for
many laptops but they might not be suitable for all.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">It's also worth checking that
any USB or display ports haven’t become loose too, for the simple reason that a
laptop is notoriously difficult to repair and it usually means taking it to a
specialist. One area you might not immediately think about is the battery,
again, unlike laptops of yesteryear, most modern batteries are built into the
device and are not user-replaceable. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">As time goes by the capacity
of the battery will diminish and suddenly you might find that the laptop needs
to remain plugged into an electrical socket just to power on or you will need
to replace the battery if it is replaceable. Built-in batteries usually require
an approved service centre installation, so again, you will need to be mindful
of any potential additional costs.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you are in the market for a
new device, it’s exactly the same as it is with displays and monitors. Older
devices from last years range might not have more modern USB C ports which are
faster and can carry more power, or their screen displays might be of a much
lower quality and resolution than the more recent models in the range. Small,
no-so-obvious details can make a huge difference to digital artists.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">This is an area though where
retailers can make last year's models look like huge bargains as they will often
discount them heavily just before a newer model with an upgraded processor,
more memory and storage and an all-around better device is released. You do need
to be cautious with retailers, discounts are rarely what they seem especially
towards the end of a products first year's sales run. Recommended retail prices
rarely reflect the prices that devices ever sell for yet the discounts applied
will always be based on the manufacturers RRP. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I scoured various websites
when writing this article just to see how much of a saving could be made and in
almost every case with the exception of Apple devices, I was able to find that
the device was often at its most expensive since release and had never been
offered at the manufacturers recommended retail price, often it had been
heavily discounted and it would have been cheaper to purchase the device
sometimes 6-months earlier.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I also found refurbished
devices selling for more than you could purchase a brand new and more recent
model in some cases once discounts had been applied to the newer devices or if
you shopped around for the best price. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">As with most technology
purchases, more often than not it can be a false economy saving a little upfront because you will generally need to upgrade much earlier than you would,
had you have spent a little more from the outset on a newer model. You really
do have to do your homework when it comes to buying any form of technology. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Retailers are masters at
presenting bargain technology buys, but technology is too expensive for them to
have it sitting around for too long, they have to keep it moving to make way
for new stock or hit sales targets. That doesn’t usually mean that they will be
overly generous with discounts, resellers who supply the retailers and the
manufacturers just don’t have huge profit margins in technology, they make
money on the upsell, the software, the subscriptions and the services that you
usually buy alongside any new device, and it is usually these extras that almost
subsidise the true cost of the technologies available.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I know that most channel
partners who supply the retailers are making almost next to nothing on the
devices and some manufacturers have been known to sell the technology at a loss
to the channel partner in order to grab a larger market share which they can
trade from. In short, if there’s already next to no profit, there will be next
to no real discount and retailers will be even less inclined to take the hit.
Technology is notoriously susceptible to paper-based values.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYZXxgrUKnu1chRDjeGgKCu89h3e8mW1EuY2_dthGVPKkLFMUC0KSEzL6jSWeE0auBZShtcbNtS3DjblqgQKlxr6m45d42sTPlE-HrACIDbtoEVeJnV-LftcGDyEdmyBfwo-o8Pzcv7_WaQyECNZYHJJ9Y8KrepRn0nfgImhdEWw--jN8flDq__8BO/s4088/insert%20coin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="coin operated mechanism and coin door" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYZXxgrUKnu1chRDjeGgKCu89h3e8mW1EuY2_dthGVPKkLFMUC0KSEzL6jSWeE0auBZShtcbNtS3DjblqgQKlxr6m45d42sTPlE-HrACIDbtoEVeJnV-LftcGDyEdmyBfwo-o8Pzcv7_WaQyECNZYHJJ9Y8KrepRn0nfgImhdEWw--jN8flDq__8BO/w640-h640/insert%20coin.jpg" title="Insert Coin" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Insert Coin by Mark Taylor - Feels like I have been inserting coins in technology ever since the 70s! Again, each element has been created as its own artwork, hand-painted and drawn, then juxtaposed into a single piece of art. These works take between 5 and 80-hours to produce!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Top Tip and why it might be
worth holding out for new technology…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Generally, new models of
electronic devices tend to be released in the early spring or in the fall. In some
cases you can pick up a discounted device just before the new model arrives,
but bear in mind that the device by that point will have already been running
the clock down on any future support and discounts aren’t always representative
of the best price the device has ever been sold for. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Buying current generation
technology just prior to the release of newer generation technology means that
you could end up with a device that will need to be replaced a year earlier
than if you were to wait until the newer model is released and you spent the
same as the previous generations full price. Whilst most devices will continue
to be supported with newer versions of the operating systems and updates, that
support usually ends at least a year before the newer device.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Get more out of the technology
you already own…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">We rarely utilise all of the
features that our current technology provides, yet we are always keen to buy
into a new model so we can have even more new features that in all likelihood, we
might not use either.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">One of the main reasons people
upgrade their phones is to take advantage of the one big technological leap that
we have come to expect every year which is with the camera. Yet there are ways
that you can make your existing phone camera get a little closer to the output
of the new models camera if you understand how the settings for your current camera
application work. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The differences between last
year's model and this years are usually that the newer model might run a little
bit faster which you’re unlikely to notice if you are only upgrading from last
year's model, the battery life might be improved but it will never be quite like
that old Nokia you once owned that only needed charging once a year, and the
number of pixels the camera can take photographs at might be a pixel or two
more. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">As most people who take
professional photographs will be using a professional camera, paying out a
thousand bucks to gain an extra megapixel which you won’t necessarily need if
you are never printing the image out, is probably more than it would cost to
purchase a reasonably solid entry-level semi-professional camera with much more
advanced features and better overall results. Sure, it’s less convenient to
carry around a camera as well as a phone, but the results will mostly always be
better.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Technically, the leaps made
between this years technology and last years aren’t the kind of leaps that we
would see between generations of technology a decade or so ago. Mostly we will
get subtle upgrades here and there, a minor facelift or a millimetre shaved off
the size, but the general user environment and experience will often be the
same as the phone you are using today. The cost of an upgrade could in some
cases be a thousand bucks plus and that seems like a lot of money that could be
put to better use, especially when it’s almost always possible to get similar
results from the device you already own.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">One way we can upgrade our
phones, or more specifically our phone cameras, is to take a dive into the
settings. If we take an iPhone using the latest version of iOS, I was able to
produce better results from an iPhone 12 than I could get natively from an
iPhone 13 by following this settings recipe which can be used on any Apple device
running iOS 15 or iPadOS 15.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">The Recipe for Professional
Looking Photos on iPhone and iPad:</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Firstly, open up your photos
app and select anything that you think could do with a touch of added pizazz.
Don’t worry, the photos app on Apple devices allows you to create
non-destructive edits so if you don’t like the changes you can revert back to
the original at any time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Once you have the photo, click
on the edit tab in the upper right-hand corner. Now we are going to manually
change the settings rather than click the awful magic wand. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Raise the exposure to 100<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Raise the brilliance to 100<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Everything should now look
like a car crash and you should have a very bright image with hardly any
detail, and that’s just fine!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Next, lower the highlights to
-35<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Decrease shadows to -31<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Decrease contrast to -33<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Reduce brightness to -15<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">At this point your photo
should look truly awful, don’t panic, this is an expected outcome and you’re
doing just fine.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Adjust the black point setting
to 11<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Set the vibrance to 9<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Increase warmth to 11<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Set the tint level to 46<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Now we need to go back to the
start and set both the exposure and brilliance settings back to zero.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">At this point, you should be
amazed that your iPhone has produced an image worthy of a gallery exhibition,
or at least it should show so much more detail in your work in progress shots.
There will be a few photo subjects and colour combinations that will look a
little less refined, but you can tweak the settings such as tint and warmth and
see if that works slightly better. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">That particular combination is
just one of many you can find online, people literally spend their spare time
changing settings to see what happens and then they will publish the results,
and there will be settings hacks or recipes for most devices that will let you
push a little more from them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjWir_0xuFEQZkiuHRO_W5rnsC4paC9Jsz1fc9C0iLQmqbhvhQe_Pu-HR7dIPq7cUNVShWLrNPdqfhBnwz0gCEWPofliTHGz8nmdrV5knK4091ydeObvtp2aNxLi2ImkuVIX0iR46MVoGpr_fy2YR5OuWRbIc_lSxM6g9eOMz5j1RmZgtP9Qoq1RwH/s4088/roller%20disco.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="roller skates and 1980s music technology artwork" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjWir_0xuFEQZkiuHRO_W5rnsC4paC9Jsz1fc9C0iLQmqbhvhQe_Pu-HR7dIPq7cUNVShWLrNPdqfhBnwz0gCEWPofliTHGz8nmdrV5knK4091ydeObvtp2aNxLi2ImkuVIX0iR46MVoGpr_fy2YR5OuWRbIc_lSxM6g9eOMz5j1RmZgtP9Qoq1RwH/w640-h640/roller%20disco.jpg" title="Roller Disco by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Roller Disco by Mark Taylor - I absolutely loved creating this. I spent a lot of time on the stitching and leather detail, and probably more time than anyone should on creating rust! </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">One more top tip…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I did think about leaving this
tip on the sidelines and tell you about it another day, but this is maybe the
best time-saver that hardly anyone uses, although it won’t save you any money,
it will save you a lot of time!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you frequently find
yourself having to cut and paste on your PC, you are probably using the
keyboard shortcuts, CTRL and C to copy, CTRL and X to cut, and CTRL and V to
paste. It’s useful when you’re typing because your hands can remain in touch
with the keyboard and you don’t have to fiddle around with the trackpad or the
mouse. I have to say at this point though, if this is how you copy and paste you
are doing it wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Some Windows PCs will need you
to go into the settings and physically turn on your clipboard history, but
generally and especially on Windows 11, if you press the Windows key together
with V, you should be given the opportunity to turn on the clipboard history without
first going into the settings. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">And that simple key
combination is the shortcut you have been yearning for, probably forever. The
combination of the Windows key and V will bring up a history of the last 25 items
you have placed into the clipboard allowing you to choose exactly what you want
to copy and paste. If you regularly need to paste the same text into a
document, you can also pin it to the top so that it’s always the first item on
the list. This is really useful if you find that you are constantly having to
retype your email address or contact details. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">You probably only use 20% of
the features you already have…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Having spoken to pretty much every
one of my handful of really close friends, none of them knew about clipboard
history, and that’s not surprising. Most of us will only ever use around 20% of
the features available to us from any gadget. It’s the same with Microsoft Word
too, there are hundreds of cool things
we can do with it, yet we mostly fire the application up, type what we need to
type and then get on with our lives. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">And the same thing happens
when we use our mobile phones but we constantly upgrade them because the new
version will allow us to do something else. Most of us will use our phones to
perform the exact same functions every day. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you are only using your
smartphone for messages, taking the occasional photograph, or browsing social
media, a faster processor doesn’t mean that you will be able to consume the
content you are looking at any quicker, it means that applications will open a
fraction sooner, or you could have two applications running at the same time so
you can save a few more seconds switching between apps. If you are not using
those features today, it’s unlikely that you will use them tomorrow on a newer
phone.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you use your phone to play
games, the processor might make more of a difference, but if you are paying a
thousand bucks to play Candy Crush a teeny tiny bit faster, that thousand bucks
would be better spent on a new generation games console or a Nintendo Switch if
you want portability. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">There is more of a reason to
upgrade when you use technology to work with digital imaging, graphic design,
or video editing, slight increases in processor speed will make a huge
difference to your workflow. But, if your professional digital demands only
stretch to completing paperwork or editing spreadsheets, chances are you are
not pushing any recent technology anywhere even close to its limits. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrtUnS1FqErZUFOLGzlqBckccqmFeD-dft0ZBPL6uDV7BcNypaGYQe2kfo2vk_NwnovqJtobYJyuQImNu2DeFxqGpZdYPeu5hTuGPOXRioTx1_OU892MBnOfUE0p_Yz7ZcOFgQ7OnvzsTtjoDgJP00QnB0JmUbhEKgz4bMKDu0VDFVKH8_-ONEr9wD/s4088/do%20not%20feed%20the%20seagulls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="fish and chips, seagull, seaside landscape art" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrtUnS1FqErZUFOLGzlqBckccqmFeD-dft0ZBPL6uDV7BcNypaGYQe2kfo2vk_NwnovqJtobYJyuQImNu2DeFxqGpZdYPeu5hTuGPOXRioTx1_OU892MBnOfUE0p_Yz7ZcOFgQ7OnvzsTtjoDgJP00QnB0JmUbhEKgz4bMKDu0VDFVKH8_-ONEr9wD/w640-h640/do%20not%20feed%20the%20seagulls.jpg" title="Do Not Feed The Seagulls by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Do Not Feed The Seagulls by Mark Taylor - If you're off to the seaside this summer, do not feed the seagulls! Yes, I still create landscapes and I love fish and chips!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Yes, technology is
frustrating…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">As I said at the beginning of
this epic tome, technology can be frustrating and modern technology not only
has in-built frustration, it now comes bundled with what is essentially, a
fixed date that you can expect it to stop working. My 40-year-old Commodore 64
8-bit home computer is still going strong and has never had any kind of update
so I do wonder just how advanced we humans have become in some respects. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">But you can avoid a lot of
this frustration either by giving things time to update or spending a little
more money now to save a lot more later. We haven’t even touched on the various
eco-systems that we become tied into, but as a professional creative, making
the right technology choices can make a huge difference to your creative
output. Not only can you save time, but buying at the right time can
potentially save you big money on your bottom line. As a small business, every
penny counts in such an uncertain economy as the one we are facing today.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7I8fbtloV7XlvJINcCuHf0TEmNFdoDK6tSmjMknLVGAJfKd5X8mKOoXOWvSvngYYXq_WpVQgc_pWnHXLEulMZWV8SPswl9TewOhZu17T7PEX1b-oziHuBGiuH7qEu_ONDvqGWfvWkss2Z-kMF_kTpIo0_bASKmhD-nkK6RSGsDdg1plr-PPrutX-v/s4088/Obsolescence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="obsolete vintage technology artwork" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7I8fbtloV7XlvJINcCuHf0TEmNFdoDK6tSmjMknLVGAJfKd5X8mKOoXOWvSvngYYXq_WpVQgc_pWnHXLEulMZWV8SPswl9TewOhZu17T7PEX1b-oziHuBGiuH7qEu_ONDvqGWfvWkss2Z-kMF_kTpIo0_bASKmhD-nkK6RSGsDdg1plr-PPrutX-v/w640-h640/Obsolescence.jpg" title="Obsolescence by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Obsolescence by Mark Taylor - A retro collectors dream artwork filled with nostalgia and obsolete technology, because it all ends up being obsolete one day and all we have left are the memories!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Until Next Time!</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Hopefully you will be able to
get a little bit more from your current devices and hopefully I will have
busted a few technology myths for you too. Tech is a confusing world made even
more confusing by those who absolutely want to retain their God-like geek image
and not share tech's inner secrets with you. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Tech is perhaps the biggest
money pit there ever was but that doesn’t mean that you absolutely always have
to throw money into it, although there will be plenty who sell it who will
disagree with me. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">There are entire ecosystems
that spring up around new models of anything. Be it mobile phones and the case
industry, review websites that aren’t as bothered by you owning the new tech as
they are by keeping you coming back and contributing to ad-revenue, everyone
will tell you that you need to upgrade when you probably don’t. We buy into it
because we all have that inner fear of missing out. Personally, as much as I
love technology I would much rather spend my money on art. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">Understanding the basics that
the geeks who sell it don’t want you to know will make sure that you can focus
on your creative process and with luck, you might even have a little extra cash
to sink into that other money pit we call art supplies, and yes, I will be
sharing the secrets of the art supply money pit soon too because if there was
ever a bigger money pit than technology, it exists in the world of art supplies
and don’t even get me started on the Mega-Gallery, that can wait for another
day!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">About Mark…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">I am an artist and blogger and
live in Staffordshire, England. My days are filled with creating all sorts of art,
dog walking and Teams Meetings, while still being stuck somewhere in the
eighties with no intention of joining the nineties.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">You can purchase my art
through my Fine Art America store or my Pixels site here: </span><a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank"><span style="line-height: 200%;">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</span></a><span style="line-height: 200%;"> You
can also purchase my work, including my limited editions, directly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">All of the proceeds from my
Pixels and FAA sales contribute to continuing this website and ensuring you get
wholly independent tips and advice without any hidden agenda and without any
need to sign up to anything!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">You can also view my portfolio
website at </span><a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank"><span style="line-height: 200%;">https://beechhousemedia.com</span></a><span style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">If you are on Facebook, you
can give me a follow right here, </span><a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="line-height: 200%;">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span style="line-height: 200%;">
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at </span><a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="line-height: 200%;">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</span></a></span></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com2Staffordshire, UK52.8792745 -2.057186822.128357373215408 -37.2134368 83.6301916267846 33.0990632tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-46237078042320767572022-04-06T10:50:00.001+01:002022-04-06T10:50:40.065+01:00Collecting Art on a Budget in 2022<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;">Collecting Art on a Budget</span></b></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_nBi_-d6LyRLBkmpwDjTP-F9ptwQLXI0-RO-ziBQfp7Dejl6AvLzEz_kUtorutJbSVVm-whLPqTCvDxaGck6OHPAcltx1cRSa8x4OeYZ-DGA17Am4NeR9n1Gi6aNR4hgRk-M4qmqFZG8aOtvAC6ndk01soTd4_S-5XGoJoFrfc2tBjrGCi9bZCSTP/s2560/collecting%20art%20on%20a%20budget%20cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="abstract cover image for collecting art on a budget blog" border="0" data-original-height="1920" data-original-width="2560" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_nBi_-d6LyRLBkmpwDjTP-F9ptwQLXI0-RO-ziBQfp7Dejl6AvLzEz_kUtorutJbSVVm-whLPqTCvDxaGck6OHPAcltx1cRSa8x4OeYZ-DGA17Am4NeR9n1Gi6aNR4hgRk-M4qmqFZG8aOtvAC6ndk01soTd4_S-5XGoJoFrfc2tBjrGCi9bZCSTP/w640-h480/collecting%20art%20on%20a%20budget%20cover.png" title="Collecting Art on a Budget" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Collecting Art on a Budget...</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Every artist was once unknown
until the point they earned the badge we call, discovered. Of course, some
never do quite reach the heady heights of discovery no matter how hard they
work for it, and that’s a real shame because the world is really missing out on
some great art by ignoring the small businesses run by the many independent
creatives who are not only contributing so much to the arts but supporting
local economies too.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">So, you want to collect art on
a budget?</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you are thinking about
becoming an art collector on a level that’s a little more than just a casual
buyer, it’s often said that you will need a keen eye, a budget that you are
able to stretch on demand, ideally a few spare walls and an expectation that
once you step on to the art collecting path the bug for collecting is likely to
bite you very hard. It’s at this point that the budget will have to stretch even
more.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">From experience, that advice
is probably good advice. You can become hooked on collecting and spend an
insane amount of money feeding your newfound passion, but collecting art doesn’t
have to break the bank. If you don’t mind missing out on hanging a genuine
Matisse on your wall, there are much more affordable ways to collect great art on a budget that most people can probably afford, even when economies shrink.
That’s the real joy of art, there’s something literally for everyone to enjoy. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLRDZ9NlvKMpMZlBC3sdU9VGzABAlD8UVNHY5TEKy5te_iYikC1exAz2e9lu9OTAXC5DmNo0ohKWhOHweMA_PI4pNPmWoDwBjp48kLf-fn59Exy6DHV_k_7v_lVXAR_hYc7hX424rFtVUZ2DhmdKpwzR1wrhPzj_k4LAVG11ua8Pqr-3N6bZiO1HQc/s4088/circuit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="circuit abstract artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLRDZ9NlvKMpMZlBC3sdU9VGzABAlD8UVNHY5TEKy5te_iYikC1exAz2e9lu9OTAXC5DmNo0ohKWhOHweMA_PI4pNPmWoDwBjp48kLf-fn59Exy6DHV_k_7v_lVXAR_hYc7hX424rFtVUZ2DhmdKpwzR1wrhPzj_k4LAVG11ua8Pqr-3N6bZiO1HQc/w640-h640/circuit.jpg" title="Circuit - An abstract artwork by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Circuit - One of my most recent releases and one of the most challenging abstracts I have ever created!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">I am a big believer in making
art accessible to everyone. Art isn’t something that should only ever be
enjoyed by the world’s most affluent people, it should be enjoyed, cherished,
and celebrated by anyone and everyone who wants to either produce it, collect
it, or support the arts in general. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">So, this week we will be
looking at some of the options you have to not only build up a great collection
on a budget but also make sure that what you are collecting is way more unique
than you might find if you were purchasing mass-produced prints from the big
box stores or even original works from one of the many mega-galleries that seem
to have become more about corporate than they are about art. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">We will also take a dive into
the world of art collecting a little more broadly. There’s a great deal of
information that you will need to know even when you are collecting on a budget
and with a little homework you can avoid many of the pitfalls that new collectors
face. Working out what’s marketing hype and what’s worth collecting can be
challenging to the uninitiated, but the good news is that learning to avoid the
pitfalls isn’t at all that difficult.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is, as they say, all
relative. Whether you are spending a Million plus on a Banksy or a hundred
bucks on Etsy, the same principles, issues, and challenges can often apply. It
is all relative to what you can and can’t afford to lose, and ideally, if you
follow some simple steps and carry out your own due diligence, you shouldn’t be
losing anything. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Knowing where to start…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Before you decide on
collecting anything or even coming up with a budget, it’s worth spending some
time working out firstly, why you want to collect art, and secondly, you need to
figure out what you love. You also need to decide whether an artwork's future
value will be a determining factor in your collection, or whether you can live
with the likelihood that finding a bargain Matisse at a yard sale is a lot like
your chances of winning the lottery over and over again.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Is art a good investment?</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">I can answer this in a single paragraph.
No. Art isn’t generally a good investment if you are collecting it on a tight budget,
or looking to get rich quick. It’s not even a great investment when budget isn’t
an issue. Art is a risky business where prices can be swayed by a single critic
review. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">You can make a successful
investment in art, and there’s little to no love needed towards a piece of art
if the outcome you want at the end is purely monetary. But, art is mostly, and for most people, a
really bad investment if you want to get rich quick or get rich at least
anytime soon from the proceeds of the art alone. Personally, I have never been
convinced that collecting art with its future
investment potential at the front of your mind is a great reason to collect art
at all, even if you can afford top tier artworks from the world's most elite
galleries there is never any guarantee that you will see any kind of financial
return on your investment.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">The value of art is based on a
very simple model of supply and demand. It’s also a model which also brings
with it, huge swings upwards in value at times, and equally and more likely,
huge swings in a downward direction too. That can be the case if the art receives
a bad critic review or when there are downward shifts in the economy, although
the economy is often less of a factor. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you want to fully
understand whether art is a good or bad investment, you only need to look at
the number of art galleries that have shuttered their doors for the last time
in the past decade. About ten years ago, I remember asking a gallery owner
friend of mine if they would set up another gallery if they could start all
over again and the answer was a resounding no. It had never dawned on me before
then that galleries are essentially making continued investments either in art
or artists that may never sell, whereas collectors are purchasing the work because
they want it and don’t necessarily want or need to sell it on.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">For wealthy investors, art is
perhaps more of an alluring investment opportunity, particularly if art is just
a single strand within a much broader investment portfolio where you are not
too dependent on one particular investment opportunity coming through. With some artworks from some artists, there’s
much less of a risk that the artwork will depreciate in value over time, but
that kind of art tends to already be at the upper end of the scale when it
comes to its value. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Art at the tens of thousands
to million buck plus level is less likely to lose money than art that is more
affordable to the masses but that doesn’t always mean even at this level, that
the artwork will always increase in value. A critical review from a
professional art critic can make or break an artist's career and the value of a
collection, as can a misstep by the artist or any number of other factors.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Art isn’t like the stock
market, it can increase in value when the financial markets are performing at
their worst, so for some people, it makes sense to diversify their portfolios
by adding in a pricey art collection to their portfolio in the hope that it
increases in value. Very little about collecting art at this level is really
about collecting art, it becomes more about managing risk. It’s all about
scarcity, supply, demand, and knowing when to make a move.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">When it comes to collecting
art at the level where you are talking about spending tens of thousands or
maybe millions of dollars or pounds rather than buying a small original from
your favourite Etsy seller, your budget will need to also stretch to caring for
the work. That care will most likely need to include things like having to have
temperature-controlled environments with detectors that measure humidity
levels or making sure that any lighting doesn’t create harmful UV rays that
could make the paint fade or crack prematurely. As art ages, it becomes needier and needier.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">This is a level of art
collecting that can quickly become more expensive than owning and operating a
private jet, in some cases a fleet of private jets, and oh, don’t forget the
insurance, management fees and the team of preservation experts that you’ll
need to have on call. If you then want to move the art from A to B, you might
also need a team of specialist art movers to take care of things. If you think about
the cost of sending regular parcels around the world, think about sending
multi-million dollar works on an aircraft in a temperature-controlled container
along with a team of experts who know how to look after work in transit. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">The simple fact that we can’t
get away from is that art collecting can be expensive, but for those of us who
are unable to drop down eye-watering budgets of between $5000 and $500,000, or
possibly even more, art collecting tends to be something that won’t necessarily
make you mega-rich in monetary terms, but it will certainly make you richer in
culture. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Risks to artists can be just
as high as they are for collectors, art is generally expensive to create and
there are very few guarantees that anything created will sell. It’s not uncommon
for many artists to always have a collection of their own work on hand, and
that goes for some of the most prolific and popular artists too. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">There was one piece of career
advice I remember getting from my mentor when I first started creating art
professionally and that was to never become an artist. Instead, he told me that
there would be way more financial benefit if I became one of the supporting
cast. I had no idea what he was talking about until my first gallery gig when I
handed over 50% of the sale to the gallery, after spending 30% on art supplies,
and giving 20% away to the tax office. It is though, the one piece of advice I
am glad I never took.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi18zs_1qt6FTVfJ71SxBB_eNP_JAZO6tYBp81B95waetLeREUVhU-dVSi2MqYWiaMvH39gN31DeLVvDbx5C9tbJTGVjynhgxQpsjZ96hsAQoxCKSEo31MYFkhfqs6GgFDTg_Pf_6SHZj6HcFJYl6gqBPbc7H_a18eoMXj3EwTVQQFGArRbpnUww6yg/s4088/out%20of%20order.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Out of order abstract artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi18zs_1qt6FTVfJ71SxBB_eNP_JAZO6tYBp81B95waetLeREUVhU-dVSi2MqYWiaMvH39gN31DeLVvDbx5C9tbJTGVjynhgxQpsjZ96hsAQoxCKSEo31MYFkhfqs6GgFDTg_Pf_6SHZj6HcFJYl6gqBPbc7H_a18eoMXj3EwTVQQFGArRbpnUww6yg/w640-h640/out%20of%20order.jpg" title="Out of Order - Abstract artwork by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Out of Order - A follow-up work to Circuit - Mark Taylor (2022)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Primary and Secondary Markets…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Art is filled with jargon, so
understanding what some of that jargon really means is perhaps one of the first
things you need to get on top of. Art is either sold in the primary or
secondary market, regardless of who created it and where it’s purchased from. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Primary sales of artworks are
sales that originate from the artist, their agent, or the artist's studio or
publisher. There is a link back to the artist in the primary market so if you
buy through this route, it’s a safe bet that the artist will receive some level
of benefit or payment. But never assume that the artist will receive the bulk
of that benefit or payment, most of what an artist earns will go immediately out
of the door as soon as it lands in their bank account. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">The secondary market is
usually a sign of a growing interest in an artist's work where work is resold,
usually through secondary galleries and art brokers, and even at auction
houses. The artist doesn’t usually directly benefit from secondary market
sales, other than those sales solidifying the artist's worth and adding to the
artist's sales record. Things might change as we progress towards blockchain
technologies becoming more mainstream, but we’re a way away from that right
now.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you are serious about
collecting, even if you are on a budget, it’s worth understanding the
differences between primary and secondary markets, and it’s also worth noting
that prices on either market are not
always lower or higher than the other, you can pick up art on the secondary market
sometimes for considerably less than the price it would sell for on the primary
market, equally, you could pay significantly more. This is where it all starts
to get really complicated.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">The secondary market can be a
really good indicator of potential future value and often defines the true
value of the work as prices are driven directly by market forces rather than
galleries, or even artists. Any art is only worth as much as whoever wants it,
is willing to pay for it. Of course, that’s also true of the primary market, no
matter how many conversations an artist has with themselves about what their
art is worth, it's the market who will decide what to pay. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's worth pointing out here
that artists don’t always have the option of setting the initial price,
especially if they are represented. That might be the case for some artists who
work in the print on demand space too, their prices are usually a combination
of production and material costs, shipping, and usually only a smaller
percentage goes back to the artist in the form of a commission. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you are buying from a
secondary market, discounts are rarer than unicorns. The market decides what
any particular work is worth and if you are not prepared to pay what someone
else is, you won’t be able to secure the work. Galleries, art brokers and even
artists might try to influence this, but ultimately the buyer decides. However,
if you regularly purchase from the primary market, discounts are less rare.
Many galleries will look after regular collectors and might offer discounts of
between 5% and 10%, but it’s also worth remembering that this discount isn’t
usually available from an artist directly if they are represented by a gallery.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Any professional artist will
never undercut the gallery they are signed with. It makes little to no sense in
discounting the work and jeopardising any future representation from the
gallery, but if you are buying enough works via their gallery then don’t be
afraid to ask the gallery if a discount is available on works sold through the
primary market. It’s not unusual to find galleries that will offer some
significant discounts on complete collections, and this is something that is
often agreed with the artist before the work even goes on sale.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGN9Ys6cxesy0EPAe4YgPh0vhxIq8FkGnTQYf0_ePuKmgyaVDB3ybJ8UdkW_4GLsLE-md3gaiEaRDm_7zyM0X1F0tWTUSB7lCps7Yy458KypwlQpQrnCjPijrXHS6BdFeiGZD83EM1q0_g_knbQyFGfvwpoNh4CW04rCgngBlJD0Eo57ELPSchqr3U/s4088/fractured%20peace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Geometric abstract artwork in yellow and blue" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGN9Ys6cxesy0EPAe4YgPh0vhxIq8FkGnTQYf0_ePuKmgyaVDB3ybJ8UdkW_4GLsLE-md3gaiEaRDm_7zyM0X1F0tWTUSB7lCps7Yy458KypwlQpQrnCjPijrXHS6BdFeiGZD83EM1q0_g_knbQyFGfvwpoNh4CW04rCgngBlJD0Eo57ELPSchqr3U/w640-h640/fractured%20peace.jpg" title="Fractured Peace by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fractured Peace by Mark Taylor</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Understanding Risk…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If an artist offers to sell
you work at a discount on the premise that you don’t say anything at all to
the gallery, it should be seen as a red flag and you should buy a new pair of
sneakers and run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Any artist who undercuts the
gallery isn’t thinking about their existing collector base, and nor are they
protecting the investments of current or future collectors. If a work is for
sale in the gallery for $10,000, the artist suggests they will cut a deal for
$5,000 if you keep the sale quiet, the art at that point has lost 50% of its
value. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">You might think you have a bargain but what the artist has essentially
done at this point is to halve the value of previously collected works that
were purchased for the full price. New sales rely on the price of previous
sales and future demand and if you remove value via a discount, generally all
sales, past, present and future could be put at risk.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's worth pointing out right
about here that the art world, even the art world that doesn’t come with
high-end price tags, can be a bit of a minefield when it comes to placing value
on works. Flipping is a word that you will need to be on the lookout for. This
is when art is purchased and then resold in the secondary market for higher
prices over and over. The result is that the work looks more popular than it
really is and therefore it appears to be more valuable than it really is, and
yes, it happens a lot. It’s an unregulated market and whilst it’s a legal grey
area, little can be done to stop it while people continue to buy the work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">The idea is to create bubbles
of speculation in the market to heighten expectations for a particular artist.
As with most dubious practices, the bubble can, and eventually will burst as
the market corrects, not only diminishing the value of the work but also
seriously harming the potential worth of that particular artist in the future. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Shill bidding is something
else that you will need to keep an eye open for and this is something that
doesn’t only happen in prestigious auction rooms, it happens every day on
platforms such as eBay. This is where fake bidders place fake bids in order to
escalate the value of the work and the ultimate sale price. You might also find
shill reviews or even just comments naming the artist placed strategically
online to ensure the artist appears to be more relevant than they really are. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Be wary of private auctions
where this is more likely to happen in the art world. The best auction houses
will have already vetted potential bidders before the sale so as not to run
foul of the many new laws that have been introduced in recent years, but that
doesn’t at all mean that the practice doesn’t continue to happen, it happens in
any area that attracts buyers and collectors regardless of whether the item is
an artwork or not. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">I frequently buy retro and
vintage computers and recently even video games have been subject to some
dubious practices of late. A sealed copy of Super Mario Brothers sold for a
million dollars, albeit a graded copy. This suddenly puts a game cartridge
available unsealed for less than sixty dollars in the same league as a genuine
work of art from an old master. The only rare element is that the game was
sealed in shrink wrap which will probably never be opened.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Unlike other investments where
there is often a level of protection when things go wrong, art is an
unregulated market. Buy a fake and you are generally on your own with a crater-sized hole in your pocket and an art sized gap on your wall. What you get with
art is at best, something beautiful, and at worst, an unregulated asset that is
illiquid and that also happens to come with high running costs and financial
performance that only ever pays out when you sell the piece on for more than
you paid. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Just one more thing about
fakes and forgeries without going completely down that rabbit hole, never think
that fakes and forgeries are exclusive to those pieces with high-value price
tags. Believe me when I say that a good proportion of print on demand works
will find their way onto the market from third party cushion covers to poorly
reproduced prints which are then sold by rogue sellers on online platforms, and
mostly without the original artist ever being mentioned, in most cases, the
original artist will be totally unaware that their work is being distributed
this way. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Some of my work has been available
for a number of years from unscrupulous sellers and there’s very little that can
be done when the sellers remain unidentified and uncontactable for anything
other than a sale. They mostly originate in countries where British and US laws
have little to no reach. The responsible marketplaces are usually great at
taking products down and blocking sellers from their stores, but they reappear
often within minutes with the same products available from a seemingly
different seller. Those HD wallpaper websites that turn up in Google searches
are filled with digital prints, the prints usually being scraped from official
online channels with many of them still bearing the watermark of the official
seller.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl36hBxykwc69bwBjtI_TfXnDVKWsHwpz82tacDYrm5OWpXPyblh_8OykWiVq2bOP8Llwg8N4esoyxcrl7tdnimoNRUQpS4awg9px_Y4BYgUeYnqKPYwDbRuEveAt_uq13RCiPr4mSDFVwkZ4FjfoGy0miQ2eCPzLGlRk2Raf6d5iSQzXFsg37CM6N/s4088/fence%20panel%20mountain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Mountain scene digitally painted on a fence panel" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl36hBxykwc69bwBjtI_TfXnDVKWsHwpz82tacDYrm5OWpXPyblh_8OykWiVq2bOP8Llwg8N4esoyxcrl7tdnimoNRUQpS4awg9px_Y4BYgUeYnqKPYwDbRuEveAt_uq13RCiPr4mSDFVwkZ4FjfoGy0miQ2eCPzLGlRk2Raf6d5iSQzXFsg37CM6N/w640-h640/fence%20panel%20mountain.jpg" title="Fence Panel Mountain by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fence Panel Mountain is a follow-on work to my earlier 'Mountain' artwork which is still my best selling work ever! Mark Taylor (Copyright 2022)</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">The future…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">For digital work which is
arguably the easiest work to copy, blockchain and NFT (Non-Fungible Token)
technologies will begin to make things more difficult for the bad players, but
for now, the technology that has the potential to mitigate some of the risk isn’t
mainstream enough, or anywhere near as accessible enough for busy working artists
and a majority of their collectors. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Vanity Galleries…<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">I don’t particularly have any
issue with so-called vanity galleries, physical spaces where the artist often
pays to place their work in a bricks and mortar retail environment. It can be a
useful marketing exercise to sell into local markets or to gauge public
perception of your work as an artist, but there are differences that are worlds
apart between the good ones and the bad ones.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Where I do have a problem is
with vanity galleries that offer no form of curated experience, or those that
have been set up to take advantage of local artists without providing anything
other than wall space. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Let’s cut to the chase here, there
are many vanity galleries that are simply in place so that artists can pay to
display with little to no ongoing support or marketing available to the artists
who are often putting everything into a model where the only real winner is the
person who collects the rent. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">This pay to display model takes
money from the artist rather than the buyer, if the art doesn’t sell, the
artist still has to make rent and that’s not good for the buyer or the artist.
As a buyer, you will certainly discover some great art, you might also discover
a lot of not so great art, but finding the good will be a challenge as most of the good pieces will be buried beneath the bad.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's worth being clear here
that there are other models that might initially look like pay to display
models, but there is a difference between an artist's collective or local art
group and a corporation basing their model completely on funding directly
coming from the artist. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">What should you collect?</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">You’re now aware of at least
some of the risks so we can now have a think about what we want to collect. Knowing
what to collect very much depends not only on budget but also what you like
and what you can realistically afford. I would love to collect original
Banksy’s, my budget is more original Etsy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">When you are collecting art
you should be collecting something that you can live with and maybe for a very
long time. With that in mind, it is worth taking some time before you even
begin collecting to work out what kind of art resonates more with you. You
might already have a subject or style in mind and that will certainly make
things easier, but if you are after something that isn’t generic, something
that’s a little more unique, and something that will provide a talking point,
then it’s definitely worth exploring the wider art world and also look at
genres, mediums, and subjects that you might not have thought about before. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Many people get into collecting
art only to become quickly limited in what they can then collect. Popular
genres and subjects are a safe place to start particularly if you intend to
sell them on fairly easily down the line, but if you’re after something that very few
other people have hanging on their walls you might want to consider looking at
more niche subjects and mediums and even sellers. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">You could also start with
collecting small works or prints from well-known names but that too can quickly
become limiting, not least in that you might fast run out of affordable options
to continue collecting and once again, well-known artists are already being
collected so if you are after that more unique talking point to hang on your
wall, the work of these artists is going to be a lot less unique than something
from a relatively unknown artist.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Your art collecting might be
to create a more aesthetic space rather than it being a collection that needs
to provide a return on your investment down the line, and there are plenty of options that
will allow you to change the décor without changing the art. My advice is to
take in and research as much art as you can regardless of the subject, medium,
or artist, and take some time to discover what you are drawn to (excuse the pun). <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you look beyond the safe
options that everyone else is collecting you will find artworks that just work
regardless of the setting and if you are looking to fill limited space with
artworks you could consider something like a gallery wall of smaller pieces.
This will allow you to grow your collection without having to consider that all-important other kind of budget that you will need, which is wall budget.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you only have a small space
for your collection, think about periodically resting some works and swapping
them out for new additions to your collection, or go with a single signature
piece surrounded by lots of smaller works. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqhSiOXn_7usgPvGGh_Q3NRoLlEgOYdJGvkI5TzKSxLoabh6j2tQXUva5oj4oZBV0qEoZZJPW98ic90wRmGpEwzsi1OC8bNN1XyhJu7zezOtiNW5kWTn4LDxPrDkX3nFFXGO5lIoyA6LP3LSh-MdMcsw_mDCArAUBu8nbfRm26PAMRswPLW8yGLllL/s4088/the%20retro%20collector.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro computer artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqhSiOXn_7usgPvGGh_Q3NRoLlEgOYdJGvkI5TzKSxLoabh6j2tQXUva5oj4oZBV0qEoZZJPW98ic90wRmGpEwzsi1OC8bNN1XyhJu7zezOtiNW5kWTn4LDxPrDkX3nFFXGO5lIoyA6LP3LSh-MdMcsw_mDCArAUBu8nbfRm26PAMRswPLW8yGLllL/w640-h640/the%20retro%20collector.jpg" title="The Retro Collector by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Retro Collector by Mark Taylor (Copyright 2022) Available from my online stores!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Who should I Collect?</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's worth pointing out at
this point that buying the work of an unknown artist or at least work from an
artist who hasn’t got anywhere near the same provenance as artists with a long
track record of sales, doesn’t make the work any less of an artwork. What it
does mean is that you might just be at the forefront of discovering that artist
and there is a possibility that your new work will indeed increase in value at
some point in the future if the artist eventually goes on to earn that badge we
call ‘discovered’. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">There is practically, as much
risk in collecting works of unknown artists in the hope that they will one day
increase in value as there is in collecting anything else, but these risks are
heavily mitigated in comparison to buying big-buck collections. You can
mitigate the risk a little more by buying from artists who you can see are
working hard to develop their provenance and career, checking out whether they
are active on social media channels, whether they are involved in any art
communities, and by listening for online chatter. I would be less inclined to
base any collection on the merits of online reviews, just as I would if I was
spending money on art from any mega-gallery where I am being steered towards
what the gallery want or indeed, need to sell.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">There is also an opportunity
to collect outsider art, although it is a term that is used in multiple ways, it’s
generally thought to describe work from self-taught artists or those who have
no formal touchpoint with the art industry or are naïve to the nuances of the
art world. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Art Brut is another term often
used interchangeably, yet there are exhibitions specifically for outsider art
and it would be completely disingenuous to describe every currently unknown
artist as an outsider in the context of thinking them to be naïve or from
outside of the art world. If you fall in love with a piece of art then it
shouldn’t matter if the artist was self-taught, many of the very best artists throughout
history have never attended a prestigious art school.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">When I speak about unknown
artists, some may be self-taught, some might not attend every exhibition or
turn up to the opening of an art world envelope, yet there are thousands upon
thousands of unknown artists who are probably more alert to the nuances of the
art world than many established artists are. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">There will be many, many,
unknown artists who might never quite find their way to wearing the ‘discovered’ badge,
and many who might not find the moniker of ‘discovered’ until after they’ve
passed. None of this means that they won’t ever be discovered, many will, nor
does it mean that their art is any less. This is a group of artists who often
work even harder than many of the most well-established artists, and maybe often
produce dare I say it, at times, much better art. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's worth remembering that
unknowns are usually at least a little known too! There are many unknown artists
who are well known within their own niches, geographic areas, and on platforms
such as Etsy, eBay, or any number of print-on-demand services, all good
examples of platforms that are filled with work that regularly sells, and some
of these artists might already have a significant following within their own
creative communities. Yet to those outside of those circles in the wider art
world, these artists are unknown. An unknown is often almost anything but, so maybe
a better term for these artists might be, not yet fully discovered.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Beware the emerging artist
hype…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">You could throw your money
towards emerging artists, artists who have maybe a number of sales and shows
under their belt, some of whom might have been newly signed up by galleries,
but bear in mind that at the point of emerging, the value will be on the rise
and the more budget-friendly pieces will have long ago been sold. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s a sort of middle ground
between buying from a completely unknown artist and an artist with provenance,
an established career and a high price tag. In my experience of being
previously (I still think, incorrectly for that moment in time) labelled as an emerging artist, this is where the high-end
hype also starts. Sometimes for good reason, other times the hype is
self-driven by an inexperienced ego or as a product of a carefully crafted
marketing campaign. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">There is no defining moment
when an artist officially gets to wear the emerging artist badge, many artists badge
themselves with this label without any provenance to back it up at all. You only need to look through Instagram and
other social channels to see how egos are crafted on a web page and you might
still end up paying over the odds for work that has zero provenance. Word to
the wise, make sure you carry out your own due diligence.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you are looking for a truly
emerging artist, my advice would be to look towards artists who are just about
to graduate from art schools. Most of the schools will exhibit the work of
their students and this is often where you will be able to pick up work that
could potentially have some significant future value. Art school exhibitions
are frequently attended by professional art critics and these shows can be
incredibly important to the artist's future career. It’s an ideal opportunity for
those collecting on a budget to maybe find something that will have some level
of potential for a future financial return.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Never buy art to match the
curtains…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Another mistake many first-time
art collectors make is in collecting works that will match existing home décor.
That works if you need to find temporary art that will only be relevant while
your walls are painted a certain colour, when you eventually change the colour
of those walls or change the carpet you will then probably want to change the
art. Collecting to match a colour scheme often means that the art becomes as
temporary as the next home décor trend. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Whilst you might not be
collecting with any future value in mind, you will want to at least protect
your initial investment and make sure that the art that you purchase isn’t just
a fashion statement for the here and now. There’s little to no collectability
value in doing that even when prices are low. If your hope is that the value of
the collection increases over time, here and now trends are sold in volumes
that automatically diminish investment potential because everyone else is
following the same trend and buying the same art.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp-GUS5smBhww-1uGC6zEA9Yn8Y8Lv58w5HOM5qa-kTojt52VGIKELwyAd0n-fmyaouQcDLpDX2SiPT2GYzRDzkK_zylXqFT2z_9PMUFAnjysjCutT_OaA3yvsf3ZNmapwwJ_EXolpDB7lpzO8l-aerzoxm5c8tujVyBiNPbeiLT6LP9qRCoYjvJgS/s4088/eight%20bit%20eighties.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="8 bit computer artwork" border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4088" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp-GUS5smBhww-1uGC6zEA9Yn8Y8Lv58w5HOM5qa-kTojt52VGIKELwyAd0n-fmyaouQcDLpDX2SiPT2GYzRDzkK_zylXqFT2z_9PMUFAnjysjCutT_OaA3yvsf3ZNmapwwJ_EXolpDB7lpzO8l-aerzoxm5c8tujVyBiNPbeiLT6LP9qRCoYjvJgS/w640-h474/eight%20bit%20eighties.jpg" title="Eight Bit Eighties by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eight Bit Eighties by Mark Taylor (Copyright 2022) Available Now!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Considering price and
available budget…<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s easy to think that the
art world is the one place you can rely on to see sales figures that look more
like telephone numbers than price tickets and generally, that is kind of all we
will see in the media. We never, or at least very rarely get to see any news
about independent artists who could very well be contributing more to the local
economy than the not quite so local mega-gallery. An artist making a living out
of one hundred buck prints is much less interesting to read about than a Banksy
work shredding itself, but look towards the artist's story and you might find
something even more compelling to read about.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">In part, the media bias is because
the small numbers involved in many local sales, of which there will be
thousands every day, simply don’t make great headlines. The media has been at
the forefront of portraying the art world as a single, often exclusive, market,
when in fact, the art world as a whole is made up of many components. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s not just the way the
media like to do things, the mega-galleries and large auction houses also like
this approach because it keeps the focus on them, but it distorts the view that
we don’t have a single, flat, global art market. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If we identified and included
the other markets such as the local Etsy seller and the multitude of other
sources of art sales such as the artist who sells from the wall of their local
coffee shop, or the artist who sells through an independent retailer, what we
would see is an art world where the big numbers suddenly stop looking quite so
big. More art is sold in the non-high-end markets than is sold on a Tuesday
night in auction houses around the world and every day in the mega-galleries.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Start Small…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">My advice to any new art
collector is to start small. If you have a limited budget, starting small means
that you’re not putting your all into something that you might find you want to
change fairly early on in your collection. It also means that you can quickly
build up a collection before committing more budget to more valuable pieces. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Rather than scrimp and save,
buy good quality works from lesser-known artists rather than buying something
that just about falls within your available budget or even stretches it beyond,
just so you can own ‘something’ from a more well-established artist. A second
rate work from a well-known artist is going to limit what you can collect in
the future if the artist's other works are more valuable, and that’s if they’re
available for sale. Besides, you can find a heap of satisfaction in supporting
the next generation of artists.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Consider starting out with
prints. An art collection for some people can be a collection of original
Matisse and for other people, it can be a collection of comparatively low-cost
prints. If it is about having art on the wall, there’s nothing at all wrong in
going down the route of collecting prints, there are a multitude of options
available from exceptionally budget-friendly right the way through to archival
quality prints that can in themselves become highly sought after, especially if
they’re limited editions or signed by the artist. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Even some open edition prints
can become highly sought after, especially if you do your homework on the
artist. In the print on demand space, it tends to be everything or nothing.
Some of these print on demand services print thousands of copies of the same
work, others might only sell in very small numbers and in some cases, the
artists will retire works rather than have unsold pieces in their online
portfolio. If you are looking for work that no one else has, especially when it
comes to prints, then print on demand is where you are more likely to find
those kinds of works.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">What that means for the savvy
collector is that as crazy as it sounds, you could find yourself with an open edition print that’s way
more exclusive than an artist's limited edition. If you are looking for an art
collection that very few other people have on their walls, doing your homework
in the print on demand space could see you landing a collection that is very
unique for a very wallet-friendly price, and if you can get the artist to sign
the print, it could even increase in value. Remember, print on demand means
that whilst there may be the option of unlimited prints, it’s quite rare to
come across prints only available on that platform available in significant
numbers, prints are only produced to order.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Keep an eye open at special
events too. My all-time best bargain buy was an open edition Disney print
purchased from Disney World but signed by the five animators responsible for
creating the image. Maybe not quite as valuable as the original cell would be
if it were to be signed by the animators, but in this instance, they never
collectively signed the original cell and they only signed two open editions by
mistake. Just over twenty years later, that twenty buck open edition is now
worth four figures and I own both of them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you are starting with
prints it’s probably best to avoid the box store variety and look beyond the hype
of editions. Some limited editions are so huge that an open edition would sell
fewer works, and in some cases, a limited edition might even mean a limited
quantity available in a specific size, other sizes might be selling in their
thousands. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Buy good quality prints. The type of medium the work is printed on will not only make a difference to the price, it
will also make a difference to the longevity and quality of the work, and even
its future value. An archival quality print in a quality frame can still be an
amazing focal point for your collection many years after you buy it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s worth remembering too
that quality art prints are usually crafted by master printmakers and at this
level, prints become their own medium. As such, in some cases you can expect to
pay a considerable amount of money to own an archival quality work that has
been skilfully put together by a master printmaker, usually working alongside
the artist who will be overseeing quality. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you are buying editions,
unless you are buying a very early print from a copper plate, don’t fall for the
lower number is more valuable sales pitch. A long time ago prints would be
created from plates that would eventually wear out meaning that the later
print runs would be significantly poorer in quality. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Today, where print plates are
used they tend to be created from steel-plated copper, meaning that the plate
doesn’t wear out like they once did and all prints in the edition are generally
the same quality. Numbering of these prints is rarely issued in print order,
the last print of five hundred pieces could be numbered 1/500 or 500/500, and
it makes no difference at all to the value. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Another thing to look out for
is when the work has been signed by the artist, but not created by the artist.
Some artists will use assistants to create the work in the artist's style,
usually overseen by the artist but that is the only interaction that the artist
will have had with the work. You are less likely to see this in the independent
creative space. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDoFbr7WqrjG6XrsaQ6kO_Nm9r67QbCD6FNHDnV_nDIGLEYOH-iTPDo19kvcEUIcsENm9KSoJoIAanmnn1lsh3yyXQqlC49fyTm_88BpT6jmn1qy6QJ2eE7pn5TZl1zuKqhWlNS0xfZd8Wi6Cs9JVL-R9FMrFuV_rUhCQRJf6Mn5xHqU7BEKRLHvxJ/s4088/insert%20coin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Insert Coin artwork of arcade cabinet door and coin slot" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDoFbr7WqrjG6XrsaQ6kO_Nm9r67QbCD6FNHDnV_nDIGLEYOH-iTPDo19kvcEUIcsENm9KSoJoIAanmnn1lsh3yyXQqlC49fyTm_88BpT6jmn1qy6QJ2eE7pn5TZl1zuKqhWlNS0xfZd8Wi6Cs9JVL-R9FMrFuV_rUhCQRJf6Mn5xHqU7BEKRLHvxJ/w640-h640/insert%20coin.jpg" title="Insert Coin by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Insert Coin - Mark Taylor (Copyright 2022) Every element was painstakingly hand-drawn using digital mediums, including each strand of the woodgrain!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Look beyond the gallery…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Some of the best work I have
picked up for my personal collection over the years has never seen the inside
of a typical gallery, it was discovered hanging on the walls of a coffee shop
or a seaside gift shop selling the work of local artists alongside seaside
souvenirs. Some of the works I have picked up over the years have been from
artists who have since been through their own emergence and have now been
discovered and there is simply no way that I would be able to afford some of
their more recent work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Keep an eye open for local
events where you are more likely to come across local artists who have a wealth
of artistic experience. Many of these artists might also be working in other
spaces and using the local market as a way of supplementing their income from
other art sale sources. There are bargains to be had even for great quality
work and for a lot of people, it’s not the collection that drives them to
collect art, it’s the hunt from potentially picking up a real undiscovered gem.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Look out for independent
creatives…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Supporting a local arts scene
with independent artists who for whatever reason, don’t typically follow the
traditional gallery path is where a lot of the most unique work will be found.
For me, a collection isn’t so much about monetary value, it’s the emotional
patina that comes attached to a piece of work that has been created by someone
who is the lifeblood of a local community. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">When you purchase from an
independent artist you not only help them, you help their local economy. As I grow
older (or more mature – because that sounds so much better), I have a very
different mindset to the one I had as my younger self who would yearn for an
original Hockney. If I invest $300 in a mega-gallery, I am going to get the art
that they want me to own, (and not very much of it for that kind of money). If
I invest the same in a local artist, I’m going to be looking at a piece of work
that has that uniqueness and emotional connection to the artist that I want
hanging on my wall. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m likely to also get a lot
more from the art, not necessarily on the canvas, but definitely in terms of
knowing that the $300 went towards feeding the artist's family and a portion of
it was probably spent in their local economy supporting another independent
business. I will have also given an ‘unknown’ artist a real boost of
confidence, probably much needed for those who work around the clock for less
than a living wage, and I might have encouraged them to carry on creating art.
I don’t feel as if I get anywhere near that level of value add from a
mega-gallery, although one of them did offer me a free cup of coffee once in
return for a few thousand dollars that I wish I had never spent. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not only that, the $300
artwork is more likely to create a bond between the buyer and the artist who
created it, and in some cases, a lifelong friendship. At any level, you’re
never going to get that kind of value from a mega-gallery but you will nearly
always get it from an independent creative. For $300, I can feel valued as a
buyer, I can be taken seriously as an art collector who collects art, not in
the hope of future resale value, but in the hope that the artist goes on to
forge a career out of doing what they love.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOZjpGLOzcPrfSOB95V3Q0WCFgDyI-elqC7o1NK0SqqxteGTgwoZyYGtcimBJlQkoU9Aujdfzq2zsvbUhzvnnW_UMFLitJUtsll_c777d2xCy6MhOn0fIN6Z5NNt5xA3c__biUfZKY08AUF0nll04Pbc7l4hu1CURA2di0W58aUQT0Ku6pi25LXUcR/s4088/the%20silicone%20shop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Computer store shelves filled with retro computers and consoles artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOZjpGLOzcPrfSOB95V3Q0WCFgDyI-elqC7o1NK0SqqxteGTgwoZyYGtcimBJlQkoU9Aujdfzq2zsvbUhzvnnW_UMFLitJUtsll_c777d2xCy6MhOn0fIN6Z5NNt5xA3c__biUfZKY08AUF0nll04Pbc7l4hu1CURA2di0W58aUQT0Ku6pi25LXUcR/w640-h640/the%20silicone%20shop.jpg" title="The Silicon Shop by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Silicon Shop by Mark Taylor (Copyright 2022) is available now. This is a nod to advertising in print media during the 80s when a specialist computer store would fill magazine pages with ads that kids would read as eagerly as the rest of the magazine! Notice the cardboard boxes stored underneath the bottom shelf!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Top Ten Things You Need to
Know…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">In no particular order, the
ten most valuable lessons I have learned from more than three decades of
creating and buying art are:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Trust your inner gut…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you like a piece of art,
buy it, regardless of what anyone else thinks or says. Learn to trust your gut
feeling when it comes to selecting work, it will be more attuned to the art you
love than listening to a sales pitch. <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Build a relationship with the
artist…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">It’s not always possible to
build a relationship with the artist when you are buying from a gallery. It is
the gallery, not the artist who owns the relationship with you and I can tell
you from experience if they can keep you at arm's length from the artist, most
will. At best, you might be invited to a meet and greet, but there’s little
chance of developing the relationship further because the artist will have
signed a contract with the gallery that puts the power of the transaction in
the gallery's hands.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you want to connect with
the artist and where their contracts with galleries allow, most artists will be
more than delighted to talk to potential collectors or even people who are just
interested in the work they create. Reach out to artists on social media, send
them an email, speak to them at shows, and get to know not only them but how
they work. Many will come back to you, but be mindful that some artists will
have a team of people running their social accounts and they might not get to
see your email, but that shouldn’t stop you from reaching out.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Support local galleries…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you do intend to buy work
from a gallery, support a local independent gallery, they’re less likely to
push you into buying work they need to move so they can inflate sales for the
next big show. You are also more likely to have meaningful interactions with
their artists, and many independent galleries put the artist front and centre
of their operating strategy and from experience, not all galleries do this. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisxBydjrSkwq738yw3ylRWmTC6d5bYzzvU-38L4vpM_SizH7pJzPJ1zv3aUvLPpaGynNbnSoqM56jj6uWufu7nwwx8CrcrUF3rIVNL05yr--CVwUdu2XkMGTdr1W9ribTa8B_2u-bm2osB_fEu7avu_Q4JR5818gtiGaxm993mc2a-FEfOEkxQJIMd/s4088/snake%20pass.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="snake pass artwork, snake in bold jungle leaves" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisxBydjrSkwq738yw3ylRWmTC6d5bYzzvU-38L4vpM_SizH7pJzPJ1zv3aUvLPpaGynNbnSoqM56jj6uWufu7nwwx8CrcrUF3rIVNL05yr--CVwUdu2XkMGTdr1W9ribTa8B_2u-bm2osB_fEu7avu_Q4JR5818gtiGaxm993mc2a-FEfOEkxQJIMd/w640-h640/snake%20pass.jpg" title="Snake Pass by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Snake Pass by Mark Taylor - Copyright 2022. This was originally created as a commission. The snake is almost leaping out of the canvas!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Frame it…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Frames don’t just look pretty,
they’re invaluable aides in protecting your investment for years to come. A
good quality frame that protects the art can also add significant value, take the
work from so-so to wow, and well-chosen frames can bring your collection to
life. Even cheap prints in a quality frame can suddenly feel and look much more
expensive. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Use a mount that is the same
colour as the paper or any exposed canvas, this will protect the art even more
especially if placed under glass, and make sure that the frame itself doesn’t
become the artwork. Keep it simple so as not to distract from the content of
the work and think about tones that match and complement rather than distract
from the work. Professional framing can be much more expensive than shop-bought
mass-produced frames, but think of a frame as additional insurance and as much
a part of the investment as the artwork itself, good quality frames can pay
back over and over in time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Don’t worry if you no longer
love the work…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m not sure if I have ever
met a collector whose tastes haven’t changed as they have become more exposed
to more art. It’s a natural part of the process involved in becoming a
collector. The great thing about collecting alternative subjects, mediums and
niches is that you have the unique ability to be able to afford to swap works
out when they ebb in and out of favour, and they will. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Right now, my Disney
original cell collection is resting while I enjoy computer and video game
ephemera, a collection of curiosities from rare arcade game flyers to even
rarer point of sale materials used for a short while in retail environments
which were originally destined to be thrown away after use. The design aspects
alone are a snapshot of the eighties and are rapidly on the rise in collector
circles. Remember, art adorns other
things aside from a canvas so if your budget isn’t quite at the level you need
right now, look at alternatives.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Set a budget…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">You have to set some ground rules
when you begin collecting art and you also have to set an immovable budget
because art collecting will suck you in. If you are buying works that need to
be shipped to you, remember to include shipping costs and taxes in your
calculations and you may have to pay more for home insurance. Always let your
insurer know about the value of any work you collect as you might not be
covered if anything goes wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Spend some time working out
what you love…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">As I said just now, tastes
will change, but you will want a solid foundation on which to start building
your collection. Take as much time as you can looking at all sorts of artworks
from all sorts of artists, subjects, and mediums and learn about what you like.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifjHhC4zChug2SOjz6ZjvVwxIIDP4EJR3cSBTjcKX4kPEN3kuE67ZeOIsG1RxKZ9hi92rD5HnyDqYdDMDsDnUVaVBGLx8fxl9OkCCRNMVPyLP8rIHl5wK7jafBCell5N4TIUlrBxAPbq5FXr3UYVKYaPlLdvR4uiPZH4muRUWEWepGM_3hsXxsUDkt/s4088/bedroom%20coder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="untidy 1980s computer desk filled with retro technology artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifjHhC4zChug2SOjz6ZjvVwxIIDP4EJR3cSBTjcKX4kPEN3kuE67ZeOIsG1RxKZ9hi92rD5HnyDqYdDMDsDnUVaVBGLx8fxl9OkCCRNMVPyLP8rIHl5wK7jafBCell5N4TIUlrBxAPbq5FXr3UYVKYaPlLdvR4uiPZH4muRUWEWepGM_3hsXxsUDkt/w640-h640/bedroom%20coder.jpg" title="Bedroom Coder by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bedroom Coder by Mark Taylor - a nod to self-taught coders from the 1980s of which I was one! My CB Radio handle was Mr Wimpy, you can see the eyeball badge on the desk! Alpine Soda (we call it pop in the UK) was delivered by truck every Friday to every street!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Make sure you have
documentation…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Particularly important if your
intention is to eventually move the art on in the hope of making a decent
return on your investment. If it has been written down, there is one rule, it’s
important. This might include obvious documentation such as sales receipts,
press cuttings, work in progress photos, and general documentation that
supports the provenance of the artwork back to the artist's studio, but don’t think
that the documentation that might come with a print is any less important than
if it had come with an original work.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sales records and anything
written about the work will add to the significance of an artwork and its worth, as will
certificates of authenticity, although these are often a source of frustration
with some being worth little more than the paper they are written on. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Know the Market…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Before you embark on a
spending spree it’s essential for the health of your bank balance that you
carry out some research and figure out the market. This is especially important
if you are buying from the secondary market. Sadly, there are unscrupulous dealers
who love a newbie arriving on the art-collecting scene and they’re mostly
willing to sell at inflated prices. It not only benefits them to escalate a
price, it also drives up the value of other works from the same artist. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Take a look through past
auction catalogues, online galleries, and websites, especially those that have
forums that the community can engage with, you will learn so much about
everything from after-sales service to the artwork itself by ignoring the
mostly fake reviews that litter the online space and going straight to the
people who are buying artworks every day.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Another useful piece of
homework that could inform your collecting is to visit multiple galleries or
other venues that sell the kind of art you might be looking for and you can do this without you
needing to spend a dime. Just observe
what other collectors are buying, and how much they are paying and get a feel
of what is and isn’t popular. This should give you a much better sense of what
holds the most value now and what’s likely to in the future.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Build meaningful
relationships…</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">No one should enter the world
of art collecting without having formed at least a small number of relationships
within the art world first, and at whatever level you are collecting. If you
make visits to local galleries, especially the independent ones, gallery staff
and curators will often be more than happy to impart nuggets of wisdom or
explain a piece of artwork and its history. It’s worth visiting museums too,
they will have many connections that could help you navigate this complex
business we call art.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">It's a good idea to join local
art groups in your community too, they will often have arrangements with local
galleries and museums to offer special tours or experts will come along to
events to give insightful talks. These events are useful not only for the
information you will gain, but you can often be amongst the first to preview
new exhibitions or benefit from some of the best offers on new artwork. Even
aside from those benefits, the biggest benefit will be in the relationships you
can build, some of these local art groups have vast swathes of useful
connections. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">What makes art valuable?</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If your intention is to
collect works that might increase in value in time, it’s definitely worth
knowing what makes the artwork more valuable. It’s not always about who painted
the work, although that could be a determining factor in any future investment
potential, it’s about a whole collection of things that are not always obvious
to the new collector.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">The story of the artist is just
as important as the art. If an artist has a captivating story to tell, buyers
will buy into the story as much as the art in some cases. Popularity of an
artist really links back to the fundamental model of art sales, it’s all about
supply and demand. Popular artists will generally be more collectable than
lesser-known artists, but as I said earlier, a lesser-known artist of today
could very well be tomorrow's Matisse. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">The medium of a work is a
factor that you will need to consider, it’s not the case that works on
canvas will always be worth more than a work on paper. Canvas will indeed be more
expensive for some artists, but where an artist produced almost all of his or
her work on canvas and very few pieces on paper, the collectability of the
paper-based work could have quite a dramatic impact on its value.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">The subject matter of a work
could also have an impact on the value, either making the work more valuable or
less valuable. A good example is that a far higher number of my retro works
have appeared on the secondary market over the past few years, whereas my
landscapes tend to be sold more often than not through the primary market. This
is due to me only having recently made my retro works available through print
on demand, previously they were sold directly to the buyer. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Right now there is an uptick
in the number of people buying into retro but if I think back to the years
pre-2010, artworks depicting vintage technology really were very niche and
there was a much smaller demand for them from anyone other than hardcore retro
collectors hanging on to the nostalgia of their childhoods. Today, I sell those
works to people who would historically have only purchased my more traditional landscapes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">The point is, looking beyond
the usual subject matter in an artwork could turn out to be another great
investment opportunity, although as with any artwork purchased with potential
future worth in mind, this is still a strategy with baked in risk and you
really do have to carry out your own due diligence just as you would with any
investment. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Art history is filled with works
that were once considered too niche to be desirable to collectors and investors
but later went on to become highly sought after.</b></span></blockquote><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">There’s an important point
here, never dismiss an artist who suddenly veers from one style to another
thinking that the change will significantly reduce the value or collectability
of any of their work. Art history has taught us over the years that swapping
genres, styles, or mediums, doesn’t always have a negative effect on the
future value of the work, and it might make some works even more desirable. If
you think about Jackson Pollock, his drip-style probably springs to mind, yet
his works in other styles will be much more attractive to some collectors.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEintykidh1n167WG3GttgG5Lt90EojYGpXZHBWPER5AlyqrlN956h7OxhctpuzN8dDvjUoAIBUR1bAiYXORIbntgztBaAhnoyQIl4Fsu5ZaZImcfo2JCsxkaJB5Fbn_TiIfkdjBMH0H9KHGB1jhBorShhHVKaxVJUbt4PLciH3CI0NMYQSgM1vOYofr/s4088/ordered.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="ordered, abstract art print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEintykidh1n167WG3GttgG5Lt90EojYGpXZHBWPER5AlyqrlN956h7OxhctpuzN8dDvjUoAIBUR1bAiYXORIbntgztBaAhnoyQIl4Fsu5ZaZImcfo2JCsxkaJB5Fbn_TiIfkdjBMH0H9KHGB1jhBorShhHVKaxVJUbt4PLciH3CI0NMYQSgM1vOYofr/w640-h640/ordered.jpg" title="Ordered by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ordered by Mark Taylor (Copyright 2022) Another new abstract work that will give a sense of bold to any space!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Will collecting on a strict
budget mean you lose out on potential future value?</span></span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">I think it is fair to say that
with the majority of working artists not working in the space we call the
high-end fine art market, there is inherently more of a risk in securing a work
that will go up in value. There’s simply a lot more work from artists working
in this space meaning that there’s less of a supply and demand issue overall.
That doesn’t at all mean that you will never potentially see a return on your
investment, it does however mean that you are less likely to see an upward
return on your investment unless you happen to come across an artist who is
suddenly in demand.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">I also think it’s worth taking
some time to carefully think about why you want to collect art though, art
collecting isn’t and shouldn’t be all about flipping a canvas to make a profit.
You can grow a culturally valuable collection that will provide you with
enrichment rather than riches and especially if you are buying from a local
independent artist. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Their art can give you a real sense of value in helping to
keep an artist's career alive, you might also help the local economy, and above
this, you will be contributing to an area of the arts that is consistently underrepresented, and massively underfunded. You’re helping a small business at a
time when small businesses need all the support they can get. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">For me, there’s as much, if
not more value in doing that if you are passionate about the arts. The arts
aren’t all about the mega gallery, the huge shows that attract billionaires in
private jets, the arts have firm roots on the complete opposite side of that
world. It’s a world that for centuries has existed as much in the shadows as it has in the light, it exists on
print on demand, or Etsy, or your local independent gallery, it exists all
around you and what you might find once you realise that the arts are right
there in affordable touching distance, are works that are filled with passion,
uniqueness, and dreams, and those are the very things that are definitely worth
collecting.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <b>Did you miss me!<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sorry to those who have missed
me over the past month or so, I have been literally inundated with work and I’ve
been working on a series of e-waste art commissions. Hopefully, things might
become a little quieter over the next few weeks and I can get back into the
habit of writing more regularly!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">And a big thanks must go to
everyone who has been continuously supporting me by purchasing works from my
new retro-inspired art collection, and a really special thanks to those of you
who have been sending me computer and video game magazines from the eighties
and nineties so I can continue to pictorially document the dawn of the home
computer age that made today’s technology possible. It has been brilliant to
discover some of these old magazines from the USA too and how very different the
tech scene was in the States compared to here in Blighty! Not only that, I am really enjoying being transported back to my favourite age, so please don't throw any of your old magazines away!</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: large;">On that note, look out for a couple of special features where I will be deep-diving into the technology that has been supporting digital artists for years and I will also be exploring some of the digital art disciplines already using the tools of the future such as Unreal Engine 5!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">About Mark…<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">I am an artist and blogger and
live in Staffordshire, England. My days are filled with art, dog walking and
Teams Meetings, while still being stuck somewhere in the eighties. You can
purchase my art through my Fine Art America store or my Pixels site here: <a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</a> and
you can purchase my new works, special and limited editions directly. You can
also view my portfolio website at <a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank">https://beechhousemedia.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you are on Facebook, you
can give me a follow right here, <a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</a>
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at <a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</a></span></span></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-19296826439854507002022-02-10T07:51:00.001+00:002022-02-11T08:40:38.852+00:00Make Your Place In The Art World<h1 style="text-align: left;"><b style="text-indent: -48px;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 37.3333px;">The Changing Face of Art...</span></b></h1><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEheDSZLzRcsK9rDvoObDVpkC0nIdZfktdrsdojDK43NXGHFrx4OescLQbNXD0N2KXuZZR4vKzy8qd6wkW2Ot5T_933gXd047rn254NObqNiwB08UUmXIvm1B9jG3M8M9WMZmQ7dnlDsDV8s_f6ueqqEkAW4T2kHG5gXYy-mh1QSptWT1N5aBwQYzvrI=s1200" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Art gallery blog image" border="0" data-original-height="628" data-original-width="1200" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEheDSZLzRcsK9rDvoObDVpkC0nIdZfktdrsdojDK43NXGHFrx4OescLQbNXD0N2KXuZZR4vKzy8qd6wkW2Ot5T_933gXd047rn254NObqNiwB08UUmXIvm1B9jG3M8M9WMZmQ7dnlDsDV8s_f6ueqqEkAW4T2kHG5gXYy-mh1QSptWT1N5aBwQYzvrI=w640-h334" title="make your place in the art world" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Make Your Own Place In The Art World</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><b style="text-indent: -48px;"><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 37.3333px;"><br /></span></b></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Here we are in 2022 and it
might seem counterintuitive to suggest that there are alternatives to selling
your art that can still see you earning a good standard of living as an artist,
by not following a traditional path through the art world. The art world in
2022 has changed, some might say that there has even been a reset, but just how
easy is it to embrace the changes and become a commercially successful visual
artist?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; margin-left: 36pt; text-align: left; text-indent: -36pt;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The
Challenge of Being An Artist…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Art has never been what you
might call an easy business, less so as we tentatively and hopefully begin to
emerge from an almost three-year-long pandemic. During that time, buyer behaviours
have changed almost unrecognisably and once-thriving high street galleries have
either made the transition online or in some cases have shuttered their doors,
leaving the art world looking very different from a pre-pandemic time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It's not just the business of
art that has changed, businesses of every description have had to adapt to some
quite mammoth challenges. Migrating bricks and mortar stores into the cloud, artists
cancelling long-planned exhibitions, and so many businesses of every description
have faced challenges that often felt more akin to the four horsemen of the
apocalypse turning up to a Downing Street party.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">As some parts of the world
began to reopen, things were not quite the same as we left them back at the
start of the pandemic. High streets look different, and buyers who would once
fill stores on a Saturday afternoon are not quite ready yet for re-socialisation,
instead, choosing to continue with online purchases. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Pre-pandemic, it was the
younger population driving the digital economy, post-pandemic, we’re much more
likely to see a hybrid lifestyle emerging, with the younger generation
returning more readily to the high street, and older generations keener to
embrace newly developed digital skills and continuing with online commerce. In
the art world, that seems to be quite a seismic shift.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgN54lL3exhhZ180fgaN0XGKyc7oNv9jK3VduFYm_HqBYFmp9wPKIRe810Ae7o7A_oXBdux2EB7GagTSigMqhvxgfgfvpf8lnmnFfT-z5gfeqdxBEmshRwhH4JrSOsV2Ka9bU4lhxJ4c-o7UbL3OZ-LQH1zWkYmPvtWoeJN95tOx8Od4QnfUvbZ2nQW=s4088" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Highland Nights Artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgN54lL3exhhZ180fgaN0XGKyc7oNv9jK3VduFYm_HqBYFmp9wPKIRe810Ae7o7A_oXBdux2EB7GagTSigMqhvxgfgfvpf8lnmnFfT-z5gfeqdxBEmshRwhH4JrSOsV2Ka9bU4lhxJ4c-o7UbL3OZ-LQH1zWkYmPvtWoeJN95tOx8Od4QnfUvbZ2nQW=w640-h640" title="Highland Nights Artwork by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Highland Nights by Mark Taylor - One of my latest landscape works, prints and other collectables available to order now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Changing course…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Over the course of the
pandemic, buying behaviours that changed out of necessity throughout the past
couple of years, have become ingrained and habitual, with many emerging behaviours
likely to stick around rather than return to anything like pre-pandemic normal.
Depending on your primary audience, how you think about doing business in a
post-pandemic world could be very different to the world of three years ago. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There is now a mix of buying
behaviours that feel different. We are definitely moving towards a hybrid
approach in some sectors where buyers are starting their buying journey online
and then finishing off the process in physical stores. We are seeing more in
the way of social commerce, where brands are meeting shoppers in their own space
allowing the buyers to discover products at home through the power of social
media and then not worrying too much about where the ultimate sale happens,
just so long as it does. That makes much more commercial sense for companies
selling products, given that they’re less able than they once were to
access social media user tracking data that would once drive the direction of their
online business. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Things are changing online
too. For the first time ever, Facebook has reported a significant drop both in
terms of revenue and daily active users, and that’s a really big shift in what
we have become accustomed to over the past decade or so. That infallible tech giant
seems to be creaking under the pressure of Apple’s privacy war on advertising,
as are other social platforms.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I think to some extent because
people are generally pretty fed up with seeing the same old content repeated
over and over, especially where a lot of it has been found to be factually
questionable. Quality counts on social media, today more than ever, the filler
content is becoming a very distant memory with users now actively looking for
the value add, quality content that informs, entertains, educates, inspires and
converts readers into buyers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I also think it goes wider
than that, in part because, for businesses, social media has become an unwieldy
minefield over the past few years, not least, because of how little your
efforts seem to be amplified. There is now a wariness bought on by an inherent
risk that your marketing campaign might fall foul of one of the seemingly millions
of unknown algorithmic rules and you find yourself cancelled, cut off from the
clients you have been hyper-focused on retaining since time immemorial. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiFgqI48ZvjDy1ewT0Uvah4oCemlHb2GpgADj9AiAYF7MhnZ6SSSrbTwYT3evRSJhd1yDVH-wedZFKoApajceL-u-rVeIbDm9K1oXjK8GzEHpJxBkkQjwjue1fY7lySra45mTxBO5JXFnDmuBTyA0dZsExnFCjd-o15UEDN9_2IR-5HhpuM9iEH05kE=s4088" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Vintage technology artwork showing 1980s digital media and technology" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiFgqI48ZvjDy1ewT0Uvah4oCemlHb2GpgADj9AiAYF7MhnZ6SSSrbTwYT3evRSJhd1yDVH-wedZFKoApajceL-u-rVeIbDm9K1oXjK8GzEHpJxBkkQjwjue1fY7lySra45mTxBO5JXFnDmuBTyA0dZsExnFCjd-o15UEDN9_2IR-5HhpuM9iEH05kE=w640-h640" title="Obsolescence by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">One of my most recent retro-inspired artworks showing vintage technology and media! Obsolescence is available to order online. Copyright Mark Taylor 2022 - All Rights Reserved.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Disinformation has spread
everywhere to the point that in some instances, it seems as if it has reached the
point of normalisation. That’s despite
some rather weak attempts by the tech giants and governments to put the brakes
on it. That makes it incredibly
difficult to find any level of organic reach unless the content cuts way above
the noise. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">As an independent artist, all
of this change is challenging. Pre-pandemic, there were a lot fewer people than
there are today who were willing to make substantial online transactions in
return for art, and even fewer who would be willing to consider purchasing art
through non-traditional routes to ownership. Then, the world changed and buyers
became much more accepting of doing things differently, and mostly they have
surprised everyone by embracing new ways of doing almost everything we once
thought they wouldn’t. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">So maybe it’s time we looked
to the future and asked the question, how can we sell more art in the future
and will we need to change our traditional approach to the transactional
process of swapping our art for cold hard cash? Just how different do we need
to be successful artists in a new world?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The transactional process is
changing…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Many alternatives to the
traditional art sale transaction approach already exist today, we just tend to
favour the traditional way of moving art onto walls which has historically followed the ‘you give me money and I give you
art’ model, with no intermediate complications beyond having a website and a
social media account. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Traditionally, you develop a
following through exhibitions and galleries and then buyers turn up to a show,
fall in love with a work and then make the transaction. There is nothing simpler,
but buyers for the artwork of the majority of working artists, are now willing
to look at alternatives to the traditional art buying process in order to
purchase and consume their art. They’re not looking in the usual places and
spaces, and they’re looking at alternative ways to pay for the work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">As artists, we will need to
adapt. Maybe we tend to favour the traditional approach to selling art because
we’re so much more comfortable with that, know where you are approach, or we
think buyers are more comfortable with that approach. I think buyers are not
only embracing new ways to transact, they’re actively looking for new ways to
transact that make the whole process of buying art and everything else, simpler
for them, and not necessarily us as artists.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The
Normalisation of Selling Online…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I
remember not all that long ago when you were expected as an artist to be
represented by a gallery. That’s how I began my art career, it was a linear
route that had been followed for centuries, and that’s what we were told to do
as artists. Today, there’s a huge blurring of the lines between physical
galleries and the online space, particularly as many galleries have been forced
to go down the online route. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgnW5CgRgNCZ4ECRxX923cwTgw9Xrd1ZYIz9_pFTg_a8-cEHtsCJnTtBlaTnuFVpTeeNFMzEhRIYSVoWQNBpaaixajEp92m8cEoiVOJ-8MQfbcWYwSNa8EAWV02uUC_5kwFr6nm1AIPS3bpKeNnjM_gmtveGgJnb2jq1ILICM5j_3m41aoFlcby3f9F=s4088" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="audio cassette artwork with cassette tape and pencil" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgnW5CgRgNCZ4ECRxX923cwTgw9Xrd1ZYIz9_pFTg_a8-cEHtsCJnTtBlaTnuFVpTeeNFMzEhRIYSVoWQNBpaaixajEp92m8cEoiVOJ-8MQfbcWYwSNa8EAWV02uUC_5kwFr6nm1AIPS3bpKeNnjM_gmtveGgJnb2jq1ILICM5j_3m41aoFlcby3f9F=w640-h640" title="Tools of the Trade by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Tools of the Trade by Mark Taylor - Copyright 2021 -2022 - Available from my online stores now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Buyers
who make purchases from the majority of working artists who are either not in
the high-end fine art market or who are not represented by the mega-galleries are less likely to be swayed to make a purchase because the item is for sale
here, rather than there. They just want great art, great quality, and even at
the higher value end of the market, they want to find great value, and that’s
not to say that they’re looking for great value in a monetary sense, it’s much
broader than that.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Let
there be change…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What has
excited me more than anything over the past couple of years is just how well
known some artists have become despite the lack of professional representation.
I take a look through the likes of Etsy and notice small micro-communities of
fans getting behind their favourite creators, anticipating their next release
and then making a purchase and leaving reviews before going on to become brand
ambassadors of real people and extolling the virtues of their favourite
creators online through social media. It’s not the galleries who do the
discovering today, it’s communities of people who might never have previously
stepped through a gallery door.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Creators
seem to be finally waking up to the 21<sup>st</sup> Century/Post-Pandemic, need
for them to become the brand of me, and it’s awesome. So how are these up and
coming creative superstars pulling it off? They’re doing things differently, they’re
being more human-like than corporate-like, they’re being way more authentic and
they’re going direct to the buyer and making the process easy. So how do us
mere mortals get anywhere close to doing that?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Rip up
the rule book!<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I firmly
believe, just as I always have, that independent creator's can shake off the
starving artist image and become successful artists if they first shake off the
belief that they need things like gallery representation or the thinking that
they absolutely must follow the norms and rules of the traditional art world to
be successful, or that they first need to wait around until they are discovered
by the establishment. Top tip here, there were never any rules, just a bunch of
over-confident people telling you that there were.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">This
is exactly why you don’t have to follow the traditional transactional process
of getting your art on people’s walls. There are no rules that have been etched
in stone to say that you need to sell through a physical store, a gallery or at
a show, it’s perfectly okay to get your art on walls in a way that works for
you and your buyer without worrying that the sale doesn’t count because you cut
out the middleman, or because you decided to take three turtle doves in payment
for your work instead of cash, so long as it works for you and your buyer. It
is though, probably worth bearing in mind that as cute as Turtle Doves are,
they’re not great at paying the bills.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If
there was any kind of etched in stone rule in the art world, it should be that
independent artists should stop worrying about what the not-so-independent art
world hierarchy is telling them to do. If you’re worried about how you are
viewed by the purists, I’m not convinced you’re at that point, any more independent than an artist who is tied to a gallery contract. You have to dare
to be different. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjnJWY2dfZdpP2yEPrk-KZ1MIZFwK7V3vXkHtX7EXTD44-C3j7iN4AqmduiNRCxDv8zBUsVT7ODdPITRU4IH2ycbOuNmrwbAuehb3tSg_NCXPzzfRmUkwhlex4Bvjykhuty6hscdOm8yA2Rjq0TOSk68aj8RvDxNMmM8V6KxZXWcW9gbFctEz688BWI=s4088" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Toucan art with jungle flora" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjnJWY2dfZdpP2yEPrk-KZ1MIZFwK7V3vXkHtX7EXTD44-C3j7iN4AqmduiNRCxDv8zBUsVT7ODdPITRU4IH2ycbOuNmrwbAuehb3tSg_NCXPzzfRmUkwhlex4Bvjykhuty6hscdOm8yA2Rjq0TOSk68aj8RvDxNMmM8V6KxZXWcW9gbFctEz688BWI=w640-h640" title="Toucan Play This Game by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Toucan Play This Game by Mark Taylor - This fun piece is available from my online stores! Copyright 2022 - All Rights Reserved.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Stop
copying corporate…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What
all of this means, of course, is that you now have a duty to be less corporate
and more you, and that goes for everything you do including how you present
yourself online. From emails to your website, people are looking for authentic you
rather than boardroom you.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Do you
want to know what kind of emails I stop what I’m doing to read? Those that aren’t
filled with generic corporate B/S sent out multiple times a day. You don’t have
to follow a traditional corporate template that sounds like it was written by a
deskbound robot. The difference between pre-pandemic email and email in the new
dawn of independent creators is in the tone of the email and the frequency. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">This
morning I checked my emails and found three from the same company that had
arrived overnight. This afternoon, another three from the same company. Sure,
they were all trying to sell me different versions of the same widget, but I
don’t have the time to be reminded every 90-minutes about a widget I didn’t
sign up to hear about in the first place. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The
email I did read was one that I get in my inbox maybe once a month, sometimes once or
twice a week, depending on the story the author of the email is sharing with me.
I can relate to the author, we share the same interests, the communication is
less corporate and more friend, I can get behind that, it feels more personal,
less like I don’t have a choice, and it’s not screaming desperation. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I do get
it, you sign up to an email marketing platform that gives you maybe 500, 5,000
or unlimited emails a month to send out to potential clients, that’s not a
target you need to strive to meet, it’s an arbitrary number linked with
whatever price tier you subscribe to of the email service you use.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I once
read something that suggested that an average year of emailing has the same
ecological impact as driving a couple of hundred miles by a gas-guzzling car. If
that truly is the case, then just the act of cutting down on the number you
send will have an impact on the environment. Instead of the typical, do you need to print
this message off, save the trees, straplines, you can at least highlight the
fact that you are reducing filler content/spam. If you are sending emails, you
absolutely have a responsibility to respect peoples time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The
company that sends me at least nine emails a day must be surely responsible for a
big chunk of global warming. I’m not sure how accurate those figures are, but
not having to think for five minutes about filler content that absolutely no
one reads will gift you with some time back that you could spend doing
something useful, or having a nap, both equally less corporate than buy this, or
this, or that, and make our shareholders happy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjLpWpUCqBZHtNKzDTNiThdbmlo_4oNK6Q5v_fJmjO7vxKMOF2iAys5UdaIUrJTYTH7fE2M30GFaBB3CTXX9zE1ZOc6NWaBm9qJGG5m-ikEEP_Df_XxElr_aiphO-ZDHe3xSzCJ61jCecwR--mnY7zQBjHzJNxhpdwYvx5RsDnNLLBm1I9zq86SjQZW=s4088" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Hot Flamingo Artwork showing flamingo with tropical flora" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjLpWpUCqBZHtNKzDTNiThdbmlo_4oNK6Q5v_fJmjO7vxKMOF2iAys5UdaIUrJTYTH7fE2M30GFaBB3CTXX9zE1ZOc6NWaBm9qJGG5m-ikEEP_Df_XxElr_aiphO-ZDHe3xSzCJ61jCecwR--mnY7zQBjHzJNxhpdwYvx5RsDnNLLBm1I9zq86SjQZW=w640-h640" title="Hot Flamingo by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Hot Flamingo by Mark Taylor - Available to order now from my stores! Image - Copyright Mark Taylor 2022</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Make
your place rather than know your place…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There’s
something else that these superstar creators are all doing in this new world,
and that is, they are giving themselves permission to think of their art
practice as being a business rather than a hobby. There’s no room for the meek
to hide away thinking that if they come out and announce to the world that they
are a business owner they will be laughed at by the purists, or they will be
seen as being a sell-out. In the art world, you really can’t win either
argument, so don’t even try. Think of your practice as anything less than a
real business and it will always be less.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">We
often talk about finding our place in the art world, but I am a big believer in
making your own place in the art world. Stop falling in line with the safe
trends that everyone else is doing and following, that’s not how you create a
whole new art movement, and it seems to be a much less useful approach in a
world that has changed so much. The world this side of the pandemic is far more
accepting that you can define your own place in the art world by being your very
own kind of weird. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There
really is no point in simply trying to fit in. Do that and you will blend into
the background along with everyone else. Follow your weird and stand out
because as an artist, that’s your mission, to be honest, it always has been.
That’s how much the art world has changed in the past couple of years, buyers
are being less safe in their choice of art and someone has to feed their newfound appetite for different. In fact, I’m not even sure all that much has
changed in that respect, maybe what has changed is that buyers are more
accepting of not following the current trend or the most well-known name.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">You
also have to put the hours in…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">In
knowing your place you also have to look beyond your talent and just get on
with putting the work in. That’s how these superstar creators are suddenly
building tribes. They’re figuring out that the world changed and people are
more into making deep connections with other people today than maybe they ever
were before. Hey, we’ve all been mostly locked inside for a few years, now we
yearn for that human interaction again. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">These
creative rockstars are suddenly working out that relationships matter. Be it by
email or on social media, there is less of a distance between the buyer and the
creator. More than that, these creators know that building relationships are
not only the key to bringing people on board, they understand that any
relationship is better if it is built on trust, and that takes a little time to establish.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Look
through the comments on social media, through the interactions in the creator's
online presence, the creators are talking directly to the buyers, more
importantly, they are responding and respecting that someone has given up their
time to engage. What you will also notice is that tribes are talking to each
other, there’s way more interaction than there was before.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What
these rockstar artists are more aware of is that they are competing, not with
other artists, but for peoples time and attention. They are competing to be
heard and noticed and not to be drowned out by all of the noise. They’re listening
to their tribe and they’re telling their story, and if they’re not telling their
story, they’re at least telling people how and why they’re creating what they’re
creating. They’re absolutely talking about the ‘why’ their art exists.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjLd8Hrze7V9J7Oh9Oy6sKs8AoSPjh01l0Diu71zQaFoWQzRD735H7nbIIKI42CjJGySlMBnocCO8EZsWG00PijtMLKRa7wuX_Hbg1GDtgMgOyMJe2Krnla9RecYYDcchXzYF3cPrg1zKu42igGpcq8pNBHjkJCKBQIZgaNaUPZnDzI-QjsX7N-PSqH=s1219" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Adrift Under A Neon Sky artwork by Mark Taylor showing beach scene and small boat at sunset" border="0" data-original-height="1044" data-original-width="1219" height="548" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjLd8Hrze7V9J7Oh9Oy6sKs8AoSPjh01l0Diu71zQaFoWQzRD735H7nbIIKI42CjJGySlMBnocCO8EZsWG00PijtMLKRa7wuX_Hbg1GDtgMgOyMJe2Krnla9RecYYDcchXzYF3cPrg1zKu42igGpcq8pNBHjkJCKBQIZgaNaUPZnDzI-QjsX7N-PSqH=w640-h548" title="Adrift Under A Neon Sky by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Adrift Under a Neon Sky by Mark Taylor - Available on a wide range of products, even jigsaws! Image copyright Mark Taylor 2022</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">That’s
something that feels completely different in the new world, this engagement alone is as much a part of the
art as the art itself. The art is only half of the conversation the artist is
trying to have with the world. If we were to simply post our latest creation and
then move on without saying a word, I’m not sure at that point we can even say
that the artist matters. The art could have been created by a robot, and it is
being noticed by buyers more than ever before. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Where
are buyers heading in the new world?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Many
buyers are going to the exact same places as they did before, but now we have
new buyers who might have discovered art for the first time during lockdown.
They’re certainly still looking in the traditional places, especially where
those places exist online, but they’re also more accepting that great art isn’t
exclusive to a gallery, and they are most definitely finding out that the most
unique art is rarely, if ever in a gallery.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Patreon…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">More
and more people I talk to have been mentioning just how much they’re looking
for unique works through platforms that might not have been front and centre
pre-pandemic and one of those platforms is Patreon. It’s a whole new way (that
existed before) of engaging those who are moving away from the traditional
transactional process of acquiring art.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Back
in the day when artists were artists, and the plague ran rampant throughout the
world, artists would have patrons who would support them so that the artist
could spend their days creating masterpieces and they would be fully funded to create
whilst taking steps to avoid catching the plague. What a time that must have
been.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Okay,
not much has changed really, apart from fewer artists today can rely on a
traditional patron funded art career. Where traditional patronages exist today,
they’re also a lot different to patronages of the past, they often come in the
form of residencies, or through brand collaborations, and that also means that
the artist tends to now have to do a lot more than simply focus on creating.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What
you can do today is crowdsource a group of patrons to cover your costs and fund
your art career using the power of modern technology and a platform called
Patreon. If people like what you do, they can each pay a small (or large) sum
of money to support you and in return, they will claim rewards for backing you.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Patreon
is something that as an artist, I can get behind because it takes art back to
its very roots in society. This is how artists would be more typically funded
at one time. Today we tend to focus on the artist who creates the artwork but
during the renaissance, for example, it was the patron or a collective group of
patrons who would dictate the cost, materials, size, location and subject
matter of the artwork, the artist would be almost secondary. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh1k-R2xJjnnHYBoJW0AiUVsgNsRGyVqIMp5eQMxcNOosgGIGf5itvv1CdEIpboZSLznZcGfuGtgiBcKu-nxcYyS0_2bsI5K2EBfG3IoutQF8nBLORMIsybqIcusd6JRhzhBW3HbpFyRiKJSXYoYSwfThlJ12puGNDaDn9P_l0Se9986QyizOE-vw04=s1179" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Mountain artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="1022" data-original-width="1179" height="554" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh1k-R2xJjnnHYBoJW0AiUVsgNsRGyVqIMp5eQMxcNOosgGIGf5itvv1CdEIpboZSLznZcGfuGtgiBcKu-nxcYyS0_2bsI5K2EBfG3IoutQF8nBLORMIsybqIcusd6JRhzhBW3HbpFyRiKJSXYoYSwfThlJ12puGNDaDn9P_l0Se9986QyizOE-vw04=w640-h554" title="Mountain by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Mountain by Mark Taylor - This is one of my older works, it's also my best selling work ever! Copyright Mark Taylor 2015 - 2022</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Today,
artists are mostly in control of the entire creative process, Patreon doesn’t
take any of that benefit away from artists. The creative process is still mostly
owned by you, you determine what you create, but your backers will generally
only back whatever resonates with them, so you will need to take their lead.
They can pick and choose what and who to back, and that’s the key, whilst the
creative process is entirely your own, you will need to keep backers hooked.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">When I
mentor new (mostly younger) artists, setting up a Patreon account is often one
of the first things they think about doing, and this is where I always advise a
little caution. Namely, that Patreon is just as uncertain as any other sales
method, until such time that it’s not. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">You will
have way more flexibility to be able to build direct relationships with
collectors rather than irregular or casual buyers which in itself sounds like
any artists ultimate dream, but the keyword here is relationship, and Patreon
requires you to build and nurture relationships over the long term. It’s not a
five-minute fix to fund your previous or current poor life decisions before becoming
bored with the whole thing and moving on when the money doesn’t flow in
immediately. Think of it as sowing a seed in the spring, it could very well be
next spring before you see green shoots.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Patreon also isn’t something that should be taken lightly. Supporting different tiers
of donation requires you to do something other than just create art, it
requires you to invest time in making sure that any rewards are indeed rewarded
to those who have shown support for you and your work. You will also need to
make sure that rewards reflect the level of contributed funding. If I’m
pledging five bucks a month, my expectations are that my reward should be
something worth less than five bucks, if anything at all other than the
creative output and knowing I have supported a creative. If I’m pledging a
thousand bucks per month, my expectations might be a little different, it’s
subjective, it depends on the audience. Some backers (as in, few) will be happy
to pay a thousand bucks a month for little to nothing other than a feeling of
support in return, others might expect a vial or two of blood. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If you
don’t have enough time or think you won’t have enough time to fully commit to
Patreon or any other service just like it, don’t do it, or at least limit what
you do with it until you can support your supporters properly. You will need to
go into any Patreon activity in a position of being prepared. I know of far too
many creators who have signed up to the platform, suddenly gained traction, and
then had no plan at all to deal with rewards and it has turned out to become an
unmitigated disaster with plenty of disgruntled backers deciding not to back
you at all. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh7sykVVR_klGYfdp6GG-ZrODSoiKMoSYnznlhpny-s0XDWKeENZ1W0widpfTR4EadvrLVmC21b-mG3FLRdNzuH2jbqiv6qKhUv6bAY4eW_--vf3ss1Yo5of6DkrZusFQzGOQD3PzusB4CUp6GWkxC2PQo9dVXw0dL4nXvCiATwmBPAlMQSqZbzxrjY=s4088" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="empty deckchairs on a beach artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh7sykVVR_klGYfdp6GG-ZrODSoiKMoSYnznlhpny-s0XDWKeENZ1W0widpfTR4EadvrLVmC21b-mG3FLRdNzuH2jbqiv6qKhUv6bAY4eW_--vf3ss1Yo5of6DkrZusFQzGOQD3PzusB4CUp6GWkxC2PQo9dVXw0dL4nXvCiATwmBPAlMQSqZbzxrjY=w640-h640" title="A Perfect Day by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A Perfect Day by Mark Taylor - Available on a range of archive-quality print mediums, and now, as a jigsaw too! Order from my online store today! Image: copyright Mark Taylor 2022</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Patreon
is also not some golden panacea to riches either, I can’t stress this enough. It
takes an insane amount of effort on your part to set up and own a process that
backers can trust and find value in, and an insane amount of effort to fulfil
rewards once you start to build up the number of backers. You might even need
to think about outsourcing some of this work down the line.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It
doesn’t at all, negate the need to carry out marketing which will be a bit of a
blow to those who already struggle with the work involved in surfacing your art
in front of potential buyers through more traditional approaches. It’s also worth
being mindful that any serious level of income is not likely to happen
overnight. Patience is itself an art.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">When
setting up your Patreon campaign, never, ever, over-promise, and never
underestimate just how much work is involved in making sure that rewards are
sent out in a timely manner, particularly where a physical process is involved
in delivering physical items. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Just
in terms of shipping, you will want to make sure that you are not spending more
money on getting a product into people’s hands than you earn from the campaign because that would mean that you become the backer of your supporters, and
that’s also not how it’s supposed to work. You really need to have the mindset
of a CEO to create a successful Patreon campaign, and that means being
realistic, robust, resilient, and willing to put in a heap of effort for
any level of reward, small or big. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">That
latter point might sound blindingly obvious to most folk, yet there are creatives
on Patreon, even today, who can’t possibly be making more in income than they
spend on outgoings. This doesn’t surprise me one bit, humans don’t much like
planning, and fewer still like to get to grips with how to run a business
before they begin to run a business. Top tip here too, learn the basics of
business before you start any journey towards selling your work, in whatever
way you sell it, you should even approach Patreon with a business-first mindset.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">You
should also never underestimate the sheer amount of work that is involved in
organising the logistics of any physical shipping method. Patreon is a global
platform and as such, your logistical issues become global logistical issues as
soon as you go live. You also need to ask yourself some very probing questions
such as, how do I scale if it takes off, what’s my plan B, and am I exerting
way too much effort/funding/energy/will to live, for what I get in return, and
if so, can my energies be refocussed on doing something else that has a better chance
of reward.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg11oh8oURj_wV5x1MWFYkHqOO9pAHjrQ8Pd_atC_rQ6DM383e9Y8USnAn7N1V-35gwQw3vFqcluPT4kdYHGVgUlg0B_kcjb2G0qwpOvlzMeLI7yvKV4e27KZSWyGxGbUho6THYRU9cGBayGJ-n1kT6TwwX5X7CbtokXpc-OsUHRpcnoSsUdYbJHPeX=s4088" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="artwork by Mark Taylor featuring electronic components" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg11oh8oURj_wV5x1MWFYkHqOO9pAHjrQ8Pd_atC_rQ6DM383e9Y8USnAn7N1V-35gwQw3vFqcluPT4kdYHGVgUlg0B_kcjb2G0qwpOvlzMeLI7yvKV4e27KZSWyGxGbUho6THYRU9cGBayGJ-n1kT6TwwX5X7CbtokXpc-OsUHRpcnoSsUdYbJHPeX=w640-h640" title="1 UP by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">1 UP - A classic retro-inspired vintage gaming technology artwork by Mark Taylor - Copyright 2021 - 2022</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Can it
pay off? I know of a growing number of creators who now solely generate their
entire income through using Patreon and some of them live very well on the
model, some can even afford to live in proverbial palaces in the Bay Area of
San Francisco, yes the rewards can be that good. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">This
is a model that has the potential to replace the nine to five and the
traditional sales process, even with as few as a couple of thousand patrons
paying you the cost of a cup of coffee each month, but don’t expect it to be
quite like a regular nine to five. It also scales really well, with the only
single point of failures being in your ability to keep creating and your
ability to keep on top of getting the rewards out on time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">While
it can pay off, you will need to take a cautionary approach to thinking about placing
all of your creations (eggs) in one (virtual) basket! Never think that the
amount that has been pledged will be what you actually receive, you will need
to pay fees from anything you make. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Another
cautionary note is around the level of fall off in supporters you might
experience with what is essentially a slightly adapted subscription model.
There will never be any guarantee that someone who pledged this month will
pledge at all next month or ever again. So, as a single source of income, it can
be unpredictable, but in fairness, that can be the case with any sales process.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What
you are doing with these types of platforms is betting on the subscription
model staying in vogue in some of the most uncertain economic times the world
has probably ever faced. What you are doing with a traditional sales process is
betting on that exact same thing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">As a
platform, it remains only a single piece of a larger puzzle, you still need to
have other elements in place such as somewhere to physically live online so
that you can host content and go deeper than the platforms allow and you need
somewhere where you can focus on building relationships with your supporters.
If you see Patreon or any of the multitude of services like it as the only
piece of the puzzle that you need, it might be more prudent to find a simpler
jigsaw.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">At
its simplest, these kinds of platforms are recurring payment systems. They essentially
collect rent in return for managing payments. Signing up doesn’t give you a
ready-made audience or extend your reach further than you already have it,
those elements still need you to put in the marketing work to make it happen,
but these platforms will make the backers experience way simpler, and that is
really, really, important. Backers are looking for the kind of simple that you
most likely don’t already offer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Having
said that, despite the work needed, Patreon is a platform that is well
recognised but never plan on it lasting. Hopefully, at some point, you will
outgrow it and be able to stand alone with your own business model and your own
patron base. You do have to be mindful of the fees, some of my peers who have
found success on the platform are paying monthly fees in the high four figures,
but there’s no gain without at least a little pain as they say.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjPyi7iSHYc5Qmil0JF_H5GSuQ86Z64DAgWGUYs_M0oJwJGoRHFYvTyffKW8dYPbpachzYuHnFaUrtjdkisyox7wk5McMhrQglyTca7l6-GPYgi4mmryFOuPxmClcg_yg9t84mGFtwLti5365q5h2yTB3Kks0dLEgX73DLx55Orm0LRMCEIZeabW4Fr=s1228" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Pool Party artwork by Mark Taylor Flamingos by a pool with tropical flora" border="0" data-original-height="1228" data-original-width="1227" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjPyi7iSHYc5Qmil0JF_H5GSuQ86Z64DAgWGUYs_M0oJwJGoRHFYvTyffKW8dYPbpachzYuHnFaUrtjdkisyox7wk5McMhrQglyTca7l6-GPYgi4mmryFOuPxmClcg_yg9t84mGFtwLti5365q5h2yTB3Kks0dLEgX73DLx55Orm0LRMCEIZeabW4Fr=w640-h640" title="Pool Party by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Pool Party by Mark Taylor - One of my best selling works that promises to add some tropical fun to any space! Image copyright Mark Taylor 2022</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The
Art Collective…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Art
collectives are becoming huge, simply because they generally offer some of the
most unique art from the most unique artists but without the overhead, you would
find from a premium high-end gallery. I have been a champion of art collectives
for what seems like forever, where a number of artists share the workload, the
fee’s, and ultimately, the buyers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">That
latter point might seem like a real rub, but there are multiple models that
make sense for collaborative efforts. Online exhibitions, online auctions, even
art rental, but it only ever makes sense if each and every creator is signed up
to the same playbook and they actually contribute an equal amount of effort
too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There
are things that you will need in place to be able to do this, firstly, you will
need to form a collaboration with like-minded artists who all share a common
goal. Next, you will need to decide on a model that each of you can run with,
or at least live with, and finally, everything has to be done with the utmost
transparency. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The
difficult part is in finding a collaboration that works for everyone. Sure, it’s
easy to find artists who say they want to collaborate, it’s quite another thing
to find a bunch of artists, all equally as committed to pouring their art and
soul into a collective effort. In my experience, collaborations stem from
existing relationships that have been built around mutual trust and respect,
and even then, it all needs to be formalised in writing, even if you are
working with your best friend. Think of it as a pre-nuptial agreement, money
can become quite divisive, especially if the contribution of effort has been
lacking from one or more sides of the collaboration. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOyzP9ymQHXT_5-DXoZWgid3AoGxVfk0erNcQPG_C_ZHIt0fWdFOk1aWkXYewu2v5kWBsQXpu7VyJ9xdZkXILk_Crm-2eIQN3Oe6tyh1H3vQWOILmOCszq4IUqREucvOVA4UCjEmtB-nlLE8Kiy2kkQ1fzmMGAIXzExAIz-bJyX4Y7OofXF7ca9BqH=s4088" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="storage wars artwork by Mark Taylor showing vintage storage media" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOyzP9ymQHXT_5-DXoZWgid3AoGxVfk0erNcQPG_C_ZHIt0fWdFOk1aWkXYewu2v5kWBsQXpu7VyJ9xdZkXILk_Crm-2eIQN3Oe6tyh1H3vQWOILmOCszq4IUqREucvOVA4UCjEmtB-nlLE8Kiy2kkQ1fzmMGAIXzExAIz-bJyX4Y7OofXF7ca9BqH=w640-h640" title="Storage Wars by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Storage Wars by Mark Taylor - Another vintage technology inspired artwork that documents computer storage media from across the decades - pre-1970s to the present day. Image, copyright Mark Taylor 2022 - Available to order from my online store!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The
Art Rental…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Art
rentals are a great way to keep art moving, but you will also need to consider
the arrangements under which the art is essentially rented. There are
logistical issues, insurance, cleaning and maintenance fees, and the cost of
replacement work for works that have become damaged or lost. It happens more
than you would think, especially in hotels (it gets stolen) and in public
spaces (it gets kicked).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">You
also need a constantly evolving inventory, but the joy of this model is that
you can find repeat income from the same work. My rental works are provided
under a collaboration of six artists, each of us committing to produce a
certain number of new pieces each year, and we also offer a final rental price
which means that the longer the art is rented, the lower the cost of outright
ownership at the end of the rental. The rental covers the added costs of
insurance, hanging services, cleaning, and replacement.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Print
materials are always at the premium end of the quality scale, not least because
that reduces the ongoing replacement costs, but also because premium materials
attract a premium price, and very few businesses will be inclined to have a
dollar store quality print hanging on public display in their reception,
neither will they want something so small that it has little to no impact so you do
have to think big. You also have to justify the price you set, surprisingly,
the image alone can’t do that because it’s the same image that might also be
available as a dollar store print.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The
downside to this model is that the upfront costs can be high, you’re
essentially paying wholesale prices for your own work on top of the cost of
creating it, and that’s before you earn a dime. But savvy businesses are keen
to have truly never before seen work hanging on their walls rather than a
costly reproduction that’s also on display in every other hotel room and in the
new world, they’re super-keen to switch things around without the feeling that
they need to sell an existing piece before they replace it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The
point to remember with a rental model is that you really cannot skimp on
quality, even at the beginning. It takes a little time to recoup any
investment, I tend to place work for between 6-12 months before I see any
kind of profit so you will need to factor in an immediately high outlay, but at
some point, it will, or at least should, become a reasonably passive income and
you should then have time to focus on other things.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">You
will also be approached by artists who want to join the rental scheme and offer
their work. Think of this as the equivalent of someone buying into your
business, (most are put off when they realise there are costs) and it will water
down any income if it is equally shared. Only encourage this if you need more collaborators
who will collaborate and be part of an overall collective of artists sharing
the work/costs equally. </span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhEXNFJ9xn472ju3yTo9Mi9ZuLiQRQxo4gdeD3eX8L7EzRRFlpQBxor6AirpIUjPyG0fMatopZi_i3dCIREI6vksX9eqXcpsogLul8tlpnKlpY89tTqukkaucaE4IZAEbhsAuTvdZD77ejesMm7Qa2yhnxTx_gcxwebDb1eqoWVVHrftE8gvk3jB4Gv=s4088" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro inspired artwork Turn It Up by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="4088" data-original-width="4088" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhEXNFJ9xn472ju3yTo9Mi9ZuLiQRQxo4gdeD3eX8L7EzRRFlpQBxor6AirpIUjPyG0fMatopZi_i3dCIREI6vksX9eqXcpsogLul8tlpnKlpY89tTqukkaucaE4IZAEbhsAuTvdZD77ejesMm7Qa2yhnxTx_gcxwebDb1eqoWVVHrftE8gvk3jB4Gv=w640-h640" title="Turn It Up by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tun it Up by Mark Taylor - Another classic piece that will transport you back to decades gone by! Available to order from my online stores! Image, copyright Mark Taylor 2021-2022</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /><o:p></o:p></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Art
Auctions…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Art
auctions, both physical and online can also work well for an artist collective
to engage with, particularly where those auctions also support wider community
causes. Whilst there is nothing stopping a solo artist from going down the route of
auctions, it does become a richer experience for the buyer if they are able to
see and select from a wide range of work created in different mediums, at
different price points and from a selection of genres.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The
shift towards homemade, quality and local…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Maybe
because we couldn’t travel for a couple of years, but the pandemic and the
associated lockdowns began to drive local trade, the search for unique quality
products, and a realisation that people are putting way more thought into
sustainability. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Community-based art projects that raise local awareness of issues and initiatives can be
a vehicle, as an artist, you are not only in a position where you can
visually document what’s important in your community, you can become a vehicle
of change within your community, raising your own artistic profile on the way. Bear
in mind that community projects should be more community, less you.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I have
said this many times over on these very pages, but if you are not engaging your
local community with your creations, you are missing out on one of the best
sources of exposure, repeat business, and gaining recognition for what you do
which may then be more widely recognised further afield. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Artists
have been at the heart of communities for centuries, yet in the 21<sup>st</sup>
Century it seems easier to find yourself serving a global market than a local
one, and that could mean that somewhat ironically, you are missing out on many
more sales. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">That
too might seem counterintuitive, but to compete in a global art market is
difficult. Despite the relative ease of entry, given all of the online tools
artists now have at their disposal, the act of working in a global space makes
everything more challenging, not least in the amount of more nuanced,
hyper-focused marketing effort that you need to put in. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Your
target market might be similar in other territories and regions but the
marketing message will very likely need to be different to match what
geographically disparate cultures respond better to. If you’re struggling to
find sales with the odd scattering of social posts, here, there, and everywhere,
in the hope that anyone and everyone will see and respond to that post while making
your message resonate with twenty different cultures, you need to be mindful
that sending a coherent marketing message that resonates in each community, is
going to be a whole new level of character building. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The
point here is, if you had any sense of dislike for marketing before, try doing
it properly across multiple territories. Despite the saying that goes something
along the lines of, the art will sell itself, yep, no, it doesn’t, even if you're pretty darn close to being the next Matisse. Art will sell itself, is just
about the biggest myth there is beyond, your creativity will be discovered very
quickly.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgn3xWtrMXiS4zbl7kmklapydtx6X18TpBdLOYzNsLrIL9UBL2x2a_c3sPYRTziM5LnUnrNPKqCHbsEATdsAZ6pQtSA4zfTPx22g1ijiTMhegp_J_zKLwOuNP-7Snf5mrY5yDAGTVoJopdk0wqjKGA0SMr9WBw3IGF9olRaGidZWOKiX4i4T6GuiAwO=s1439" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Pisces artwork fish out of water by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="1439" data-original-width="1009" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgn3xWtrMXiS4zbl7kmklapydtx6X18TpBdLOYzNsLrIL9UBL2x2a_c3sPYRTziM5LnUnrNPKqCHbsEATdsAZ6pQtSA4zfTPx22g1ijiTMhegp_J_zKLwOuNP-7Snf5mrY5yDAGTVoJopdk0wqjKGA0SMr9WBw3IGF9olRaGidZWOKiX4i4T6GuiAwO=w448-h640" title="Pisces by Mark Taylor" width="448" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Pisces by Mark Taylor - Like a fish out of water, this work is also available from my online store! Copyright Mark Taylor 2022</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Embrace
the new world…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I
think, we truly are witnessing a seismic shift in the behaviour of buyers, we’re
certainly seeing a democratization of the art world and we are finally seeing
independent artists find the level of success they deserve. There have been
plenty of creatives who have proven throughout the pandemic that it is possible
to generate a good living from their creative endeavours by embracing change
and adapting to have a much more entrepreneurial spirit.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I so
often speak to independent artists who feel like they are running on the spot
and getting nowhere fast. Art has always been a long game, especially for those
artists who are chasing the unicorn we call, ‘getting discovered’ as if that in
itself is some kind of golden ticket. What the pandemic has shown us, is that
the art world that the majority of working artists create within, has embraced
some seismic changes and it is entirely possible to have a successful art career
without the pursuit of stereotypical discovery, but you will have to be willing
to embrace difficult and challenging and put your business front and centre of
what you do. You are not selling out by making a living.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">When
you talk to or read about those previously unknown creatives who have found a
level of commercial success throughout the pandemic, the one thing that you
might notice is that their attitudes towards running their art practice as a
business have been a departure from pre-pandemic times where waiting to be
discovered was their primary objective. Top tip here, no one gets paid to wait around.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Now,
those creatives are more like CEOs of startups, embracing entrepreneurship and
actively doing things that get them noticed, things that we’re not all that
comfortable with, and things that make you get up at 5am, the difference is
that you will want to get up at 5am if you get it right. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Those
creatives are also more likely to have a plan, and they’re more likely to spend
time searching for things that will make them stand out rather than searching and waiting, for the golden ticket that is discovery. They are being discovered
in a totally different way, and more importantly, on their own terms. That my
dear friends sums up just how much the art world has changed. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgjNTuyHWI8BuFMSQd5Xh8wF_DTP86pLT3R-x4i89TQXAV4iZAK0OT7KQWLGuHomfFYamvJZaUDPz_DJqsNagBTgrjp0bN6vaXlsbsjSc7p-s_dD8J9snCEU6nJKnnz1mdAEoypAI-u1U2a5SNpRY6lEBeZw2WKS9_hm4p3okiWdRrz0i2yHb8W0vJ6=s1221" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Dry stone wall landscape at sunset artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="1035" data-original-width="1221" height="542" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgjNTuyHWI8BuFMSQd5Xh8wF_DTP86pLT3R-x4i89TQXAV4iZAK0OT7KQWLGuHomfFYamvJZaUDPz_DJqsNagBTgrjp0bN6vaXlsbsjSc7p-s_dD8J9snCEU6nJKnnz1mdAEoypAI-u1U2a5SNpRY6lEBeZw2WKS9_hm4p3okiWdRrz0i2yHb8W0vJ6=w640-h542" title="Glow Over A Dry Stone Wall by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Glow Over A Dry Stone Wall by Mark Taylor - one of my favourite paintings that I created a couple of years ago. Also available on jigsaws, and the ultimate in luxury, museum-quality acid-free prints! Copyright Mark Taylor 2022</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Until
Next Time…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Hopefully,
this post has got you thinking about how the world has changed and given you a
few new ideas about how you might want/need to engage with your market in the
future. It’s difficult to predict with any degree of accuracy what might happen
this time next year or even next week and less so in the art world, but there
is little doubt that buying behaviours have changed dramatically and we really
need to respond differently. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There
are so many marketing guides out there on the ‘tinternet’ that have been
written by marketing gurus and huge organisations who will all readily share
most (but never all) of their secrets to success. They’re often brilliant, even
genius, and tell you exactly what you need to do to get results. Except, they
don’t really tell you anything that is relevant because you’re not playing in
anywhere near the same space. A giant corporations marketing budget is likely
to be more per week than most working artists make in a year, so following the
corporate master plan is more likely to frustrate rather than help.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I come
to this from a lived experience perspective. Three plus decades in, there’s a
heap more I probably got very wrong than I got right along the way, and I never
once followed the fail-fast method of learning. I often failed slowly, frequently,
painfully. What has though become more and more obvious throughout that time,
is that when your market changes for whatever reason, you have to change, adapt,
and embrace it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">About
Mark…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I am
an artist and blogger and live in Staffordshire, England. My days are filled
with art, dog walking and Teams Meetings, while still being stuck somewhere in
the eighties. You can purchase my art through my Fine Art America store or my
Pixels site here: <a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</a> and you
can purchase my new works, special and limited editions directly. You can also
view my portfolio website at <a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank">https://beechhousemedia.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 281.25pt;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If you
are on Facebook, you can give me a follow right here, <a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</a>
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at <a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</a></span></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0Stafford, UK52.806693 -2.1206629.982837547193814 -37.27691 75.6305484528062 33.03559tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-84023385733667062122021-12-09T10:54:00.001+00:002021-12-09T10:54:32.078+00:00The Road to 2022<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><b>The Hottest Art Trends for 2022</b></span></span></h1><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xkY68a9RumY/YbHKrhemDYI/AAAAAAAAGzU/ffZ__VJiMEkHsBne64El0I5_DdqI1O87gCNcBGAsYHQ/s1080/the%2Broad%2Bto%2B2022.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="highway with mountain background" border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1080" height="336" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xkY68a9RumY/YbHKrhemDYI/AAAAAAAAGzU/ffZ__VJiMEkHsBne64El0I5_DdqI1O87gCNcBGAsYHQ/w640-h336/the%2Broad%2Bto%2B2022.jpg" title="The Road to 2022 Hot Art Trends" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Hottest Art Trends of 2022</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><b><br /></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Every year about this time, I
write a new article predicting the next year's art trends and colour schemes and
this year is no different! With my usual level of over the top research and
many, many hours of running through the numbers, flicking between Google, Bing
and countless other search engines and consuming almost a lifetime’s supply of
art in the process, the predictions this year are the most solid yet!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">With Christmas around the
corner, it’s time to start thinking ahead to 2022 and the art trends that any
self-respecting thriving artist should consider working on. We very often talk
about the side-hustle on these pages and even if you have a regular style, some
of these trends might just give you a new sense of inspiration and to be
totally honest, next years trends look like they’re going to be fun to work on
too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-taFzbFp58VU/YbHMYuAvpkI/AAAAAAAAGzc/ELTYQQwe1fQmSshR4TdstT3obtBFVjOTACNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/highland%2Bnights.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="highland landscape aurora" border="0" data-original-height="1515" data-original-width="2048" height="474" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-taFzbFp58VU/YbHMYuAvpkI/AAAAAAAAGzc/ELTYQQwe1fQmSshR4TdstT3obtBFVjOTACNcBGAsYHQ/w640-h474/highland%2Bnights.jpg" title="Highland Nights by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Highland Nights by Mark Taylor - Available in my Pixels and Fine Art America Stores now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Figuratively Speaking…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">First on the list shouldn’t
really be a surprise, although look back a few years and figurative art gave
way to non-representational abstract and to an extent, for a while, it looked as
though figurative works were under threat of becoming less relevant outside of
the museum. The dry spell was short-lived and figurative works have become
increasingly popular year on year. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Even during the times when
non-representational art was becoming increasingly popular, figurative works
never really went away with new Hockney’s coming on the market and just as
popular as ever. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">2022 will though, feel like
somewhat of a resurgence for figurative work with a number of exhibitions
already pencilled in (pandemic permitting), with a number already started and
running into 2022. There’s a major double David Hockney exhibition at the Bozar
Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, running through to the 23<sup>rd</sup>
January, and displays of work by Jenny Saville at Florence’s Museo Novencento,
and Tate Modern’s large scale show of recent work by Lubaina Himid runs right
the way through to July. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_F4iktmbPrU/YbHM_ACKaBI/AAAAAAAAGzk/Sx19OjSRzI8ZsisCZFgxaQut2_RvERIxQCNcBGAsYHQ/s1080/glassmorphism.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="rain on glass" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_F4iktmbPrU/YbHM_ACKaBI/AAAAAAAAGzk/Sx19OjSRzI8ZsisCZFgxaQut2_RvERIxQCNcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/glassmorphism.jpg" title="Glassmorphism" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Glassmorphism - a recurring trend?</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Just like glass…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Glassmorphism, and yes, that’s
an actual thing in user interface speak, is transitioning from screen to canvas
and it’s becoming ever popular in digital artworks where layer transparencies
are easier to accomplish than using traditional mediums. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If you’re wondering what
Glassmorphism is, it’s essentially the effect of glass panes in a similar
fashion to how modern operating systems look with a slightly blurred background
image behind the foreground image. Whilst not impossible to recreate with
traditional mediums, it is made much simpler using tools such as Photoshop or
Procreate with the built-in Gaussian blur and transparency tools.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It is a stylish way of
bringing the background of work into the foreground without it taking over
and the effect can be strikingly clean, although when used in user interfaces,
the misuse of Glassmorphism can create confusion and the work can end up
becoming what’s known technically as being, a bit of a mess.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Hand Drawn Elements…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Illustrations that have been
hand-drawn, especially when used for product marketing will become even more
popular during 2022. Hand drawn works can convey an immediate feeling of
familiarity and warmth, and they have become massively popular with products
such as beer cans, particularly with the small micro-breweries that have been
popping up to produce IPA beers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There’s also a certain
aesthetic and quality to hand drawn elements that are not always easy to
produce using digital formats. Particularly popular and appearing in many
searches online are works that give the appearance of being etched, or utilising
lines to produce the shaded areas and they also have a great fit with another
trend that has begun to emerge through Google’s search trends, and that is in
the use of monotone and black and white images.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NGBGEr2wMuc/YbHN458Av3I/AAAAAAAAGzs/YVJNAH4RIK4Q157gJiKswavfwsIrgcLywCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/eighties%2Bsocial%2Bmedia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="80s technology artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NGBGEr2wMuc/YbHN458Av3I/AAAAAAAAGzs/YVJNAH4RIK4Q157gJiKswavfwsIrgcLywCNcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/eighties%2Bsocial%2Bmedia.jpg" title="Eighties Social Media" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Eighties Social Media</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The future is retro…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">For those of you who have been
paying attention to the writing on these walls over the past few articles,
you’ll have noticed a heavy influence of creating retro and retro inspired
works to evoke those nostalgic feelings that more and more of us are getting as
we drift between episodes of the pandemic. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Whilst nostalgia for the past
will be different for everyone depending on a myriad of factors like your age,
where you grew up, and the type of childhood you had, there is no doubt that
the pandemic has made us all reflect in some way and think back to simpler
times. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">For me, I grew up in the
seventies and have fond memories of my childhood though it wasn’t until the
eighties that I became much more independent and old enough to remember what I
did and what I enjoyed. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The eighties was a very
formative decade for me, not least because that’s when I really began my art
career with a landscape work and the creation of graphic images using very
basic home computers of the time. It was also the decade Michael Jackson hooked
me with his Bad album, I was able to drink alcohol legally by the end of the
decade, and I had somehow managed to solve the Rubik’s Cube in less than a day
and have never solved it since.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I have never stopped creating
80s inspired artworks, creating hundreds, if not thousands of designs since I started
out that somehow still continue to find some relevance with collectors and
still manage to sell today, but it seems that the art world is ready to grow up
and move into the nineties, or it will be in 2022.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Nostalgia loving demographics
who grew up in the nineties have been reaching out for a while to ask when I
will be creating 90s inspired works, and an extensive search on Google Trends
seems to indicate that this is happening more broadly. There’s a new retro
demographic that we see every decade or so and this time it’s the 90s that will
be providing the visuals. There are also
nods to the year 2000 appearing in many online art markets, influences of that
crazy time when we all thought that our Nokia’s would die at the stroke of
midnight, a New Year’s Eve spent anticipating the end of the world in between
bottles of alcopop, it’s palm trees with a not-so-subtle hint of Miami, so let’s
party like it’s 1999!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gimFoGgciEw/YbHPdu0WdvI/AAAAAAAAGz0/QYJkTAW7D5svALXTPH3OJ5Rc79jWgrhvwCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/hot%2Bflamingo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="hot flamingo art" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gimFoGgciEw/YbHPdu0WdvI/AAAAAAAAGz0/QYJkTAW7D5svALXTPH3OJ5Rc79jWgrhvwCNcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/hot%2Bflamingo.jpg" title="Hot Flamingo by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Hot Flamingo by Mark Taylor - Available in my stores now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Ukiyo-e…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">A genre of Japanese art that flourished
during the 17<sup>th</sup> to 19<sup>th</sup> centuries, Ukiyo-e is once again
providing design inspiration for artists in the 21<sup>st</sup> century.
Whereas traditional Ukiyo-e works were more likely to feature prominent kabuki
actors and sumo wrestlers, the method was used to depict a myriad of subjects. Often
created using woodblocks, the modern twist is somewhat less traditional.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The modern take is more of a
combination of flat vector art and traditional woodblock, to produce flat,
simple images that will often make use of negative space on a page. The subject
matter is still wide and varied but the trends of the moment are more likely to
inspire works depicting travel and nature and simple figurative subjects.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The result is a clean image
with crisp lines, as simple as it is complicated to get to grips with as an
artist, but if the artist masters the process of creating this style, the
effects that can be produced can look stunning and unique. I wasn’t too sure
why Google trends were pointing to this style until I began to wonder if the
past few years of living under the cloud of a pandemic meant that people were
searching for simpler, yet bolder statement pieces. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-v77tnswF1Zg/YbHQcj5f2SI/AAAAAAAAGz8/Xd1ApYvNoYY20nPoxW50uxTymL3f_9hIwCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/sunset%2Bvalley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="sunset valley artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-v77tnswF1Zg/YbHQcj5f2SI/AAAAAAAAGz8/Xd1ApYvNoYY20nPoxW50uxTymL3f_9hIwCNcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/sunset%2Bvalley.jpg" title="Sunset Valley by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Sunset Valley by Mark Taylor - A flat art style with added foreground and background depth! - Now available in my Pixels and Fine Art America stores! </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The Re-emergence of Brutalism…
sort of…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Maybe we’re all a little bored
of the same old, same old by now, and by that I mean, have you noticed how
everything and anything these days has a tendency to look the same? Whether it's
transport or user interfaces, there’s an instant familiarity to everything that
we pick up, yet it hadn’t used to be like this. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Open up an application on your
smartphone and you are likely to be greeted with the stock standard button
toggles in the settings, all displayed on a completely black background in
something they call night mode. User interfaces tend to stick to specific
design standards and if there is one thing about design standards that I have
learned throughout my creative career, it’s that they eventually change when we get
bored with them. Standards are generally only the standard whilst they're the standard!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Sometimes these dark modes are
wrapped up in the guise of being an accessibility feature, mostly though, these
dark interfaces are wrapped up in a feature called, "we think people will think
this looks cool". The reality of accessibility though is that black and white
interfaces might work for some accessibility needs, they don’t work for all. Sorry to burst your UI bubble, but accessibility should run way deeper than a dark mode.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">That maybe explains why there
is a growing trend towards anti-design, where the artist rips up the rulebook
and creates new rules. Hey, what a novel idea, imagine creating something that
could even become its own art movement. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-si3dmM2XhjU/YbHbpGxUJBI/AAAAAAAAG0E/vdbEhtPOr0g_2Cwttwmm9mL7X7FqfeOjwCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/rebirth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="rebirth planetary artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="1515" data-original-width="2048" height="474" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-si3dmM2XhjU/YbHbpGxUJBI/AAAAAAAAG0E/vdbEhtPOr0g_2Cwttwmm9mL7X7FqfeOjwCNcBGAsYHQ/w640-h474/rebirth.jpg" title="Rebirth by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Rebirth by Mark Taylor - planetary anti-design! Of course, it's available now from my stores!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Anti-design shares more
similarities with brutalism than anything else, and yes, its alleged ugliness
is its beauty. Yet it also says so much, it makes a statement that we’re done
with conventional tastes. It challenges us, and it throws the traditional rulebook
right out of the window. In short, it’s a trend that maybe better conveys where
the world is right now, it’s the new kid on the block who definitely doesn’t
follow the rules that someone else made up. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">While we’re on the subject of
let’s break the rules, we’re also done with minimalism. Sure, we all cleaned out
the cupboards under the instruction of Maria Kondo, but with art, it’s also
about getting that hoarding habit back. It’s the Tiger King to Maria, and it’s
bold, bright, and beautiful. Intricate Maximalism isn’t all about just filling the
canvas, it is about making the use of the space that you have and creating
colour, objects, shapes, and patterns, that once again stem from the inner
artist's artist.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Clashing tastes, primary
colours, big, bold, always something new for the viewer to discover, statement
pieces that have staying power and no shame. It is the perfect opportunity for an
artist to bring out their inner weirdness. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aFJYBoCakIM/YbHcre5KRxI/AAAAAAAAG0M/YEclZkiwc5IiUIhUjlX8QMDo10oLrzjsgCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/data%2Bcorruption.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="data corruption artwork" border="0" data-original-height="1515" data-original-width="2048" height="474" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aFJYBoCakIM/YbHcre5KRxI/AAAAAAAAG0M/YEclZkiwc5IiUIhUjlX8QMDo10oLrzjsgCNcBGAsYHQ/w640-h474/data%2Bcorruption.jpg" title="Data Corruption Artwork by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Data Corruption by Mark Taylor - big, bold, brutal, and deep, at least for those who grew up during the birth of big data.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Last year was about nature…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">This time last year we were
all looking for paintings that reminded us of the great outdoors, a year later,
we’re all ready to just make a break for it and run. This style is another one
that essentially rips up the rulebook, unexpected colours that just work, whimsical
settings straight out of an artist's inner artist, of course, I’m talking about
escapism. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There’s almost a crossover
with psychedelia inspired works and anti-deign, except this looks cleaner, if
not just as strange. Why would you paint a cat sitting on the window ledge
looking out at the astronaut in space while a tiger roams the jungle, all flowing
as one from the same canvas? Because you can and it looks great. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">This is a style that I have
tinkered with for many years, hence in some of my landscapes you might find oversized
flowers as a nod to the escapism genre, life is full of Easter eggs when you look
closely at some of my work, but this is a style where an artist can be an artist
with imagination and not feel weird that someone might not get it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Here’s the thing. They don’t
have to get it, escapism can be you, your innermost thoughts and feelings, it’s
supposed to make you wonder, no, you don’t have to get it at all, you just have
to enjoy it. I really think this is the artist's art. Anywho, it’s on the rise
and it’s rising fast in the online trends. Hey, it’s like I always say, if you
can’t paint a landscape or a nude and make a million, just go ahead and be
weird, the world needs way more weird. Oh, and that really is the best piece of
artistic advice in the history of ever, free of charge and only here!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EJW5HFh5k_Y/YbHd1lsWXKI/AAAAAAAAG0U/R-SmKgtYi9kgscW1i5ewXYPPsryFH_taACNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/fall%2Bwall.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Fall Wall artwork by Mark Taylor, flowers, dry stone wall" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EJW5HFh5k_Y/YbHd1lsWXKI/AAAAAAAAG0U/R-SmKgtYi9kgscW1i5ewXYPPsryFH_taACNcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/fall%2Bwall.JPG" title="Fall Wall by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Fall Wall by Mark Taylor - notice the oversize flowers!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Pop Art is back again…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I mentioned pop art last time
around and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Bright, bold design, heavy
text, grainy textures, and a trend more recently being influenced by the insane
amount of comic book tie-ins that have been coming out of Hollywood of late. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I think to some extent, there’s
a real shift towards bright colours, statement pieces that elevate a space and
a mood, and if you take a look through all of the online art markets and in
particular spaces like Etsy, what you will find are a multitude of works with a
comic/pop-art vibe that isn’t necessarily based on official comics or
characters, but off-brand influences that trigger a nostalgic response, and there’s
that nostalgia thing popping up again!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5G81LtFBwA4/YbHebXPNELI/AAAAAAAAG0c/-C2ywUl6vYoUQ3Ok45VO7uIvDRm6j3DkgCNcBGAsYHQ/s2048/eighties%2Bpop%2Bmusic%2Bculture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="eighties pop music technology art" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5G81LtFBwA4/YbHebXPNELI/AAAAAAAAG0c/-C2ywUl6vYoUQ3Ok45VO7uIvDRm6j3DkgCNcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/eighties%2Bpop%2Bmusic%2Bculture.jpg" title="Eighties Pop Music by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Eighties Pop Music by Mark Taylor - I was creating digital pop-art way before Warhol!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The Third Dimension…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I was on the fence about including
3D, it’s always a popular genre for digital artists but the subject matter in
the images created can often have a tendency to look the same at times. I jumped
off the fence when I beta tested the latest version of the iPad art app, Procreate,
with its shiny new 3D painting engine that takes 3D objects and allows you to
paint them, in 3D.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">One thing I have always
noticed with Procreate is that they tend to add features to the app that
reflect the direction digital art is travelling. What convinced me, even more, was the trend data that had been emerging over the past few months including
searches for more tactile mixed media works. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The Staples…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There will always be a place
for the staples of the art world, landscapes and nudes are always immensely popular,
as too are abstracts, and there is a clear slide towards abstract minimalism of
late. The interesting one for me is around art that has a more tactile feel, so
assemblage art will continue to be popular, perhaps even more so as there does
seem to be more of a shift towards the quality and uniqueness that hand made
arts and crafts can bring. Hopefully, the move towards supporting more and more
small businesses and independent creatives will continue too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">As for the rest of the art
world, you know, the high-value part of the market that the majority of
working artists don’t have any touchpoint with, will continue to thrive, especially
as shows and exhibitions that had been cancelled throughout the pandemic have
plans to tentatively reopen in 2022. That said, new variants of Covid could jeopardise
those plans for some. I think we might be seeing a move towards owning works of
familiar names at maybe more realistic prices than we’ve seen in the recent
past, and by realistic, that’s kind of a subjective word at this level.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">A note for those reading this content
on other websites!</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There seems to be a growing
trend of websites harvesting other people’s content and displaying it on their
websites, so if you’re not reading this at <a href="https://beechhousemedia.co.uk/" target="_blank">https://beechhousemedia.co.uk</a> you will have been inadvertently directed to
reading a stolen copy of my work, so I can only apologise if some unscrupulous website
is making you either sign up, pay to read it, or serving ad after ad, but if
you come to the original source I can promise you that there are no ads, no
need to sign up, no charge, and you will be supporting a truly independent
creative directly!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Until Next Time!<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">That’s all for this week but I
will be back soon with more news including news of some of the projects I have
been working on recently that have meant that my presence here has been a
little less regular of late! <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">And I would also like to say a
huge thank you to those of you who have been supporting my work here by
purchasing prints of my work. This site is completely funded through my own
pocket, completely independent and I rely on a percentage of my print sales
through Fine Art America and Pixels to help with the growing costs! Even the
purchase of a gift card or sticker will provide funding that can go back into
creating more content for this site! <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Until next time, stay happy,
stay healthy, and stay creative!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Mark x<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I am an artist and blogger and
live in Staffordshire, England. My days are filled with art, dog walking and Teams
Meetings, while still being stuck somewhere in the eighties. You can purchase
my art through my Fine Art America store or my Pixels site here: <a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</a> and
you can purchase my new works, special and limited editions directly. You can
also view my portfolio website at <a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank">https://beechhousemedia.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you are on Facebook, you
can give me a follow right here, <a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</a>
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at <a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</a></span></span></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com2Staffordshire, England52.6678696 -1.846035651.323076978836191 -4.043301225 54.012662221163815 0.351230025tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-53650801479765803342021-10-29T08:37:00.000+01:002021-10-29T08:37:09.694+01:00The Art of Retro Inspired E-Art<h1 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Art of Retro Inspired E-ART</span></b></h1>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Painting the Eighties, one bit
at a time…</span></b></h2><div><b><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5gmUHH0G3fk/YXuSwn9ELvI/AAAAAAAAGv4/uaSqO6NL8SQtRzY0-k1MKK6wtwiUb8ZhQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/Cover%2Be%2Bwaste%2Bart%2B80s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The Aer of Retro E Art title image" border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1080" height="336" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5gmUHH0G3fk/YXuSwn9ELvI/AAAAAAAAGv4/uaSqO6NL8SQtRzY0-k1MKK6wtwiUb8ZhQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h336/Cover%2Be%2Bwaste%2Bart%2B80s.jpg" title="The Art of Retro E-Art" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Painting the 80s One Bit At A Time!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you have ever wanted to
create interactive artworks or artworks from alternative mediums such as
electronic waste, this week’s article has you covered with tips, market
insights, and even a brief history of early eighties computing and how it
shaped digital art today! We will also be taking a glance at technology inspired artwork and you might just get a few previews of my next creations!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Built-in obsolescence…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Technology is often sold with
built-in obsolescence and most people will probably have some old electronics
sitting around that they no longer have a use for. Technology has been
providing creatives with original ways to express themselves since, well,
technology first existed, but eventually, it stops working and all too often
ends up buried in the ground, left to leach toxins into the soil and
groundwater supplies. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Recycling old electronics is
an option, and the best option by far, but the facilities to do this in a safe
and sustainable way simply don’t exist everywhere. But there is also a certain
beauty that can be found in looking at something that previously had its very
own history. An internet router that communicated with millions of other
routers, a phone that would have been used for countless conversations, or a
camera that took thousands of pictures. So where electronics cannot be
recycled, they can be turned into very unique pieces of art.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MtwFrm0Vg4E/YXuTTzXIuZI/AAAAAAAAGwA/hkCQRZ6_R8Qe8tegbHxsN0NOY6gwzD5ZwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/obsolescence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Obsolescence artwork featuring electronics of the 80s" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MtwFrm0Vg4E/YXuTTzXIuZI/AAAAAAAAGwA/hkCQRZ6_R8Qe8tegbHxsN0NOY6gwzD5ZwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/obsolescence.jpg" title="Obsolescence by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Obsolescence by Mark Taylor - available now from my stores!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Styles of tech-inspired
artwork…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Just a cursory glance around
the internet will demonstrate just how big the market is for this kind of work.
You can see everything from statues to posters, apparel to home appliances.
Sega – a company that created coin-operated amusement machines as far back as
the 60s before releasing major systems such as the Genesis (Megadrive elsewhere),
even set up a Kickstarter to create a Sonic the Hedgehog themed toaster which
would burn an image of the character into the toast. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Regular readers will know that
despite being known perhaps more for my traditional landscapes, for more than
thirty years I have been creating technology inspired artworks, video game
graphics, box art, and retro images for vintage gaming collectors. From 8-bit inspired pixel art prints to the artwork used on the side of arcade
machines, and more recently, the artwork for physical packaging used in special
edition collectors editions of modern retro-inspired works. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Wherever I can, I still use
the original hardware to create the most authentic visuals, it’s extremely
difficult to recreate say a Commodore 64s unique display in something like
Photoshop. If I don’t have access to a physical system I fall back to
emulation, a way of getting a modern PC to replicate whatever system from the
past. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SAo0EQm2mc4/YXuUD8z15FI/AAAAAAAAGwI/VZrOpUXWdw8MlwC4r1wlIjszPGy33NGsQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/test%2Bbench.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="electronics on work bench" border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SAo0EQm2mc4/YXuUD8z15FI/AAAAAAAAGwI/VZrOpUXWdw8MlwC4r1wlIjszPGy33NGsQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h480/test%2Bbench.jpg" title="Test Bench" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">One of my workbenches in the studio where I soak test systems and create e-waste art - oh, and also create props! Notice the Commodore 64 to the right of the image - one of a number of systems I use to create authentic retro-inspired art.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My Eighties inspired
collection, Retro Revival, has become increasingly popular recently and it is a
series that continues to grow and evolve. Throughout this article, you can see
some of my more recent additions to the collection, all of which are deeply
rooted in the nostalgia that many collectors have for the true golden age of
home computing and video games. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As a niche, vintage and retro
gaming and computing have seen a recent resurgence and there are plenty of
collectors who you might never have even thought about previously, let alone
reached. This week, I have you covered so that you can at least step onto the
vintage technology ladder with a little confidence. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Not just prints and paintings…</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whilst you might not want to
extend your talents to manufacturing a Sonic inspired toaster, you might want
to consider extending your art portfolio by using electronic waste. In 2019,
some 53.6 million tonnes of electronic waste was produced and yet only 17% of
it was recycled sustainably. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What’s perhaps just as
concerning is that the raw materials in the e-waste stream from 2019 was valued
at some £44.8 million ($61,44,944 US). The real issue here is that the lost
resources are then having to be mined again, depleting the planet's resources even further while the unrecovered waste is buried within landfills and left to
create toxins and health issues. Just £7.9 million ($10, 842,789 US) was
sustainably recovered through professional recycling and recovery facilities in
the same year.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Artists have always found use in things that others have thrown out. What might be perceived as junk
will have some value to someone, and this is almost always the case with
vintage technology, even if it is only ever reused to provide spare parts. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">CRT TVs and monitors are
becoming increasingly difficult to find in working order, yet a serious retro
and vintage collector or owner of an original arcade game machine prefer the
glow of a CRT over the flat and sharp image produced from a modern screen and
they are happy to pay for that level of authenticity. Now that CRTs are no
longer produced, they are highly sought after by the purists, either for that
distinct original glow or simply because some vintage systems just won’t work
at all with a modern display. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">New CRT production is in
demand, yet no one has started to reproduce them. Perhaps, because we have lost
many of the skills required, but more likely because we have lost the
technology and the production facilities to produce them, and of course,
environmentally, CRTs were much bigger and heavier than modern screens and they
were notoriously problematic to dispose of in later years. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Interestingly, cassette tapes
are something else that has seen a surge in demand of late, and whilst one
company continued to produce them in small numbers over the years, they were
very much inferior to the tapes of the past. That has recently changed as
another company have now begun production of high-quality tapes, for a premium
price of course. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4218GjmwkkM/YXuVzAVQj4I/AAAAAAAAGwQ/6pKu4qmJavM8YOGbZ-uTvONcNmRQ7qF7ACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/tools%2Bof%2Bthe%2Btrade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="cassette tape and pencil artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4218GjmwkkM/YXuVzAVQj4I/AAAAAAAAGwQ/6pKu4qmJavM8YOGbZ-uTvONcNmRQ7qF7ACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/tools%2Bof%2Bthe%2Btrade.jpg" title="Tools of the Trade by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Tools of the Trade by Mark Taylor - Now available in my store!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This has been welcomed by the
retro gaming community who have had to transition to utilising after-market
add-ons that allow SD-Cards to replace the need to load programs from tape, but
a genuine retro lover would rather wait for a tape to load and listen to the
noise of data being transferred than have something modern that loads the
programs almost instantly. The retro purists prefer authenticity over
convenience and they’re very happy to pay for that authenticity. I think you
get the idea, the retro and vintage technology community are actively seeking
an anchor to the past, and in big numbers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Art Projects using E-Waste…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Printed circuit boards can be
used as a unique canvas, repurposed into a sculpture or made into a clock, the
only limit for their use is your imagination. For a number of years, I have
reused old technologies in the props I created for TV and film, and more
recently I have been taking old technology, deconstructing it and turning it
into functional items such as clocks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Old technology isn’t an overly
expensive medium to create with, so long as you have a constant supply of
components. Waste really is just a lack of imagination but when it is turned
into art, it can unsettle the viewer and make them think about their role in
adding to the overall problem of generating e-waste. E-Waste can be immensely
powerful at conveying some of the most poignant environmental issues that we
face today.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Technology has also shaped the
art world we know today…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Much of what we see in the art
world today, be that the performing or visual arts, wouldn’t have been made
possible if technology and science had never found a parallel with creative
people. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Leonardo Da-Vinci was known
for his forays into the world of technology, Warhol wouldn’t have become quite
so well known without the Commodore Amiga computer, and the genre of new media
art, a term that had been coined in the 60s wouldn’t have had a hand in the
introduction of the internet.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Technology is as critical to
artists as a tube of paint, whether you currently use digital mediums or you
continue to only use more traditional mediums such as pen and ink. As a digital
artist, I’m not only interested in pushing pixels around a screen, I also push
paint around a canvas, something I would never have done in a professional
capacity if I hadn’t received a small microcomputer as a Christmas present from
my parents back in 1980.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My first steps in home
computing…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My passion for technology goes
back to me being a small ten-year-old boy growing up in one of England’s newly
built “new towns”. Towns that had been developed to ease the overspill
population from the major cities. The seventies had been a decade of innovation
and a hot summer in 1976, and by the 80s, the new town was thriving with new
technology companies providing much-needed employment for the grown-ups. Not
quite like Silicone Valley, think more like eccentric British inventors in a series
of large sheds. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">By the early 1980s, life had
changed from the life I had known as an even younger child in the 70s. Accessible
technology seemed to suddenly appear around every corner, beeps, flashing
lights, shiny tech, I was suddenly sucked into a digital world before we humans
even realised what digital really meant. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It was an incredibly important
time in history, it was an era that
would define the tech we see today, and as the population of today reaches a
certain time in life, nostalgia for the period grows stronger by the day. In
part, maybe because back in the 80s we never had to wait for a Windows update
to do its thing, but in part, because for most kids of the eighties, technology
created a happy place that meant you could play games with friends on your
portable TV after school.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today there is a sizable and
fast-growing market for vintage technology. There is also a market for artworks
depicting vintage tech, and there is a market for technology to be implemented
within art. The question that we need to ask ourselves as professional artists
who are looking to communicate our individual messages to the world, is why
wouldn’t we embrace any of that technology when we think about creating our
next masterpiece?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In life, change is the
default, not the exception. Evolution is baked into every aspect of our world,
from physical growth to scientific progress, it’s little wonder that people
long for stability. Maybe that’s why many of us choose a nostalgic anchor to
the past to remind us of simpler times.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My anchor, as many of my
regular readers will know, is a combination of the eighties and technology.
Having grown up during the dawn of the home computing age, I feel incredibly
lucky to have not just witnessed the beginning of something that has
significantly changed the world in which we live, but something that I have
been involved with right from the start. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Had it have not been for that
small microcomputer sitting waiting for me under a Christmas tree in 1980, I’m
not sure I would have ever had an art career at all. I had always loved drawing
and painting, just as every child does, but it wasn’t until I began to learn to
program a computer that I began to see the potential to create art on a screen.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">At this time I had no idea
that anyone had already created artwork using a computer before, but the first
art created with a computer had already been created sometime in the sixties.
By the eighties, the process of using a computer to either create or assist
with creating a piece of art had become more prevalent and the term, digital
art was first spoken. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When I discovered that the not
very powerful device I found under the Christmas tree was capable of producing
some level of visual output, it was a game-changer that opened up a completely
new world of possibilities and it sparked a lifelong passion for the arts, not
just digital art, but traditional art too. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cBFi392fl0c/YXuWumgmo6I/AAAAAAAAGwY/Dtn98RJy9XQc1JhClpG5vnXfcI9cUWV7wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/storage%2Bwars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="vintage computer storage media artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cBFi392fl0c/YXuWumgmo6I/AAAAAAAAGwY/Dtn98RJy9XQc1JhClpG5vnXfcI9cUWV7wCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/storage%2Bwars.jpg" title="Storage Wars by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Storage Wars by Mark Taylor - now available in my Pixels and Fine Art America stores!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Fast Forward…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s funny how technology has
changed since the days when I started out creating digital art back somewhere
around 1980. In the old days as they’re now known, you needed a small box that
contained extra memory (RAM) to be precariously connected to a not very
powerful home computer so that you could do anything remotely half productive
with it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Those small boxes were
optional extras that were also kind of essential, and they would wobble and
crash the computer if they hadn’t been attached with the aid of Blue Tack or
Duct Tape to keep them in place. Excited fingers would vibrate a table just
enough so that you would lose all of the work you had already done, only for it
to be replaced with a blank screen and the need to cycle the power off and back
on. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Computer programs were
available on cassette tape, sometimes they would be available on
interchangeable cartridges, and the code to create programs would often be
listed, often incorrectly, in the computer magazines of the time. Those
listings were the reason I learnt to program a computer, after spending a good
few hours diligently typing the listing into the computer you would find out
that somewhere, there would be an error that you would then need to track down
and debug.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We had, by the eighties, just
about moved on past punch cards and paper tape, transitioning to either huge
floppy discs or compact cassette tape, but we hadn’t moved on when it came to the
public perception of computers. Most
people still equated computers with a science fiction future and geeks wearing
white lab coats huddled around a green screen display in a dimly lit lab. I
knew of no one who saw computers as a viable art medium.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So I began creating
traditional landscapes…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My interest in art had been
piqued, the more I created on screen the more inspired I became to create art
using any medium I could get my hands on, eventually selling my very first
landscape work which was a watercolour painting of Westminster Bridge in London
with a big red double-decker bus driving across it in front of the houses of
parliament. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9nTw5DNFcYQ/YXuXa-LTZYI/AAAAAAAAGwg/3bf8anx-VTozKT3dumu8Glm1W5mS-KSFwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/glow%2Bover%2Ba%2Bdry%2Bstone%2Bwall.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="sunset, dry stone wall, artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9nTw5DNFcYQ/YXuXa-LTZYI/AAAAAAAAGwg/3bf8anx-VTozKT3dumu8Glm1W5mS-KSFwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/glow%2Bover%2Ba%2Bdry%2Bstone%2Bwall.JPG" title="Glow Over A Dry Stone Wall by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Glow Over A Dry Stone Wall by Mark Taylor - One of the hundreds of traditional landscapes I have created. This one is also available on my Pixels and Fine Art America Stores!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Landscapes became my thing,
yet behind the scenes, I was still creating on any computer I could get my hands
on. That creativity even stretched to creating computer games on 8-bit
microcomputers, systems such as the Sinclair Spectrum, Atari 400 and 800, later
moving on to the Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, and eventually the PC.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And then I began creating
digital art…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If I wasn’t creating games, I
was creating graphics for other people to use in their games or creating the
artwork for the box art and I was suddenly earning real money for doing the
things I loved. That Christmas Day in 1980 didn’t just present me with a
computer, it presented me with a lifelong career.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A brief history of computing
in the 80s…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you plan on creating art
based on vintage technology or create art directly on vintage technology, then
knowing the history of that technology is extremely useful, especially if your
intention is to show your art at one of the many thousands of retro events held
around the world every year. Don’t worry, I have you covered with this, it’s my
other specialist subject having been a collector since I realised that I never
throw any technology away!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">8-Bit and beyond…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the States, the 8-bit home
computer scene wasn’t quite as vibrant as it was over here in the UK. The
Commodore 64 did really well in the USA, but come 1983, the American video game
bubble burst, while over here in Britain, the scene was becoming busier with
more and more home computers becoming available and their popularity increasing
as more and more kids convinced their parents that computers could help with
school work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Computers of the time never
really did help with school work, there were few teachers at the time who understood
computers quite as well as the kids did.
By now, many teenagers were turning into entrepreneurs and creating
games to sell from the comfort of their bedrooms through the power of mail
order and placing cheap ads on the back pages of one of the many home computing
publications at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It was a lucrative time for
many bedroom coders. I remember a time when you could turn up to a computer
fair to sell your independently produced game and people would constantly be
six or seven deep at the table, literally throwing money at you in return for
the code recorded on a compact cassette tape. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I was earning more money for a
few days of work than both my parents earned in a month, just from creating a
program that would take a couple of days to code or maybe a week if it was
something special. Once I had created the code, I would visit a computer fair
twice a month to sell my wares. Amazing times, but it wasn’t a sustainable
business model in the long term.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Technology was evolving into
something new every week. No one could keep up with the pace and the choice of
technology available began to dilute the market for games. It was the original
print-on-demand model, but without the need for a middleman, but then came the
saturation as the industry grew ever larger.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yD5T0iPup3E/YXuYHuRAFxI/AAAAAAAAGwo/G5c4ZaAgLK44Du1fYpuyOLclZDoW-WY1gCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/handheld%2Bgame.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="1980s retro video game handheld artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yD5T0iPup3E/YXuYHuRAFxI/AAAAAAAAGwo/G5c4ZaAgLK44Du1fYpuyOLclZDoW-WY1gCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/handheld%2Bgame.jpg" title="80s Handheld by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The 80s Handheld by Mark Taylor - Available in the coming days on my store! I love, love, love, painting these!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The problem with such market
saturation was that unless you developed for every system, it wasn’t viable,
and it also wasn’t viable to develop for every system. Here in the UK, there
were three original staples of the home computer market, The Sinclair ZX
Spectrum which sold phenomenally well in the UK. It was sold as the Timex
Sinclair 2068 in the USA where it didn’t do very well at all. Then there was
The Commodore 64 which did incredibly well everywhere, and the Amstrad CPC464
which I don’t believe made it anywhere outside of Europe in significant numbers.
There were plenty of other systems, Oric, Acorn, MSX, but none would really
find similar market sizes that the Spectrum, Commodore and Amstrad had found. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Enter 16-Bit and beyond…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Those three systems were the
systems that you would develop for if you wanted to find an eager market, but
as 16-bit microcomputers and consoles began to gain popularity, the base of
available models exponentially increased consumer choice and the development of
software became exponentially more challenging. It would be an even greater
challenge when the 32-bit systems such as the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast
arrived.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Commodore introduced the
Amiga, again, a system that didn’t do overly well in the USA, but this was a
system that would go on to enable an artist by the name of Warhol to create
some of the most iconic pop art of all time, and I have to say, he was creating
on the Amiga much later than I was, he was simply better at marketing his work.
I still own my original Amiga and frequently still use it to create authentic
Amiga art.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AJYzip3usV4/YXuYuMB_cuI/AAAAAAAAGww/SL5hY8gjsI0HNdWQHhBQLDPTEZKbbGYtwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/80s%2Bpop%2Bmusic%2Bculture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="80s pop music culture artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AJYzip3usV4/YXuYuMB_cuI/AAAAAAAAGww/SL5hY8gjsI0HNdWQHhBQLDPTEZKbbGYtwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/80s%2Bpop%2Bmusic%2Bculture.jpg" title="80s Pop Music Culture Artwork by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">80s Pop Music Culture Artwork by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is when everything
changed. Suddenly, the lone bedroom coder had to become a team of people and
today, that team has become in some cases, 500 or 600 people strong, often
more, in order to produce a modern video game. The other difference is that in
the eighties, the limitations of the devices became the mother of creativity,
today, we are blessed with plenty of resources to more or less build whatever
we can imagine and add some photorealistic images and a full orchestra in too.
In the 80s, you had to be an efficient coder, today, the software is nowhere near
as efficient as it once was, despite its visual greatness. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The other difference between
then and now is that not only could you create a title for very little outlay
back in the eighties, you could also work on graphics and sound without relying
on too many others. Today, you need the high side of a six-figure start-up fund
and at least eighteen months of development on specialist development hardware,
just to get close to getting your product to market. But, maybe the tide is
turning once again.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What we are beginning to see
today is a return of the indie developer.
Small teams, sometimes even lone coders going up against the big
players, writing smaller games that are then sold via a platforms online store
as a digital download, or, as is more increasingly the case, as a limited
physical edition release which is often targeted towards collectors. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We are also seeing more and
more retro remakes using modern hardware to replicate the look and feel of the
old-school equipment that we once owned, although some of the best remakes
still require huge teams and significant budgets to bring to market. As an
example, you would probably need something like $100,000 to stand any real
chance of success if you developed a title for the Nintendo Switch. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Fast Forward…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Fast forward to today and the
gaming market that sprung up as a direct result of those early home computer
innovations is now bigger than Hollywood. We’re talking about an industry that spans
the globe and is worth billions in revenue each year, and there’s no sign of it
slowing down. Recent predictions suggest that the video games market will be
worth $200 billion per year by 2023. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Much of the recent surge of
popularity around these old, now almost vintage systems rapidly increased
throughout the pandemic, although interest in them had been gaining traction
for a number of years pre-pandemic. Nostalgia has had a huge influence on the
market, and it has even spilt over into the art world with retro-inspired
vintage computer and gaming artworks becoming increasingly popular, especially
when you look at the number of works now appearing on platforms such as Etsy. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-162q5afsJqc/YXuZWflxJMI/AAAAAAAAGw4/N_rTyZ6Ga50jicM9PW58_x_4cfURaaqRACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Data%2BCorruption.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="data corruption artwork PCB, circuit board" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-162q5afsJqc/YXuZWflxJMI/AAAAAAAAGw4/N_rTyZ6Ga50jicM9PW58_x_4cfURaaqRACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Data%2BCorruption.jpg" title="Data Corruption by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Data Corruption by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So how do I get into the
market?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are looking for a niche
and have an interest or ideally a passion for all things vintage technology, it
is one of the few niches that you can dive into today that might very well
still be a viable niche in a decade, and there is no other art niches that I
can categorically say will grow quite as fast and still be popular so far in
the future. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s a lot of gaming-related artwork out there already and there are some great pieces to be found, equally, there is a lot of work out there already that is fairly generic and I have to
say, there is quite a bit that lacks any understanding of the technologies that
it portrays. The more specialist works are also commanding higher prices, and
if you can bring a new idea to the market, there are buyers who are willing to pay
a premium. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We might not be talking about
a Matisse original level of premium, but certainly, three or four-figure sums
instead of two. A decade ago, some of my retro-inspired original works would
hang around the studio for a few months, today they tend to go out of the door
almost immediately, and they are increasingly being requested as commissions. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As we have seen throughout my
recent blogs about creating retro-inspired works and looking at alternative
niches, your success in this will be determined by how well you stand out above
everything else that is already out there. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Before you embark on a voyage
throughout this niche as an artist, it has to be said that you ideally need to
have at least some knowledge of vintage technology and/or retro gaming, and
it’s even better if you have a genuine passion for the subject, as you should
as an artist in whatever you create. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The market for this kind of
artwork is very switched on to the many nuances of technology and if you ever
confuse your Mario’s with your Sonic’s, the community will let you know, often
quite brutally. It can be a difficult niche to enter if you aren’t currently
creating in the genre, at least until you begin to form relationships with the
community. Thankfully, the community, wherever they are around the world are
almost always willing to engage with you in return.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cc5X7wvDn-M/YXuZyWpusWI/AAAAAAAAGxA/LSqlbBNXa4EBDhPK6jNWbYH4scsIP2BpgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/close%2Bup%2Bof%2BPCB%2Bin%2Bprogress.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="printed circuit board art work in progress" border="0" data-original-height="1431" data-original-width="2048" height="448" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cc5X7wvDn-M/YXuZyWpusWI/AAAAAAAAGxA/LSqlbBNXa4EBDhPK6jNWbYH4scsIP2BpgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h448/close%2Bup%2Bof%2BPCB%2Bin%2Bprogress.png" title="printed circuit board art work in progress" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">All of my work is created by hand using tools such as Procreate - each line on the board was drawn using an Apple Pencil in this piece. This was a WIP shot of my PCB artwork - more than 60-hours of drawing lines had been completed at this point!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> <b>A word to the wise…<o:p></o:p></b></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As I intimated earlier, buyers
pay a premium for technology and gaming-inspired art that isn’t generic, but
you also have to be mindful, especially if you chase the video games market,
that you don’t inadvertently stumble into an intellectual property fight with
the likes of Nintendo, or “Ninten-don’t” as they have become affectionately
known. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Companies like Nintendo are
fiercely protective of their IPR as are many others. It’s also worth noting
that companies have been set up with the specific intention of buying out the
intellectual property rights of long lost companies with the sole purpose of
scouting the internet for unauthorised and unpaid use of old IPR. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some modern companies with
hugely popular back catalogues actually encourage fan art projects on a
non-commercial basis, but there is a fine line when it comes to making any kind
of profit from the work. There are a few who are perhaps a little more willing
to negotiate the rights to use older IPR in works, although you might find that
there is a curation process alongside a licensing fee that will need to be
paid. No company wants to see their 8-bit character shown in a bad light.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The good thing about vintage
technology is that, whilst you do have to respect the general principles, you
can also take some artistic licence. People tend to value the feeling of
nostalgia that the art brings over and above any precise technical detail, well,
mostly.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Creating technology inspired
artwork…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Throughout this article, you
might have noticed some of my more recent works inspired by vintage technology,
some of which is now being reproduced as mixed media pieces using original
components. One of the pieces I am working on at the moment is to create a
clock that uses an enterprise-grade Cisco router, a device that cost over $1000
( £728 UK) a few years ago, but since the model is now end of life and is no
longer upgradeable with security patches, there is no place for it in any
corporate or home network. By extracting value from turning it into a piece of
functional art, it becomes one less component destined for a landfill. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The paintings I have created
have all been hand-drawn and painted using Procreate on the iPad Pro before
being refined further in Photoshop/Illustrator and in some cases, using
original hardware from the period. Some of the works are more than 70inches in
size when printed out at full size, and they have been included in my Retro Revival
collection of artworks which has become increasingly popular with its focus on
the golden age of video games and home computers in the 1980s.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mQo7i7Ogbjc/YXuapIKrUQI/AAAAAAAAGxI/sM4WZLN-BlofmvO76BYlcrRNyk6BN6RigCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/together%2Bin%2Belectric%2Bdreams.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="electronics painting, artwork," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mQo7i7Ogbjc/YXuapIKrUQI/AAAAAAAAGxI/sM4WZLN-BlofmvO76BYlcrRNyk6BN6RigCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/together%2Bin%2Belectric%2Bdreams.jpg" title="Together in Electric Dreams by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Together in Electric Dreams by Mark Taylor - available from my stores now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ideas for E-Art…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not sure there is a
specific term that defines the entire home computing/retro-inspired art genre
that also encompasses e-waste art, so I prefer to call it collectively, E-Art,
perhaps it could make it as a new art movement. One thing I do know is that there’s
certainly not enough of it about right now!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some of the most inspiring
works I have seen made out of e-waste recently have been themed around
Steampunk. It’s a popular genre that has a significant market share of upcycled
works in the art world. Take a look online and you will find artists who have
created everything from shoes to coffee tables out of e-waste, even 3D skyline
landscapes of famous cities, and they’re attracting collectors who are willing
to pay that all-important premium price. More importantly, buyers in this genre
tend to quickly turn into collectors. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Small printed circuit boards
are being turned into keyrings and jewellery, speakers are being transformed
into lamps, cables have been turned into paper towel holders and even an iMac
clone. You can find the projects and instructions to recreate these things
right <a href="https://www.instructables.com/Projects-with-E-Waste/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Adding Micro-controlled
interactivity into your artwork…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I kind of remember when any
computer would take up about the same floor space as a large house, although by
the time I started to use them they were by then, comparatively pocket-sized
until later in my career when I began working with data centre based
infrastructure. Fast forward to today and not only does the smartphone you are
reading this article on have more power than was used to launch a man into space,
you can now accommodate an entire computer on a single chip. A quick technical
note here, your phone might be more powerful than NASA's space era technology,
but it still can’t launch a man into space!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Devices and computers on a
single chip are now increasingly common, there’s a good chance that something
you already own has an FPGA device within it. Field Programmable Gate Array
(FPGA) is a semiconductor device that is based around a matrix of logic blocks.
In non-geek speak, that means that you can essentially create almost whatever
device you want on a chip and then reprogram it later to become something else.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">FPGA can be complicated for a
first-timer, it’s not something I would dabble with had I not have been using
FPGA technology in other projects for a few years, but there are easier options
if you want to embed technology within a piece of artwork. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you have ever used an
emulator on a computer, and you might have done without realising it, for
example, if you have ever played an old video game on a modern system, then
emulation of some kind was probably involved, especially if any part of the
game relied on or used the original game file. That would have been software
emulation, or in short, not quite like the real thing. FPGA is full-on
hardware emulation and pretty much it becomes the real thing in a modern and
often tiny package. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Using a MiSTeR FPGA device, I
built an entire arcade machine that is capable of running over 70,000 video
games from a multitude of video and arcade game systems and home computers and
it all runs on a device that is barely bigger than the palm of your hand. FPGA
does have a downside right now when it comes to a device such as a MiSTeR, it’s
expensive, although it can be done much more cost-effectively when it is
focused on recreating a single device.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Slightly easier and cheap
enough to instil into an art project is the Raspberry Pi. <b>Raspberry Pi</b> is
a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in
the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in
association with Broadcom. The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned
towards the promotion of teaching basic computer science in schools
and in developing countries. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The original model became more
popular than anticipated, selling outside its target market for
uses such as robotics. It is widely used in many areas, such as
for weather monitoring and because of its low cost, modularity, and
open design. It is typically used by computer and electronic hobbyists, due to
its adoption of HDMI and USB devices.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And that’s what makes the
Raspberry Pi such a great device to incorporate into art projects, and
especially devices such as the Raspberry Pi Zero or PICO which only cost around
twenty dollars for the most basic versions. The question I guess, is just how
much of a technology expert do you need to be to create an art project that
involves this kind of tech? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The easiest way to incorporate
modern technology into art projects…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think, for the most part, the
creative process is going to be the most problematic aspect. When you realise
just what the possibilities are, it can feel overwhelming to settle on the one
idea that will add some value to any particular piece of art to turn it into an
interactive work, or a work that has the added depth of working technology
embedded within it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As far as the technology
itself goes, that is perhaps the easiest part because there is a huge community
both active and willing to provide help and support. I think it is one of the
best communities for knowledge sharing that I have ever come across. Virtually
anyone can learn how to use a Raspberry Pi just from watching 30-minutes of
tutorials on YouTube, and if you utilise pre-configured SD-Cards, anyone can have
a project completed and built within a very short space of time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It would be awesome if you
understood the programming language they call Linux, but for the most part, you
are able to purchase those pre-configured SD-Cards I just mentioned with both the
operating system and the application pre-installed. Your role is to then
assemble a few simple components using the vast library of tutorials available
on the internet or from the hundreds of books that have been written on the
subject, slide in the pre-configured SD Card and turn the power on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The versatility of the Pi is
unsurpassed. You can quite literally buy an accessory that will make the device
do almost anything you could imagine. From inexpensive high definition touch
screens to home automation and robotics, cameras, facial recognition, and if you
need a very cheap PC, you can even use a Pi as a fully-featured computer,
especially if you have the latest Raspberry Pi 4.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I have seen Windows 10 functioning
better on a Pi than one of my old laptops, so it is, without doubt, the cheapest
way to get into computing and many of these devices have been used throughout
the pandemic to allow children to access their schoolwork and participate in
remote lessons, this is especially useful when finances have been drained a
little too much and there’s a need to use a computer or access the internet.
Pi’s today are perfectly capable computers in their own right.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Generally, if you can think of it, there is a device that has been made to attach to the Pi that will allow
you to execute the idea, usually for pennies on the dollar compared to other
technologies. Who wouldn’t want to add artificial intelligence to an
abstract painting of the mind?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BNUkvQ0MtWs/YXubmlyBirI/AAAAAAAAGxQ/CjSuyi-XNhcag4B6AHEACJjkLxlDiJ8-gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/RPI400BACK2WHITE_b6e1cf95-a388-4e60-98b0-c4ddba5c2b26_1024x1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="raspberry Pi 400" border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BNUkvQ0MtWs/YXubmlyBirI/AAAAAAAAGxQ/CjSuyi-XNhcag4B6AHEACJjkLxlDiJ8-gCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/RPI400BACK2WHITE_b6e1cf95-a388-4e60-98b0-c4ddba5c2b26_1024x1024.jpg" title="Raspberry Pi 400" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Raspberry Pi is built within an official keyboard - Image copyright Pi and Pimoroni - the best place to buy Pi devices!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Be careful…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are some materials and
components that you definitely want to avoid in your e-waste art projects, used
batteries that can leak, any materials containing lead and mercury, and smoke
alarms that actually contain radioactive components are probably the most
obvious components to avoid. Always check that the materials you are using are
not only safe for you to handle, but they’re legal and safe for you to resell.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You will also want to take
some precautions when creating your projects, especially when using old PCBs
which can have very sharp edges, and using a soldering iron to deconstruct and
reconstruct projects is fraught with risks, not only are they hot, they can set
fire to anything they are resting on. That might sound obvious, but sadly it’s
not, I have known people who have picked up a hot soldering iron by the tip
rather than the handle. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Use a soldering mat to avoid
damage to surfaces and if you can, use a heat resistant silicone soldering mat
as this has the benefit of providing some additional grip to prevent components from slipping. Soldering irons should never be placed on a surface that doesn’t have
a heat resistant mat, instead, they should be stored when you are not using them
within a specialist soldering iron stand but these are inexpensive enough for
you to not have to worry too much about set-up costs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are thinking about
deconstructing old electronics, it is worth researching the value of them
before you do. A sealed iPhone 1 in its original packaging is currently on sale
on eBay for £20,000 although an unsealed original boxed iPhone 1 is going to be
closer to £2,000. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You also need to be cautious
when comparing the prices of vintage computers and technology. Many eBay sellers
will describe their Commodore 64 home computers as being super-rare and will
inherently place a high value on the items. A person's own nostalgia is worth
nothing at all to someone else, and as many as 30-million Commodore 64s may
have been manufactured, although some sources state it was closer to 22-million
units. With that in mind, the Commodore 64 isn’t actually rare at all, many of
them are packed in boxes in attics having been forgotten about, they’re not
rare, they’re just in hiding and that’s the same with most vintage
technologies. The tech that is perhaps genuinely worth more will be prototype
units or tech that only ever found a very limited market. Equally, you have to
be mindful that this too isn’t the bar to set a value against, I own some very
rare technology, but its value will be from nostalgia rather than being
monetary.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s the same with a lot of
vintage technology, although prices have gone even crazier recently after
the graded sealed copy of Super Mario for the Nintendo Entertainment System
sold for over a million dollars. There was though, a very specific set of
circumstances that led to that price.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">According to some websites and
experts, the price the game sold for happened in a way that’s not too
dissimilar to the way the murky parts of the art world operate, allegedly, but
it did begin to drive retro prices up and up more widely for everything,
despite there being no real reason for prices to increase. What it did do was
to encourage more people to dig out lost treasures from their attics and list
them on sites such as eBay for exorbitant prices.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can find the full story on
the Mario game and the auction online, and a number of conflicting views around
why the game reached such an eye-watering price. There is an explanatory video
on YouTube that may or may not present what really happened, of course, I’m not
convinced we will ever know for sure. If you read about it or watch the videos
that have been posted online and you are familiar with the stories from the
murkier parts of the art world, I’m sure you will see more than a few similarities!
Just Google the term, exposing fraud and deception in the retro video game
market and you will find videos that allege what might or might not have
happened.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Where can I find out about the
history of vintage computing?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We artists do love to research
our subjects before attempting our next masterpiece so you will be pleased to
find out that the internet generally has you covered with enough information to
provide you with sufficient knowledge that will more than get you started. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’ve broken the links down
into sections so that you can pick the most relevant ones to gain a better
understanding of what you want to do, be that create 8-bit retro computer
art, find out the history of any specific computer, or listen to podcasts that
cover all things retro and vintage computing. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--e7UFfLUma0/YXucscBS2-I/AAAAAAAAGxY/LvKoIwuy89sfEngZj0DngixXAcjc9GAMgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/turn%2Bit%2Bup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Boombox artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--e7UFfLUma0/YXucscBS2-I/AAAAAAAAGxY/LvKoIwuy89sfEngZj0DngixXAcjc9GAMgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/turn%2Bit%2Bup.jpg" title="Turn It Up by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Turn It Up by Mark Taylor - available now from my store!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">8-bit and Retro Computing:</span></b></h1>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Low End Mac:</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are already into retro
and love your Mac, you might have already come across a website called, Low End
Mac where they guide you through keeping your Mac alive for as long as
possible. What you might have missed is a feature on the history of Commodore’s
8-bit computer range. You can find Low End Mac right <a href="https://lowendmac.com/2015/a-history-of-commodores-8-bit-computers/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Gamasutra: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">More
of a general IT related website but with a decent history of Atari’s 8-bit era
for those who didn’t buy into the Commodore machines. Back in the day, there
were only two real choices outside of the UK, Atari and Commodore. You can find
the Atari article right <a href="https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3750/a_history_of_gaming_platforms_.php" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Old Computers: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Old
Computers is by far one of the best resources to learn about old computers,
there are currently 1261 systems represented, most with information about the
devices, the peripherals, software and a copy of the original documentation in
some cases. I’m not convinced this site gets anywhere near as much love as
people ought to give it, but I can spend hours on it just browsing systems that
were only available in other countries. You know they still manufacture the
Sega Genesis in Brazil right? You can find the online museum right <a href="https://www.old-computers.com/museum/default.asp" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Vintage Computing: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Vintage
Computing and Gaming have a wealth of retro information and it’s not just about
computers. Toys are represented here too, specifically the kind of early
electronic toys that we would once see in Radio Shack, or Tandy as it was known
here in the UK. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I had completely forgotten
about the Radio Shack Armatron, The Takara My Robot Watch which was an
alternative to Transformers, and there are a number of 80s adverts scattered
around which, if nothing else, will either provide you with a healthy dose of
nostalgia or remind you that graphic design today can at times, be really dull
in comparison.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can find Vintage Computing
and Gaming, right <a href="https://www.vintagecomputing.com/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Byte Cellar: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I
stumbled across Byte Cellar while looking for Apple accessories online and
found a personalised cut wood Apple logo sign from 1984, sadly, I don’t as yet
have one of these in my collection. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are a lot of systems
represented here, the iconic TRS-80 which I still need to get my hands on
because it was a great little development machine, and the early Woz and Jobs
era Apple machines seem to be well represented. You can find Byte Cellar right
<a href="https://bytecellar.com/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Stack Exchange – Retro
Computing: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I have to admit, with such a need to consume
everything tech-related, I can often be found exploring Stack Exchange –
usually for answers to some strange coding issue I have come up against when
programming 8-bit artworks. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is also a Retro Computing
Stack Exchange where questions get asked and answers are given. This is an
ideal site if you are researching older technologies for art projects, the
community are eager to support everyone with even the smallest of questions,
and they’re knowledgeable. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is the site that also
touches on pre-8-bit computing, namely the times of punch cards, and mainframes
such as the Russian Strela from 1953, a system that played a pivotal role in
the Cold War. You can ask all of your retro technology and computing questions
right <a href="https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Centre for Computing
History: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Based in Cambridge, here in the UK, the Centre for
Computing History is much more than a museum, it hosts hands-on exhibitions,
educational workshops and a wide range of activities and events. If you plan to
visit in person, it’s only open on weekends, and there is an on-site shop that
sells everything from a MyZ80 maker kit to floppy disk notepads, and icons of
beige computer poster prints. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Upcoming events which might be
useful for those in the UK who want to start developing skills to add
technology into art will find the Pico Clock event useful where you will learn
to build and program the Raspberry Pi Pico! You can find out more <a href="http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Vintage Is The New Old: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of
the things I really like about Vintage is the New Old, are the news articles
that often showcase recent Kickstarter projects, often projects that are art-related and vintage technology focussed. Recently there was an article on a
Kickstarter to create a deck of 52 playing cards, each paying homage to a
classic video game, with each card promising some sweet 8-bit pixel art. You
can find the site right <a href="http://www.vintageisthenewold.com/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Commodore News: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I know
I have a lot of readers from the USA and I am always minded to research things
that will be suited to both US and UK audiences, and with that in mind,
Commodore News might be just the site that US and UK audiences will both love
given the popularity of the machine in both territories. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Commodore 64 was huge over
here in the UK and Europe, but until the Nintendo Entertainment System arrived,
the C64 was the defacto 8-bit computer of choice in the USA, alongside the
TRS-80 (also lovingly referred to as the Trash 80!)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For those considering using
the Commodore as a source of artistic inspiration, it will be good to know that
the machine is still huge today and there is an avid army of retro-heads,
myself included, who still continue to both use and develop for the machine
even today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Visit retro fairs and there
will still be deep queues forming around anything related to the breadbin of
computers, so-called because of its distinct breadbin-like shape. The modern
C64 scene is perhaps the most vibrant of all of the retro communities. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you want to find out the
latest developments and news, then head over to Commodore News, right <a href="https://www.commodore-news.com/news/index/1/en/desktop" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iNyuV8wFykI/YXuf4F0mmTI/AAAAAAAAGx4/V-k6JUNIKK0y0U9pZ4uZzMdxn82PBsNMQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/Pi%2B4-8GB-Images_1_1024x1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Raspberry Pi 4" border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iNyuV8wFykI/YXuf4F0mmTI/AAAAAAAAGx4/V-k6JUNIKK0y0U9pZ4uZzMdxn82PBsNMQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h400/Pi%2B4-8GB-Images_1_1024x1024.jpg" title="Raspberry Pi 4 from Pimoroni" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Raspberry Pi 4 from Pimoroni - This is a fantastic computer that can do almost anything you can imagine!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Generation Amiga:</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Commodore Amiga wasn’t an
immediate follow up to the Commodore 64, there was also the Commodore Plus 4
and Commodore 16 along with a couple of other variants and we almost got to the
point of seeing the Commodore 65 land in the wild before Commodore fell into
bankruptcy, although a few prototypes did make it out into the wild and the
machine is finally being released as a recreation. An original C65 prototype
will set you back around $20,000 - $25,000 today. The Commodore Amiga was
hugely successful in Europe, not so much in the USA, but it has become the Holy
Grail for some US-based collectors of late.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Amiga was an incredibly
important computer in the digital art scene. Programs such as Delux Paint
predated Photoshop and gave users an incredible amount of power over digital
imaging, it was also the preferred tool for Warhol who used the Commodore Amiga
to produce some of the most iconic pop art of our time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Amiga was also legendary
for its music power, with chip-tunes created by demo groups of the time that
are now highly sought after by collectors of the early demo scene floppies, discs
that would often also contain cracked versions of commercial software with a
musical intro created by hacking collectives of the day. I can neither confirm
nor deny that I was involved in the demo scene for obvious reasons that would
probably implicate me in the grey art of breaking disc copy protection. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Atari ST (and later the
Atari Falcon which didn’t do anywhere near as well) would be utilised alongside
the Amiga for its incredible, for the time, ability to act as a MIDI
controller, and between both machines, the digital arts and music scene was to
become well established. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I still use both my Commodore
64 and my Commodore Amiga for creating original digital art and a little games
development whenever I have the time. They are incredibly important machines
and anyone who is into digital art should definitely understand where digital
art and music really originated. The scene today is arguably just as vibrant as
it once was, and collectors and fans of the machines provide a ready-made
market for artists who utilise the systems in art projects. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can find out more right
<a href="https://www.generationamiga.com/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Atariage: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the
USA, it was all about Atari. Youngsters would never admit to playing video
games, instead, they would play Atari. Atari was also one of the most
influential companies in the history of computing and video games releasing the
Atari 2600 Video Computer System on the 11<sup>th</sup> September 1977. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The company ran into trouble
just ahead of the video game bubble burst of 1984 in the States, having
manufactured more ET game cartridges for the 2600 than there were 2600 consoles
in existence. They then buried those that were never sold in the desert. Some
were dug up relatively recently and some even still played the game without any
issues when inserted into a working console, despite having been buried in sand
for decades. ET as a game it has to be said was pretty bad and it disappointed
a lot of folk including me. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Atariage is perhaps the best
known Atari website of the modern-day, and you can find it <a href="https://atariage.com/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s
also worth noting that the Atari VCS has recently been re-released, and the
verdict, it’s nowhere near the same as it was, and fans who bought into it are
firmly split into two camps, lovers, and haters. It looks really cool though.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Lemon 64<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I mentioned emulators earlier,
C64 forever is one such emulator that focuses on the Commodore 64 (others are
available) and it comes complete with a library of original games and it is
available through the Lemon 64 site. If your research extends to the history of
the C64, then Lemon 64 is perhaps one of the finest C64 resources out there.
You can find it right <a href="https://www.lemon64.com/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Raspberry Pi and Raspberry Pi
Art Projects…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you have ever considered
creating a truly interactive art project that utilises technology, the
complexity might very well have put you off from even trying. Enter the
Raspberry Pi. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Raspberry Pi on Toms Hardware:
</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There
are some great ideas on this site <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/features/best-raspberry-pi-projects" target="_blank">here</a>, </span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">that
will get your creative minds thinking about how you might want to incorporate a
Raspberry Pi type device into your next art project.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Raspberry Pi scary picture
frame would be an ideal addition for Halloween, albeit probably a little too
late to get something produced for this year, although there is a simpler
Turning Jack-O-Lantern. Perhaps you might want to create a George Orwell
inspired 1984 style facial recognition artwork, although be mindful of any data
protection issues that might arise if you display the work in public!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bcHbCyoH0uQ/YXugPq4HquI/AAAAAAAAGyA/Iq2zhpRBxqocw_zvRVvA4o19odB9Ws3VQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/inky-7-colour-main-1_1024x1024%2Bink%2Be-paper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Inky 7 colour screen from Pimoroni" border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bcHbCyoH0uQ/YXugPq4HquI/AAAAAAAAGyA/Iq2zhpRBxqocw_zvRVvA4o19odB9Ws3VQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h400/inky-7-colour-main-1_1024x1024%2Bink%2Be-paper.jpg" title="Inky 7 colour screen available from Pimoroni - what a great art project this would make!" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Inky 7 colour screen available from Pimoroni - what a great art project this would make!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Pimoroni: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This
is one site that is frequently recommended to me as a brilliant single source
of Pi-related devices and components, so much so that my next Pi order will be
heading over to them. Pimoroni offer worldwide shipping and prices are some of
the lowest I have come across, even if you have to factor in import taxes,
although they do have a network of global distributors. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is also where the
potential to utilise a Pi and technology in your art projects becomes financially
possible. The HyperPixel high-resolution screens come either in a traditional
rectangular format, or as a circular display, and they are touch-sensitive,
making them perfect for interactive projects, or to utilise at art shows and
exhibitions. The colours really pop on the screens and I can think of a hundred
and one ways to bring an artwork to life with a Pi and one of these screens, or
even multiple screens. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cYxCgSdLUHU/YXuevZXcAaI/AAAAAAAAGxg/LegqCMs4EXQj3r_3qQl5fdZ2oy1E2Z_1QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/touch%2Bsensitive%2Bround%2Bscreen%2Bhyperpixel-round-2_1024x1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Hyper Pixel Touch Screen Pimoroni" border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cYxCgSdLUHU/YXuevZXcAaI/AAAAAAAAGxg/LegqCMs4EXQj3r_3qQl5fdZ2oy1E2Z_1QCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h400/touch%2Bsensitive%2Bround%2Bscreen%2Bhyperpixel-round-2_1024x1024.jpg" title="Hyper Pixel Touch Screen available from Pimoroni" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Hyper Pixel Touch Screen available from Pimoroni</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tecYakeJemo/YXufFGBpDoI/AAAAAAAAGxo/rOs6a1_nZlQ_-ElkOEnz7bCeeCAf5RKRwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/HyperPixel_4.0_4_of_7_1024x1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Hyper Pixel traditional touch screen" border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tecYakeJemo/YXufFGBpDoI/AAAAAAAAGxo/rOs6a1_nZlQ_-ElkOEnz7bCeeCAf5RKRwCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h400/HyperPixel_4.0_4_of_7_1024x1024.jpg" title="Pimoroni Hyper Pixel Touch Screen - traditional shape" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Available from Pimoroni - Hyper Pixel Touch Screen - traditional shape</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are other devices, so
many other devices that you will only get a sense of the number and variety of
them if you visit Pimoroni’s website, but of all of them, the most obvious to
include in art projects for me would be the audio amplifiers and air quality
monitors which would be a fantastic addition to artworks focussing on issues
such as global warming.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YSFZthVdkWk/YXufdxwhVFI/AAAAAAAAGxw/G1ZbmaKsXDQhaMvrlM6ho_p97vo5OmyUQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1024/audio-amp-shim-4_1024x1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Audio Amp for Raspberry Pi" border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YSFZthVdkWk/YXufdxwhVFI/AAAAAAAAGxw/G1ZbmaKsXDQhaMvrlM6ho_p97vo5OmyUQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h400/audio-amp-shim-4_1024x1024.jpg" title="Audio Amp for Raspberry Pi - available from Pimoroni" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Audio Amp for Raspberry Pi - available from Pimoroni - I have found Pimoroni to have the best range of Pi Products on the planet!<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro Podcasts…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you prefer to listen to
history rather than reading about it, there are a number of retro podcasts,
although all are not created equal. I listen to a lot of retro podcasts and
have probably listened to at least a couple of episodes of most of them that
have been created over the years, so I have picked the best of the best that
are currently on my daily podcast playlist to share with you!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retronauts: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retronauts
is described by the hosts as America’s favourite games podcast… probably. The
website to accompany the show is full of articles and includes videos so you
can not only listen to the show but visit the site to get even more context
around whatever they’re discussing. The shows are around 90-minutes long as
many of the shorter shows are and podcasts are released a couple of times a
week. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can find the website and
links to the podcast to play in your podcast player of choice, right <a href="https://retronauts.com/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Retro Hour: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of
my most listened to podcasts is The Retro Hour, a British podcast with hosts
who record the shows every week, and not too far away in Nottingham. Dan, Ravi,
and Joe bring exclusive interviews with some of the greatest names in the
industry, from Atari veterans to modern-day developers who have worked on some
of the latest retro remakes. The Retro Hour Podcast is a founding member of
‘The Videogame Heritage Society’ alongside BFI, National Science and Media
Museum, Museum of London, C64 Audio, Centre for Computing History, Bath Spa
University and the British Library.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you want a definitive
history of vintage computing, then you can find it right <a href="https://theretrohour.com/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 175.5pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Maximum
Powerup: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another great podcast, especially for collectors of vintage
computer and gaming magazines and publications. Some of the past episodes have
bought interviews from some of the early video game journalists, reviewers, and
editors who shaped computer and videogame journalism in a pre-internet era. It
is an incredibly important and historic look back at an industry that didn’t
document its own progress very well, if at all, during the early years. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 175.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You
can find Maximum Power Up right <a href="https://maximumpowerup.com/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 127.15pt;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro
Asylum:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> If you are looking for a nostalgia hit, Retro Asylum is
another podcast that reflects on times past and also provides useful tips for
retro collectors and enthusiasts. Covering computers and games consoles from
all over the world, although, with a heavy hint of the popular systems available
in Britain, the team have extensive knowledge of all-things-retro. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 127.15pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This
is perhaps one of the most authoritative podcasts on the subject and there are
plenty of past episodes to listen to. It’s a little like having a conversation
about retro with friends in a pub on a Friday night! You can find the Retro Asylum right <a href="http://retroasylum.com/category/all-posts/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; tab-stops: 127.15pt;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-16CA70dTGmU/YXuh8pzBlOI/AAAAAAAAGyI/cw6BL5O4pHYkfJoocerEpC2F02Zok3eYgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/work%2Bin%2Bprogress%2B80s%2BCB%2Bradio.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="work in progress artwork, CB Radio" border="0" data-original-height="1431" data-original-width="2048" height="448" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-16CA70dTGmU/YXuh8pzBlOI/AAAAAAAAGyI/cw6BL5O4pHYkfJoocerEpC2F02Zok3eYgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h448/work%2Bin%2Bprogress%2B80s%2BCB%2Bradio.png" title="Retro CB Radio Artwork in Progress" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is one of my latest works in progress - massively popular in the 80s, the CB Radio! Who remembers the astounding K40 antenna? My handle was Mr Wimpy! Based on the character from the British fast-food chain that is still selling fast food in a few remaining restaurants today! Stay Tuned for More on this one!!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Arcade Attack: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Covering
a range of arcade games and retro consoles, Arcade Attack is another podcast
that reflects on the history of video games and home consoles, PC and even the
retro scene on the Nintendo Switch. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are also a number of
celebrity interviews from the likes of Al Acorn (of Atari and Pong fame), Rob
Hubbard, who has to be one of the most prolific and most revered video game
musicians ever, and there is a great interview from Tom Kalinske, one of the
main driving forces who were behind Sega in the 1990s. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can find Arcade Attack
right <a href="https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">RGDS: Retro Gaming Discussion
Show: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">RGDS began as a podcast back in 2014 and has since covered
thousands of historic video arcade games from developers all around the world.
Discussing platforms such as the Panasonic 3DO, Gameboy, classic Nintendo
consoles, Atari, PlayStation 1, right the way through to modern remakes of
classic games, the show is chock full of information. You can find RGDS right
<a href="https://retrogamingdailyshow.libsyn.com/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ten Pence Arcade</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">:
Focussing on video games culture between the 70s to the mid-90s, the Ten Pence
arcade also covers some of the lesser-known systems from the time. There are
also features around the restoration of video games cabinets and arcade PCBs, so if
you are one of the growing numbers of people who are jumping on the recent surge
to have an arcade machine in your own home, then this is probably one of the
best sources of information you will find. They also cover emulation, a method
with which you can emulate many of the systems on today's modern PCs and Macs.
You can find the site and the podcast right <a href="http://tenpencearcade.co.uk/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Ted Dabney Experience: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In
association with The American Classic Arcade Museum, the Ted Dabney Experience
is a serious conversation about the golden age video arcade greats. With some
of the most iconic interviews, often with the original people involved in the
birth of games and systems back in the 70s and 80s, this is another definitive
history that is being documented in a professional way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The hosts, Paul Drury, Tony
Temple, and Richard May, all have a deep connection to the industry. Paul
writes for Retro Gamer Magazine, a British magazine that is also popular in the
USA, Tony holds the Guinness Book of Records for his high score on Atari’s
Missile Command, and Richard was co-founder of the popular geek-culture ‘design
portal’ website, Pixelsurgeon. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Since 1998, Richard has been a
freelance illustrator with clients such as WIRED, Edge, Computer Arts,
Waitrose, Nordstrom, New Scientist and The Guardian. His long-term relationship
with British rock band Echobelly has seen him design the covers for the
majority of their post-Britpop era releases, so if you are still in any doubt
that this is a history that is also steeped in art, Richard is probably all the
proof that you need. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can find the Ted Dabney
Experience right <a href="https://www.teddabneyexperience.com/" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro Magazines: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I
collect vintage computing, gaming and technology magazines and now have a
collection that is in the high three digits and growing. From both a design and
technology perspective, they represent a stark contrast to the technology
available today and because the magazines are for the most part, in a physical
format from the pre-internet era, there is a sense of nostalgia every time I
pick one up. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, it’s rare to see a
computer magazine, though back in the 80s and 90s there were at least two or
three magazines on the shelves for each of the many systems. What often stands
out is the design and publishing standards of the time, not forgetting the copy
contained within each magazine, they’re sometimes also representative of the
time when there were very few editorial standards around political correctness
and I find that it can be a fascinating insight into just how much the world
has changed. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro Gamer: </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Talking
of magazines, if I didn’t let you in on the retro world’s best-kept secret, I
wouldn’t be doing any justice to the history of gaming. I mentioned Retro Gamer
earlier, and this is a magazine that I am lucky enough to own every issue of. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Published monthly in a
physical and digital format, Retro Gamer since 2004, is a publication that
looks back at the entire history of retro through reviews, interviews, and
features and the publishing standards are outstanding. The magazine itself has
become a bit of a collector's item of late, and it’s also one of the few
remaining physical gaming magazines available on the shelves in news stores. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is a no-nonsense
approach that feels down to earth and familiar and often there is a humorous
writing style that doesn’t take itself too seriously. The copy is always very well
written and edited and the production values, especially with the subscriber-only cover editions are in themselves an art gallery of gaming’s greatest
moments. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Covering every major computer
and system, the magazine provides plenty of information every month, and it
provides the inspiration to go out and search for some of the lost gems from a
previous age that we might not have played, or played a lot and then forgot
about. You can subscribe wherever you are in the world and the link to the
subscription can be found on the Retro Gamer website <a href="https://www.retrogamer.net/" target="_blank">here</a>, </span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">or you
can purchase a physical copy from all good newsagents in the UK. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Importance of Computing in
the Digital Art World…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The history of computing and
video games is fascinating and it’s not something that is reserved purely for
gaming enthusiasts, there is enough history throughout the above websites for
you to get at least a small idea of just how incredibly important early
computers and video games systems are to the modern age. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Without the likes of Delux
Paint on the Amiga, a precursor to Photoshop, it’s fair to say that early
computers defined the way that we create digital art today. It’s also
surprising to find out things like the Sega Genesis (Megadrive outside of the
USA) is still being manufactured and supported in Brazil, despite being last
manufactured by Sega in 1997. The podcasts are always full of information that
will sometimes make you say wow, and other times make you say oh dear. They are
though, performing an incredibly important role in their quests to document
and retain the information that is quickly becoming lost. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Most of the podcasts also
reflect back on the decades between the 70s and 90s, often covering popular
culture of the time and not just computers and video game consoles, if you have
fond memories of any of those decades then you’re likely to find something of
interest beyond the subjects of computing and gaming. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Happy Creating!<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Hopefully, you will have found
this week’s article at least a little useful if you plan on utilising
technology in your artwork. Being a long-time collector of technology, gaming
platforms and video games, I have a huge passion for anything and everything
that involves electronics. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I even have a collection of
vintage gaming and computer magazines and am always on the lookout for more,
especially magazines from the USA which I missed out on here in the UK. I love
comparing the industry around the world and there’s nothing more retro than
sitting down with a coffee and flipping through the pages of a physical
magazine with the phone turned off and not a screen in sight!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I mentioned earlier that I
never throw technology away, but in my younger days I did sell on computers
that I had owned for a while so that I could purchase the next latest model. My
parents funded what they could but that usually meant waiting until machines
came on offer towards the end of the model's life, or as a result of me saving
up. Since then, all I seem to have done is try to replace whatever I sold in my
younger days and lived with the regret that I sold some hyper-rare items for
pennies on the dollar compared to what they are worth today, both in a monetary
and nostalgic sense. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Even some of the magazines
that I had read at the time made me get that warm, safe, fuzzy feeling, and my
own video games were advertised in some, yet I still don’t have a single copy
of a magazine that featured any of my work, or any of the many letters I would
write to the letters pages which got published. I also passed up the
opportunity to work in video games journalism after being head-hunted at the
age of 14, a regret I carry to this day. By headhunted, I mean they were pretty much, taking anyone on who knew how to play video games and write BASIC programs! Big regret, massive, my life could have been so different!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I have to admit that my
digital art studio has become more museum-like over the past few years, but my
ever-growing collection always manages to provide an abundance of inspiration
for my eighties inspired work, and I can justify it by calling it research
rather than hoarding! So, if you are sorting out your attic and need to find a
home for any old computers, vintage computing magazines, or if you need to
either know more about them or donate them to a good home, I’m all ears and
always willing to find space! My bank manager agrees that I should just cut out
the middle-man and exchange my art directly for vintage systems. Maybe they
should create a special version of Patreon where I get funded in tech in return
for art!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s all for this time, but
keep an eye open for a future article on popular culture and art through the
70s, 80s and 90s, which might just give you a clue as to what my next artworks
are likely to feature!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As always, stay safe, stay
well, and look after each other, oh, and Happy Creating!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark x<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I am an artist and blogger and
live in Staffordshire, England. My days are filled with art, dog walking and Teams
Meetings, while still being stuck somewhere in the eighties. You can purchase
my art through my Fine Art America store or my Pixels site here: <a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</a> and
you can purchase my new works, special and limited editions directly. You can
also view my portfolio website at <a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank">https://beechhousemedia.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are on Facebook, you
can give me a follow right here, <a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</a>
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at <a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0Staffordshire, England50.9619753 -1.949028525.935439410848417 -37.1052785 75.988511189151581 33.2072215tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-10775952530261152662021-09-20T10:16:00.000+01:002021-09-20T10:16:04.855+01:00The Cold Art of the Side Hustle for Artists<h1 style="text-align: left;"> <b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The hustle that's a hassle!</span></b></h1><div><b><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D1pomP98FYs/YUhKCpldZYI/AAAAAAAAGts/SZO4NZjeMagOIqhZMYk58uUfl1acC4xAwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/cover%2Bside%2Bhustle.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="wreath blog cover image side hustle" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D1pomP98FYs/YUhKCpldZYI/AAAAAAAAGts/SZO4NZjeMagOIqhZMYk58uUfl1acC4xAwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/cover%2Bside%2Bhustle.png" title="The Cold Art of the Side Hustle for Artists" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Cold Art of the Side Hustle for Artists</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When it comes to writing new
articles I have a process that I have to follow. It usually involves late
nights, early mornings, lots of coffee, and copious amounts of research because
I want every reader of my site to go away with the best information and to come
back next week when they’re ready for more.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Well... that's usually the plan!</span></h1><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So that’s exactly what I did
when I began preparing this article, and oh my life, did my eyes get opened!
This week we will be looking at the side hustle, the sideline that an artist
can use to pay the bills in between major works and commissions, or at least
that’s the theory. Sometimes, the side hustle can be a huge side hassle that
can pull you as far away from your art as possible. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So, in my quite literally,
weeks of undertaking research to figure out what kind of side hustle might bear
more low-hanging fruit, I discovered that hundreds of websites had already
covered the subject. I distinctly remember thinking that my work here has
already been done and I would need to select the next subject on my list of
must-write articles, or at least that was until I read them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The thing is, I have
absolutely no idea who even wrote some of what has been written on some of
these websites purporting to have the insight that would point an artist towards
a side hustle that would complement their art practice, because in no way, in
any universe, would less than a tenth of what’s been written and described as a
fruitful side-hustle complement your art practice or pay any bills, not even
your Netflix subscription. And besides, none of the themes was exactly what you might call easy side
hustles either.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Want to know what most of
these websites thought the highest paying side hustle would be for a visual
artist? YouTube. Apparently, you can earn mega-dollars just by being you in
front of a camera and uploading the finished video to the Tube of You. Yep, no
you can’t. Well, you can, eventually, you know, when you have as many viewers
as the Pew di Pie character, but that’s never going to happen with visual art
unless you are already established or your name is Banksy. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sadly, that’s the cold reality
of YouTube, there’s just so much competition for the same eyes and there are so
many artists, all vying for the same viewers. So, unless your production
quality is on a par with those who are getting the big views and your content
is different enough to stand out, YouTube will be a long grind that certainly
isn’t as easy as all of these websites will have you think. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qgES_1hEfMA/YUhKt7dWpoI/AAAAAAAAGt0/9A0Dp8EbPw4lpYDDz0J9cz90kcvOgAEaACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/oh%2Bmy%2Bgogh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="artwork of an art supply store" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qgES_1hEfMA/YUhKt7dWpoI/AAAAAAAAGt0/9A0Dp8EbPw4lpYDDz0J9cz90kcvOgAEaACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/oh%2Bmy%2Bgogh.jpg" title="Oh My Gogh Art Supplies" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Oh My Gogh Art Supplies by Mark Taylor - art supplies can be a lucrative side hustle for artists too!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sell your talent…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another one that appears on
the many lists that promise your days of scratching a living will be over, is
the tip that I’m sure no artist in the history of artists has ever considered.
There’s a hint of sarcasm there, any working artist will be all too familiar
with the grind but the tip in question here is to sell your creativity through
services such as Fiverr and Upwork. At their core, these services pit creatives,
and in fact, pretty much anyone with a pair of hands and a pulse, together with
the intention of offering cheap services that can be ordered by anyone with a
need for a pair of hands to create or do something. They’re popular with
providing the skills to produce things like logos, where the commissioner wants
something as quickly as possible usually for the least amount of money. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">To be fair, there are some extremely
talented folk on these services but the way that the services are structured
lends itself to creating an almost disposable talent pool that can be picked up
and put down at will, and the competition and often low-cost services offered
do no one any favours as it devalues the work being done. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sure, there will be a few who
manage to scrape a living wage creating on these services, but these tend to be
the exception rather than the rule. Mostly, the gigs provide fillers in between
major projects and while they’re especially useful if you don’t already have a
commercial portfolio and need to quickly build one, let’s not think for a
moment that these gigs will be any easier than anything else and, neither will
they necessarily bear enough financial fruit for you to forge a decent living
on. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7Q1LT8bddvw/YUhLJMvP4_I/AAAAAAAAGt8/5kdZC5_KT_UUf1HocZMYIg3-MBGLFcGywCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/80s%2Bnewsagent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="the 80s newsagent artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7Q1LT8bddvw/YUhLJMvP4_I/AAAAAAAAGt8/5kdZC5_KT_UUf1HocZMYIg3-MBGLFcGywCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/80s%2Bnewsagent.jpg" title="The 80s Newsagent by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The 80s Newsagent by Mark Taylor - Nostalgia is a great side hustle!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You get the idea…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s as if whoever has written
these long lists of possibilities hasn’t actually tried any of them out. If
they had, and the ideas worked, most of the authors would be too busy with side
hustles to write such an article in the first place. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As an artist, a side hustle
can be an essential part of the creative journey. Sometimes the hustle is essential
to filling in the gaps between major projects so that the bills can continue to
be paid. That’s not to say that just any side hustle is going to be compatible
with your ambitions to create a successful and professional art practice,
indeed, some side hustles can cast a shadow on what you are trying to achieve
with your art or they can quickly become a distraction that takes your artistic
focus away.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whatever the side hustle is,
it’s also kind of a bonus, if not essential, that it is also something that you
enjoy doing, otherwise it could become something that is a grind that you then
begin to resent and that would just be miserable. The whole purpose of the side
hustle is to fill in the financial gaps, whether they’re small or big, so it’s
critical that any side hustle you choose is one that can fill whatever gaps you
have or as I intimated earlier, it really can become a side hassle. The more
fun you can have with a side hustle, the better it will be, it should never
start to drain your artistic creativity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If the last eighteen months
have taught us anything at all, it’s that as artists we need to be resilient.
There have been many artists who went into the pandemic probably thinking that
they would still get to turn up at physical events and keep their art flowing out
through the door. Those that relied on turning up in a physical space had to
refocus their efforts online and if they weren’t prepared for online sales,
will have had a choice to respond quickly or continue to struggle.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NAhs51xj6WU/YUhLmodD0KI/AAAAAAAAGuE/ax23OiM95_0tBNDSrMgnZnjIl-vH9Ih_gCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Art%2BSupplies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="art supplies artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NAhs51xj6WU/YUhLmodD0KI/AAAAAAAAGuE/ax23OiM95_0tBNDSrMgnZnjIl-vH9Ih_gCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Art%2BSupplies.jpg" title="Art Supplies by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Art Supplies by Mark Taylor - art for artists is another side hustle!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What the side hustle should
be…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Other than ideally being fun,
the side hustle should complement your art practice rather than being something
that is disparate from it. You have to avoid confusing the market that you
already have and it’s even better if the side hustle isn’t a single thing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If we learned any lessons
throughout the pandemic it should have been that plans can change, economies
can stop spending, and even the most resilient businesses faced, and in some
cases continue to face a struggle. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s not that any of those
issues have never happened outside of the pandemic, they did and they did
frequently. The art world is perhaps more ebb and flow than most other
businesses even in the best of times but the one thing we did see that we haven’t
seen previously, was the closure of physical spaces. Some people will continue
to buy art whatever the economy looks like, others won’t, or their buying
habits will change, and there have always been busy seasons and slow seasons,
that’s the art world in a nutshell. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What the pandemic did was to
shine the spotlight on the problems that inherently existed in the art world
even before the pandemic and it shone an even brighter light on the changing
buying habits of collectors who for the first time, began to take online more
seriously. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These issues will appear again
in the future, it’s the cyclical nature of the art business and any other
business. So, when it happens again, and it will, the pain will be the same regardless
of the cause. The key is in how well you prepare during the good times so that
you can combat the bad and how prepared you are to counter things like physical
closures which we could one day see again. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whatever the economy looks
like, it’s just not worth placing any blame for any lack of sales on that
alone, a tumultuous economy is an expected issue that arises over and over in
any business and you really do have to learn to adapt, and in part, accept that
this is generally just how any business really works. It’s not fun, but you can
plan and prepare and at least stave off the worst of it when it happens. Those
who read my previous article on business strategies might be more attuned to
thinking outside of the proverbial box when it comes to preparedness. You can
read that article right <a href="https://www.beechhousemedia.co.uk/2021/09/the-strategy-of-art.html " rel="" target="_blank">here </a>if you missed it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Don’t just have one hustle…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Having multiple income streams
means that you’re not putting all of your eggs into a single fragile basket,
but it’s how you choose those side hustle that really counts. I mentioned
earlier about making sure your side hustle is compatible with your core business,
but it also has to be compatible with you.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One side hustle might be to
start selling sunglasses alongside your artwork, but wouldn’t that be
confusing? How about selling a professionally created course on how to paint
instead? That certainly sounds like it would have a fit that makes more sense
to the market of an artist. What you are really looking for are business assets
that do most of the heavy lifting for you rather than potentially quick wins
that can turn into an unsustainable grind that takes your focus away from your
core business. You absolutely need something that will be relevant long term if
you want to create a sustainable side hustle.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is what happens over and
over, side hustles can quickly turn into let’s also do something that will just
make a lot of money fast, rather than being carefully planned to leverage your
core business. Surely the intention, if you’re not selling much art, should be to
do something that has the potential to help you to sell more art if art is
indeed your first passion and you are serious about making a living from it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you already have a market,
even if the market is currently spending less, you really don’t want to lose
that market even temporarily. When the market eventually corrects course, you’ll
certainly want them to come back and spend just like they did previously. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">An incompatible side hustle
can lose you the business and the market you have strived to build maybe for
years if the side hustle introduces any confusion. So what might be compatible?
Thankfully, I have researched this, spoken with numerous successful creatives,
and have my own experience to draw from after running the side hustle of
creating retro, computer and game-related artworks for more than three decades.
In fact, that was exactly how I originally cut my teeth in the art world so you
could say that the non-computer and game-related art I produce to this day is
probably my original side hustle!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o5GVw3paYz8/YUhMV5PPw1I/AAAAAAAAGuM/LooY9_5BV_ESukN4hzHSXF_h3il8H_2lgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/wedding%2Bplanner.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="wedding invitation" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o5GVw3paYz8/YUhMV5PPw1I/AAAAAAAAGuM/LooY9_5BV_ESukN4hzHSXF_h3il8H_2lgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/wedding%2Bplanner.png" title="The Wedding Planner Hussle" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Wedding Planner Hussle</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Upcycling…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Custom upcycled furniture is
currently hot and it allows you to extend your creativity in new ways, and it’s
not just furniture that you can work with. Custom frames for your work can
extend the story within your art outside of the canvas. Taking a bottle and
decorating it can make an awesome table centrepiece, add sequins to the outside
to give it a shimmering look and feel, or dip it in environmentally friendly
glitter to sit in the middle of a wedding party table, alongside the wedding
party name cards you designed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you enter markets such as
those populated by wedding planners, there’s a myriad of options for artists
from producing environmentally friendly confetti out of dried leaves, wedding
invitation design, and there are markets for portrait artists. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qabLxEZkcUw/YUhMlj2iocI/AAAAAAAAGuU/2vgaV_udLNg2dcfjhObcVNcxagv6zwbpwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/confetti.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="dried autumnal leaves" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qabLxEZkcUw/YUhMlj2iocI/AAAAAAAAGuU/2vgaV_udLNg2dcfjhObcVNcxagv6zwbpwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/confetti.png" title="Dried leaves" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Look towards natural resources to create unique gifts and products...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Once you begin to open up new
markets you can widen the market even more by offering more compatible items, and
you can even customise almost anything to make it bespoke for your clients. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"></span></i></b></p><blockquote><b><i>The
sky really is the limit here, and what you should never do is judge other
peoples wallets by the value of the contents of your own. That’s true of your
artwork too.</i></b></blockquote><b><i><o:p></o:p></i></b><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is a market for premium,
and that market didn’t go anywhere during the pandemic, in truth, the market
grew considerably in some areas. That means that you can find premium markets
for premium quality items that might also now be interested in your now premium
art.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Upcycling isn’t necessarily
about turning a bargain into another bargain, or something that no one else
wants into something that they might want, it’s about turning a bargain into
something useful, something that people need, and even something that people
desire. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you do try the upcycling
side hustle, it can be the stuff of social media dreams, especially on services
such as Instagram or Pinterest, yes, Pinterest is still relevant today especially
if you are doing cool things with a mason jar or a garden.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Subscribers are as good as
collectors…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not too sure why we don’t
see many artists jump onto the subscription bandwagon, because subscribers are
quite literally becoming the new collector. We pay subscriptions for almost
everything these days from streaming services to coffee and pretty much
anything and everything that you regularly consume.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not talking about Patreon
type services here, although Patreon might not be a bad way to start out, having a direct relationship with regular collectors who continuously provide
you with funding in return for art. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One subscription model idea
might be to charge a reasonable amount each month or two or even each quarter
and in return, the subscriber will receive a brand new quality frame each time
they pay their fee, along with a number of downloadable artworks which can be
swapped in and out of the frame. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A good example might be that
the subscriber signs up to an initial bi-monthly plan, receiving the frame at
the start of the first month and then a new downloadable artwork every week
until the next subscription is due. The benefit to the subscriber is that they
get to showcase a new artwork on their wall or create a gallery wall which is a
great idea for those who might be short of wall space. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Larger frames, larger
artworks, personalisation, or receiving art more regularly might even be useful
upsells to increase the available subscription tiers. If you can collaborate
with another artist to create new subscriber-only works you could even double
the output with half of the work, or you could go down the subscriber-only
edition route to provide your newfound collectors with art that you will never
make available anywhere else.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Even a low-cost subscription
can get people interested in collecting your other works, even if they only
have aspirations to own one of your originals today, there is a chance that one
day those aspirations will be realised. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CUQkf3xaiP0/YUhNA__FM5I/AAAAAAAAGuc/1sjUBcCqiZY_IsfNsmONMt9jQ0sknpjowCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/storage%2Bwars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="vintage computer storage mediums" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CUQkf3xaiP0/YUhNA__FM5I/AAAAAAAAGuc/1sjUBcCqiZY_IsfNsmONMt9jQ0sknpjowCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/storage%2Bwars.jpg" title="Vintage Computer Storage Wars" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Storage Wars - each of the storage mediums in my artwork can be reused as they are created individually - meaning you can exponentially grow your portfolio with different images using the same assets!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Create Resources…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I am nervous when it comes to
suggesting that you create something like a full-on tutorial course, purely
because most of what can be learned already has a tutorial to teach and the bar
is set pretty high. Unless you absolutely know and understand your subject,
creating tutorials can be challenging, competitive, and bear in mind that the
Tube of You already makes most tutorials available for free, so long as you don’t
mind the occasional 4-second ad.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are other ways you can pass
on your talent for profit, and they’re all going to be infinitely easier than
creating a YouTube channel and learning about almost Hollywood level production
quality. Patterns, templates, vanilla book covers for e-book authors, stickers,
planners, photoshop brushes, digital textures, are all in demand from other
artists. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the past year alone I spent
over $500 on commercial digital brushes, texture overlays for commercial use,
and fonts, and I know a heap of other artists who are so time poor that they
buy them too, purely because we have so little time to create our own.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">$500 might seem like a lot for
digital assets but the reality is that I only buy premium digital assets with
licences for commercial reuse, so that doesn’t equate to a lot of digital
assets at all. I’m happy to pay the premium for quality, as are other artists
and it is a niche that needs way more choice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Digital assets for artists can
also be added to subscription models, particularly if you are offering
something that is unique to you and it allows you to grow a community that then
buy into you, for your creativity.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can also create resources
for e-learning content, the assets that can be used when producing interactive
learning, and there is a steady market to feed the games industry with visuals,
even product box art.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Rights Free Music…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Video is huge, it has been for
years and its growth on social media is exponentially growing. The problem for
any creator of video on social media is the issue around using music in your
videos. Unless you can demonstrate that you hold the right to use a piece of
music, and demonstrating that can be what can only be described as a faff, then
the almighty algorithm will strike your post down, or mute it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A lot of artists have a side
hobby that is often just as creative, and many of these hobbies also involve creating
and playing music, it must be a right-brain thing or something. If that
describes you, there’s a world of potential in creating musical assets that
other creators can benefit from.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Artists who create videos for
their own social media and YouTube channels, or promotional videos showcasing
their own artworks are all potential customers for some good quality rights-free music.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mzQIdZZUZBQ/YUhNzDBc5LI/AAAAAAAAGuk/ZpoNxKObAl4sY_Zk_aaEiXKPLhjl-8L5QCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/dry%2Bstone%2Bwall.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Dry stone wall at sunset" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mzQIdZZUZBQ/YUhNzDBc5LI/AAAAAAAAGuk/ZpoNxKObAl4sY_Zk_aaEiXKPLhjl-8L5QCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/dry%2Bstone%2Bwall.JPG" title="Glow Over A Dry Stone Wall" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Glow Over A Dry Stone Wall by Mark Taylor - Frames can be a lucrative upsell. 9 out of 10 purchases of this work are purchased with a frame!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Frame it…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">How many artists currently
offer a choice of frames, or offer bespoke frames and accessories? Mats,
frames, hanging fixings, are all simple things that can make a completed
artwork feel even more complete. What tends to happen when people purchase
prints is that they might decide to buy the frame at a later date, you have an
opportunity for the upsell that will take that hassle away from the buyer if
you offer them a choice of price points. You can point out the value in adding
a frame such as protecting the work, and you could combine the upcycling side hustle
by offering buyers a frame that extends the artwork beyond the canvas.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In my experience, if you can
provide a worthy value add, people will take it. Here are a few of the upsells
I have the most success with:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Handcrafted Frames made from
sustainable wood </span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A choice of print mediums –
from value canvas (but still acid-free and still great quality) right the way
through to Somerset Rag, Archival canvas and paper, wood and acrylic block and
steel.</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Personal hanging service</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Hanging Fixings</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Collector only editions – only
available to collectors who have access to the collector's area on my other
website.</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Commissions</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Art Consultancy – including authenticity
</span></i></li></ul><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Beyond that, some of my other
side hustles include:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Art Rentals (from a consortium
of independent artists)</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Digital Originals on encrypted
drives </span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Book Covers</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Restaurant Menus – Graphic Design</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Hotel and Restaurant Art</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Licensed Images</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Video Editing</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">8-bit Graphics for vintage
computers – including classic retro designs</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Illustration Work</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Cover art – from media publications
to video games</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">TV and Film prop artwork with
immediate clearance – because clearing art is a logistical pain for studios who
need a work of art on set that day!</span></i></li></ul><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The best thing about having
multiple upsells and side hustles is that you have a menu of options that can
be mixed and matched to any particular buyer. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The premium side hustle…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A good side hustle should reinforce
your brand and even take it to the next level. Equally, it can be about providing
value to those who can’t quite reach the financial outlay for your premium
option, but you should have in mind that offering a smaller work isn’t about
compromising on quality, it’s about the aspirations of the buyer in the future.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You should also consider your
own aspirations in the side hustle too, and let’s not forget the aspirations of
your existing collectors. Your one goal as a professional artist who relies on
selling art to make a living is to get as much monetary return as possible for
each piece of work sold. Now that might sound a little selfish, or as if you’re
selling out, but the reality here is that this is a great thing for your
collectors. If you take a cut in earnings from your work, the work your collectors
already own takes a cut in value. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s worth pointing out here
that there is a single critical difference between buyers and collectors.
Buyers want value, collectors want you to increase your worth. Something that
is often forgotten when events such as Black Friday come around and you desperately
offer crazy discounts to chase the immediate sale, you not only devalue the
work you are trying to sell, you devalue the work that your collectors already
paid you for and that isn’t a good place to be. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s much better to serve the
market for lower-priced works by creating something different, perhaps smaller
more affordable works, offering your work on alternative mediums, or publishing
on less expensive mediums without compromising the quality too much. Again,
this is about creating a market of aspirational buyers who will one day hopefully
become your primary buyers and even collectors.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Kl8tXQsEmGs/YUhO9tdVl1I/AAAAAAAAGus/SQ1n02IZHDolKVIyf0Vp1BXXuRwBudRPACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/colouring%2Bsheet.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="mandala" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Kl8tXQsEmGs/YUhO9tdVl1I/AAAAAAAAGus/SQ1n02IZHDolKVIyf0Vp1BXXuRwBudRPACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/colouring%2Bsheet.JPG" title="Mandala colouring sheet" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Colouring sheets make great gifts - I often create them to give away on social media!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Make sure it’s sustainable…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As for most of these articles
that promise a one-stop list of money-spinners that are easy enough to run as a
side hustle, it’s as if the writers of such articles have been scratching
around for ideas but not necessarily knowing too much of anything about the
reality of the side hustles they recommend. The intent is to be helpful I’m
sure, but it’s not helpful for an artist to sink hours into something that will
either be yet another grind without the potential of any real reward, or a
pursuit that can damage the professionalism of your art practice. Art is a
funny business at times and existing buyers can be put off if they become
confused or feel as if the original art is now the side hustle.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sure, an incompatible side
hustle might reach a short term goal, but it has to be sustainable, not devalue
your collector base or future collector base, but more than this, if it’s not
fun, it becomes yet another grind. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is value for every
artist in running a successful side hustle, in most cases, it will give you
another niche that can add value and open markets so that you can chase that
YouTube dream. A side hustle can differentiate you from everyone else, it can
make you stand out in the crowd, but you absolutely want to stand out for the
right reasons when it comes to selling art.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Having a compatible side
hustle can generate new business for your existing work. It should complement
what you already do rather than be something a million miles away from it. The
key is to turn your mind into that of an entrepreneur rather than chasing the
next big thing regardless of what it is. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Until Next Time…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Hopefully, this week’s blog
will have given you some food for thought and at least an idea or two about
what your next side hustle could be, and maybe you’re now feeling more excited
about the possibilities that you have. You are creative, so go ahead and be
creative in everything else that you do too. Creativity is wasted if it only
comes out in the studio.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Until next time, stay safe,
stay well, look after each other and always stay creative!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark x<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I am an artist and blogger and
live in Staffordshire, England. My days are filled with art, dog walking and
living my best life while still being stuck somewhere in the eighties. You can
purchase my art through my Fine Art America store or my Pixels site here: <a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</a> and
you can purchase my new works, special and limited collector only editions
directly. You can also view my portfolio website at <a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank">https://beechhousemedia.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are on Facebook, you
can give me a follow right here, <a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</a>
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at <a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</a></span></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com2Staffordshire, England52.088607499999988 -1.508176631.942985231504473 -36.6644266 72.23422976849551 33.6480734tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-37748134138095617952021-09-01T12:20:00.000+01:002021-09-01T12:20:00.296+01:00The Strategy of Art<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Developing a strategy to market your art…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tN-h7fJbw2g/YS9T-TutWBI/AAAAAAAAGrM/fw7prXgSCQ4LmVgYR1drmGJGgB-njJD_gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The strategy of art cover image" border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1080" height="336" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tN-h7fJbw2g/YS9T-TutWBI/AAAAAAAAGrM/fw7prXgSCQ4LmVgYR1drmGJGgB-njJD_gCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h336/cover.png" title="The Strategy of Art" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Strategy of Art</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you can find a job you
enjoy, you’ll never work a day in your life. I’m not sure who first said that,
but I followed that advice and became an artist expecting that my days would be
filled with glitter and paint, evenings would be spent nibbling on canapes at
my next art exhibition and I would be able to wear paint-stained clothes in
public and drive around in a sleek Italian sports car. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><b>It turned out a little different...</b></span></h1><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">At no point did anyone ever
suggest that it might actually be hard work, nor that I would end up driving
around in a cute little yellow Fiat 500. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">To be fair, I did manage to
fulfil the dream of owning a sports car, although it was a British Jaguar
rather than some sleek Italian number. The Fiat 500 though had been on the
bucket list for a while, and I wanted to become a lot more environmentally
friendly, and in part, because art supplies have become exponentially more
expensive and my keen to be green attitude meant there would be more cash
available to import Japanese paintbrushes. I never questioned if they were
arriving by air.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Nor did anyone mention that
mostly, I would need to be concerned about things like sales funnels or
distributed growth strategies, which to be totally honest, I’m still not
convinced is an actual thing. More recently there’s so much currency given to
being ‘agile’, a business buzzword that as far as I can tell, means that you make
it up as you go along. Not that there is anything wrong in making it up as you
go along, I’m convinced that’s exactly how you innovate, it’s certainly how you
learn, it’s also how you make mistakes which are also great and essential
lessons to learn. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whenever I write an article
about starting out in the art business I always mention having a strategy that
covers both marketing and sales, and I have often talked about having a content
strategy for the works that you create and of course, the content you put out
on social media. That’s all well and good but what I don’t usually expand on in
too much depth is what you really need to focus on when writing those
strategies. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This week, we’re going to take
a dive into the world of creating a strategy to build your art business on, and
I will provide a few ideas that you might not have thought about but might be
important. They’re certainly things that have helped me over my increasingly
long career.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iDFgOYm1FXA/YS9UmYLe96I/AAAAAAAAGrU/lRdgiAmJeoEoZdpevsfdTgQWZcrXkqsEACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/80s%2Bpop%2Bmusic%2Bculture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="80s pop music culture art" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iDFgOYm1FXA/YS9UmYLe96I/AAAAAAAAGrU/lRdgiAmJeoEoZdpevsfdTgQWZcrXkqsEACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/80s%2Bpop%2Bmusic%2Bculture.jpg" title="80s Pop Music Culture Art" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">80s Pop Music Culture by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Times are changing…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When I first started out as an
independent artist there was no such thing as the internet, or at least the
internet that we know today. Hey, we had bulletin boards and a dial-up modem
that the phone needed to be placed on top of. If you were born in the age of
anything more recent, you most likely have zero idea what I’m even talking
about, just know that life was hard. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you needed to find anything
out about running a business it usually involved some insane amount of effort,
a few books, and some good luck. It’s a little easier today in one respect,
almost everything you need to learn can be found online, but to some extent
running a business has also become much more complicated than it once was. There’s
a heap more distraction for a start.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In the art world of the past,
there was a structure that an artist would generally follow. You would go to
art school, make contacts, work your way up through the gallery system and then
hopefully at the end of it, you might have sold some work. There was though,
never a guarantee despite being told that was the only way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It was a well-trodden, almost
linear path that was more or less easily understood, even if it was next to a
nightmare to navigate or even get a foothold into at times. Today, that
structure has been eroded away, gone are the gatekeepers to the art world that
once stood outside the gallery doors. Today
it’s entirely possible to have a successful career in the creative sector
without ever having stepped into a gallery at all. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today’s relatively easy access
to the art world doesn’t have anywhere near the same structure. Sure, there are
still, gallery routes that artists can follow, but you now also have the option
of going it alone or working in collaboration, assuming you can find someone
who is willing to collaborate and understands that collaboration is a two way
thing, but that’s another blog entirely. The downside is that you then have to
also, do the job that the galleries once did, and that means that you need to
learn the art of the business of art, rather than just the art of creating
great art. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NsJn0kkQFQo/YS9VumAkbBI/AAAAAAAAGrc/LI4kGlNVsC8dzpQ3wk6QpLyb3wxzXPpZACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/tools%2Bof%2Bthe%2Btrade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Tools of the Trade cassette tape and pencil artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NsJn0kkQFQo/YS9VumAkbBI/AAAAAAAAGrc/LI4kGlNVsC8dzpQ3wk6QpLyb3wxzXPpZACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/tools%2Bof%2Bthe%2Btrade.jpg" title="Tools of the Trade" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Tools of the Trade - by Mark Taylor and now available in my store!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Unfortunately, there is no
simple shortcut that allows you to only ever focus on creating art if you want
any of that art to find a paying wall to hang itself on. It takes effort, an
effort that can feel herculean at times, and I think it’s fair to say that
almost every artist who has chosen this route in the history of ever has found
out that at times, going it alone in the art world can feel incredibly daunting,
even lonely, and it most certainly identifies and exposes your vulnerable side
like no other business I know.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That daunting feeling is a
difficult one to overcome. An artist today has to work in so many different
areas than they did at any time before. Back in the days of showing my work in
a gallery, I had no idea about any of the business buzzwords that we hear so
much about today, it was simply a case of knuckling down and doing your best
and following the galleries lead, it was still incredibly hard though. I don’t
think I even came across terms such as progressively disintermediating
functionalized channels until a few years ago and to this day, I still have
little idea about what it really means. For all, I know it could be a made-up
business buzz phrase designed to put us off even trying. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One thing I absolutely do know
though, is that the daunting feeling can be overcome and the business side of
things can start to become second nature, so long as you have the absolute
basics in place from the off.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">And that’s the rub with so
many of the new artists I come across who are just thinking about stepping out
onto the creative path as a professional artist. Knowing exactly what the
basics of running an art business are, isn’t a topic generally covered in any
meaningful depth in many academic art studies, that’s if the subject of
business is even included at all. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My advice to anyone thinking
of formally studying art is to double up on the learning and take an academic
program in business too and maybe even do this first. For those who are going
down the self-taught route, it matters
not where or how you learn, that’s another upside that has come from the
erosion of old school ways of doing things, but my advice is the same. Spend as
much time learning about business as you spend learning about creating great
art and then some more if you can.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Learning about the business of
art is more critical than ever before. There has been an explosive growth in
technology over the past eighteen months and that growth has fractured an
already outdated art world even more. It’s a sector that has become much more
destabilised due to the pandemic, and as a result, the way we now have to work
has changed almost beyond recognition. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2rnhnExGWwk/YS9WE4DjeAI/AAAAAAAAGrk/jTuYO2j2XfQABM2cLtw3R9gBlluweEsiwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Ascend.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Ascend abstract space artwork" border="0" data-original-height="1515" data-original-width="2048" height="474" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2rnhnExGWwk/YS9WE4DjeAI/AAAAAAAAGrk/jTuYO2j2XfQABM2cLtw3R9gBlluweEsiwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h474/Ascend.jpg" title="Ascend by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Ascend - one of a number of Space inspired artworks in my new collection - Space and Beyond!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That might sound as if a
career in the art world should be even more daunting than before, and it can be
if you don’t have a plan that builds the foundations on which you can build a
successful career, one step at a time. Given that the art world now looks and
functions very differently to the art world we all knew just a little under two
years ago, having a strategy that factors in those new changes and challenges makes
sense, even for artists who have been in the business for a while. Things have
changed, it might be time to change your forward strategy a little to take into
account what might be around the corner and of course to take into account the
massive changes we have been seeing over the course of the pandemic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><b>Avoiding Noise…</b></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The single most critical
element when writing any strategy, be it for marketing, sales, content,
whatever is to avoid noise. It’s essential that the foundations are well built
and robust enough for you to build a business in a world that has changed,
in some cases, almost beyond recognition when compared to the same business a
couple of years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Noise has no place in an
artists strategy, yet I see it far too often, and I see the impending
frustration emerges when the art fails to go out of the door. Whenever I work
with new artists, I’m often struck at just how hard they work and by how much
currency they give to new trends. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some trends are worthy pursuits,
it’s great to be right in at the start of something, but the fact that a trend
is a trend implies that you wouldn’t be the first to do it and that
automatically puts you in at least second place. You need to spot the next
trend way before it’s a trend and that my friends ain’t exactly easy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the more recent trends
that we have all seen is a classic example of noise. The noise in question is
around the use of non-fungible tokens or NFTs. No doubt a trend spurred on by recent NFT
sales that have grabbed headlines in mainstream media around the world. Inevitably,
after about ten minutes of the first headline to announce that millions had
been paid for artwork through an NFT, artists were offering work for sale
through NFTs and perhaps missing the point a little that NFTs aren’t something
that only takes five minutes to master and slightly less to set up. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">NFTs aren’t new. A few years
ago I wrote an article asking whether artists were ready for bitcoin,
blockchain, and cryptocurrency in the art world. This was something that I had
been dabbling in at that point for a while, more out of interest than it being
written in any kind of master plan. It wasn’t an easy process back then and
it’s still as complex and costly to do it today. Another misconception that
seems to influence a lot of strategies is that NFTs are some kind of golden
panacea to being discovered, they’re not. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">NFTs won’t make your art
either more valuable or more desirable, indeed, they might even put a lot if
regular buyers off. If you are totally unprepared for NFT then it’s better to
leave that as a strategy for later, in the meantime, it’s totally fine to
accept the currency of RFM, or real freakin money, just like millions upon
millions of artists have done and continue to do every day.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is a place for NFTs, and
they will continue to be prevalent for a while, although my guess is that at
some point the world will change. Indeed, they can provide the provenance for
digital works that have been impossible to supply in any other way. But their
prominence could be undermined if some of the financial institutions, countries
and governments who are generally doing their best to make them less relevant
get their way. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Personally, I can see some
form of the blunt instrument called regulation being imposed on them, not least
because the other side of cryptocurrency has both uses in illegal activity
and a massive negative impact on the environment.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8Gr_xpogi-w/YS9W6e-WSNI/AAAAAAAAGrs/sBfIXmg18Twnlno7AXWah8vmcXMp8fDRQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/obsolescence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="vintage technology painted as an artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8Gr_xpogi-w/YS9W6e-WSNI/AAAAAAAAGrs/sBfIXmg18Twnlno7AXWah8vmcXMp8fDRQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/obsolescence.jpg" title="Obsolescence by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Obsolescence by Mark Taylor - available in my store - digitally hand-painted recreations of vintage technology that was designed to become obsolete! </span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The point is, that many trends
are generally noise and they can hamper whatever strategy you currently have,
especially if you’re not well prepared. Once those foundations of a strategy
are built, that’s the time when you can begin to lay the bricks, and then in
time, you might want to add the roof and a few essential extras. You don’t have
to do it all today, you don’t even have to do it all tomorrow, art isn’t a
race, it’s way beyond even a marathon, it’s an entire career that can last a
lifetime so you need a strategy that evolves and flexes throughout that
lifetime.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Let’s address that one thing
we all know but prefer to never really talk about. Writing down strategies and
plans is plain and simply, boring. I know, and it’s not lost on me that the
minute anyone sits down with the good intention to knuckle down and strategize,
that’s when life 1.0 gets in the way, or oh shiny happens, or another
commission comes in. The thing is that you are the one who knows where you want
to go with your art business so it makes sense that there is only you who can
map it out. There are no templates, art is the least cookie-cutter type
business to be involved in, your strategy has to be as unique as your art, and
as unique as the people you want to buy your work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Just start with the basics…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Once you begin to recognise
that you don’t have to fall in with every trend or become distracted with every
little noise, or get confused by the obscurity of business terminology, you can
begin to focus on the basics. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you were to ask a business
guru, and that’s definitely not me, they would tell you that a well-developed
marketing strategy will help you realise your goals and focus on what you need
to be doing to reach your target market. In my experience, which to be fair
over the years has often drifted between try it and see and a laser-like focus has proven to me that it’s the time when I’m least lazy about doing the
business-critical things is when I tend to get the majority of sales. Equally,
it’s not always possible to be 100% focussed on the business side of things
when you also have to be 100% focussed on creating the art at the same time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YEJ4Nr3zMNs/YS9Yg5VZ0BI/AAAAAAAAGr0/89RXbNwLsUAUg_kaLtOgBQOqRA5LinWpACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/storage%2Bwars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="computer storage media from the eighties hand painted digital art" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YEJ4Nr3zMNs/YS9Yg5VZ0BI/AAAAAAAAGr0/89RXbNwLsUAUg_kaLtOgBQOqRA5LinWpACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/storage%2Bwars.jpg" title="Storage Wars by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Storage Wars by Mark Taylor - one of my latest creations - all drawn by hand using a digital medium and saved on, you guessed, a drive that isn't depicted here!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">At its most basic, a strategy
is something that provides you with some direction that makes it less easy to
be lazy, we’re human and by default, we’re tuned to seek out the shortcut. The
strategy has to identify the core principles and direction that your business
needs to take, in a way that you can follow. It has to outline what your
business is, what your aims are, what your product and/or service is. Knowing
that should give you the confidence to know the value and purpose of your
business, and identify your place within the industry. Those really are
critical things to know and understand. Break it down to its most basic level
and it becomes exponentially easier to get to grips with.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><b>In short:</b></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The strategy should identify
what you and your work are about.</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The strategy should explain
how your artwork fits into the market – do you have a theme, a specific medium,
genre.</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Your strategy identifies the
people you are trying to reach with your work.</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A good strategy sets out the
tactics that you will use to reach those people.</span></i></li><li><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A strategy has to define your
business goals and it calls for a need to be totally honest with yourself as
to why you are in the business you are in and what you really want out of the
business that you have created. </span></i></li></ul><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is no right and wrong
answer to this last point, if your primary motivation is to produce great art,
that’s awesome. If your primary motivation is to make a living wage, that’s
completely fine too. If it’s to make a living while creating great art, that’s
perfect, but never confuse why you are doing what you are doing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you’re serious about being
in the professional art creating business, you kind of have to forget being a
fragile genius who thinks that art and money have no place in the same sentence.
If that were the case then art supplies would be free and the bills would never
get paid. Never think that you have to compromise making a living to create
great art, the myth of a starving artist is as real today as it was in the
eighteenth century, and it really is just that, a myth that belongs in some
romanticised period novel.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IzAx9E-TZ1s/YS9ZSPu9kXI/AAAAAAAAGr8/Rf8tdSg5kfMC83J6oHDvM2HLgTJ_1b7fgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/hot%2Bflamingo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="hot flamingo vibrant 80s inspired artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IzAx9E-TZ1s/YS9ZSPu9kXI/AAAAAAAAGr8/Rf8tdSg5kfMC83J6oHDvM2HLgTJ_1b7fgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/hot%2Bflamingo.jpg" title="Hot Flamingo by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Hot Flamingo by Mark Taylor - Oh those colours just pop!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A quick point to note here is
that the starving artist myth was at one time more likely to be applied to an
artist who had only one, or a small number of assistants, it had very little if
anything to do with actually starving. The media probably romanticised the myth
more than the art world did. Throughout art history, art has attracted artists
from all kinds of backgrounds and incomes and whilst many historically
successful artists weren’t necessarily wealthy, not many of them were actually
starving either. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The starving artist label has
prevailed throughout art history, and to some extent, we’ve been forever led to
believe that art that is functional or commercial has no legitimate place and
that an artist must suffer to produce great work. Nope, you don’t have to
suffer to produce great work at all. In
fact, you can enjoy creating art, even if it is functional or commercial. Being
an artist shouldn’t be about surviving, it should be about thriving and having
a conversation with the world. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You really do have a choice,
you can hang around in the hope of being discovered and be the one in however
many hundreds of thousands of artists who manage to find success this way, or
you can do what every other successful artist is doing right now, and that’s to
build a business around your work. Forget the romantic and noble notion of
working in a darkened room, for the majority of working artists who are making
it already, they tend to have the lights well and truly on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I do get it, there’s a fear
that by somehow commercialising our talent we will lose the purity of our art,
and while that can be a legitimate concern for some, it’s not a rational way of
thinking about how you should create. That is something at the very core of
creating a strategy and I sometimes wonder if that is something that puts
artists off creating one. If you formulate any strategy with a view that
devalues your talent and your work from the start, that really won’t be a very
good business or marketing strategy to move forward with and you will forever
be chasing the proverbial tail.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Once you have this nailed down
you can then think about a marketing strategy, something that can only be
defined by the goals that you set yourself through your business strategy. Your
marketing strategy relies on having a strong symbiotic relationship with your
business goals, but they’re not the same.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mpo1UycFJyw/YS9Z84XKq0I/AAAAAAAAGsE/hbNZSwa02akfOZsFR9YNkfi9jr5jWAlaQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/toucan%2Bplay%2Bthis%2Bgame.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="toucan art collage by mark taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Mpo1UycFJyw/YS9Z84XKq0I/AAAAAAAAGsE/hbNZSwa02akfOZsFR9YNkfi9jr5jWAlaQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/toucan%2Bplay%2Bthis%2Bgame.jpg" title="Toucan Play This Game by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Toucan Play This Game by Mark Taylor - Available in my store!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The basics of any strategy…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Now we understand that there’s
a need to define your business goals so that you can focus on developing your
marketing strategy, we now have the basic foundations on which you can build
upwards and outwards. The marketing strategy differs from the business strategy
in that this is the plan that will lay out the roadmap of how to get your art
hanging on the walls of other peoples homes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That might mean defining how
you plan to increase the size of your market, or how you develop the market to
sell your work to other people who don’t already buy from you. These don’t have
to be overnight strategies, I don’t think that would even be possible in the
art world unless you already have the pedigree of say, Matisse or Banksy. Van
Gogh even found that his pedigree needed some development even after his death.
I think that in most cases, the art will always need a strategy that outlasts
you.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Marketing strategies and by default,
the business strategy, should constantly evolve and they should remain aligned.
If you update one you need to update the other, at a minimum you should be
rewriting strategies year on year or whenever you notice a change in the market.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What happens if your next-door
neighbour starts selling the same work as you and starts selling it in the same
space, what happens if you suddenly find that your current market has moved on
to something else? They can and they do, and whilst these things might sound
extreme, this is what happens in any business. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Your market today is never
guaranteed to be your market tomorrow, and I think that’s a good thing. I would
think it would be really hard work to keep the same market engaged forever
purely in terms of what you would need to create to keep them engaged. There’s
another train of thought in that you should at some point want to change the market
of your own volition. If your current market is only buying one hundred buck
prints, you might want to find the market that wants to buy the two hundred
buck print or the five thousand buck original. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Much of your marketing
strategy can be completed by thinking about the reasons you create what you
create and who you are creating it for. I have previously said that if you
haven’t currently got vast amounts of customer profile information it’s a
useful exercise to set out on paper, the exact type of person you think you are
creating for. That will at least get you a customer profile to build on, and
once you have that fleshed out with some reasonably basic information, you can
then think about how you might attract a different audience, perhaps a younger
or older generation or a generation with a little more disposable income. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p5NZC9YtxIA/YS9a3EgcHdI/AAAAAAAAGsM/vC46MTNzsSw_W_Rm5zZ2jlYjqCUgVSmrQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/eat%2Bme.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="trippy mushroom art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p5NZC9YtxIA/YS9a3EgcHdI/AAAAAAAAGsM/vC46MTNzsSw_W_Rm5zZ2jlYjqCUgVSmrQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/eat%2Bme.jpg" title="Eat Me by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Eat Me by Mark Taylor - from a commissioned series and available in my store!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Those strategies might include
changing how you run your social media, creating a presence on other platforms,
or getting out and about in your own local community. In fact, any strategy
that fails to include drawing in the power of your local community is missing
something that has the potential to significantly make selling easier down the
line. For me, creating a community strategy and raising my local profile by
becoming involved in the community has opened more opportunities than any
number of previous exhibitions. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you ask some of those
business gurus I mentioned earlier, I think many of them would say that any
strategy needs to be smart. Smart being the acronym for specific, measurable,
achievable, relevant and timely. I’m personally not a fan of setting targets,
especially SMART targets, they don’t necessarily have a perfect fit with the
art world, they’re cliched and often destructive and more than that, they’re
outdated.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Instead, forget the acronyms.
Whatever you do has to be purposeful, it has to move your business forward, and
any goals that you set for yourself should be set with affirmative action,
and then rinse and repeat over and over, tracking your progress so you can see
how far you have developed, and this doesn’t have to be complicated.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What it comes down to is
knowing whether something needs to be done, did your last work land exactly
where you thought it would, and if it didn’t, identifying what didn’t work and
taking an affirmative action to put it right. Remember, this really doesn’t
have to be complicated, if you can create something that is really easy to
follow you will be more likely to continue following it. It really is as simple as that. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5ihc8nP5TgU/YS9bQEDdrVI/AAAAAAAAGsU/WEB-rsQ_RIIZPo2RzOQ0ZjcZzZM4P3OrwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/majestic%2Bmushroom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="mushroom art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5ihc8nP5TgU/YS9bQEDdrVI/AAAAAAAAGsU/WEB-rsQ_RIIZPo2RzOQ0ZjcZzZM4P3OrwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/majestic%2Bmushroom.jpg" title="Majestic Mushroom by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Majestic Mushroom by Mark Taylor - available in my store from a commissioned series of work!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Aligning the stars…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you can align the stars
that are the business strategy and the marketing strategy, you then have the
foundations that will begin to solidify the rest of your business. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A marketing strategy is
essential if you plan to do things like running online advertising, and that’s
something that you should never even contemplate attempting without having any
kind of strategy in place at all. The glossy invites luring you into spending a
few dollars a day on clicks isn’t necessarily a worthy strategy to follow,
especially if you have no idea about who you need to target to get the best
bang for your buck. Coupled with all of the new privacy restrictions
implemented by tech giants such as Apple, it’s even more vital that you know as
much as you can know about who your market is before you spend anything on ads.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Out of all of the artists I
know who have travelled down this rabbit hole without having the information
groundwork completed beforehand, only those who have taken the time to
understand who they need to reach through advertising has had any real success.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Your strategies will inform everything
that you do. If you haven’t strategized something beforehand, there’s little
point in jumping in with both feet. Ad spends are a great example of absolutely
needing some level of planning to be in place, not least when it comes to
funding the spend.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A strategy should provide the
details around funding a campaign and perhaps even more critical, it should
outline the tactics that you will engage throughout the campaign. Without these
in place, you’re more likely to misread the market and ultimately you could end
up paying even more for your campaign trying to salvage it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Many business owners representing
all kinds of businesses get online ad-spend completely wrong through a lack of
having a strategy in place that identifies the target audience, only to find
that the spend doesn’t land anywhere near who they need to reach. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eh43M6dgvc0/YS9bww2bPHI/AAAAAAAAGsc/VV1gMiT0tJoQgW_SHq6te0kdZV_s5Kb6ACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/miami%2Bnights.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="vintage tech art with palm trees" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eh43M6dgvc0/YS9bww2bPHI/AAAAAAAAGsc/VV1gMiT0tJoQgW_SHq6te0kdZV_s5Kb6ACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/miami%2Bnights.jpg" title="Miami Nights by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Miami Nights by Mark Taylor - Each piece is hand-drawn and represents an original work in itself!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Who buys your art?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Figuring out the question of who buys your
art is easy. At least it is when people are buying your art. If they’re not, it
becomes a tad more challenging and can even feel impossible. If you’re starting
from scratch and don’t have a consistent sales record you will need to carry
out some market research, and this shouldn’t be limited to online research. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The art world isn’t known for
its transparency. Googling another artists sales history or the type of buyer
who buys their work isn’t a guarantee that you will find any level of useful
data to suggest that you should go after the same or similar clients. There’s never
a guarantee with online research that the information you find is anything like
the truth. Sure, the internet will play a role in your market research but
physically getting out and about and talking to real people is going to bear
more fruit. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What you need to figure out is
who are you creating your art for? Once you work that out you can then identify
the potential size of the market, its potential to grow, demographics such as
age, income levels, gender, and perhaps just as importantly, the markets social
trends. Are the people you identify on Facebook or Twitter, perhaps they don’t do
social media at all. That’s the kind of information that can turn a potential
sale into a guaranteed sale if you are targeting the very people you know will be
more likely to buy your work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That might sound obvious,
except in the art world, it’s not. Artists who have carried out any level of market
research tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Art doesn’t always fail
to sell because it's bad, it usually fails to sell because the marketing isn’t
reaching the right audience. The people
who are more likely to buy your art just have no idea that you are there. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Of course, there will be other
reasons why work doesn’t sell. Just last week I noticed a relative newcomer to
the art world marketing a thousand dollar print, with no provenance, little
experience, and clearly little idea that the platform they were selling the
work on wasn’t suited to that type of work or that kind of price level. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s not to say that a thousand
dollars for your first work is unobtainable, it is, but only if someone with a
thousand dollars is looking at it and wants to buy it. The thing is, the work
was pretty good, but on that particular platform it wasn’t close to a thousand
dollars kind of good because it was the single most expensive print on the
platform by around $900!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-en2mHxknGQI/YS9c1m-6xQI/AAAAAAAAGsk/P8mxoitoc3UNSAFa4Rnu0bQY_LBwmrTYgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/together%2Bin%2Belectric%2Bdreams.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="vintage technology art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-en2mHxknGQI/YS9c1m-6xQI/AAAAAAAAGsk/P8mxoitoc3UNSAFa4Rnu0bQY_LBwmrTYgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/together%2Bin%2Belectric%2Bdreams.jpg" title="Together In Electric Dreams by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Together In Electric Dreams by Mark Taylor - available now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Profile your tribe!</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Once you have identified the market,
figured out where they hang out, and begun the process of connecting with them,
that’s the point when you can begin to profile your ideal customer. Profiling
will reveal the customers buying patterns, do they only buy occasionally or are
they regularly purchasing work, and more importantly, what is it that they’re
buying and when?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When the profile of your audience
changes, that’s the trigger point to change the strategy, give it a fresh coat
of thinking and a fresh coat of research. Again, that’s something that is often
missed, a strategy should live, evolve, and grow along with your business and
any changing trends.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s not just about your own client
base though, keeping an eye on the market to figure out what’s working for other
artists who sell similar works is also just as critical. I’m reluctant to say
that any other artist is competition, for me, other artists are my inspiration,
but that’s not to say that you can’t learn from how other artists are using
marketing to attract their own buyers, sometimes you just need a little
inspiration to think outside of the proverbial box. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Having said that, if the
market of another artist is exactly the same as yours, you do have to identify
what makes you the better choice and then you have to somehow convey that
message to your buyers. It might be that you offer a much more personal
service or your products are created on better quality materials, equally your
products might be of a lower quality, and you need to consider whether the
buyers are indeed even the same at all, it’s not always obvious. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can begin to use this
information to work out what sets your business apart from everyone else’s.
This will improve your performance, improve your offer, and give you an opportunity
to review things like your pricing strategy, or marketing tactics, and even
your supply chain. A good example of this would be if your market shifted to
become much more environmentally friendly. Your current supply chain might not
be as environmentally sustainable as another artist and that could make a difference
in a client deciding to buy or walk on by. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Knowing the audience allows you
to begin to cater exactly to their needs, you no longer have the tedious and
complex job of trying to market to anyone and everyone which is in itself a
really hard way to run any business. By taking the time to strategize and work
out your audience you can focus on the product because you’re being smarter
about the strategy. That really is the Holy Grail for artists, every artist I
have ever met would give up their best paint brush to spend more time arting
than marketing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s really important to test
out any new ideas first too rather than jump in with both feet from the off.
Remember when I talked about avoiding the distraction of noise earlier, it
becomes way too easy to fall into those distractions when things begin to go
well so you really do have to be mindful and remain both focussed and grounded.
You have to strive to become the signal that is so much louder than the noise.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YBK9TQagg48/YS9eSTrBMVI/AAAAAAAAGss/_2v26fBbmgAtmKbMlZE1ejOtJkUdo2y2ACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/turn%2Bit%2Bup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="boom box art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YBK9TQagg48/YS9eSTrBMVI/AAAAAAAAGss/_2v26fBbmgAtmKbMlZE1ejOtJkUdo2y2ACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/turn%2Bit%2Bup.jpg" title="Turn it Up by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Turn it Up by Mark Taylor - available in my store now! You should absolutely get this on an acrylic block and illuminate it from behind, it looks super-80s-awesome!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Resist…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Lastly, you absolutely have to
resist the romantic notion that your art practice isn’t a business unless it
really is a hobby, and if it is, that’s absolutely okay too but don’t get
concerned about not selling art if that’s the case. Art is too often seen as an
incredibly vulnerable undertaking that is fragile and can be disturbed or even
sullied by the concept of commercialising it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With art, you can’t wait until
the time is right, it never will be, and you can’t afford to hang around in the
belief that inspiration for your next masterpiece is just around the corner.
You have to resist anything that stops you pushing forward with your creations,
and just as importantly, selling the work that will fund the next piece. It’s
only when you are known by someone that you will be discovered and you’re more
likely to be known by someone when that someone can see that you are striving
to be prolific, and to an extent in the art world, it’s fair to also say being profitable. Sounds cold, that's a reality though!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You absolutely can’t be
fragile or lazy when it comes to creating art. If you have a belief and a deep
passion for something, anything, it doesn’t even have to be art, there will
forever be competing factors that will work to stop you pushing forward. If you
park your truck in that space there will always be competing excuses that stop
you from realising your full potential. Excuses
can become comfort blankets that you hold on to so tightly that you never take
the leap over the edge and you never take the leap of making a firm plan. We've all been there!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hVudmevZkRk/YS9fNOKD-FI/AAAAAAAAGs0/EjtmUf86euo5rBbvXTTB142-qbMSDzoxgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/warp%2Bspeed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="warp speed space abstract art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hVudmevZkRk/YS9fNOKD-FI/AAAAAAAAGs0/EjtmUf86euo5rBbvXTTB142-qbMSDzoxgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/warp%2Bspeed.jpg" title="Warp Speed by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Warp Speed by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Art is hard work, but it’s not
the only work of an artist. Every successful artist before and after you will
have reached out and engaged with their tribe. They will have done the
marketing thing, even if they now have a team of people who do it for them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The one’s who got discovered
will have initially found that someone who noticed them and they will have
realised that confirmation of talent doesn’t come solely through sales, they will
have found validation in other ways long before they even sold a work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Your art is the conversation
that you have with the world, so make it count, but try not to get too
distracted with all that noise on the way. You totally have this. Anyone who
wants to be an artist as much as you do has the potential to become a great
artist, but you really do have to remember that resisting what needs to be done
in favour of only ever taking the creative path isn’t going to make the journey
any easier.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Before I go for this week,
there is one very simple thing that has proven to me time and time again that
the business of art doesn’t have to become messy and chaotic. That simple thing
is to make sure that you get the things that you least like doing out of the
way early on. Even get some simple things out of the way early too in order to
give you the confidence to tackle something more challenging. The more early
wins you get, the more willing your mind will be to accept that the business of
art is essential, even critical to your success. Most of all, have a plan, define your own
space, define your own style, and there will come a time when even the business
of art will become fun.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3Ymu0nYQCKo/YS9gKp6AWVI/AAAAAAAAGs8/ePxrBTVwjVQ8G8GdC5JLSCEMfhe3wfFmQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/the%2Bnight%2Bgarden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="the night garden art by mark taylor, snail, mushrooms," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3Ymu0nYQCKo/YS9gKp6AWVI/AAAAAAAAGs8/ePxrBTVwjVQ8G8GdC5JLSCEMfhe3wfFmQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/the%2Bnight%2Bgarden.jpg" title="The Night Garden by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Night Garden by Mark Taylor - now available in my In the Night Garden Collection!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m back!</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you have been wondering
where I have been for the past month or so, I have been inundated with new
commissions, building out my new retro-inspired collections and I took on
another major project – more on that in the weeks ahead! You can see some of my latest releases throughout this article!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I have plenty of new articles
lined up, we’ll be deep-diving into some of my processes in creating art, including
my work on vintage computers to create authentic 8 and 16-bit artwork! A niche
that hasn’t gone away for more than thirty years of creating the art for a
community that keeps vintage computing alive, and I will be exploring the art
of the artist side hustle!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As always, stay safe, stay
well, and happy creating!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I am an artist and blogger and
live in Staffordshire, England. I began creating digital art in 1980, moving on
to coding 8-bit computer games and producing graphics for early computers. To
this day I am still involved in the retro and vintage computer industry creating
8-bit and retro-inspired works along with my more traditional landscapes, book cover
and box art designs. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You can purchase my art
through my Fine Art America store or my Pixels site here: <a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</a> and
you can purchase my new works, special and limited editions directly. You can
also view my portfolio website at <a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank">https://beechhousemedia.com</a> Or you can reach out directly
if you need a digital commission or rights-cleared work for your next TV or
film production - digital files can be with you within minutes when you need work on set!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are on Facebook, you
can give me a follow right here, <a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</a>
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at <a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</a></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> </span></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com2Staffordshire, England52.0855555 -1.624414829.459230217726745 -36.7806648 74.711880782273255 33.5318352tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-85228400370908044832021-07-05T07:43:00.002+01:002021-07-05T07:43:26.570+01:00Back to the Business of Art<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> <b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Back to the Business of Art – The
Not Quite So Starving Artist</span></b></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nOc1nvi3aP8/YN7LBzWDnOI/AAAAAAAAGl0/jZlXn3xrwDIw_RbWqJFYc9nm3amtX4ozwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/Back%2Bto%2Bthe%2Bbusiness%2Bof%2Bart%2Bcover.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="back to the business of art cover image, toys character, toy business person," border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1080" height="336" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nOc1nvi3aP8/YN7LBzWDnOI/AAAAAAAAGl0/jZlXn3xrwDIw_RbWqJFYc9nm3amtX4ozwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h336/Back%2Bto%2Bthe%2Bbusiness%2Bof%2Bart%2Bcover.png" title="Back to the Business of Art - The Not Quite So Starving Artist" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Back to the Business of Art - The Not Quite So Starving Artist...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">With a pandemic that has
disrupted the way the world works and even now, still hangs around like a dark
shadow, businesses around the world are having to become much more creative in
their endeavours to stand out above the competition during a time when everyone
is one-upping everyone else in the competition for eyes. This week we take a
look at some of the simple things you can do to make sure that you become a
thriving artist rather than a surviving artist.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">A really mixed bag of a year…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The art business has really
been a bit of a mixed bag throughout the pandemic to date. Some artists are
recording their best-ever sales as more and more people decide to spruce up
their homes after being inside them for so long, other artists have struggled,
particularly as there have been fewer shows and exhibitions and many galleries
were forced to close during lockdowns and a few may never reopen. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">For some artists, the pandemic
has meant a complete refocus of the way they do business and the art that they
create. Some artists have transitioned from their decades-long staples and have
moved in completely different directions, and there’s nothing at all wrong in
doing that, an art business should be thriving, not merely surviving and there’s
plenty of historical precedence to change direction completely. Many of the Old
Masters did this, as have many more recent artists, Jackson Pollock is a great
example.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I have written more than a few
articles on preparing your art business for the future, and I know more than a
few of my regular readers have taken heed and really developed their business
models, but if you haven’t revisited your business practice for a little while,
now’s the time to do it! This week is really all about sharing a few ideas and
practical tips that you can easily add into the mix and shake your art business
up for the better, and besides, sometimes we just need a reminder to do the
things we ought to be doing rather than thinking, I’ll get around to doing that
later.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EoTd4jgeRs0/YN7LsdlCTcI/AAAAAAAAGl8/IYP6lW_60EMYXgVhyirjmBUr8WCU8tXpACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/The%2BNewsagent.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="1980s newsagent artwork by Mark Taylor shop window art," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EoTd4jgeRs0/YN7LsdlCTcI/AAAAAAAAGl8/IYP6lW_60EMYXgVhyirjmBUr8WCU8tXpACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/The%2BNewsagent.jpg" title="1980s Newsagent Artwork by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Newsagent - A blast back to the 80s when independent newsagents would be on every high street. My latest 80s inspired creation is available in my Pixels and Fine Art America store! Check out the detail in the store, there are more than a few easter eggs in this piece!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></b><p></p><h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">You did create that website
didn’t you?</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If it was important to have a
real web presence beyond social media before the pandemic, it’s even more
important today. Even a simple online affair is better than having nothing at
all, and if finances are stretched, there are still a number of options that
you could look at that are either free or very inexpensive for a basic presence.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">A website lets people know
you are there, an up to date website lets people know you are still there. I’m
always surprised when I see beautiful websites that have been professionally
created but never get updated. Your website is essentially a window directly
into your world so it’s critical that when you do go down the website route
that you keep it up to date, it should never become a distant reminder of your
one time hopes and dreams.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><i><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">You might also want to
consider:<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">A custom URL – nothing screams
I built this on the cheap louder than a website address that includes anything
and everything other than who you are. The good news is that even the most
inexpensive website hosting packages and some free ones allow you to change the
URL to a custom domain name. They’re relatively pennies per year in the great
scheme of things, but absolutely essential when you need to project a
professional image.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Search Engine Optimisation –
SEO has been in and out of vogue for a few years. Once you get your head around
how search engines rank websites it becomes almost second nature to make sure
that your SEO is in tip-top shape. There are some great resources on the
internet, Google’s digital garage is a free resource and it offers a number of
short courses straight from the proverbial horse's mouth!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Analytics – Make sure you have
at least some analytics embedded in your website. Once you get a feel for the
kind of person who is regularly visiting your website you can start to build
content focussed on that kind of person. Google Analytics has recently had
a much-needed facelift making it about the most simple analytics platform to
use and it works with most websites, although it is worth checking that your
hosting package supports it.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Embrace Fear…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Running a business is scary at
the best of times and especially in the midst of a global pandemic. As a
creative, there’s an opportunity for you to embrace the fear and drive your
passion forward, but remember, art isn’t a race. Slow down, take your time and
produce the best work that you can rather than producing work in a panicked
rush. A slower approach can give you the time you need to reflect in between each
work, it also helps to combat burnout, something that has grown to become a
major problem throughout the course of the pandemic as people work longer and
longer hours from home. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Paint what inspires you rather
than what you think you ought to be painting. Art can quickly begin to feel
like any other job if you’re not inspired. Every day should be filled with an
excitement to create and if your art has begun to lose its sparkle because
you’re producing the same thing over and over, it will be obvious to those who
look at it and that’s a major headache when you want those who view it to also
purchase it.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gmcgNAfGKcw/YN7MiLmBRxI/AAAAAAAAGmE/DHcrk-mglUYzbn2XAwy8Lpa6mOfL9-hEgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Nearly%2BThere.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="mountain, prayer flags, snow, artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gmcgNAfGKcw/YN7MiLmBRxI/AAAAAAAAGmE/DHcrk-mglUYzbn2XAwy8Lpa6mOfL9-hEgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Nearly%2BThere.jpg" title="Nearly There by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Nearly There by Mark Taylor - available in my Pixels and Fine Art America stores!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Harvest Your Own Buyers…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Print on demand is a great
resource for artists wishing to take away the headache of preparing work,
shipping it and handling payments. Print-on-demand services really do take much
of the hard work away apart from the obvious marketing you still need to do.
But what print on demand doesn’t give you is the one thing that you really do
need if you want to find any level of real commercial success as an artist, and
that’s a direct relationship with your buyers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Unless buyers specifically
reach out to you there is just no way of ever finding out who has purchased
your work. That makes it super difficult to plan your next work because apart
from knowing which pieces are more popular, you won’t ever get to the point of
knowing what else buyers are looking for. Not having that connection makes it
next to impossible to develop your work into other areas, and that’s a risk
because over time, your work could well end up becoming very samey.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A handful of loyal collectors
are always going to bear more fruit than a dozen casual buyers, and being in a
position where you can reach out to your buyers anytime you want and whenever
you create new work, means that you are no longer reliant on borrowing buyers
from a service where you are effectively doing as much, if not more work than
you would if you were to find your own buyers. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Talking of which, what are you
doing about email subscribers?</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I know, we’ve all seen the
desperate emails from major brands appearing in our inboxes approximately 72.6
times a day, I can’t recall a time when I have hit the unsubscribe button quite
as often. But there are emails that I do genuinely look forward to receiving, usually, they’re from independent artists who are using email to stay in touch but who
are not necessarily using every email as a direct sales pitch.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you haven’t as yet managed
to start growing a subscriber list, this really should be a focus, to add as an
extra strategy in your toolbox. I say add as an extra strategy because an
email marketing campaign has to be backed up with other strategies including a
website that provides the value add to the reader. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Growing a list today isn’t as
easy as it was a few years ago when everyone would sign up for everything. We
have become so desensitised to the message within emails that they really do
run the risk of becoming little more than noise, that is unless you can bring
some of that all-important relatability into your marketing campaigns that we
covered in my previous post on telling your art story, which if you missed it, you
can find right <a href="https://www.beechhousemedia.co.uk/2021/06/telling-your-art-story.html" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I have covered the usual email
campaign management systems many times, but services such as Mail Chimp are
great, and often better than some of the stock email services you get with some
print on demand and gallery based services which often get diverted by email clients
into spam folders. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are a member of the
Fine Art America premium service, there’s a useful email campaign manager built-in with your annual fee, yet I know very few who use it to its full potential,
perhaps because it’s down to the artist to supply the contacts. That’s
something that you would need to do with any email service though, and as this
comes bundled with your membership, it’s a real value add that you might want
to take advantage of. To be honest, it’s perhaps worth the cost of the premium
membership on its own.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problem with some of these services,
although I haven’t noticed it via Fine Art America which tells you all you need
to know about it, is that your emails might never get seen. If you are already
sending out emails via an email campaign service, always check with a number of
subscribers and ask if they are receiving your emails in their inboxes. If
they’re not, but they are finding them in spam folders, it will either be because
your content is overly spammy, or the email service you are using is known by
mail clients to be a sender of mass marketing and spam. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Emails are scanned by
email clients for known spam triggers, if they’re full of links and pitches,
they usually end up in the sin bin we call the spam folder. It could also be
that the users own settings are preventing your emails from appearing. In
my experience, it’s usually one of the first two issues that stop emails from arriving in the inbox. If no one sees them, you’re kind of wasting time, no one really
checks their spam folder, ever.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The one question many small
business owners have is whether or not email campaigns are still as relevant as
they once were. There’s a lot that has been written on the subject over the
past year or two, many seem to suggest that email campaigns have had their day,
but an email is still the most direct way to get your message in front of eyes.
If you make an email relevant, provide added value in the form of providing
useful information, and maybe even add a touch of humour, email is still one of
the best ways of getting in front of your audience. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UgnHCFXjugU/YN7NW6W4M4I/AAAAAAAAGmQ/LHk6plUnbgE82_ujchpC7RWB33-dR0NsACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/A%2Bperfect%2Bday.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="beach, deckchairs on beach, artwork, seagulls, ocean," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UgnHCFXjugU/YN7NW6W4M4I/AAAAAAAAGmQ/LHk6plUnbgE82_ujchpC7RWB33-dR0NsACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/A%2Bperfect%2Bday.jpg" title="A Perfect Day by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A Perfect Day by Mark Taylor - Available now from my Pixels and Fine Art America stores. I so need a vacation or sun, just some sun would be fine!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Don’t fall into the, when I
feel like it, marketing trap…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I mentioned that email
marketing campaigns are a useful tool to have in the toolbox, but they’re not
the only tool. They should complement the other marketing strategies that you
have but should never become the sole marketing strategy that you have.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s the same thing with
social media. It’s a tool, it can be useful, but it’s not some kind of golden
panacea that will pave a path to your work that clients will line up on. The
one thing I constantly hear from artists is just how poorly their social
channels perform, even when they think they’re putting out the best content
ever. Sure, great content is critical, but if it’s not finding the right
audience, it can be epic, great, good, or bad, it really doesn’t matter what
you put out there or how much work you put in if it’s not sticking to an
audience. Content needs to be swathed in a layer of Velcro and superglue.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I mentioned in my last article
that eyes buy art, and you need a lot of them to view the art before any of
them decide to buy it. There are three things combined that generate sales, the
right audience (eyes), the product itself, bearing in mind that even bad art can
sell if the marketing campaign resonates and sticks, and ultimately, the pitch,
which is essentially your story.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The one thing that will
attract their eyes is the story, which should be the number one area that you
really do have to spend some time focussing on. It’s the story that will build the
engagement and with it a community. At that point, the community can continue
to tell the story to other people, but you first have to set the scene and
provide the talking points. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Any one of these things when
done in a silo will never be enough to turn those eyes into buyers, there’s an
interdependency, each having a symbiotic relationship with the other. Neither
will any one of the tools such as email campaigns and social media work in a
silo, it has to be a combination of everything with the foundations firmly set
in conveying a compelling story.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The hard part in all of this
is getting past the thinking that any single marketing tool will do all of the
work when it comes to selling your art. If your thinking is along the lines of your
art will sell itself, or a periodic post on Instagram or any number of the
other social platforms will be enough, that won’t provide a compelling enough
reason for people to engage beyond a reaction, a love, a like, or a wow. How
popular you are should never become the measuring stick of success. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">When we begin to break down what
that means, we begin to realise that having thirty engaged followers who make a
purchase is always better than having a million who never make a purchase or engage.
The numbers become meaningless if they’re not converting, they only become
meaningful if you place more currency on participating in a popularity contest and
think this is more important than selling your work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">To find your people, you have
to give them a reason to also find you. That means that you have to produce
compelling reasons to come back, produce great content that tells an episodic
story, rather than content that is little more than sales pitch after sales pitch,
you have to provide the next seed that will keep people interested. The sales
pitch after sales pitch approach might work for selling widgets, but each piece
of art is unique, and the messaging it needs has to be just as unique. Here’s the
reason I created it, here’s where we’re heading, not here’s my latest artwork,
like or share, neither of those is asking the viewer to do the one thing you
want them to do and that’s to buy the work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">If you treat your email and social
media tools as little more than something that could exist on a piece of paper
pushed through the letterbox, there is then no compelling reason for people to
engage. If you use those tools instead to produce rich multimedia experiences
that people enjoy and that they can engage with and talk about, that’s the
point when you begin to provide the real hook. It is only at this point that
you are giving them a compelling reason to care about what you do, we’re
selling unique works whereas widgets are rarely if ever, unique.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4k7b2lXG77E/YN7OLVbZjiI/AAAAAAAAGmY/o5ypEbsef9kf67ovP78DqnszaqwrLUfXwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1219/adrift%2Bunder%2Ba%2Bneon%2Bsky.PNG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="sunset over the ocean, boat, neon sky," border="0" data-original-height="1044" data-original-width="1219" height="548" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4k7b2lXG77E/YN7OLVbZjiI/AAAAAAAAGmY/o5ypEbsef9kf67ovP78DqnszaqwrLUfXwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h548/adrift%2Bunder%2Ba%2Bneon%2Bsky.PNG" title="Adrift Under A Neon Sky by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Adrift Under A Neon Sky by Mark Taylor - available now from my stores. One of my all-time favourite artworks!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Turn up…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">They say that the biggest task
for an artist is actually turning up. That doesn’t just mean in physical
spaces, it means being everywhere and anywhere, online or in physical spaces
such as galleries and shows. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">With lockdowns beginning to
lift, there are more and more creative opportunities for artists to be seen in
their own communities, art walks, and local exhibitions are great ways to get
some local visibility but you do have to turn up! I liken this to paying for a
gym membership and hoping that just because you pay a membership fee each
month, somehow you will become exponentially fitter without doing any of the
work. Just sending your art out into the wilds without turning up is exactly
the same thing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">The act of being present in
itself can be difficult for some people, especially after working in print on
demand where customer interaction might be historically next to zero,
everything is handled by the print on demand service and customers usually have
a relationship with the service rather than you, and that can be a real
frustration for artists and it means that there’s often little to no
interaction with buyers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Getting your name and your art
out there in a physical sense is an opportunity to claim what’s rightfully
yours, your very own art buying market which really is worth the little bit of
extra effort that being physically present will take. The only question you
will have after you have done this a few times, is just why you didn’t do it
earlier!</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Embrace Change…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m going to stick my neck out
a little here, the art world, or more specifically, the art world that the
majority of working artists work in has changed forever. Buyers have become
used to buying art online, it’s practical, convenient, and massively more
accepted and easier than it was even two years ago. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Whenever change happens people
either embrace it or try to change it, but what also happens is that whenever
the change is effected, remnants of what was good in the change stick around.
So whilst we might see some of the old ways of working and doing business emerge
once again, we’ll also see the convenience of buying art in different ways
stick around. It is what it is now, there’s little to no point fighting it so
you might as well embrace it.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-S69abfdk-mQ/YN7PFbhtwFI/AAAAAAAAGmg/DcvBDV4OFr8vh5Z_ahDBGCodHQfJR2y0ACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/adrift%2Bat%2Bthe%2Bgolden%2Bhour.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="sunset over the ocean, boat, artwork, landscape," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-S69abfdk-mQ/YN7PFbhtwFI/AAAAAAAAGmg/DcvBDV4OFr8vh5Z_ahDBGCodHQfJR2y0ACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/adrift%2Bat%2Bthe%2Bgolden%2Bhour.jpg" title="Adrift at the Golden Hour by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Adrift at the Golden Hour by Mark Taylor - available in my Adrift Collection from my Pixels and Fine Art America Stores!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Feed your mind…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I have been a long-time fan of
building knowledge, it’s critical as an artist to be exposed to a wide range of
influences and techniques, and to continue getting that exposure throughout
your entire career. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I often get asked why I cover
topics such as retro art on this site, but there’s a simple answer, It’s not a
topic that’s well covered elsewhere and yet it ties into so many aspects of the
art world. Knowing things such as how nostalgia can influence a buyers decision
to buy, or walk on by, is a critical component that can be used in all sorts of
artistic genres and in your business dealings when marketing and selling art.
If you can learn anything about any aspect of the art world, it’s worth
knowing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">You really do have to become
exposed to anything and everything in the art world, trends change almost
daily, buying decisions are often made on the basis of what’s in vogue right
now, and perhaps the biggest reason to keep up to date with learning other than
improving your own knowledge and skills is that the ultimate for any artist is
to strive for mastery of your craft, yet that’s an impossibility if you have no
idea about what has come before.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s also important because
you have a massive responsibility to your collectors and potential future
collectors. Those who have already invested in both you and what you do won’t
want to see their purchased art diminish in value, no matter if they paid five
bucks or five thousand bucks for it. If you are in the business of encouraging
art collectors, you have to take a very different approach to how you run your
business in the future, it’s almost like an eleventh commandment that thou
shall not reduce your prices, but thou should definitely put them up.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">That’s not to say that you
can’t go on forever and eternity selling five buck prints and especially if you
are living your best life and making a living, but if there’s a choice over a
hundred casual buyers and ten collectors, even if they’re buying five buck
prints, I know I would pick the ten collectors every time. We might ‘art’ out
of passion, but we eat out of necessity. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><b></b></span></p><blockquote style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: arial;"><blockquote><span style="font-size: large;">We might ‘art’ out of passion, but we eat out of necessity.</span></blockquote></span></b></blockquote><p></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Feed your audience…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Oh, this is extra-super-essential!
One of the biggest superpowers I find that a lot of new artists have is their
uncanny ability to attempt to be everything to everyone for at least the first
month. Who’s your market? Oh, men, and women, between the ages of zero and a
hundred and fifty-three. There’s a little secret that has taken me the best
part of nearly four decades to work out, most people are not your people and
that’s exactly how you need it to be. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s going to take a little
time but the most essential step that you will need to take is to begin the
voyage of discovery that is figuring out who your tribe are. Once you know your
audience and what resonates and more importantly, sticks with them, the business
of giving them what they want becomes markedly easier and exponentially easier
than the spray and pray approach of flinging out a hundred and one ideas and finding
out that none of them has worked. That spray and pray approach my friends is
really hard work. To coin an overly cliched phrase, work smarter, not harder. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SIeJ_ILn9oU/YN7P5OqNs_I/AAAAAAAAGmo/p6i7HmNC3mst2ipBF5P7l5xS0lBRZgp0gCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Night%2BWalk.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="moonlit woodland, forest, artwork, moon, night sky," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SIeJ_ILn9oU/YN7P5OqNs_I/AAAAAAAAGmo/p6i7HmNC3mst2ipBF5P7l5xS0lBRZgp0gCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Night%2BWalk.jpg" title="Night Walk by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Night Walk by Mark Taylor - available from my Pixels and Fine Art America stores!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Communicate…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I can’t even begin to big this
one up enough. You have to communicate with potential buyers because they will
mostly buy into you just as much as they buy into your art. If you avoid taking
their calls, answering emails, responding to comments, buyers do the very same
thing we would do, they walk away without making a purchase. The chance of a
sale is often determined by the speed of your response.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Target your pitch to your
tribe. I can’t stress this one enough, but you really do have to know what your
audience needs and then you have to <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>address those needs directly, rather than
giving everyone from an interior designer to a casual buyer the exact same
pitch. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">What’s important to me might be very different to what’s important to
you and both responses will certainly be different to what’s important to
someone else. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Ask questions, hey, even
politely ask for the sale, but get to know what your audience love, what they
want, and then respond positively to that. Just as importantly, answer
questions too, if a potential buyer wants to know something about you or your
art, they’re probably expecting the immediacy which they have been accustomed
to over the past year and a half or however long we have been in this parallel
universe, that is a pandemic, where everything is done online in an instant.
Everything suddenly got faster, from delivery speed to purchasing, there has
been a massive shift from the days of old normal, immediacy is the new trend
and it’s likely to stick around for a while.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">When it comes to
communicating, blogging is still one of the best ways to keep an audience
engaged. This is another mission that requires that pesky expenditure of
effort but it is completely worth doing once you begin to build up even a
small amount of regular readership. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Can you make a living from it?
For most people, probably not, although there are a few rock-star bloggers who
have managed to figure out how to work with brands and they do very well. Art
blogs though, generally aren’t about bringing in a revenue from the blog alone.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Blogging is about building brand
awareness and engagement, it will probably cost you more money than you make
directly from it, and it will certainly cost you time, but there’s a payback in
the form of engagement if you get it right and that’s worth a lot in our
business.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">What you decide to blog about
will be in some way guided by your audience but you do have some obvious
choices. You could blog about you, this will allow readers to get to know you,
or you could offer practical advice on owning your works, framing, or general
tips for buyers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Would I be tempted to set up a
site covering practical tips for artists, just like this site? If you are
creating it as a channel to promote your artwork, then not so much. If it is to
genuinely support other artists, it’s worth doing, and absolutely if your
business involves selling things such as patterns and templates to other
artists. Think of it as a labour of love that gets your name out there if you
follow those routes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you want to reach more
mainstream buyers in any numbers, a blog specifically aimed at what buyers want
to know about your work, which also includes the story of you, is the way to go.
I will as always, caveat blogging with the simple fact that art blogging won’t
pull in the crowds that trendy YouTubers attract when they vlog about the
latest fashion accessories, it’s way more niche than that but also kind of
essential as an artist if you want to build up any level of awareness. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I probably need to mention the
thorny issue of YouTube at this point. I’ll be frank here, (hello Frank),
YouTube is incredibly hard work and only the minutest, as in, less than a
handful of YouTubers ever see any kind of monetisation or success. The YouTube
platform is filled with tutorials, you can gain more knowledge from YouTube in
a day than you can in an entire art school curriculum, and that’s a real
problem for someone who is nowhere near established as a YouTuber. You will be
the needle in a haystack within a haystack, with another pile of haystacks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Your content, no matter how
epic it is, isn’t going anywhere fast, or at least it isn’t until you start to
build up a massive following with an engaged community. It won’t gain mass
traction until you start applying professional production values to your
efforts. Even then, it can still be a lottery.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Podcasts on the other hand,
are big, getting bigger, and will, I think, overtake YouTube one day. Now is
the time to jump on board the podcast train and the good news is that you don’t
need quite as much in the way of equipment to be able to make a start. Whilst
it’s not a visual platform, it can be a real driver to your website, and
everyone I know who already creates podcasts has told me that the percentage of
hits they get on their sites primarily come via the podcast platforms rather
than through YouTube channels.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Just as an aside, the podcast
to accompany this website is edging closer to reality, I’ll keep you posted through
the journey!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Be an art consultant and not a
typical salesperson…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s a fine art (no pun
intended) and an even finer line between being overtly salesy, and being a
genuinely useful resource for buyers. Rather than immediately going in for the
sale, leverage any facetime with the client by being genuinely helpful. You
know your work better than anyone else and if there is generally one thing that
buyers dislike, it’s having to make choices or being pushed into making choices.
Buyers really aren’t that good when presented with too many choices. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Make recommendations, point
out the benefits that you think the buyer will want to know about, but never
get confused between benefits and features, sell the sizzle, not the steak! The
reason for this is that you need to become the authority on the subject of your
art and then guide but not push the buyer towards buying something that they
will forever love rather than forever resent, they will respect you even more
for doing that.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The ideal is that customers have
the very best experience and walk away with something that they will forever
cherish, not something that has sat at the back of your studio for the past few
years which you needed to get out of the door. I would much rather explain to a
customer that it might take a few extra days or weeks to get what they love produced
than have them walk away with something inferior just because it’s ready to
take away. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yHXP53nO0eI/YN7Q4VrDAaI/AAAAAAAAGmw/_XBAZeizBe02sCxbtZy9_grQpVFv_pJJwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Red%2BMoon.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="blood moon, red moon, super moon, night, forest," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yHXP53nO0eI/YN7Q4VrDAaI/AAAAAAAAGmw/_XBAZeizBe02sCxbtZy9_grQpVFv_pJJwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Red%2BMoon.jpg" title="Red Moon by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Red Moon by Mark Taylor - Available from my Pixels and Fine Art America Stores</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Make it easy to buy…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">No one wants to jump through a
million and one hoops to make a purchase, the buying process should be as easy
as possible for customers. That means making sure there are no unnecessary
steps to making a purchase on your website, and it also means making the
choices as clear and simple as you possibly can. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Even with art prints, the
range of options available to buyers can feel overwhelming for them. First they
select the artwork they want to buy, then they need to decide on the material
it is printed on, and then comes another set of choices around matting and
framing, and that’s before you get to hang the work on the wall. So it is
always useful to show examples of what the finished product will or could look
like which will make it so much easier for the buyer to get an idea of what
they could have. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">This is also a great opportunity
to think about the upsell, maybe a slightly better paper-stock, double matting,
a hanging kit, or a bundle of works in a collection. But stick with the guiding
principles of being an art consultant rather than that annoying salesperson
who just wants to take the cold hard cash, art is all about repeat business
because that’s exactly what collectors bring to you. Remember, this really is
about selling the sizzle, not the steak!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is where the podcast can
be useful, and to an extent, I think I would rather see a video on YouTube of
an artist showing me the benefits and features of their work rather than simply
watching another tutorial. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Be relatable…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Oh boy is this a big one! I
have lost count of the number of shows and exhibitions that I have attended
either as an artist or an art buyer over the years but hadn’t realised until I
attended those shows as a buyer, just how far some artists have managed to
climb into their own self-importance. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">A level of arrogance is, I
think at times, a required trait for artists but not too much that it puts your
people off. There’s a seriously fine line between being overly arrogant and
simply being confident in your ability, and it’s an art that needs to be
refined over time. Make yourself accessible, put down the cellphone, and give
the potential buyer 110% of your attention. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">As I mentioned in my previous
article which was all about storytelling, being relatable means that you
become more shareable. Sharing is really the only shortcut to social proof,
which is essentially what the best businesses are built on.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">We need constant reminders to
not forget the basics…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s so easy to become wrapped
up in the here and now and then completely forget to do something positive to
push your business forward. The longer you leave things, the further they fall
behind, but keeping a simple checklist of things that you absolutely need to do
either every day or every week will help you to form a habit and get used to
making sure your business doesn’t fall behind.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lP7GmlkMeTQ/YN7RwbuA1DI/AAAAAAAAGm4/jyNDBtYoJi0Ea3su7g7SLYo2AJKpBa08wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/adrift%2Band%2Bfinally%2Bfree.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Boat in stormy sea, ocean, art, artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lP7GmlkMeTQ/YN7RwbuA1DI/AAAAAAAAGm4/jyNDBtYoJi0Ea3su7g7SLYo2AJKpBa08wCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/adrift%2Band%2Bfinally%2Bfree.JPG" title="Adrift and Finally Free by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Adrift and Finally Free by Mark Taylor - I loved creating this piece, I was reminded of being in the ocean and looking up at looming waves about the break with the white crest beginning to form!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Learn from the past year…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">While there is no denying that
the past year has been anything but normal for most artists, there’s a heap of
stuff that the year has probably taught us all. Maybe the biggest thing is to
not take things for granted quite like we used to, but for some, the biggest
lesson, will have been that you don’t necessarily have to rely on physically
turning up to expensive shows or shell out for expensive travel quite so often.
Technology allows us to still be present even when we’re not physically
present.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Even where physical shows have
begun to restart, many are doing things very differently to accommodate all of
the changes that social distancing has bought about. Ghost booths staffed by
local assistants where the exhibitor or artist is then on call via video
conference to answer any questions from buyers who have physically turned up have become an accepted way of doing business. What this means is that we don’t
always have to stick to the norms, we can do different, and we know that buyers
really don’t mind too much, or at least they don’t seem to for now. Whether
that once again changes when things are back to whatever the new normal will
look like, we’ll wait and see. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">What has surprised me more
than anything over the past year is that the demand for art hasn’t dropped as
significantly as I thought it would at the beginning of the pandemic, and it’s
certainly not the same as it was in 2008 after the financial crash. That said,
we shouldn’t forget those who have been financially impacted throughout the pandemic.
Whilst there have been ‘accidental savers’ who have found they need to spend
less on outgoing expenses than during regular times, there will be an equal
amount of one time regular art buyers who have been having to make difficult
decisions around what their priorities now are and everything is becoming
infinitely more and more expensive as the cost of living increases. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">So one thing that we need to
focus on is how we continue to look after one time collectors who have been
placed into an economically different or more specifically, an economically
challenging position. There’s a simple reason why this needs to be done and
that is that you will at some point want those regulars buyers to come back
once their finances are more stable. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This might mean widening your
portfolio with less expensive works or prints, or it could mean diversifying
into areas that you might have once avoided. It reminds me of the age-old
saying that you need to make friends on the way up because you’ll need them
again on the way down. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Adapt – Because everyone else
has…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you haven’t as yet adapted
your business to function during a pandemic, you have some catching up to do.
Art is still selling as I have mentioned a few times over the course of the
past year or so, but people are very much buying art for different reasons and
there’s a definite difference in who is buying art today, many people have
discovered art and art collecting for the first time during the pandemic. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Some are buying work as an
investment, accidental savers are realising that they can now afford what they
once perhaps couldn’t, and some are buying just to pretty up their spaces which
they have been spending much more time in. That’s really good news for
independent artists who were perhaps much better prepared than most to
accommodate all of the changes many of the galleries really struggled to put in
place. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Whilst there has been a change
in buying behaviour, there has also been an almost seismic shift in the way
that people now buy art. They no longer expect to walk into a gallery by
default, they expect to view the work online, maybe even make the purchase
online, and they have some expectations that they will still have options to
see the work up close. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Thinking about the future
means thinking about how this new way of buying art will pan out post-pandemic.
I think there is one thing that is more likely to happen and that is that there
will be a shift towards more hybrid buying experiences and possibly, a shift
towards buying artwork more from physical spaces that are convenient, not
simply spaces that are necessarily traditional galleries.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It really is going to be more
and more about placing your work where you know the people are, rather than where
you think the people might traditionally visit. Some galleries will come back
stronger than ever, some have forever disappeared, but the future is more
likely to be one that encompasses a much broader retail experience. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s_8YDG0habE/YN7SuYCBCpI/AAAAAAAAGnA/kFsSHQ_5mcA-XclSXnMQe6MjrwHHIFcEwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1221/glow%2Bover%2Ba%2Bdry%2Bstone%2Bwall.PNG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="sunset over a dry stone wall, landscape art," border="0" data-original-height="1035" data-original-width="1221" height="542" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s_8YDG0habE/YN7SuYCBCpI/AAAAAAAAGnA/kFsSHQ_5mcA-XclSXnMQe6MjrwHHIFcEwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h542/glow%2Bover%2Ba%2Bdry%2Bstone%2Bwall.PNG" title="Glow over a dry stone wall by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Glow Over A Dry Stone Wall by Mark Taylor - Inspired by a visit to England's Lake District, this is perhaps my all-time favourite landscape work. Really enjoyed creating this one!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Don’t burn out…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Burnout is a real thing,
experienced by the best artists, oh, and me too. If there is one thing that you
take away from this week’s article it should be that you have to put yourself
front and centre and reduce the risk of burning out. We’ve all been slaves to
video conferencing for so long now that day’s have begun to merge into each
other and the hours that would normally be spent commuting have been replaced
with yet another meaningless video meeting that not only could have been an
email, it could have really just been an emoji.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Stop it with the filler conference
calls, Skype, Teams, Zoom, and remove the mandatory, why haven’t you put on your
camera chant that emanates in a broken robotic voice over a bad connection.
I’m certain there is an artwork depicting a webcam and a goldfish bowl
somewhere in there.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Burning out is serious, and
it’s absolutely no good at all for you or your art. We often hear talk of a
work-life balance, but that suggests that we all kind of need to find a level
that gives us a happy balance of both. I’m not convinced that it should be a
work-life balance in that sense, but maybe our nirvana might be to strive
towards work-life-engagement, because we only truly thrive when we are engaged
and energised, maybe it’s as much about finding our energy than it is about finding
time. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Stay safe, well, and creative!</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Hopefully, this week has been
a small reminder that putting you and your business front and centre is pivotal
to a happy and fulfilling art career. Notice I didn’t mention success in that,
that’s because we should all be striving to work towards our own version of
whatever success looks like for us, each of us is unique, a small success for
one person can be huge step for someone else, and that’s absolutely fine,
celebrate it whether it is small or big, but more than that, remember to take
some time out occasionally and celebrate you too, because without you there is
no art.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">Until next time, as always,
stay safe, stay well, look after each other and stay creative!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Mark x</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…</span></b></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">I am an artist and blogger and
live in Staffordshire, England. My days are filled with art, dog walking and
living my best life while still being stuck somewhere in the eighties. You can
purchase my art through my Fine Art America store or my Pixels site here: </span><a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</span></a><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"> and
you can purchase my new works, special and limited editions directly. You can
also view my portfolio website at </span><a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">https://beechhousemedia.com</span></a><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are on Facebook, you
can give me a follow right here, </span><a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at </span><a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</span></a></span></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.43597330.869907915970536 -38.592223 79.886194084029455 31.720277tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-43632214360814559092021-06-25T08:36:00.001+01:002021-06-25T08:36:33.867+01:00Crowdfunding Creativity<h1 style="text-align: left;"> <b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Crowdfunding for Artists</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7KekGJGkus8/YNV7DeF4HgI/AAAAAAAAGjg/oNdKnwzhaqY2ODjCqMkNeNvIFTBMk1LWgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/crowd%2Bcover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="chalkboard with crowdfunding your creativity text" border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1080" height="336" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7KekGJGkus8/YNV7DeF4HgI/AAAAAAAAGjg/oNdKnwzhaqY2ODjCqMkNeNvIFTBMk1LWgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h336/crowd%2Bcover.png" title="Crowdfunding Your Creativity" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Crowdfunding Your Creativity - A Masterclass in the art of crowdfunding...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Financing your art and your art career can be a
challenge and especially when you want to tackle major projects, but there are
ways that you can do it without having to visit or even break the bank! This
week, we’re going to delve into the subject of crowdfunding and whether or not
there is any merit in setting up a campaign as a visual artist. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A golden era of crowdfunding…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whenever I speak with new
artists, the subject of crowdfunding always seems to spring up. It’s not
surprising, it’s a concept that has become huge over the past couple of years,
and more and more creators are making a great living through platforms such as
Patreon. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether they are creating
artworks or producing podcasts or film, creators can utilise the power of these
platforms to monetise what they do so that they can continue to do it, and
hopefully, fund new projects or pay themselves a living wage. While there are
plenty of examples of creators being able to support their work through
crowdfunding, there are even more stories about crowdfunding projects that fell
at the first fence, usually through a lack of planning rather than the pitches
being inherently bad. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you’re not familiar with
the concept, crowdfunding is literally what it says on the tin. Think of it
like you had an idea in the pub on Saturday night and all of your friends and a
few interested strangers each chipped in the money to make your idea happen.
Well, sort of. There’s quite a bit more to crowdfunding than coming up with a drunken idea in the pub on a Saturday
night, although looking through the Kickstarter website, there are more than a
few that might have been dreamed up in a pub on Saturday night.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You get the idea, but the
question is, does crowdfunding really work? For some, it’s the gateway to
putting ideas into practice and going on to great things with whatever the idea
is. For the majority though, it’s an exercise in completing an online form and
watching the days remaining to fund the project tick away while everyone
ignores it. That is an avoidable problem, for the most part, you just need a
campaign that sticks and resonates with people so that they become excited
enough to back it. That though is the hard part but it’s not an insurmountable
problem if you plan ahead.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4lsIrk9aUrc/YNV7uBBYyvI/AAAAAAAAGjo/3pE-vyjgza4yEGtS17QOj_FFcR94hb1iACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/coffee%2Band%2Bcake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="high street coffee and cake shop artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4lsIrk9aUrc/YNV7uBBYyvI/AAAAAAAAGjo/3pE-vyjgza4yEGtS17QOj_FFcR94hb1iACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/coffee%2Band%2Bcake.jpg" title="Coffee and Cake Shop by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I'm slowly creating an entire high street of shops that would have been present in the eighties, a time when high streets were high streets, with real shops that took real money! Available now on my Fine Art America and Pixels stores!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What Crowdfunding Isn’t…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Crowdfunding isn’t the golden
unicorn that many think it is. It takes a heap of planning and hard work along
with a robust plan and a strategy that people will want to buy into. Neither is
it something that will fund your poor life choices, if people are pledging
money, they usually expect something in return. Crowdfunding your Caribbean
island and a fleet of private jets isn’t something that people generally buy
into which frankly, is a bit of a shame because we’ve only had a week of sun in
the UK so far this year.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are more projects that
never get the funding in place than there projects that do, yet crowdfunding is
often seen as the one thing that will solve the funding issues that many start
ups have. The reality is that there are many ways that funding to set up new
art projects can be raised, it’s just that some of them seem at first to be far
more complicated than signing up to a crowdfunding platform that themselves
are becoming increasingly picky about the projects that they now actually allow
to go forward.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So rather than seeing
crowdfunding as the goose that will lay the golden egg, it’s much better to
think of it as a mechanism of raising some, but not necessarily all of the capital
needed to bring an idea and potentially even a business to fruition. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Crowded Crowdfunding…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The crowdfunding eco-system is
much more crowded today than it was just a couple of years ago. There are a
heap of projects that initially look like they could be great ideas, but dig
underneath the surface, a little and you’ll find that there are a lot of
projects that seem more like impossible dreams than tangible ideas that could
come to something. I can’t even count up the number of projects I have seen
listed on crowdfunding sites over the years where the creator wants to build
the new Facebook, or an app that could cost millions of dollars more to produce
than the ten buck target, they think it will cost.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The number of impossible
projects mean that whatever you do has to be better than any similar project on
the respective platform, and it also means that you still have to do those
crazy things like coming up with a marketing strategy that resonates with the
audience so that they feel compelled and excited enough to back it. Usually,
this means spending weeks, maybe even months, putting everything in place in
the way of marketing your idea so that you can go into the challenge with a
strong proposition and ideally some people already willing to back it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Buying into your dream…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If there is one thing I always
recommend to new artists, it is to have a level of self-belief that is
infectious. If you don’t believe in your idea then it’s very likely that no one
else will buy into your idea either. It has always been the case that people
buy into the artist just as much and often, more than the art. I think the same
is very true with crowdfunding a start-up project or business too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What you are essentially doing
is asking a bunch of strangers to buy into your vision and your dream, and not
everyone will. This means that you have to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of
your pitch, a passion for what you want to achieve, and you need a plan that
makes it simple to work out the benefits of backing it, not necessarily the
benefits of the product or in this case, the artwork you want to create. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You will need to lay out as
much information as you can, not just about what the end result will be, but
about you and the kind of person you are. Many backers won’t even consider
buying into a project if they can’t buy into you.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AnCsLlvv1p8/YNV8sZYJUKI/AAAAAAAAGjw/4KwpmRALCmERxgHTfDxOsUKzi7AjILoDACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/The%2BArt%2BSupply%2BShop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Art supply shop artwork, shop window artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AnCsLlvv1p8/YNV8sZYJUKI/AAAAAAAAGjw/4KwpmRALCmERxgHTfDxOsUKzi7AjILoDACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/The%2BArt%2BSupply%2BShop.jpg" title="The Art Supply Shop by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Oh My Gogh Art Supplies... one of my latest high street creations is available now from my Fine Art America and Pixels stores... The Art Supply Shop by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Not everyone will connect with
your hopes and dreams…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As with any business, when it
comes to seeking any kind of funding for your hopes and dreams, there will be
those who hold the purse strings who just don’t connect with your idea or even
see your vision. It can be quite hard for anyone with such passion for a
project to believe that not everyone will share your excitement, and there will
be some who might even have an opinion or two about your idea that they will
want you to hear and it won’t always be sugar-coated.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Crowdfunding can be much more
like testing the water to see how hot or cold the idea or product is than it
is about raising capital. If few are receptive to your idea, you have to be
prepared to change the idea, adapt it, or maybe even put it to one side. On the
positive side, this is also a great way to figure out if your product has legs,
and any ideas to improve on your idea might even make more backers want to buy
in and improve your project even more.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Do your research…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are pitching an idea
for an art project that has been unsuccessfully pitched by others a hundred
times before without success, you have to make sure that your pitch hits the
spot that the others never found. That means knowing who the audience for the
project is, whether or not there is a need for it, and focus on casting the
net towards those who are more likely to buy into your idea. Casting the net
far and wide might get you a few causal backers but a handful of backers is
rarely enough. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you can pitch to the right
audience, they’re much more likely to back you, and they’re much more likely to
remain with you if you encounter any delays. In my experience, major art projects
can and very often will overrun and likely need some level of contingency
funding identified, so if you can find an audience who will remain engaged
throughout any delays, perhaps because they understand some of the issues that
can arise from big art projects, it will make the process so much easier. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Will your current buyers back
you?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We’ll come on to some of the
other funding options shortly, but the success of any crowdfunding exercise is
often predicated on there already being a level of social proof in support of
either you, what you do, who you are and the project itself to some extent. As
artists, we’re used to social proof, making our sales known helps potential
buyers feel more confident in purchasing your work because there is
demonstratable proof that you already have a track record of selling your work.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you can leverage your
existing network to at least offer some initial backing, it will show other
backers some of the social proof that they need to feel a little more
comfortable about backing you. The power of we’re all in this together has
never been more apparent than over the past year and a half or so, and if you
can demonstrate that there are people who trust you enough to back you, this
will often encourage others to contribute to the campaign. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The reality of crowdfunding is
that most of your backers won’t necessarily come via the crowdfunding platform,
they will come as a result of any marketing efforts you make. Think of it as a
similar model to print on demand, and if you are already selling your art via
those kinds of platforms, you will already be familiar with the concept that
the platforms are merely a transactional mechanism rather than a promotion
machine. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m sad to say that anyone who
thinks that crowdfunding is some kind of magical gravy train requiring a zero
marketing effort on your part is very likely to be sorely disappointed with the
results. Organic backers will only ever come through the platform once they
start to stumble across social proof and then become excited enough to seek
your project out. You might be lucky and get a handful who just happen to find
you, but this isn’t an approach that generally means that you will meet your
target.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Selecting the right
crowdfunding platform…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is another area that can make
the difference between a successful and a not-so-successful campaign. Each of
the many and varied crowdfunding platforms generally exist to do the same thing,
but for very different purposes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Kickstarter, for example, is
more about physical products than the arts, but other platforms might have a
more varied mix of startup projects. That’s not to say that selecting any one
platform over another will mean that your project will fail, but each platform
will attract backers who are more attracted to the projects more attuned or familiar with a particular
platform. Kickstarter does still have art projects, but you might find that
another platform will have a better fit with the project you are trying to get
off the ground.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Every day, new projects will
spring up on each of the platforms and you might find that there are few arts
related projects at the time you visit, go back the next day and multiple art
projects may have been added. These platforms really do change considerably day
to day, so you really do have to carry out a little research prior to deciding
which platform might suit your project better, and just because a platform is
generally seen as being <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another consideration is that
each platform has its own set of rules for running campaigns. Some platforms
will require you to reach your goal prior to receiving any of the pledged
funding, other platforms will allow you to access the funding as it comes in,
and each platform will have its own set of fees that you will need to consider,
each taking a cut of whatever you raise. Bear in mind too that in some
territories, taxation could also be a factor.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As I said earlier, some of the
platforms are beginning to become pickier about the kind of projects they will
allow you to post on their platforms with each changing the rules occasionally
which is something you need to keep an eye on. It goes without saying that
falling foul of any of the rules and regulations on any of the platforms will
see you and your project booted off and in some cases, not even arriving at the
starting blocks.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ckP7hD5MV9Y/YNV94QAplEI/AAAAAAAAGj4/VxLK_bZY7FgToFZeUPmj_n_vaeajOVu3wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/The%2BTV%2BShop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The TV Shop artwork, shop window artwork, TV and video store art," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ckP7hD5MV9Y/YNV94QAplEI/AAAAAAAAGj4/VxLK_bZY7FgToFZeUPmj_n_vaeajOVu3wCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/The%2BTV%2BShop.jpg" title="The TV Shop by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The TV Shop by Mark Taylor - I can't tell you how much nostalgia came flooding back to me while I was creating this! Available now on my Fine Art America and Pixels stores!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Red Tape and Rules…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Most of the rules for
crowdfunding are relatively straightforward, just make sure you read those
terms and conditions that you would usually skip past before you sign up to
anything. There are several different types of crowdfunding, each has their
own way of doing things and some are legally tied up within the laws of the
country you sign up from, so the rules for one person may be different for
another in a different region even though they are using the same platform. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Generally, crowdfunding works
differently depending on the type of crowdfunding the multitude of platforms
offer between them, not all crowdfunding platforms are equal, and no two are
really the same. So it’s always worth knowing before you sign up to anything,
what type of crowdfunding platform it is that you are signing up to and also
having a think about the type of platform that will suit your project better.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The main types of crowdfunding
platforms fall under the following headings:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Peer to Peer lending - </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>where the backers lend money to a company or
individual on the understanding that the money will be repaid along with
interest. This is similar to the way loans from banks work, except that you are
essentially borrowing from lots of banks, but in this instance, the banks are
generally people or individual companies. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Equity Crowdfunding – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">where
you essentially sell a stake in your business in return for an investment. This
is basically the crowdfunding version of the stock market and you could end up
with investors holding a stake and a say in how the project pans out in the
future. In short, do you take the funding in return for giving up some future
control?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Rewards-based crowdfunding – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">is
more typical and probably what most people understand crowdfunding to be.
Patreon style crowdfunding is perhaps one of the best examples to use here, and
this is where backers expect a level or multiples levels of reward in exchange
for their contribution which may either be a one-off or continuous payment or
donation similar to an ongoing subscription.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Donation-based crowdfunding – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">individual
donations usually of small amounts to a cause or charity that mount up towards
a larger overall funding target and where the supporter usually doesn’t expect
anything in return. Go Fund Me is maybe the best example of this although many
funding seekers do also offer some rewards for donations received.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Profit-based crowdfunding – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">where
future revenue and profit is shared with the backers in return for their
funding to begin the project now. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Debt Securities Crowdfunding –
</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">a
crowdfunding option that can be complex, it’s where individuals invest in debt
security issued by the company looking for backing, usually in the form of a
bond. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Hybrid Crowdfunding – </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">is
exactly what it says on the tin and can be a mixture of multiple types of
crowdfunding. It’s perhaps better for some serious business backers but can get
complicated.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each of the above forms of crowdfunding will
be governed by very different rules and regulations and some will be governed
by financial laws and regulations too. Some of these will perhaps need a level
of legal advice, particularly where you are issuing shares in something, and
these rules and regulations might even be governed by the laws of a particular
country or region and not just by the rules and regulations of the platform, so
it’s always best to check.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When you are deciding on the
type of crowdfunding to use you may think that going down the standard Patreon
type route will be the best option, and in most cases and from experience, it
probably will be. But the crowdfunding platforms that require you to give out
shares or future control shouldn’t be immediately dismissed, especially if the
project requires a lot of financial backing. For some investors, this is
exactly what will sway them into backing your idea.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">How do you get paid?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Each platform will handle
payments differently. Some require you to have a bank account and to share the
details of the account with the platform so that they can pay you, others will
make payments via PayPal, and all will take a cut of any funding you receive.
The depth of the cut depends on the platform, some charge less than others, and
it also depends on the level of funding you receive in some cases. If you are
worried about sharing bank account details, don’t be. If you use a reputable
platform, of which there are many, they take security seriously and will only
ever use the details provided to make sure you get paid.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some platforms will pay as
your campaign receives backers, others will only pay you if you meet the minimum
required or the total of the amount you asked for. In this case, if you don’t
raise the full amount, backers won’t be charged and you won’t get paid which
means that you are then under no obligation to deliver the project.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YdGFEiHgaEs/YNV_Mr1jMDI/AAAAAAAAGkA/7IF71po5A54XAnaQqXRTqm-Wrc9FDZTygCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/The%2BGreat%2BBritish%2BFish%2Band%2BChip%2BShop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="fish and chip shop artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YdGFEiHgaEs/YNV_Mr1jMDI/AAAAAAAAGkA/7IF71po5A54XAnaQqXRTqm-Wrc9FDZTygCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/The%2BGreat%2BBritish%2BFish%2Band%2BChip%2BShop.jpg" title="The Great British Fish and Chip Shop" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Every high street had a chippy! The Great British Fish and Chip Shop is available from my Fine Art America and Pixels stores!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">How much do you need?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Crowdfunding should be viewed
as one single tool in the toolbox of raising funds for your project. It can and
probably should be part of a much wider strategy around finding funding, but
you do have to go into these kinds of funding hunts with a firm idea of just
how much you need to bring the project to light.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are looking at other
funding options alongside crowdfunding, it probably makes sense to set your
crowdfunding target lower than needed and look to other sources to top it up to
the level you need. There’s an element of risk in doing this, if you fail to
reach the required amount from other sources, you might not have enough in the crowdfunding
pot to cover the project. However, having a crowdfunding target that has
exceeded its target goals is an excellent way of delivering social proof that could
encourage even more backers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you plan to use this
option, it’s worth setting out your intention on the crowdfunding platform to
ensure that backers know that funding is reliant on other sources too. There’s
nothing that annoys a backer more than seeing a project that has met its goal
over and over, but that’s still not met the goal that means the project will
move forward.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Having contingency built into
your planning is essential. Even the best thought out art projects usually come
with hidden surprises and therefore hidden costs. An installation artwork for
example might need funding in order to cover things like gaining permissions
and permits, or it might be to provide additional safety equipment if you are
working in a public space.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Also, don’t forget things like
public liability insurance which some installations will no doubt need if this
hasn’t been agreed with the commissioner of the work. Every artist will
probably be able to share their own story of that one time when the project
almost broke the bank, and a few will probably share stories of when that one
project did actually break the bank all because of not having a contingency to
cover something relatively simple.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Deliverable plans rather than
imagination…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As I intimated earlier,
crowdfunding isn’t a fast track to fund poor life choices, and neither is it a
way to fund some kind of mid-life crisis idea that came to you on a whim. Take
a look at some of the projects that asked for funding though, and that’s
essentially what you get. There are so many ill-thought-out projects on
crowdfunding websites that it can sometimes make it difficult for backers to
filter out the maybe will happen from the definitely won’t happen kinds of projects.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s vital to go into any form
of crowdfunding with a solid plan. It’s often said that around 70% of
crowdfunding projects never get off the ground, and most of the time it’s for
the simple reason that there is no plan, or the funding target has been set
impossibly high. Having a plan means knowing the market, and what the market
will more likely fund.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With art projects, especially
with first time crowdfunded art projects, it might be much better to start off
with something a little smaller in scale than the three-storey art installation
you have been imagining over the weekend. Instead, start off with something
that you know you can deliver and something that backers feel like they can
back because they can see that it’s not going to be impossible to deliver and that
it has a realistic crowdfunding goal. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Once you deliver a project you
are more likely to gain traction with future projects which can then become
grander and grander in design and because you will by then have a proven track
record of delivery, you might even begin to reach your goals much sooner.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Be excited about your project…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Posting a crowdfunding idea
and expecting the world to immediately see your genius and want to buy into it,
really isn’t how this thing works. Once you have the plan in place, a strategy
to deliver that plan and a good idea about the kind of person you are pitching
the idea too, that’s when the hard work really starts.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is the point at which you
need to find an insane amount of energy and enthusiasm to keep the momentum
around your project moving forward. The most critical time for any crowdfunded
project is within the first two days of going live. This is the point when you
need the excitement dialled up to eleven and the passion to be dialled up even
more.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s no better feeling for
crowdfunding seekers to find that their project is making major strides towards
reaching the goal during the first 48-hours, but to get that kind of traction
there will be a point when some backers will be looking for social proof to
give them the confidence to back the project in the early hours and days. The
best way to do this is to make a start on raising the excitement levels in
advance of going live, so you might want to harness the power of your existing
email subscriber list and try to enlist some early backers so that the social
proof is in place from the off. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is a strategy that I
call, priming the pump. It’s not just useful in crowdfunding, it’s a great
strategy for promoting your next art release too. Large corporations with
entire marketing departments never start marketing the product on the day it
gets released, some will be making a start on the marketing about ten seconds
after the initial idea. They will create teaser campaigns, begin to work out
what might stick with their target audience, and they will gradually build-up
the anticipation over an extended period so that when the product finally hits
the market, it’s a well-known product with an already invested and interested
market.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The pre-launch marketing
campaign could be as simple as a video or a series of videos introducing the
concept of the project, maybe even demonstrating a prototype, and together with
a sustained presence across social media that tells the story as it develops,
can make a huge difference in those very early and most critical hours of
crowdfunding. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8R_dOH_Ghvc/YNWApcVoKwI/AAAAAAAAGkI/zqw7V_yxCacepxhMwh0WUNqeZMeuLEQTQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Art%2BSupplies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="fabric artwork depicting art supplies" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8R_dOH_Ghvc/YNWApcVoKwI/AAAAAAAAGkI/zqw7V_yxCacepxhMwh0WUNqeZMeuLEQTQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Art%2BSupplies.jpg" title="Art Supplies by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Art Supplies by Mark Taylor - Available in my Fine Art America and Pixels stores. I love creating fabric art using digital mediums. I can spend weeks working on texture, it's so relaxing!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Rewards and stretch goals…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s a whole new language
to learn when it comes to crowdfunding. You might come across rewards that
need little explanation, but you will also come across things like stretch
goals. These are additional goals that are set after the original goal has been
met. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But let’s start with rewards.
A reward can be something as simple as a mention in the project, a T-Shirt, or
a behind the scenes tour, or even the physical product that the project is
producing. With art projects, those rewards could be prints, signed prints,
limited editions, or all manner of other products that will be linked to the
main project. Each reward will be placed in a tier, so anyone backing tier one
for example, might receive a T-Shirt, but those backing tier four and putting
even more money into the project might get a limited edition signed print or an
original work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You might then think about
increasing the level of reward when you begin to implement stretch goals, so
with this hypothetical art project, the stretch goal could be to make the
artwork bigger, utilise more expensive materials or make the project even more
elaborate, and the rewards might at that point also become more and more
alluring to backers. If only the original goal has been met, none of these
additions would be placed into the completed project unless you find that you
can afford to implement them with the funding you have already raised. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You need to be very clear with
potential backers when it comes to stretch goals. If it was always your
intention to upgrade the materials in the project even if only the original
target was met, then it’s not really a stretch goal. Stretch goals should add
the extra value to a project that didn’t or wouldn’t exist if only the original
goal had been met. A good example of a stretch goal might be that you were
going to 3D print a component if only the original goal had been met, but a
stretch goal might mean that you can utilise more robust injection moulding,
add another few chapters to a book, or print artwork on much better quality
materials, none of which could easily be done without the stretch goal funding.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Stretch goals can also create
their own momentum, if backers are keen to see the next tier implemented in
your project, they’re more likely to want to share it with their people in
order to get you and them past the post to make that reward tier happen.
Stretch goals can and should really be part of your strategy, but as I said,
you do need to make sure that the stretch goals really do add value.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c5whg0iCpzU/YNWB7ETn1XI/AAAAAAAAGkQ/bIpdAlBTLCYWx3V6gJbTl6rZC3d974q3gCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Happy%2BSummer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="happy Summer artwork depicting a tree with pink and yellow leaves" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c5whg0iCpzU/YNWB7ETn1XI/AAAAAAAAGkQ/bIpdAlBTLCYWx3V6gJbTl6rZC3d974q3gCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Happy%2BSummer.jpg" title="Happy Summer by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Happy Summer by Mark Taylor - Available from my Fine Art America and Pixels stores!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Have your strategy in place…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Before you go down the route
of crowdfunding anything, you have to have a strategy in place to start your
project as soon as you have the backing. We’ve already covered making sure that
you have a plan, but the project delivery strategy is what brings the plan to
life. Let’s put that into a little context. If you reach your target this
weekend, do you have everything you need in place, or at least have a plan to
have everything in place to make a start on Monday morning? Whilst that might
sound dramatic, that’s essentially how quickly these things can and need to happen
if they take off.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you need parts
manufacturing, do you have a willing manufacturer waiting in the wings? If you
need to scale, can the manufacturer keep up with the volume? With art projects,
you might not need quite the same level of behind the scenes activity to have
taken place, although I can think of a few art-related projects that could very
well need to have people and some infrastructure prepared and ready to go if
needed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Communicate…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If there are going to be any
delays in delivering the project, you have to communicate this to your backers
as soon as you know, and then you need to keep them updated. Nothing puts
backers off more than radio silence, so the best strategy if you encounter a
delay is to explain everything in an open and honest way. If you’re
communicating, backers will put more faith in you and realise that you haven’t taken
the money and made a run for it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s a good idea to have a
communications strategy even when things are going to plan. Keeping backers up
to date will build up trust and that’s even more important if you plan on
creating further projects that will need crowdfunding, those who backed you
this time are more likely to back you again. Positive communications, so long
as they are accurately communicating the positives of the project can help to
continue building that all-important excitement and anticipation, and might
even bring in even more backers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s something else that
you need to communicate throughout and even before your campaign even begins,
and that’s the same thing I have been saying on these very pages for<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> a </span>number of years. You have to tell your story,
and that’s even more critical when it comes to the arts.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3yme-DqJAVY/YNWCfXZpWJI/AAAAAAAAGkY/PkmigeIEk8w4XAE_yl1wvwitDa_9gwhsACLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/tell%2Ba%2Bstory.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="go tell stories artwork" border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3yme-DqJAVY/YNWCfXZpWJI/AAAAAAAAGkY/PkmigeIEk8w4XAE_yl1wvwitDa_9gwhsACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/tell%2Ba%2Bstory.png" title="Tell Your Story throughout your campaign" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Tell the story throughout your crowdfunding campaign...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Risks…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Crowdfunding really is as much
about managing risk as anything else. There’s a definite risk involved for
backers, and there are risks too for those seeking funding to bring their
projects out into the open. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For backers, it’s true that
many new businesses fail within the first few years, sometimes sooner. If a
business ceases to exist after it has been backed, there’s very little to no
chance of the backer getting that money back if the money has already made it
to the creator of the project and it has been spent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Any return on the backing made
is never guaranteed with crowdfunding, and even more so when the crowdfunding
platform pays the project creator as soon as you put your cash on the counter.
There are countless stories of crowdfunding projects where this has happened.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are backing a project
in return for shares in a company, the shares that you receive may be unlisted,
which essentially means that they don’t work in the same way that shares on the
financial markets would usually work and they might be next to impossible to
sell on. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The worst scenario would be if
the crowdfunding platform ceases to exist, which given the sheer number of
crowdfunding platforms isn’t that much of a stretch to imagine happening, it’s
a hugely competitive market. We might immediately know the obvious ones who are
less likely to hit problems, but there are many of these platforms springing up
and each will be set up slightly differently and will have very different rules.
For new platforms, it can take a while for them to build up credibility so that
potential backers can feel confident in backing projects.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a risk for the project owner too, if
the platform goes bump it could take your backers money with it and you not
only lose the funding, but your credibility is on the line too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Let’s not forget the real
gorilla in the room either, and that’s the risk of scammers. Again, there have
been plenty of stories even recently where crowdfunding projects have been set
up with the sole intention of taking the money and making a run for it. It’s
not just those who are backing projects either, there have been more than a few
project creators who have sought out funding only to be scammed by fraudulent
backers. Whether you are seeking funding or backing a project, it’s critical
that you carry out your own due diligence.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VCdaijBldXQ/YNWDIzWThxI/AAAAAAAAGkg/jO34JbjvBRcdl-vzlHZUdUt1ca_D80ijwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/do%2Bnot%2Bfeed%2Bthe%2Bseagulls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="do not feed the seagulls artwork by Mark Taylor, seagulls flying towards fish and chips" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VCdaijBldXQ/YNWDIzWThxI/AAAAAAAAGkg/jO34JbjvBRcdl-vzlHZUdUt1ca_D80ijwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/do%2Bnot%2Bfeed%2Bthe%2Bseagulls.jpg" title="Do Not Feed The Seagulls by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Do Not Feed The Seagulls by Mark Taylor - Another recent creation now available on my Fine Art America and Pixels store. Link below in the About Mark section!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Look to alternatives too…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As I mentioned earlier, it’s
worth keeping in mind that crowdfunding really is only a single tool in a
toolbox that also contains many other tools. With art projects, it might be
more fruitful to look towards art grants and awards in the first instance rather
than immediately going down the crowdfunding route. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There will be a few people who
equate crowdfunding as something that is going to be easier than filling in the
forms to apply for an arts grant, but both come with about the same level of
effort. Arguably, crowdfunding can be much more complex and require much more
effort than applying for a grant or award, especially when it comes to marketing
and even more so because that level of marketing has to be sustained often over
a much longer period.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Patreon or Patrons…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Patreon is a crowdfunding
platform that works a little differently from other crowdfunding platforms and
harks back to the days when artists would sustain their craft through the
support of a patron. With a significant percentage of artists having to fund
their art through either their own finances or through second or indeed even
third jobs, Patreon provides an opportunity for artists who can be supported by
the community. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Rather than supporting a
physical product or service, Patreon supports the creator, much as the Royal
Patrons throughout art history supported the artists daily life so that the
artist could focus on their art. However, the funding on Patreon is likely to
be less than the once-popular Royal patrons would provide to the artists they
supported, but to counter this, you can have any number of patrons gifting
through Patreon. The backing is in the number of people who get behind the
project.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Patreon is a platform that
allows you to reward those who back you but the chances of backers finding you
at all amongst the shear volume of projects on the site are pretty slim until
you become established and generate your own audience. Again, plenty of marketing
effort is required, and there are some high-value rewards given out by some
funding seekers that you will need to compete with. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It might not be enough to send
out a PDF print of one of your artistic creations month after month, those who regularly
spend the big bucks will usually be looking for something else. Of course there
will be those purely focussed on supporting the artist rather than being in it
for the reward, but I wouldn’t underestimate just how important those rewards tiers can be for some backers and there’s a community of backers who want to be
the first to get their hands on whatever the project is.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It could though be a more
sustainable income than some other crowdfunding platforms and models,
particularly as backers can set up a recurring monthly payment that will then
land in your bank account minus the Patreon fee. But, we probably need to set
some expectations right about here, which are that you really do need to ideally
have an already engaged community surrounding you and your work. If you only
have a handful of likes on social media and little to no engagement, you might
want to build the engagement up on social media first.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Patreon perhaps works best as
a mechanism to build a membership business rather than as a mechanism to pay
your household or project bills month after month, yet there are artists who
manage to do that and pull in a regular income through Patreon that allows them
to focus on their art in between sending out reward tiers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">How you utilise a service such
as Patreon really does depend on how you want to take your work and your career
forward, but this is another option that is at its core, the very essence of
crowdfunding at the same time as offering something a little different and it
is much more geared towards artists than other crowdfunding platforms. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are thinking of a
project for say installation art, or another one-off project, maybe other
platforms might bear more fruit as Patreon really is geared towards regular
payments with regular rewards. That’s not to say that Patreon should be
avoided, it’s one of the best and perhaps the best there is with a creative
focus, but you will need to think rather more creatively about keeping backers
engaged if you want to continue receiving their backing month after month.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Power of the crowd…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In my experience, if you have
an engaged community who already buy into what you do, crowdfunding is a
logical next step. I’ve even known artists who ask for unused art supplies to
be sent to them on a semi-regular basis, with which they make all sorts of
interesting art and then send some of that art back out to the community of
backers. Whilst there are no platforms that offer art supplies as a currency
(maybe that’s a Kickstarter in itself), a few of the artists I know who already
do this have set their own crowd-funding for art supplies websites up or
utilise word of mouth. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The point of this is to show
that generally, people, even in this day and age, are willing to show support
for what and who they love. If you can think of creative ways to fund an aspect
of your art career that people who may not have excessive cash can buy into, I
think, generally they will. I’m always surprised by the kindness of community
but it always comes down to you, and making sure that you are making it easy for
the community to want to buy into you. That means plenty of give and take, less
me, me, me, more working together.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HAuWefsBRMI/YNWEW4Nk7sI/AAAAAAAAGko/Et-otiX6j8o6a2wHl2iMpeUdZdwYNYKUwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1179/Mountain%2Bframed%2Bprint.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Mountain print by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="1022" data-original-width="1179" height="554" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HAuWefsBRMI/YNWEW4Nk7sI/AAAAAAAAGko/Et-otiX6j8o6a2wHl2iMpeUdZdwYNYKUwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h554/Mountain%2Bframed%2Bprint.PNG" title="Mountain Print by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A very early work from me, it's also my best selling artwork ever! Originally created on a wooden fence panel, this work sells as a print at least once or twice a week!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Power of Presentation…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is one thing that you
absolutely have to nail when it comes to crowdfunding, and that’s the
presentation of your project. If you take a look at the most-backed projects on
any crowdfunding platform, the pitches are usually really slick and the images
used in those pitches, even slicker. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is where your artistic
vision becomes your super power. Imagine pitching to create a beautiful work of
art and then using the equivalent of a third-hand digital photocopy of a
photocopy for the visuals you will use in your marketing. As an artist looking
to fund an art project, the visuals are the shop window on which backers will
get their first sense of what they can expect and if they see that equivalent
of a photocopy, it won’t fill them with inspiration or confidence that the
finished project will be any better.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In summary…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Crowdfunding is a great way to
raise capital for your next project but it’s not the only way. If you decide
that it’s for you, spend as much time as you can preparing your campaign. Get
the marketing materials in place way before you start, and begin the pitch as
soon as you can. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Harness the power of social
media and really work on your engagement skills. Facebook even say that on
average, business pages that join relevant groups get around 130% more visits
to their business page, but that only happens when you engage in the group
properly. That means you need to focus on building relationships and being
generally useful rather than using the groups as just another opportunity to
sell, sell, sell. It really is about building credibility and trust within a
community who are more likely to find some value in your pitch and idea.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Don’t waste time focussing on
markets that realistically would never back you. A good crowdfunding campaign
is often started months before going live on a crowdfunding site, and those
early days are really when a majority of your backers will decide to back you.
Once your pitch is live on the platform, the platform really is just a
mechanism for them to pony up the pledge promises and to stay informed about
your progress. The act of crowdfunding is essentially done and dusted in the
time before your pitch goes live on the site.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As a rule of thumb, you should
be ideally aiming for at least 20% - 30% of your target in the first 24-hours,
as a minimum. That might sound like a huge task but bear in mind that at this
point, you should be converting all of those relationships you have built up
over the preceding months into paying backers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Another great test is whether
or not friends and family back you, if they don’t it’s usually a sign that you
might struggle with people outside of your inner circle and that should be a
good indication that you really do need to up the marketing game or reconsider
the strategy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You absolutely have to know
how much you are going to need and then add in some contingency. What you
shouldn’t do is keep returning to your crowdfunding platform to raise the
target because you underestimated just how complex and expensive your project
is going to be. Early backers are likely to back out if you begin to look like
you totally underestimated how much the project is going to cost, each time
they see a plot twist gives them another reason to back out.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Don’t just rely on social
media and the crowdfunding site as your pitching strategy. The best crowdfunding
projects usually have some kind of prototype that demonstrates the probability that
the idea can be created, and this is then something that could feature more
prominently in your pre-launch campaign. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The pre-launch campaign should
ideally have what I like to term as an anchor. Somewhere where potential backers
can always visit to find out more information about you and your idea. With
this in mind, it’s worth considering creating a website that includes those
details, your back story, and more importantly, a way to contact you directly
and find the links to make the pledge on your crowdfunding service of choice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Despite the popularity of crowdfunding,
for a lot of people it’s still a new subject that is little understood, and
those people might not know enough about crowdfunding to be confident enough to
back you. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Be open to explaining how crowdfunding works, point out the benefits
but also point out the risks, and be ready to provide examples of successful
well-known products that have previously been crowdfunded.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s worth recapping on those
reward tiers too. When it comes to offering rewards, the tiers available at
different pledge levels should be unique. If you are offering the same reward
for a five buck pledge as you are for a hundred buck pledge, there’s no real
incentive for anyone to pledge more than the five bucks. Equally, you shouldn’t
get carried away with having an excessive number of reward tiers, that’s just
confusing for the backer and it becomes a nightmare to logistically manage for
you. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are struggling for
inspiration for an idea that could attract crowdfunding as an artist, do some
research over a couple of weeks as projects change almost daily and this will give you a much better sense of what is popular over a short period of time. The reason for this is that lots of new kick starter
projects spring up every day and what you find on any of the sites today is
going to be very different to what you might find on the same site tomorrow or
next week.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When I took a look online
while researching this article, some of the most backed projects from creatives
tended to be pin badges which have often met their original funding target
multiple times over. If you go down the route of pin badges, you will need to
make sure you have a supplier and a heap of engaging designs that you know your supplier can produce. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Other projects over the past
week or so have included limited edition giclee prints, trading cards, prop
replicas, one hundred limited edition prints with each backer receiving a one-off
print, art cards, physical magazines, coffee table books, and yet more enamel
pin badges. Interestingly, all of these examples had met or even stretched the
original target.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Finally, remember what I said
earlier about crowdfunding not necessarily being the golden egg, or the gravy
train, or the answer that will get your idea funded. It takes an incredible
amount of effort to crowdfund successfully, and even more effort in the months
before you even go live. If you are looking for an easy way to raise capital,
there are probably a hundred and one easier ways of doing it than through
crowdfunding, especially with the number of arts awards and grants available
each year. Whilst competition for those grants and awards is often huge, they
might give you a much better chance of your project succeeding. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Take Care!</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s all for this week but I
would love to hear about any crowdfunding projects you have created and whether
or not they were a success. I would love to know about your experiences of
backing them too, so if you have anything to share, as always, leave a comment
below!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Until next time, stay well,
stay safe, and stay creative!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Best Wishes,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark x<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I am an artist and blogger and
live in Staffordshire, England. My days are filled with art, dog walking and living
my best life while still being stuck somewhere in the eighties. You can
purchase my art through my Fine Art America store or my Pixels site here: </span><a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> and
you can purchase my new works, special and limited editions directly. You can
also view my portfolio website at </span><a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://beechhousemedia.com</span></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are on Facebook, you
can give me a follow right here, </span><a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at </span><a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-88890207298132129712021-06-10T08:52:00.000+01:002021-06-10T08:52:16.652+01:00Telling Your Art Story<h1 style="text-align: left;"> <b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Box Art – The Original Storyteller</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gED8aDBjbYo/YMG8nl1MaqI/AAAAAAAAGiA/I802hQhO3RswCQf3kP0zl5MWSoSTfRNNQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/cover%2Bbox%2Bart.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="box art title cover" border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1080" height="336" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gED8aDBjbYo/YMG8nl1MaqI/AAAAAAAAGiA/I802hQhO3RswCQf3kP0zl5MWSoSTfRNNQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h336/cover%2Bbox%2Bart.png" title="Box art telling stories through art" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Box Art - Telling a story through art...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This week we take another dive
into the art of telling a story through your art. It’s something I have covered
many times on these pages and it’s also something that is an ingredient in the
magic formula of selling art. If I had to write the recipe for that formula
down, the two top ingredients you would need to sell any work would be to get multiple
eyes on your work together with a compelling story to hook those eyes in the
first place. If you get the story right, you will find a third ingredient, the
buyer connection.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I went AWOL!</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A few of you might have
noticed my absence over the past few weeks, I had to slow down, put the brakes
on, and recover from a bout of anaemia. I had a choice between writing and
sleeping and sleeping won because I literally didn’t have the get-up and go to
get up and write! <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Thankfully, I’m now on the
road to recovery and writing again, I’m even producing more art than ever, but
with a difference, I’m producing art that has been on my bucket list to create
for as long as I have had a bucket list!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zX2frNbe930/YMG9ORNMvJI/AAAAAAAAGiI/fqbIcjh7lO4xYYrpRrxUmeA99IR34ofhACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/coffee%2Band%2Bcake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="coffee and cake shop front art" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zX2frNbe930/YMG9ORNMvJI/AAAAAAAAGiI/fqbIcjh7lO4xYYrpRrxUmeA99IR34ofhACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/coffee%2Band%2Bcake.jpg" title="Coffee and Cake Artwork by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Coffee and Cake - A typical eighties coffee shop, unshackled from chains! Available in my store now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The truth is though, that the art
on my bucket list is art that I have been creating outside of my traditional
landscapes for more than thirty years. Over that time I have managed to pick up
a number of collectors for this work, some of whom have been with me for as
nearly as long as I’ve been creating. Now I’m producing more of it, finally
publishing it in my store rather than as I have done historically and just making
it available more as an aside to the collectors, but most of all, I’m having
fun again and I’m producing way more of what I really love to create. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’ve never made a secret that
I create retro-inspired artworks, they’re not something I usually promote
through social media and I have tended to fill my stores with my more typical
landscapes for a number of years. I’ve never really promoted this work online
because for the most part, it has always been more of a niche market than my
landscapes, but if you had visited me at a show a decade ago you would be more
likely to have seen this kind of work than my traditional landscapes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Regular readers will know that
I’m a fan of retro, childhood memories and anything that’s generally as old as
me, and it’s kind of where I started out in my art career. Once upon a time, I
was young you know!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I became inspired to create
art the minute I was given a home computer back in early 1980, it might have
even been towards the end of 1979. Sure, I was always into drawing and
painting, but it wasn’t until I started to get into this new fangled trend of
computer programming and video games that I began to really notice just how
important art really was. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">To this day I believe that
anyone starting out in the art world or anyone who is keen to learn more about
art should really take notice of the emerging culture of video gaming and home
computing during the late seventies and eighties. That might sound weird, but
video games introduced an entire and usually inaccessible generation into the
world of art and it introduced them to a golden age of marketing and innovation
through good design and great art that had multiple purposes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Okay, some of it was a bit
dodgy thinking back, and some of it definitely didn’t pass muster on the
political correctness front, but what was good was generally great. This was
the next iteration of Mad Men but in real life.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XkY5i41cZio/YMG9wHMlGHI/AAAAAAAAGiQ/Y6oYfZZbdtAwIHbHZVdeJDsuakrHRgfBgCLcBGAsYHQ/s390/Bandits_Video_Game%2BSirius%2BSoftware%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Bandits video game box art" border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="255" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XkY5i41cZio/YMG9wHMlGHI/AAAAAAAAGiQ/Y6oYfZZbdtAwIHbHZVdeJDsuakrHRgfBgCLcBGAsYHQ/w261-h400/Bandits_Video_Game%2BSirius%2BSoftware%2B%25281%2529.jpg" title="Bandits game box art" width="261" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Typical Box Art of the eighties, this is Bandits (C) Sirius - an excellent example of storytelling through art!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There were two aspects that
really sucked me into the art world, computer graphics, or rather the lack of
them back in the day, and box art. This was the art that appeared on the cases
that the software would be packaged in. There was a third aspect too, that was
the artwork that adorned the sides of video arcade games. I remember like it
was yesterday when I first got to see a real-life Space Invaders machine at the
local railway station café. That was back in 1978, and while I was impressed by
the game, I was even more impressed by the artwork on the side of the massive
wooden cabinet. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It was a masterclass in
storytelling, and here’s why. The graphics on the game while being more
advanced than anything I had ever seen before, were still pretty dire on
reflection. It was accepted that this was as good as graphics got at the time
because we didn’t know any better, and the technology to produce anything
better hadn’t even entered into the world’s brightest geeky minds. Photorealism
was still decades away, as was safe playground equipment and I can’t recall any
of my friends having allergies. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It was inconceivable to think
that graphics could be anything more than they were, this was the cutting edge
of technology and after playing a home version of pong with a square ball and
two rectangular bats, which had first appeared in 1972, Space Invaders was the
difference between night and day. Almost alchemic in its appearance, yet it
still had the ability to bankrupt an eight-year-old by emptying my pockets of
loose change and my parents pockets too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So if it wasn’t the gameplay graphics
that attracted me to the machine could it be the novelty of being able to play
with something new? I’m sure that was part of it, and the gameplay still holds
up today but looking back, it was deeper than that, much deeper. The booming
bass sounds repeating and becoming faster added to a sense of urgency as the
invaders crawled down the screen, and that certainly helped, but even the sound
didn’t hold a candle to the artwork. The artwork was so good that I was just as
excited to get an original copy of the promotional flyer that came with the
game as I was to finally get a home version of the game when I finally got my
hands on an Atari VCS.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tyBYlqllM5Q/YMG-VABGduI/AAAAAAAAGiY/yzUYkF08JyQa1k2JgKcTHAzq3gObLHKjgCLcBGAsYHQ/s375/Space_Invaders_flyer%252C_1978%2Bcopyright%2BTaito%2Ball%2Brihts%2Breserved.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Taito Space Invaders arcade game flyer" border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="265" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tyBYlqllM5Q/YMG-VABGduI/AAAAAAAAGiY/yzUYkF08JyQa1k2JgKcTHAzq3gObLHKjgCLcBGAsYHQ/w283-h400/Space_Invaders_flyer%252C_1978%2Bcopyright%2BTaito%2Ball%2Brihts%2Breserved.jpg" title="Taito Space Invaders Arcade Game Flyer" width="283" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The original Space Invaders arcade promotional flyer. Copyright Taito - I still own an original of this flyer today!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The artwork grabbed the player
even before they played. Where a book cover might give a brief synopsis of a
story or it might show a key moment in the story, video game art had to tell
the entire story before you got to the game. You would view the artwork and
immediately your imagination would begin to work overtime and transport you
into that place. Marauding aliens attacking your base on the moon which you had
to protect with a spaceship that fired lasers, it was the sort of thing that
resonated with every nine-year-olds imagination. I’m 51 now and still find
myself mumbling that background track as I wander around the supermarket.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That was really it, the
artwork was exactly what invited you to play, you had seen the incredibly
colourful imaging, built up the story in your imagination and bam, you then had
a deeper connection with the game before you even saw the screen. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">None of this was obvious, I
didn’t even think about this until much later in life, even after I had begun
my art career. In fact, it wouldn’t be obvious until around a decade or so ago
when I began pondering the psychology of we really connect to a piece of art.
This was perhaps the best example of artwork depicting a story that would immediately
form a deep connection with the viewer that I have ever come across. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sure, there have been a
hundred and one artworks that I have felt a deep sense of connection with over
the years, I remember shedding tears the first time I got close to The Return
of the Prodigal Son in the Hermitage in Russia, but I have never been easily
able to explain just how a connection to artwork is formed without thinking
back to the artwork on the side of that arcade cabinet.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When you begin to build up the story around what you are seeing, you are already emotionally invested in what
you are looking at, it’s at that point that you become connected to the work. Once
you are invested in any way, shape or form, that connection starts to become exponentially unbreakable.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So what was it that hooked us
in with these amazing yet often ignored works of art? That’s very simple to
answer, it was the artwork that told a story that you could engage with and
build upon. The more you thought about it, the more invested you became. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Remember, this was a time when
the best graphics had been featured in games such as Pong or the even earlier
Space Wars. Put those graphics next to a modern video game and there’s simply
no comparison, it’s like the difference between prehistoric tools used by
Neanderthals and current-day power tools, mostly still used by Neanderthals.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PHCTNB6S790/YMG_FFson8I/AAAAAAAAGig/plJT7lOSVaABkE0FD920Aqmk-iuW8DYUwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/do%2Bnot%2Bfeed%2Bthe%2Bseagulls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="seagulls flying over fish and chips artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PHCTNB6S790/YMG_FFson8I/AAAAAAAAGig/plJT7lOSVaABkE0FD920Aqmk-iuW8DYUwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/do%2Bnot%2Bfeed%2Bthe%2Bseagulls.jpg" title="Do Not Feed The Seagulls by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Do Not Feed The Seagulls - another throwback to day's out in the eighties - fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, seagulls swooping in for the kill!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whenever home versions of the
games were released they would be packaged in cases with colourful inserts,
each one telling the entire story of the game the case contained. Screenshots
that you might find on modern video games were possible, although not very
good. Capturing screenshots was a whole new level of crazy that usually
involved using a dark sheet and placing it over the TV and the camera, taking
the photo at the exact moment that the word paused didn’t appear on the screen,
and then waiting a few days for the film to be processed before you would find
out if the blanket trick and your sense of timing had worked. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There was no screen capturing
software that you could use, it was all down to a modicum of skill and luck together
with your timing, it was also the biggest issue that video games magazines
faced at the time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The home versions relied on
the artwork to attract the buyer just as arcade cabinets relied on the artwork
to attract the player, and this really introduced the world to a completely new
art movement that mostly went unrecognised, that movement was, of course, box
art, some of which is insanely collectable today. It’s also a growing trend in
collectables, forget the games, the box with mint condition artwork is worth
considerably more in most instances, and just how many of them have you thrown
away?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There was more to box art than
telling the story though. This was a time when we witnessed a sea change in
marketing. The bigger and more flamboyant the box that contained the game, the
more chance a game would have of selling thousands of copies. It was beginning
to happen in the movie industry too with the introduction of home video
cassettes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There could have been a
hundred games on the shelf at the local game store, maybe a few hundred video
tapes in the local video rental store, and the only way you could quickly
filter out which one you were more likely to walk away with would be which one
of them, you immediately got drawn towards by looking at the artwork on the box.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6GruY9ye-yU/YMG_xGLdMbI/AAAAAAAAGio/8gNdosv7iYwRLl6doLge8cY4qo4lfhHHACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/totally%2Bretro%2Bby%2BMark%2BTaylor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro and vintage technology artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6GruY9ye-yU/YMG_xGLdMbI/AAAAAAAAGio/8gNdosv7iYwRLl6doLge8cY4qo4lfhHHACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/totally%2Bretro%2Bby%2BMark%2BTaylor.jpg" title="Totally Retro by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Totally Retro - One of my new artworks celebrating the 1980s and available to order in my store!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We can learn a lot from the
marketing throughout this period too. This was a time when marketing didn’t
exist on the internet because the internet didn’t exist. It became necessary to
stand out and there was a visible competition for eyes with each new release
appearing in packaging that would outdo the competition. It was a time when packaging
began to include gimmicks, I think today we might call it a value add, but
there were some really crazy tricks that packaging designers would use to make
sure that their game or video made it on your list. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I remember getting a copy of
Gran Turismo on the PlayStation One and finding a scratch and sniff disc inside
the packaging, the odour of car tyres wasn’t that realistic but it was a nice
touch and certainly made the game stand out. The only other game to feature
this that I can recall was FIFA 01, which allegedly smelled like a football
pitch, but probably not a football pitch any of us had ever got close to
sniffing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This era really was a
masterclass in packaging design, unlike today where size standards exist to
ensure that retailers can accommodate as much inventory as possible in the
smallest possible space. When digital stores began appearing the use of box art
began to wane and by now, screen capturing software and hardware had become a
mainstream staple of every publisher, so box art was replaced with screenshots.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Once digital downloads began
to take a foothold, the same issues began to appear, how do you make a needle stand out in a haystack of thousands of games or films. Box art, whilst it had
been more of an afterthought for a while, it began to emerge, albeit in a digital
form. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Physical releases were still
being adorned with some great artwork but there’s a heap of difference in
creating an image the size of a case insert and a small digital image that is
little bigger than a thumbnail on a digital store or streaming service.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s also another emerging
market that has been quietly gaining pace over the past decade, and that’s the
market for limited run physical releases and special editions, and it’s a
market that is becoming exponentially bigger every year with a growing number
of retro collectors now paying big bucks for what was once little more than
pocket change. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Many of the physical releases of today are a nod back to what can only be termed as that golden age of video gaming
when box art was king. Specialist retro collector retailers are springing up
and they’re less concerned about the space needed, such is the value placed on
some of these releases. What we’re seeing now is a nod back to the time when
the product boxes were real boxes and a time when gimmicks were included to
stand out, except this time around those gimmicks are what we now might call a
real value add. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is a market that is
beginning to become even more closely aligned to the art world than one might
initially think.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A limited run physical
release can easily cost ten times the price of a digital download, and once the
run is sold out, collectors are eagerly queuing up to make sure their
collections are as complete as they can make them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Scarcity in the art world
might drive up prices, but scarcity in the video games world of retro
collectors is actually even more insane. A mint condition Super Mario Brothers
game, boxed and sealed was not that long ago sold for the princely sum of
$660,000, or about the same price that one might place as a value on a work from
some of the old masters. Not bad for a game that in around 1983 would have cost
around $50, and yes, it’s the box and the art and the fact that it’s sealed
that brings with it the crazy price.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tcI7njjFqwI/YMHA6jWLtUI/AAAAAAAAGiw/1ExreyQSxq47cQngveuHKAK2wp6nG2K2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/TV%2BTennis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="TV Tennis game art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tcI7njjFqwI/YMHA6jWLtUI/AAAAAAAAGiw/1ExreyQSxq47cQngveuHKAK2wp6nG2K2QCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/TV%2BTennis.jpg" title="TV Tennis by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">TV Tennis by Mark Taylor - Another throwback to childhood, imagination and batteries required!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In terms of investment, video
games can be even more lucrative than some artworks and it’s not just the
stereotypical nerds and geeks like me who are buying them. Prices are going up
exponentially as more and more people become attracted to turning a quick buck
who might never have picked up a video game previously.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s also an opportunity
for artists that has arisen with the growing popularity of retro and the new
trend of limited releases, not just in retro-inspired works and classic games
from classic systems of the past, but many indie developers now actively seek
out artists to work on physical release box art and marketing materials, even
some of the digital downloads have a need for artists to create digital
thumbnails of box art and marketing materials. It’s like the e-book cover art
gig for the video games world.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So whilst the concept of video
game box art might seem a million miles away from the traditional art world,
there’s a heap of overlap, an abundance of similarities, and more than a
crossover when it comes to the value placed on historical releases, there are even
books that cover nothing but the artwork and the packaging and don't forget a vibrant collector market.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The biggest overlap is when we
look at artworks throughout art history that have told a story. It’s something
that many new and even not so new artists struggle with, but to get any
potential buyer to become invested in your work, it needs to resonate and
connect with them and the best way of getting work to do that is through
allowing that work to tell a story.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Box art is perhaps one of the
best examples of storytelling that uses artwork to immediately form a
connection with whoever is looking at it. It’s also a fascinating world of
marketing psychology, the tricks that are used to get you to psychologically
invest in the contents of the package deserve a separate article all of their
own, and as I said earlier, it might sound a little weird for some people to
start looking at video game box art to begin to understand better how
storytelling can work with art but it really is an outstanding example to learn
from. Here’s something else that you need to consider too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s more to a story than
the art can tell…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s another storytelling
ingredient that you need to add into the recipe for any level of commercial
artistic success and that is the story of you. This is something that many
artists really do struggle with, and it’s something that every artist has at
some point found some kind of excuse to avoid doing.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WlcN-lidKKQ/YMHBlwS9ZEI/AAAAAAAAGi4/zcpXF-XpYC4D8GOVowO41K0Slj1Fmo92QCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/The%2BTV%2BShop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Eighties TV shop front art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WlcN-lidKKQ/YMHBlwS9ZEI/AAAAAAAAGi4/zcpXF-XpYC4D8GOVowO41K0Slj1Fmo92QCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/The%2BTV%2BShop.jpg" title="The Eighties TV Shop by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Eighties TV Shop by Mark Taylor - Every high street had one of these back in the day!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Again, we look back at the box
art of video games and we begin to realise that storytelling is intrinsically
linked to marketing. There is no way that is humanly possible for you to be
stood in front of every viewer who gets to see your work, so what you need is
something that can copy and paste an element of you that can be present
whenever you can’t be. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What many artists struggle
with is the exact same thing I struggled with for years, they think they have
lived the most mundane of existences, yet everyone is unique and just as they
say that there’s a book lurking inside everyone, there’s an interesting story
or two, too. The greatest connection any artist can have with a buyer has
nothing at all to do with the art, it’s the human interest that the buyer takes
in the artist.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Throughout art history, art
has never sold itself. Even artists represented by the finest and most
prestigious galleries have had to share their story with the gallery in the
first place so that the gallery can continue telling that story to potential
buyers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s nothing but a slight of
arrogance to think that your work will stand head and shoulders above
everything else and then do noting or tell no one about it, even if it’s better
than anything else created. That is unless it comes bundled with the value add
that is your story. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Throughout human history, storytelling has been one of the most powerful ways that we have of
communicating. It’s how we remember history and who we are, but more than that,
a good story keeps the conversation going even when you are not there. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I still don’t think I have a
story…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Like I said earlier, there’s a
story in everyone but you might have to dig very deep, and that can sometimes
be painful, excruciatingly painful for some and your story might not fully
emerge overnight. But just how far do you go?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think there is a line and
that’s a line that will be different for everyone. I’m not sure just how
interested people will ever be in some of the things I’ve done or have been
through in life, but they will be interested in the ‘why’, ‘what’, and the
‘how’. Why did I decide to become an artist, how did I get from being a
non-artist, what drove me to get to where I am today, who inspired me, who
influenced me, and perhaps one of the most important elements when it comes to
collectors, what aspirations do I have for the future. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s important for
collectors because they will also want to have some semblance of comfort in
knowing that what they invest both in terms of building a relationship with you
and in terms of financial outlay, that those investments might prove fruitful
in future years. As an artist, a collectors investment begins in your hands and
that’s quite a responsibility to hold. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4YcxrfoG1LQ/YMHCoMfCPzI/AAAAAAAAGjA/ME73GEoN5sQvwe4k0rk7ApDhtU0M_Zi1gCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Tear%2BDown%2BThis%2BWall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Retro and vintage technology artwork by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4YcxrfoG1LQ/YMHCoMfCPzI/AAAAAAAAGjA/ME73GEoN5sQvwe4k0rk7ApDhtU0M_Zi1gCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Tear%2BDown%2BThis%2BWall.jpg" title="Tear Down This Wall by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Tear Down This Wall by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Story Telling Tips…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">No matter how much we say it
isn’t so, when the likes rack up on social media, our smiles become a little
wider. It’s reinforcement that what we posted is liked, it has stuck, it’s also
a completely false sense of achievement. Any content only sticks when it really
sticks and then gets shared.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Having a compelling story to
tell will eventually convert those likes into shares, but no post is going to
get shared until it has a relatable human connection. Relatable stories mean
that you are one of us, and that’s exactly how the best socially engaged brands
and influencers want us to see them. Of course, they’re not really one of us,
they don’t have the joy of parting with a week's worth of grocery budget in
return for a single tube of paint. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">People have long given up on
buying from faceless brands waving coupons, voucher codes, and special deals
for likes and shares, fewer and fewer people share posts on social, certainly
the shares for most artists will be significantly down on what they were a
couple of years ago, unless you have managed to establish your brand position
and people continue to engage and relate with it. People buy from, and share
from brands and businesses they have a real affinity to, brands that reflect
them and their own sensibilities.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is exactly why working on
the story is so crucial for any business, not just artists. The story helps you
to demonstrate your personality and allows you to shake off the audience’s
automatic preconception that you are a money-hungry brand that’s only
interested in them opening their wallets. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you can add a sense of
humour into that story then things get even better, the human race is hardwired
to respond to things that are funny, so when the audience decides to share that
funny moment in your story, it becomes a story that they’re telling about you. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s at this point the post
becomes less about you and more about the person sharing it, they’re not
sharing it to tell you that they liked it, they’re mostly doing it to share
their own social purpose. If a post is funny, it’s being shared to show others that
the person sharing it is funny, while demonstrating to their own audience that
they’re savvy and well informed. It’s psychology baby, as a psychologist
probably once said.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">None of this is to say that
your posts should forever forward be comedy gold. Comedy writing is another
kind of fine art completely and something that takes years of practice to do
well, but your story should be relatable, something that people can connect
with, feel a deep affinity to, and then want to share it with their own audience.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When it comes to content, it’s
actually not always about you or your work at all, it’s about giving your
audience content that serves their own social purpose, and when that happens it
will have a knock-on effect to propel your brand just a little more forward each
time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">New Collections…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Hopefully, you will have found
this weeks article useful and my advice to anyone is to spend at least a few
hours taking a look back at the video games industry to get some inspiration on
how to bring your work to life with a story, and because it really was a
turning point in the history of mass marketing. It was an era of genius
storytelling and it’s all becoming an (8)bit of a lost art. See what I did
there?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Throughout this week's musing's
you will have noticed a few newly released works that have been inspired by this golden age, and it’s also a nod to my previous post on retro artworks
which if you missed it, you can find right <a href="https://www.beechhousemedia.co.uk/2021/04/that-retro-thing-vintage-and-retro-art.html" target="_blank">here</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you want to support the
upkeep of this website and support an independent artist in the process, please
visit my store and take a look through all of my recent works where those tiny
not-so-obvious details in each piece will be more easily viewable! Did anyone
notice what the seagulls did? Also, I kind of need the hits since I haven’t
been around for a few weeks and I guess I kind of need to eat again!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Until next time, as always,
stay safe, stay well, look after each other and stay creative!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark x<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I am an artist and blogger and
live in Staffordshire, England. My days are filled with art, dog walking and living
my best life while still being stuck somewhere in the eighties. You can
purchase my art through my Fine Art America store or my Pixels site here: </span><a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> and
you can purchase my new works, special and limited editions directly. You can
also view my portfolio website at </span><a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://beechhousemedia.com</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are on Facebook, you
can give me a follow right here, </span><a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at </span><a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</span></a></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-82263652656920447882021-04-16T11:17:00.000+01:002021-04-16T11:17:12.090+01:00That Retro Thing - Vintage and Retro Art Guide for Artists<h1 style="text-align: left;"> <b style="text-indent: -36pt;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The
Retro Revival</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W56JX5FTH-c/YHlFM4icKxI/AAAAAAAAGeM/ak09WnvkQtEGIXgSY85mF5nO5ZzPLhcGgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/retro%2Bcover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="retro images and text" border="0" data-original-height="670" data-original-width="1200" height="358" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W56JX5FTH-c/YHlFM4icKxI/AAAAAAAAGeM/ak09WnvkQtEGIXgSY85mF5nO5ZzPLhcGgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h358/retro%2Bcover.png" title="that retro thing blog cover image" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Back to the 80s, 90s, and every other decade ever!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In my last musing, we concluded
my recent ‘Your Art Career’ series by unpacking crazy ideas to discover new
niches. This week, we take one of those niches and unpack it in a lot more
detail. So, sit back, grab a coffee, maybe even a packed lunch, and join me as
we go on quite the trip back to the past
with a retro revival!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The psyche of retro…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I have always been fascinated
with the past, whether it is my own past and memories of my childhood back in
the days when the responsibility monster didn’t enter the house through the
letterbox disguised as a bill every morning, or whether I’m discovering an
historic era that I had only ever read about in books or watched as a
documentary on TV. The past fascinates me, or at least much of it does. I‘m
much more into the 1960s onwards than I am about the 1860s unless we’re strictly
talking about art and then I’m all in from about the 1400s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WzRrfFaErmI/YHlF7OCuuMI/AAAAAAAAGeU/vujWJZi236cfgl4dfrcSnBXtbSsu5UyagCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/press%2Bplay%2Bon%2Btape.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="80s technology yin and yang art" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WzRrfFaErmI/YHlF7OCuuMI/AAAAAAAAGeU/vujWJZi236cfgl4dfrcSnBXtbSsu5UyagCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/press%2Bplay%2Bon%2Btape.jpg" title="Press Play On Tape by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Press Play On Tape, one of my latest creations that takes us back to the eighties! Part of my brand new Yin and Yang Collection!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">I love looking back at the
history that has been made during my own lifetime, the defining moments that have
moved history along. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the space race, the cold war,
the way people would use language differently in the 70s, even how people just
a few decades ago imagined what the future might look like is something that fascinates
me. Where’s my flying car? What really fascinates me is how our own pasts have
been documented by artists and that sense that we really do have many shared
experiences as a human race.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I am never happier than when
I’m flipping through an old magazine, I love the slight aroma of childhood that
emanates from the pages, I even love looking at the adverts because those were
the days pre-the internet when a magazine would be the only way of finding out
what the future held. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The magazine was a
physical, hold in your hand experience, unreliant on an electricity supply to
read it and you could take it anywhere. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Over the years I have become a
magazine hoarder, retaining old computer magazines and those that would
showcase the latest technology, and I’m unwilling to part with them for fear of
losing memories. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whenever I pick them up now, I’m
intrigued by how much currency we gave to some technology which was billed as
the next big thing only for it to then fizzle out within a few months after
release. It’s surprising just how much technology got released only for a
limited time and even more surprising just how many of us fell under its spell
as early adopters. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m not so naïve as to think
that my rose-tinted glasses of the past only ever show the world through a lens
of positivity, there are periods of history in my own lifetime that I would
sooner forget. All too often I have rediscovered something from my younger days
only to find out that it wasn’t quite how I remembered it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some things, and even some
places, maybe even some people really don’t age that well and the memories are often
way better than the reality ever was. As we grow, our own expectations grow
with us, life was much simpler back in the day, but was it really or were we
just too young to realise that it wasn’t? We certainly didn’t have the
distractions that we have today but neither did we have the access or
convenience that we have today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whilst some of that old
technology never sold very well, there is no denying that nostalgia sells. It
always has but in the midst of a global pandemic, it’s perhaps even more of a
comfort blanket than it ever has been before. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether it is artwork or a
release of a new product that nods back to times gone by, people love to
connect to their past, at least for the most part. One only has to take a look
online to find out that something is about to be reinvented and reimagined or
remixed for the 21<sup>st</sup> Century, and we can’t seem to get enough of these
revivals, remixes, and anniversary editions. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">From classic games consoles that
have now been miniaturised and include dozens of original video games that we
would once have played throughout our childhood, right the way through to
folding cell phones that take the concept of the original flip phone and pretty
much destroy it. It’s like everyone is looking to the past, probably in the
hope of fixing the future. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SbuIZrGHjRw/YHlGtdtVVfI/AAAAAAAAGec/eHCpVaaJK440yb-czpX5ydTrdRpe39TfgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Tear%2BDown%2BThis%2BWall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="80s technology artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SbuIZrGHjRw/YHlGtdtVVfI/AAAAAAAAGec/eHCpVaaJK440yb-czpX5ydTrdRpe39TfgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Tear%2BDown%2BThis%2BWall.jpg" title="Tear Down This Wall" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Tear Down This Wall - another one of my 80s works, but can you spot more than 100 references to the eighties? They're all there, even if they're not immediately obvious!! Even world events of the age are referenced in this work.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">According to psychologists,
there’s a lot more going on than us simply hankering after days gone by. Scientists
believe that nostalgia is important in building emotional resilience, looking
back at memories of the past can help you to visualise a more positive future. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Hearing a sound, seeing an image,
or smelling something, or just remembering past times or actively participating
in something that we had fond memories of doing in a bygone era can remind us
of our early life experiences, either good or bad. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These experiences and feelings
trigger the brain's built-in reward centre which then fires the
neurotransmitters that are involved in pleasure and salience. This produces dopamine
and gives us a pleasurable hit. So, it seems as if we don’t just like nostalgia,
we actively crave it so we can experience what can only be called a high. I
find this remarkable given that nostalgia was once thought to be a disease that
needed to be cured.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">More and more of us are
looking for that nostalgia hit too. Since the start of the pandemic there has
been a resurgence in retro video gaming with prices of vintage gaming consoles
and home computers skyrocketing on platforms such as eBay. A 1980s video game
console might have cost around $50 (or around £50 UK) a little more than a year
ago, but since the beginning of the pandemic, those on offer today are being
badged as being either rare or ‘super-rare and having some kind of imaginary retro
tax applied.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s not that unusual to see
an old video games console up for sale on an auction website for the buy it now
price of hundreds of dollars when pre-pandemic and certainly a year or so
earlier, the very same system could have been picked up for around a fifth of
the price and before that, for even less, at one time they were almost being
given away. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Sellers are selling the hit,
not just the product and they’re using tactics such as labelling them as
super-rare to give us a sense of urgency and scarcity, it’s the classic
marketing model. Except of course they’re not that rare, or at least most of
them aren’t but that doesn’t stop us buying into the hype when everyone else is
clambering to buy the same thing. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JN-HTRNOkmQ/YHlHg3Ls7YI/AAAAAAAAGek/u2RDYbDGzngKPPqHUqMslQjjrXVAK6SJQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/art%2Bsupplies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="fabric art depicting art and craft supplies" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JN-HTRNOkmQ/YHlHg3Ls7YI/AAAAAAAAGek/u2RDYbDGzngKPPqHUqMslQjjrXVAK6SJQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/art%2Bsupplies.jpg" title="Art Supplies by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Art Supplies - one of my recent works and yes, there are nods to the eighties in this piece too! Anyone else remember those tubes of school glue, the steel ruler, safety scissors and the mandatory sewing class!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Plenty of these allegedly rare
systems still exist in working condition in attics around the world, but what
has happened is that people are seeing the resurgence of retro as a way to sell
that dopamine hit and a childhood memory that we’re all craving for, and
because most folk might not have seen something on the retail shelves for a
while and the assumption is that there are fewer of whatever about. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some thirty million Atari 2600
video computer systems were sold back in the golden days of video gaming and whether
they’re working or not today, they still exist in big numbers so they’re not
rare, even working ones are just not that rare, these things were way better
built than we build things today. What is rare is for someone to clean out the
attic at the time that you want to buy one. If people stopped falling for this
for a while, I am confident the market would level back off to how it was in
more sensible, precedented times. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Surprisingly, the genuine
vintage technology dealers will mostly be selling this stuff at much more
reasonable prices than individuals will be selling it for, but at a time when
we’re all looking for a safety blanket, the warm fuzzy feeling of positive
childhood memories together with that dopamine hit, well, it’s probably enough
to convince us that we need to place much higher bids than anything is really
worth. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Who buys retro?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, I’m not entirely sure
there is even a specifically defined audience for retro, certainly not in the
same way it could be defined a few years ago. Back then, I would have said that
retro was very much an almost fifty-thing, which might sound stereotypical and
as if it was linked to some kind of mid-life crisis, but retro a few years ago
was a very different market. At that time, the market for anything retro was
tied to a specific subject, event, or time, with a very specific demographic
aligned to each, retro was niche and it was often a small niche.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As we age, our own retro
reality and what we have the fondest memories of ages along with us. What’s
retro or vintage to me isn’t necessarily going to be retro or vintage to
someone older or younger or even the same age, and millennials are buying into retro
and vintage just as much as anyone else. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro isn’t age exclusive, and
neither is it exclusive to a specific thing. Retro is on-trend and appeals to a
much wider demographic than it once did and it’s constantly changing, what
wasn’t retro yesterday is suddenly highly collectable today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Millennials have their own version of retro which you would think would be very firmly rooted in the nineties and
noughties, but millennials are buying retro-inspired creations that depict
everything from the cold war to the 1950s. Retro in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century,
it seems, has a very broad appeal and I don’t think we can any longer
categorically say that the market for any retro work is definitely more of this
and less of that for any particular demographic. I am constantly surprised by
clients of all age groups who are now buying some of my retro works that would
once only appeal to a very specific group of collectors.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whilst more defined markets
exist for certain retro subjects, the market isn’t necessarily now limited to
only those looking for a specific subject. Retro is a style that people can buy
into regardless of the subject matter, and people do seem to be buying into
eras as much as anything that went on or was available within them. If you have
a fifties home décor theme going on, then anything that ties into that fifty’s
era is fair game to add some authenticity to the décor.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro, vintage, what’s the
difference?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What it perhaps comes down to for
an artist wanting to produce retro-inspired works is whether the style you are
creating is a nod to the past with some artistic licence or an authentic
recreation that might not fit quite so well with modern décor, something a
little more detailed, a little more authentic, less of a nod to the past, more
very much just like the past. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If I had to break the
demographics down in such a granular way, those might be the two most distinct
areas of retro I would say could be more defined and be more applicable to
specific demographics. I think today, you’re either creating authentic or
decorative retro and you might or might not focus on a specific subject, what
you will be more focussed on is that the work fits with a particular era and
you will inevitably find a style and an era that suits your ability as an
artist.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think what we can say about
retro is that, if you were ever looking for a niche that appeals to the
broadest section of society, you essentially have two choices. Food which we
buy to survive or nostalgia that we buy to remember, and sometimes even those two
things are linked. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Language of Retro…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whilst there is plenty of
material in the genre of retro that can keep an artist in work forever, retro
can be an incredibly challenging artistic genre to pull off. What we tend to
see with a lot of retro work today is a nod to a period in time that relies on
artistic licence rather than any kind of authentic presentation, but the
description of the work might be nuanced towards the wrong demographic and it
fails to gain traction in any market. In short, whilst it is a broad market,
you can still miss the mark when it comes to marketing the work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro-inspired along with
artistic licence is a trend, it’s faux, mainly decorative, and perhaps doesn’t
provide the viewer with the same kind of dopamine hit in the way that something
more authentic would, but it is the nod to the past that a specific retro
viewer is looking for and it very much has a market. For me, I think this falls
into a category of functional art, it generally has a very specific purpose,
although not always.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That kind of decorative, faux
retro has a place, but for an artist looking to create authentic retro pieces
that are perhaps better described as vintage, it’s important to realise that those
who are genuinely looking to reconnect with the past are more likely to be sticklers
for detail, they want authenticity, they want the work to give them a snapshot
of the past that they can connect with and they will be looking for that
dopamine hit that will scratch their itch for nostalgia.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Having said that, it is
possible to add some artistic licence to more historically accurate pieces but,
in this instance, the trigger of nostalgia will be more reliant on the story
the work tells. A good retro artist is also a storyteller, and unfortunately,
not every artist can tell a story which is why retro can be challenging to pull
off convincingly.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro can be a confusing genre
to work in. Whilst some people want a retro-inspired piece that fits in with
modern surroundings, other people look for much more authenticity. It can be
challenging for an artist to create retro work if they aren’t specific enough
about what they want to create, the work risks becoming either nor. Either
they’re creating a piece that nods back to a period in time, or they’re
producing an authentic retro experience filled with authenticity and I think
those styles of retro artworks are two very different things that can sometimes
be confused. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think it stems from the
interchangeability of the terms vintage and retro. Retro is really something
that is new that imitates something from the past, it’s something that can have
much more in the way of artistic licence applied to it. Vintage on the other
hand is something old and original, and where this gets recreated, the devil, as
they say, is really in the detail because it is much more of a recreation of
original. It’s also a matter of timing, retro can describe anything from twenty
years or more ago but that’s subjective, vintage is older and can also be
described as antique depending on just how old it is.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Getting the terminology
correct is really important, creating a vintage-inspired work and labelling it
as retro will miss the market for vintage, equally, labelling a work as vintage
but giving it a retro-inspired makeover is something that you could actually
create, but there is yet another market that exists for that particular style
of work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is also a vibrant fine
art market for scenes of the past or where the work tells a compelling story
that triggers a memory within the viewer. Retro is acutely more diverse than
many other artistic subjects in the direction that the artist can take it, but
you do need to be specific about what you have created and I think there is a
difference between painting history and painting retro.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As confusing as it seems, I’m
possibly oversimplifying things a little, there are way more nuances between
the terms vintage and retro and it is very much down to individual
interpretation as much as anything else especially when it comes to what gets
classed as being retro, vintage, or antique. Ask some people and vintage
should only ever be used to describe the age of wine which stems from the
French word Vendage, meaning ‘the grapes picked during a season’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think it’s all about the
timing. if you are trying to recreate a particular look or feel, it’s really
important that you get the language that describes and identifies the piece
correct, but it’s also critical if you are aiming to give something a
genuinely authentic aesthetic, that you also carry out some research and
absolutely nail the detail so that you’re creating what would have been present
at, and of the time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y_tj0FVHZJU/YHlJCoBIKaI/AAAAAAAAGes/n1biMdnhqKItbMJ3Xxf_uEE7T01na-GvgCLcBGAsYHQ/s512/8%2Bbit%2B32x32.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="8 bit art duck on water" border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Y_tj0FVHZJU/YHlJCoBIKaI/AAAAAAAAGes/n1biMdnhqKItbMJ3Xxf_uEE7T01na-GvgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/8%2Bbit%2B32x32.png" title="8 bit art by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Strictly not 8-bit, this image is created using 32 x 32 pixels so would have been used in 16 bit and later, 32-bit systems. Grab some graph paper, spilt it into 8x8 or 16x16 grids and then tell a story within the grid. It's a great way to sharpen your storytelling and your creativity! It's lots of fun too!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My own experience of creating
‘retro’ stems back to the eighties, except back then it wasn’t so much retro,
it really was cutting edge. I had a small modicum of success in creating video
game art, or more specifically, the sprites that would be used as characters in
video games, although I had slightly less success with a game I produced, but
which did get published. I was producing digital art way before even Warhol
made it trendy, the difference is that I wasn’t anywhere near as good at
marketing, nothing changes, I guess!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Surprisingly, my work in this
area has never stopped. Whilst the way I produce digital art is very different
today, I’m still serving a market of retro game fans with arcade cabinet art
and covers for homebrew games on the original home computers, rather than the
immensely detailed environment and concept art that you might find in modern
games that create the look and feel of an entire world which tend to be created
by teams of dozens of artists. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As for those chunky eight by
eight pixelated sprites, I still get asked to create them, usually as posters to
hang in retro-inspired spaces and not just in stereotypical man-caves. I get
commissions from female gamers and retro fans too, and occasionally I also get
commissions from homebrew coders who just don’t have the time to produce
character sets or when they need cover art for their latest game that runs on
original hardware. For some works, I still utilise the original hardware to
create the images which makes me sound like a technology hoarder and I think
it’s fair to say I am. When my vintage home computers are all buzzing away it
can feel like walking into one of those independent high street computer
retailers in 1982.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m often more than happy to
take those kinds of commissions on, even out of love sometimes. First, I’m a
retro gamer, second, I’m still living in the eighties, and because it’s
important to protect the legacy of the golden age of home computing and video
games. We should never forget just how vital the likes of Atari were to modern-day computing, not just gaming. The internet wouldn’t be anything like the same
as it is today had it have not been for the likes of Atari and Commodore
bringing this technology into the home. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Know Your Era…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Selecting an era to base your
retro-inspired ideas on might be down to the artistic style you feel more
comfortable with creating than your passion for any particular era. If we take
a look back through the decades since the fifties, every one of them could
easily be defined by very specific and very different styles. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The rounded corners of kitchen
appliances in the fifties, the unexpected colour combinations of the sixties
with an almost futuristic feel to both architecture and furniture. That sixties
and seventies architecture that had so much utility seems to be coming back
post-pandemic with many organisations now focussing on the environmental
benefits of refurbishment rather than rebuild, and the more recent migration
away from open office spaces and hot desks which are now being seen as harbours
of infection. Finally, we might get our own offices back but this time with a
soap dispenser hung next to the door.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Who could forget the seventies
and the groovy bright colours which always seemed to be accented with a mustard
hue? The eighties, with its shoulder pads and neon-lit shopping malls, always
take me back to my childhood, whereas the nineties, at least for me, was
defined by knotted pine and the purple walls found in the TV show Friends. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I find that getting an
authentic sixties vibe down on canvas is especially challenging but give me a
project that’s based on the eighties and I am well and truly in my comfort zone
as you can probably guess. Despite being born right at the very end of the sixties,
my passion for the eighties is, I think it’s fair to say, bordering on the
almost obsessive. Perhaps stemming from both fond memories of the decade and a
couple of years working on almost nothing but Cold War inspired artworks and
props for period theatrical plays and of course, creating those images that
would jump around in video games, the eighties for me were great days. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-voIgyw_Zb2w/YHlMZUUGTkI/AAAAAAAAGe0/13vJIvpIMXwGhSajMrYi3zBFkMbnNVxhwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/prop%2Bdocs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="recreated documents vintage letters" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-voIgyw_Zb2w/YHlMZUUGTkI/AAAAAAAAGe0/13vJIvpIMXwGhSajMrYi3zBFkMbnNVxhwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/prop%2Bdocs.jpg" title="My recreations of aged documents" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Getting the fonts, papers, and typography correct is just so important when working on props, here's an earlier selection. Not sure which, if any, of these ever got used, but I do remember getting paper cuts from cutting out the tickets. Lots of research and photo references involved!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are lucky enough to be
able to apply your artistic style to your favourite era, that really helps with
recreating the authentic vibe that collectors and buyers yearn for, but I don’t
think it’s necessarily easy to force a particular artistic style if you’re not
already comfortable in creating it. I think that goes with any artistic
endeavour, you have to be comfortable first and then develop from there. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">From Feel to Font!</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When creating a retro or vintage-inspired artwork from whatever era, there are a few things that are worth
considering that will add more of an authentic touch to your work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Textures…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whilst every era can be
identified by its design style, every era also had its own texture. The texture becomes really important when you are producing any kind of historically based
reference. The small rip or tear or the crumpled page can age a design so that
it becomes more authentic, but it can also make a piece feel less mass-produced. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the most versatile
techniques used in digital art lends itself perfectly to creating retro
inspired textures. The use of texture images laid down as overlays and then
blended into the background using the overlay tool, can mean that you can even
age a digitally created work rather than having to rely on finding the right
physical medium to print or produce the work on. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sSC22NtDUpg/YHlNqk7BiHI/AAAAAAAAGe8/szxSmxMgMRcDg-pEtgUvVWn9UU6yTrNEACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/overlay%2Bexample%2B1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="using overlay tool in Procreate App on iPad Pro" border="0" data-original-height="1431" data-original-width="2048" height="448" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sSC22NtDUpg/YHlNqk7BiHI/AAAAAAAAGe8/szxSmxMgMRcDg-pEtgUvVWn9UU6yTrNEACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h448/overlay%2Bexample%2B1.png" title="Using the Overlay Tool" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Add a texture image above the image you need to create the effect on, size it, or use the clipping mask to only apply it to the layer directly beneath, and then go to the transparency menu and select overlay or one of the other blending effects. <br /><br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FueR8WOOEMQ/YHlOQeFwjzI/AAAAAAAAGfE/tEz62E3TwBoYiiPBfX9pj2BhYIXPgKtkgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/overlay%2Bapplied%2Bexample%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="overlay tool in procreate on palm tree image" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FueR8WOOEMQ/YHlOQeFwjzI/AAAAAAAAGfE/tEz62E3TwBoYiiPBfX9pj2BhYIXPgKtkgCLcBGAsYHQ/w426-h640/overlay%2Bapplied%2Bexample%2B2.jpg" title="Using the overlay tool and blending in Procreate on iPad Pro" width="426" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A flat image will now have texture. You can also build up textures by repeating the process and merging the layers in between. It takes a little practice but Procreate on the iPad Pro makes it very easy. Similar results can be achieved in Photoshop too.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Shading, noise, and slightly
blurred backgrounds can be used to great effect to create some beautiful
textures, add depth and provide that aged shade look that many retro and
vintage works have. Adding a border can make a modern creation appear aged, but
there is one technique that is often never applied to a retro or vintage work,
and that is the technique of keeping things simple. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Choose any decade pre-the
noughties, and you will find that images tend to be much simpler than they are
today. The tools to create pseudo-3D effects didn’t really exist and when they
did, they were inaccessible to all but the biggest corporations who could
afford that kind of technology. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are looking to recreate
authenticity in a work, that’s kind of an important detail to remember and it’s
also refreshing to have to limit your toolset to roughly what would have been
available to create the work at the time, even if you are creating the work
digitally. Lately, I have been noticing more and more of my artist friends
looking towards techniques such as silk screen printing and finally finding a
use for those skills we learned in school. Anyone remember mixing those powder
poster paints and where they even safe?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Typography… </span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When you are working with both
vintage and retro-inspired works, typography plays a key role. Adding a modern
font to a period piece will completely destroy the vibe of the time you are
aiming to recreate. Here’s a quick run down to give you an idea around the time
period that is generally tied into fonts.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">1900s… <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Morris Fueller Benton’s <b><i>News
Gothic</i></b> is a sans serif font that can also be found in the opening text
scroll of Star Wars. Anything from around 1910 might though be better suited to
<b><i>Johnston</i></b>, which is classified as a humanist san-serif font.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">1920 – another humanist
sans-serif font called <b><i>Gill Sans</i></b> could be used, at least until we
get to the 1930s when the <b><i>Times New Roman</i></b> style would be found
in newspapers. Text similar in style to the <b><i>Fairfield</i></b> (serif)
font would have been popular in film during the 1940s, but when we get to the
50s, the san-serif <b><i>Univers</i></b> would have a much more authentic feel.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The 1960s as we head towards
the era of the Space Race would be more attuned to using something like the
geometric sans-serif, <b><i>Eurostile</i></b> but as we travel in time to the
70s, then something like <b><i>ITC Avant Garde</i></b> would be reminiscent of
the typography of the period. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you need something
different from the seventies, there is plenty of choice with many styles
spilling over into the eighties. <b><i>Mouse, Bauhaus Geomet, </i></b><i>(other
Bauhaus fonts were typical of the time too),<b> Helvetica, Menhir, </b></i>and <b><i>Futura,
</i></b>could be used for 70s inspired works, but an <b><i>Aki Lines</i></b>
style was often found in anything related to music during that particular
decade and it is now reappearing in more recent titles.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The eighties were a real mixed
bag of typography, <b><i>Avenir</i></b> is perhaps one font that could be used
for most things of the age, but neon effects were really coming into their own
by this point. In the 90s, particularly if you are recreating signage, then <b><i>Meta</i></b>,
another humanist sans-serif font is useful to have in your library.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The eighties also dominated popular culture
and video game inspired fonts such as <b><i>Pac Font</i></b>, <b><i>Arcade
Classic, Sabo, VCR OSD, and Bayshore </i></b>which can all give your work a
much more authentic feel.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retrofuturism which we
briefly touched on in my last article became really popular again in the
eighties, <b><i>Stargaze </i></b>and <b><i>Paralines </i></b>are two beautiful
fonts that deserve to be seen in any retro-futuristic work from that era. <i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>As I suggested last time, take a look at
Walt Disney World’s Tomorrowland as a shining example of retro-futurism, it’s
an essential field trip for any retro-futuristic artist and I still want to
become a Disney Imagineer when I grow up. You can also check it out on YouTube.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Dope, Spot, Hanover, Vogue,
Samson, </span></i></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">were popular in the 1990s, and 1995 saw the
introduction of my all-time-least favourite font, <b><i>Comic Sans</i></b>. Some
love it, I’m afraid I’m not one of them, and it was designed for a specific
reason that isn’t a reason to still use it today. A program called Microsoft
Bob used speech bubbles to communicate with young computer users, but it also
used <b><i>Times New Roman</i></b>, which designer Vincent Connare thought
wasn’t accessible, so he came up with Comic Sans instead.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Although Comic Sans wasn’t
ready in time for the release of Microsoft’s Bob, it instead became the font of
Microsoft Publisher, appeared as a font in Windows 95 and was seen as a font
that wasn’t confrontational so was used in company branding, a little too
often. I recently found some business cards picked up from a trade show from a
decade ago and nine of the ten had used Comic Sans. Even back then, this really
wasn’t a good design choice that I could get behind. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, as a font, it’s
divisive, it probably has a place, but I have no idea where that place might be,
yet I know a few people who love it and continue to use it. Honestly, not a fan
but it has got people talking about fonts I guess which is remarkable in itself
because a few years ago I would never have put money on anyone ever having a
conversation about fonts outside of a design agency. I digress, let’s get back
to it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Gotham</span></i></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> style
typography became popular in the 2000s, and nothing really changed until the
end of the decade when <b><i>Open Sans</i></b><i> </i>style typography became
more prevalent. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A font choice, particularly
when it is being used in a retro-inspired design, can make, or break not just
the artwork, but the entire era the work represents. I don’t think I could ever
imagine a font such as Comic Sans being used on a 60s album cover from Jimi
Hendrix or David Bowie, it just wouldn’t capture the era let alone the music
and it certainly wouldn’t match the period. So just as you do with texture, you
really do have to research the fonts of the period if you intend to use fonts
at all.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One piece of font-astic
advice, and please forgive the pun because it was intended because I just came
up with that and it made me laugh, is that you should never skimp on font
licencing. Using professional fonts rather than relying on utilising the ‘almost
but not quite’ era-correct fonts that can be found in free font libraries, is
worth the additional expense. It sometimes feels like everyone uses open-source
fonts that tend to lead to works either losing their historical accuracy or
works that can begin to appear samey. The right font will elevate the work
above every other piece that uses those more generic variants and it’s
generally a wise investment even if it is a little more expensive. The world is
full of font-snobs who can spot the difference between a free font and
something that costs a little money. Don't skimp on these things, they're important!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Colour Pallets…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If fonts can elevate a piece,
they still can’t quite match the power that using the correct colour pallet can
bring to a retro-inspired creation. A colour pallet alone can conjure up
memories of certain times. The eighties were perhaps renowned for bright pinks
and purples and metallic gradients, the seventies were garish but applying the
correct and historically most accurate colour palette to any retro creation can
be the difference between a viewer being transported back to an era or walking
right on past the work. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MK0qC2EvALQ/YHlSUVoLc4I/AAAAAAAAGfM/T_OexOg94uo9jlF-t-InmDaryU12nrRewCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/purple%2B80s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="purple colour palette" border="0" data-original-height="1082" data-original-width="1600" height="432" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MK0qC2EvALQ/YHlSUVoLc4I/AAAAAAAAGfM/T_OexOg94uo9jlF-t-InmDaryU12nrRewCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h432/purple%2B80s.jpg" title="Purple 80s pallet" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">80s Purple Pallet</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--zEziBQMfGc/YHlSlfb-dEI/AAAAAAAAGfU/F_7DLyE4IjAcgwHPZMjmapHPFKpdEaPRQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/silver%2B80s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="silver colour pallet" border="0" data-original-height="1087" data-original-width="1600" height="434" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--zEziBQMfGc/YHlSlfb-dEI/AAAAAAAAGfU/F_7DLyE4IjAcgwHPZMjmapHPFKpdEaPRQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h434/silver%2B80s.jpg" title="80s silver pallet" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Silver 80s Pallet</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4uJbpKrDkZU/YHlS61ARz2I/AAAAAAAAGfc/gmmOEP8vS4Ab6K5Dj7gYGlAuEmGW3KgywCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/light%2B80s%2Bblue.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="blue colour pallet" border="0" data-original-height="1078" data-original-width="1600" height="432" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4uJbpKrDkZU/YHlS61ARz2I/AAAAAAAAGfc/gmmOEP8vS4Ab6K5Dj7gYGlAuEmGW3KgywCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h432/light%2B80s%2Bblue.jpg" title="80s Blues Colour Pallet" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">80s Blues Colour Pallet</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V8ENMvG5K0M/YHlTKiCkW0I/AAAAAAAAGfk/ZplBCFFgSGch8ZX6ntckCcEP8QUND8PhgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/light%2B80s%2Bgreen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="green colour pallet" border="0" data-original-height="1082" data-original-width="1600" height="432" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V8ENMvG5K0M/YHlTKiCkW0I/AAAAAAAAGfk/ZplBCFFgSGch8ZX6ntckCcEP8QUND8PhgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h432/light%2B80s%2Bgreen.jpg" title="80s green pallet" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">80s Green Colour Pallet</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Again, this really comes down
to carrying out some research, exploring the colour pallets of the time and
then experimenting. One of the things I do frequently with some of my digital
work once I have completed it, is to take the original files and then recolour
them with different pallets. The muted 50s inspired artwork recoloured to
convey the neon eighties can look like two entirely different creations which
can be quite the mind-bender at times producing some really interesting and
creative effects.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Researching Retro…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I’m one of those kinds of
people who have to research everything, but the amount of research I do is
often determined by the passion I have for the subject. I might spend a couple
of hours with my head in a book or glued to a screen but give me a subject I
can become super-enthused about and the research can last for weeks, months,
and sometimes even years. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My passion for digital art
started in 1981, although arguably, it might have been 1980 which is officially
when I took my first digital commission for some scrolling text to appear on a
display screen, in part, because I was a bedroom coder, read geek, and in part
because I was cheap enough to hire, I would only need to cover the cost of a
new computer game on a cassette tape and have enough change for some pick ‘n’
mix sweets. My trip down the rabbit hole of researching digital art still
continues to this day. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro is a broad subject, and
I’m using the term retro quite loosely here to describe vintage and every other
variation. Depending on what retro route you decide to follow will determine
where you will find the best research resources. But, researching retro isn’t
just about scouring websites or flicking through magazines and books from the
past, the best research will come directly from those who experienced the era
you are following, so there’s ample opportunity for face-to-face discussion
with this subject. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One pointer I think is
important to mention is that when you do research retro, it’s probably a better
idea to avoid directly researching retro-inspired artworks. There will be too
many influences from the artists who created the work and often, rather than
authenticity, you will start to see the work through the lens of a particular
artist and that in itself can be quite influential in what you go on to create.
We become influenced by what we’re exposed to, so my advice is to go straight back
to the original source, do your own research, and be inspired by original
rather than someone else’s interpretation of original.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">With a subject that looks back
to the past, it should be your own interpretation or your own research that is
depicted on canvas, otherwise, you run the risk of producing artwork that feels
very samey. The retro-inspired artwork market is already filled with art that
is already just like that and whilst nostalgia sells, not every piece of retro
inspired work will and less so when much of it looks so similar.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Once you have a subject in
mind, there are plenty of resources around, and there are plenty of vibrant
communities too. Podcasts exist for every subject under the sun these days, but
you might want to also check out older web-based forums, even those that remain
online but are no longer active. There are still some enthusiastic communities
for Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, and later the Garbage Pail Kids, and some really
bizarre subjects that no one would have thought would still have an active
community in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century, yet they do. Pick any of your
favourite toys from your childhood and I can almost guarantee that you will
find a community of fans still talking about it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of my go-to resources is
the <a href="https://archive.org/web/" target="_blank">Way Back Machine </a></span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">which
lets you take a look back at web pages just as they looked at the specific time
they were captured. Many were captured years ago, almost at the start of the
internet as we recognise it today, and there are abandoned pages and websites aplenty, even when the website owners have long given up on their one time
hopes and dreams for web-based stardom. It’s a digital archaeologists dream and
it allows you to really explore retro in ways that books or a general scour of
the internet just cannot match.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I would think you can safely
assume that by now, every subject has a webpage, or did at one time have a
webpage, because more than 552 billion pages exist on the site. It is another
deep, deep, rabbit hole and you do need to be prepared to spend some not
insignificant time getting a taste of what authentic really looked like back in
the day. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In my previous article, I gave
a shout out to a few retro video games podcasts, and if vintage and retro
gaming is something that you might feel inclined to stretch towards, a word of
advice from someone who has been involved with retro gaming since 70s and 80s
gaming was cutting edge, is to absolutely do the best research that you can.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro gamers are an
unforgiving bunch and can be harsher than any professional art critic over the
minutest of details. I know this because not only am I a retro and vintage
gamer with a history of having a little involvement in the industry during the
early days, I’m also obsessive about detail, just like many retro games
collectors are. It’s no different to any historic subject that gets depicted in
art, wherever fans exist, there will be an element of hardcore fans who really
do expect a high level of historical accuracy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Cultural Importance of
Video Games in Art…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Video games might not be a
subject that interests you, perhaps you might pick up your phone or tablet from
time to time and have a casual play on something, but if you are interested in
art, video game art isn’t something that only appears as bits and pixels in the
actual game, it has a huge following and it’s highly collectable. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Video game art is an entire
movement that is widely ignored outside of gaming and retro communities, but it
is an essential piece of the jigsaw in art education because it has major
crossovers with marketing and design. It is essentially an entire art education
in itself so even if you have no personal truck with games, the art of video
games is one that will both enrich and inform your current level of art understanding regardless of the artistic style that you follow.
It should absolutely be a staple in any art curriculum because it is a one-stop-shop of everything art. Forget the subject matter, this is how the art business works when it comes to product promotion and design.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In video games themselves there
is an element of in-game art, entire worlds are beautifully created using both
traditional and digital artists skills and when we look at the retro games’
scene more broadly, an entirely new art market springs up that is both
fascinating and a source of constant surprise even to this day.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The research for older video
games is fascinating from all sorts of perspectives. An enthusiastic and
vibrant art market exists for the artwork that appeared on arcade cabinets and cabinet
marquees back in the early to mid-eighties, and from the box art and
advertising that went along with any new home computer and video console releases.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Think back to the days of
Atari, Intellivision and Coleco, and way before Nintendo and Sega, and what you
will find is a fascinating glimpse into an often-forgotten art world, or at
least forgotten in a mainstream sense but some of the artists creating the
images at the time went on to do great work and today their original works are
highly collectable and eye wateringly expensive to buy. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JTfswDMh_N4/YHlXgIRrbWI/AAAAAAAAGfs/zQ2wUbZsHhUO-kkjlEaCbZo6xa16u6i7wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/atari%2Bboxes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Video game box art" border="0" data-original-height="1160" data-original-width="2048" height="362" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JTfswDMh_N4/YHlXgIRrbWI/AAAAAAAAGfs/zQ2wUbZsHhUO-kkjlEaCbZo6xa16u6i7wCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h362/atari%2Bboxes.jpg" title="video game box art" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Atari video game box art, just like the arcade game cabinets had to pull in a crowd of eager paying players. The art had to tell a story and the artists were masters of their craft. Image used as a reference, all rights belong to the rights holder and artists.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Artists such as John Enright,
Susan Jaekel, Cliff Spohn, and George Opperman were the very artists that got
me into art in the first place, as did the work of fantasy artist Oliver Frey,
a little later. Ollie is a Brit who created the art for home computer magazines.
Spohn, Opperman, and Jaekel were the artists who also designed those wonderful
boxes that Atari games would be packaged in and the side art that appeared on
arcade cabinets which would either be vinyl or hand-painted usually with
stencils. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Those images told stories that
the games themselves certainly couldn’t convey with their limited blocky
graphics. In hindsight, they were often masterpieces of storytelling which we
can now learn from even if the subject matter doesn’t appeal to you. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Not only did their work have
to convey a story, but it also had to appeal to a broad swathe of the public. Listen to
those who were around at the time and they will tell you that it was the artwork
that supported the games that would convert the nation’s youth into gamers, one
quarter at a time. It was a strategy to utilise the artwork to attract paying
players and it succeeded. We exchanged money for games based on how excited we
were by the art on the cover or on the side of the arcade cabinet, everything
really was about how appealing the design could be made. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Let that sink in for a moment
because as a ten-year-old, that is exactly what got me excited about art and I
would think that for a lot of ten-year-olds of the time, visiting the arcades
and seeing the artwork was one of the few times beyond the school trip to an
art gallery that kids would be exposed to artwork, and they appreciated it. I
remember having conversations with school friends about colour, and how crisp
the images were on specific cabinets, not fully understanding that this was
down to the printing process. Ten-year-olds were having conversations about
art, I think we might have lost that.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iMhlcPl4W2w/YHlYVGBbcaI/AAAAAAAAGf0/ruVRItx1_44d-zI-UIsndit67HD48fsGwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Created%2Bon%2Bthe%2BCommodore%2BAmiga.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="portrait of a woman in computer graphics" border="0" data-original-height="1491" data-original-width="2048" height="466" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iMhlcPl4W2w/YHlYVGBbcaI/AAAAAAAAGf0/ruVRItx1_44d-zI-UIsndit67HD48fsGwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h466/Created%2Bon%2Bthe%2BCommodore%2BAmiga.PNG" title="Portrait of a Woman Amiga Art" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A portrait recreated using the Commodore Amiga A500 and Delux Paint. Notice the scan lines of the CRT monitor and the more vibrant glow than you would get from a modern LCD or OLED display. It will look much better on a CRT display than it does here even though that will not be in anything like HD resolution.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">No publisher, or at least very
few were able to create screenshots of the games on the packaging and when they
did it was almost always from a better system, so it was always down to the
artwork to bring the players closer to the arcade game or to the home version. It
was the artwork that told the story and filled in the gaps that the graphics
and even the gameplay couldn’t. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That art was magnetic, it had
to attract a buyer from a distance, and it did, it was bold, and there was a
certain aesthetic about it that still feels just as on-point today. The games
could never sell the games in the way that the artwork did, art managed to
create an entire global industry from what people had initially said was just
one of those trends that will pass.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is significant cultural importance
in covering this subject, lots more people from the industry of the time should
be coming back and writing about it, especially as the publishers of the games
from the late 70s and right the way through to the noughties, were never very
good at archiving or documenting their work. Instead, it is often left to the
likes of retro collectors and enthusiasts to document what is really an
important industry and many of those who were involved at the time are edging
ever closer to no longer being around.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GjmCFuqWXu4/YHlb9CF2foI/AAAAAAAAGf8/HwU50DaKA-0T94_EyR4o4qOE3m69FBZtQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/created%2Bon%2Bthe%2BCommodore%2B64.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Commodore 64 art beach scene pixel art" border="0" data-original-height="1278" data-original-width="1920" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GjmCFuqWXu4/YHlb9CF2foI/AAAAAAAAGf8/HwU50DaKA-0T94_EyR4o4qOE3m69FBZtQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h426/created%2Bon%2Bthe%2BCommodore%2B64.PNG" title="Commodore 64 Beach Scene" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Work in progress on a working Commodore 64 vintage computer system. Recreating a beach scene, this is coded using BASIC, Beginners All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. In itself, a long lost art, there aren't many of us BASIC programmers left!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Culturally, the video games
industry has been responsible for so much development in the way of computing
and gaming. There will, I hope, be a time when eighties home computers and the
golden age of video games will be taught alongside other subjects of historical
importance, but the art should be revered given the task that it achieved. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s similar to other retro
subjects. Marketing had to be exactly on-point for any product to reach an
audience, there was no internet, everything relied on print media, TV, and word
of mouth or the product packaging. If the product didn’t have that
all-important ‘I need it’ factor, the product wouldn’t find its market. The art
hooked us, it’s what sold the product.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Nailing down the authenticity…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When it comes to recreating
authenticity, we might be well served to look towards the more nefarious characters
who have been involved with the art industry or at least have been involved in
the shadows of the art industry. The dark side of the art world, one of
fakes and forgeries isn’t just fascinating in a kind of intriguing way, it is
an area that we can learn from when it comes to recreating authenticity. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whilst I would never condone
anyone forging a painting, I’m not so certain we can just cast aside the
obvious skill that some of these master forgers have. You simply cannot buy
authenticity, but you can sure as nails fake it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I would like to say that I am
savvy enough to be able to spot a fake at fifty paces, except I’m not, and
neither are many of the major galleries around the world who either knowingly
have forgeries within their collections or who are totally in the dark about
the origins of some of their assets. I dare say that those who do know are more
likely to keep their lips well and truly sealed, not only would it be
embarrassing for a major gallery to say they have it wrong, but it would also
shoot a hole right through the fine art market, just as it has done whenever
forgeries have been exposed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I have seen forgeries up
close, right next to originals and if I had to rely only on the naked eye, I
would wager a bet that even with a 50/50 probability of spotting the fake, most
people would choose the forgery as the original. The authenticity of a forgery
is something of a learnable skill, how well you perform that skill comes down
to experience and how well the provenance is forged to go with it and how much
of a convincing storyteller, the seller is.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What we can take away from the
criminally-minded masters of the present day who recreate the old masters of
the past is some of the techniques employed to age works and add details that
the naked eye will be drawn to. Extremely useful if we’re considering a career
move into retro and vintage art where authenticity is key but be mindful that
doing anything even remotely slightly outside of legal isn’t something that I
would recommend you do, even in the name of art.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cE9KZOOyAmI/YHldBQY0avI/AAAAAAAAGgE/WfHZqILoANM2T4V3mkNRLzLcbIlxDTILgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/new%2Bgame%2Bday.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="video game arcade artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cE9KZOOyAmI/YHldBQY0avI/AAAAAAAAGgE/WfHZqILoANM2T4V3mkNRLzLcbIlxDTILgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/new%2Bgame%2Bday.jpg" title="New Game Day by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Flaking paint on the doors, signage, screws, stone detail and weeds, just some of the extra detail I always tend to put into works, whether it is needed or not! This is my latest creation, New Game Day, a massive nod to summer in the 80s.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Know your pigment…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Even though much of my work
today is digitally created, that hasn’t always been the case and right now I
can literally touch three canvases I’m working on as I keep my traditional
skills honed and the commissions flowing. In short, if you are going down the
retro rabbit hole then knowing what materials were used in original pieces is
vital information to have if you are looking to recreate authenticity if it is
to be believable.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are looking to recreate
something pre-nineteenth century then it’s worth knowing that it wasn’t until
the 19<sup>th</sup> Century that industrial manufacturers began to produce
commercial studio-grade oil paints. It wasn’t until 1953 that acrylic paint
would be used and the very first of these were actually wall paints rather than
artist paints. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Artists would need to mix
their own paints prior to this, and it wasn’t inexpensive to do this even then.
Nothing ever changes with art supplies, does it? It wasn’t so much that the
paint itself was expensive to produce but the pigments used in the paints often
had to be imported. Some artists would use a siccative or extenders to make the
paint go further, and they are often used today, mainly in the form of barium
sulphate and alumina hydrate because neither of which have too much effect on
the tint. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Forgers realise this and will
go to painstaking lengths to recreate an almost exact pigment, but for
authentic vintage recreations you can mostly and thankfully take the less
onerous route of using modern commercial studio-grade paints, although if you
do need a little more authenticity, it might be worth experimenting with mixing
or adding in an extender. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Supports, paper and canvas…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When selecting the support, be
it paper, canvas, wood, or whatever medium of the period, there are techniques
you can apply to give the support an aged look. When I create artwork props or
documents, one of the things I always make sure I have to hand is some aged
paper stock. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are various ways of
ageing, at one time I would leave paper out in a sunlit area so that it became
naturally yellowed from UV light, the issue with that is that once this process
begins to happen, it is a process that then continues to degrade the medium and
there’s little if anything that can be done to prevent it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Expert forgers will look for
canvases and papers of a similar age may be produced in a similar region to the
canvas that the work originally appeared on and there is plenty of evidence to
suggest that master forgers would buy quite expensive artworks only to remove
the original paint and then recreate the old master on the now fresh but
appropriately aged and historically accurate canvas. There’s even some
anecdotal evidence to suggest that some forgers have done this and
inadvertently removed a painting that had a much higher monetary value then the
work they were about to forge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Depending on the exact level
of historical accuracy though, a seventies canvas print that probably will
never have any aesthetic, collectable or financial appeal might be the way to
create something even more authentic, but there are easier ways to age a canvas
that will suffice for most retro or vintage-inspired works unless you have a
local thrift store, in which case looking out for vintage frames and supports
is something that is definitely worth considering. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Ageing a modern canvas can be
done with diluted bleach by applying it to the back of the panel to give it the
brittle feeling that you would get when you touch an authentically aged work. If
you then add a mixture of umber and paint thinner together with the liquid from
soaked coffee grinds after straining them through a sieve, and then rub into
the canvas in circular motions, the ageing effect is quite convincing. I have
seen this done with soil and even sand which also provides some natural abrasion.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">On the front of the canvas, a 75/25
mixture of thinner together with a mix of umber will provide a nice, antiquated
effect and if you rub either walnut oil or the same mix that you applied on the
back of the canvas into any exposed wood, the finished piece will be completely
transformed into something that just feels really old and fragile but is still
much less fragile than the original might be.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Remember though, when you are
recreating authentic vintage or retro pieces, whilst the purist collectors of
vintage will be sticklers for detail, there’s still a great deal of artistic
licence that you can get away with. You’re not in the business of forging
artwork, your job is to provide the smoke and mirrors that trigger the
nostalgia hit the viewer is looking for. The trick is in making the viewer
believe what they are seeing, and arguably, that’s exactly what art forgers do
too!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some vintage work really does
need to have a stressed effect for it to be convincing. Sandpaper to gently scratch
paint away from wood or whatever medium the work is created on is a nice way to
provide a subtle stress effect, and you can round the corners of works which is
something that would naturally occur to artwork over time.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you need to create cracks
in the paint, you can either wait for fifty years or so, more in the case of
most modern paints or you could just use Elmer’s Glue with a thin layer for
hairline cracks and a thicker layer for larger and deeper cracks. If you then
apply a top coat of flat latex paint in a different colour over the glue and
then cure it with gentle heat, it is an inexpensive way to produce a
believable cracked paint effect.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Alternatively, you could opt
for a crackle medium, but these can work out to be quite expensive and if you
are anything like me whenever you visit the art supply store, you might decide
to spend the GDP of a major country on a range of all of the professional
mediums that are specifically designed to apply vintage or stressed effects. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Gn9zDlrOFd0/YHld7fmPmOI/AAAAAAAAGgM/ha1SGDFt-cc6ycC2GKhtmSx_zC-knD-xgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/wayback%2Bamazon%2Bcapture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="way back machine website screenshot" border="0" data-original-height="1181" data-original-width="2048" height="370" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Gn9zDlrOFd0/YHld7fmPmOI/AAAAAAAAGgM/ha1SGDFt-cc6ycC2GKhtmSx_zC-knD-xgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h370/wayback%2Bamazon%2Bcapture.PNG" title="Way Back Machine screenshot" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Wayback Machine at Archive.org is a rabbit hole that you might never leave! An outstanding source of discovering retro!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">For antique glazed effects, I
tend to steer away from ready mixed-effects mediums and instead mix raw umber,
burnt sienna, and a dark brown together. You might want to experiment with your
own ratios for this, but the effect can be much better controlled than you would
be able to achieve with a pre-mixed medium and you can always add thinner to
the mix if you want something more transparent. I tend to use this on projects
that involve ceramics, but it works great on furniture and canvases too and it
can really elevate the work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">On frames, it’s not uncommon
to see tiny woodworm holes on original pieces, and whilst it’s not something
that is completely necessary if you are using an older frame such as those you
can pick up for next to nothing in a thrift store, driving in a small nail and
removing it produces a similar effect. I then dip the nail into a slightly
darker than the frame paint just to add a little depth, and this has the added
benefit of protecting any exposed wood so that ironically, it’s less likely to
become a harbour for real woodworms. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Creating fly specks, the enemy
of many a fine art collector is easy enough to recreate using paint flicks, but
it is much better when this is done with thicker paint to give the flicks a more
of a raised texture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of my long-running side
hustles has been in creating props for theatre, tv and film, usually creating
documents but occasionally creating the random abstract that hangs in a lobby
for around half a second of screen time and this has taught me more than a few
short cuts and a few not quite so short cuts, to create special effects over
the years. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It has had a knock-on effect
in influencing some of my artwork too. I absolutely love to create deep levels
of detail that aren’t always immediately obvious to the viewer, it’s the kind
of it’s there if you look detail and it can be another one of those things
where I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or a curse, some of the detail in my
works can add hours to the time spent creating it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you can master a few
techniques that can give the appearance of ageing that won’t dramatically add
to the overall time needed to create the work, I think the detail is worth
adding. If it takes hours and hours, you do have to consider whether it is
worth doing, or whether you can recreate what you are looking to do in a
simpler way that just provides an indication that the detail is there. My own
problem is that I rarely if ever take the shortest route!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Styles and Examples of Retro
and Vintage…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One piece of advice I would
give to any artist considering working in retro and vintage works is to not
limit themselves to digital creations. If you work only in digital you will
limit what you can do with some subjects, and it’s only possible to produce an
impression of authenticity as opposed to physical authenticity which allows
collectors to hold something in their hand that then takes them back on a
nostalgia trip. Texture, feel, and even weight, can reinforce the
believability, with digital, it can be slightly more limiting.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Having said that, there’s
still lots, and I really do mean, lots, of possibilities for digital artists to
work in the retro and vintage space, and as we have covered here today, it is
an artistic genre that stretches way beyond a fifties advertising sign or the
Rubik Cube. So how far does it stretch? Let’s take a look at just a few
examples.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Broadside Posters</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> were
perhaps the earliest forms of posters and they were used to bring attention to
public decrees and notifications from the government. They were produced in
large quantities, also known as ephemera, and they usually had short sentences
to convey whatever message. Think of these as the earliest tweets, except they
would be printed using a woodcut printing process. No intricate drawing would
appear on these as the printing process was very limited. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Pixel Art</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> which
I have covered here today and in the past on this website is perhaps more
stereotypically retro today, but pixel art is a bit of an art form in itself
and one that is quite challenging, and not made any easier by modern design
software. The real art is in coming up with something that would represent a
picture in around 64 blocks of colour. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">8-Bit retro art usually refers
to the time when 8-bit processors would be able to use 8x8 pixel blocks to
create a character. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xflHYxYM6As/YHlevGOtUyI/AAAAAAAAGgU/wUVToD71Z_oSVj4ImFScxt1j3BZ9dZuzACLcBGAsYHQ/s1200/created%2Bon%2BAtari%2BST.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Atari Box Art recreated on Atari ST" border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="852" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xflHYxYM6As/YHlevGOtUyI/AAAAAAAAGgU/wUVToD71Z_oSVj4ImFScxt1j3BZ9dZuzACLcBGAsYHQ/w454-h640/created%2Bon%2BAtari%2BST.PNG" title="Atari ST digital art" width="454" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Another work in progress using an Atari ST 16-bit computer to recreate the box art of Space Invaders on the VCS 2600. Image courtesy of rights holder and used to demonstrate the power of the STs graphics. The Amiga was much better!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Not to be confused with
voxels, which represents a character in a 3D space, think Minecraft, although
technically, Minecraft uses polygons that pretend to be voxels if we’re getting
geeky, or Texel which is an image representing the smallest unit of texture
that may be repeated to tile an area. Voxels are extremely popular, particularly
in advertising.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Lithography</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> many
vintage posters used the process of lithography, drawing the design onto a
stone or metal plate which was usually made from either zinc or aluminium
affixed with a chemical process with the design drawn using a lithographic
crayon or ink. There is a great walkthrough of the process at The Met Museum
website which you can find <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/curatorial-departments/drawings-and-prints/materials-and-techniques/printmaking/lithograph#:~:text=Lithography%20is%20a%20planographic%20printmaking,means%20of%20a%20chemical%20reaction" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Poster Art </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">was
popular between the 1880s and 1960s and by the 1870s, the streets of Paris
would be lined with beautiful posters advertising some of the local bars and
clubs. The movement landed in the US and Europe eventually where it became the
primary means of communication. Early poster art was heavily influenced by Art
Nouveau styles and later Art Deco. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Propaganda Posters</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> have
been used by governments over and over, even to this day, you can see this style
of poster being used in countries such as North Korea. Whilst we might not
agree with the subject matter, there still remains a nod to the Cold War years
in many of the works that do find their way out of the country. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">World War II and post-war
posters are incredibly popular for collectors, and these began to really
influence the travel industry in the post-war years. I remember seeing some
great posters to advertise the once-great airlines such as Pan Am, and there
are some outstanding examples of vintage advertising posters. However, you also
need to be mindful of any copyright issues.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Signage </span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">is
always popular, regular readers will know that my pub and restaurant
chalkboard signs have been something that has proven to be popular for a
number of years, particularly in the B2B leisure and hospitality market. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Vintage and retro signage is
also something that performs well within the retro home décor market. Vintage
and retro kitchen signs advertising things like cream teas, coffee, or home
baking and printed on wood or metal have been incredibly popular for years.
However, many of them do have a kind of mass-produced feel so there could very
well be a niche for something much more authentic. It’s likely that you will
see some of these coming out of my own studio very soon, my daughter is in the
process of opening a high-end bakery that also happens to sell accessories for
the kitchen! Now I get to be the voluntary webmaster, courier, business
analyst, and in-house artist and I’m still accepting computer games as payment
all these years on!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Is retro for you?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether you are creating
pixelated 8-bit art or recreating an antique, retro and vintage design is
certainly, an artistic adventure that is as broad as it is long. There is so
much scope for an artist to explore and it is a style of work that can be
applied to almost any subject. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As a vintage or retro artist
you don’t necessarily have to be limited to a single subject, the aged theme
will often be enough to tie a body of work together. It all comes down to where
you place your art for viewing or sale and the always important marketing, but
I don’t think there is a style of art that is quite as flexible or more
forgiving for an artist to work with. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Is it a genre that is worth
exploring? If you enjoy history or recreating the past it can certainly be a
pleasurable pursuit that feels much less formal than other artistic genres. It
can also be challenging, particularly if you want to recreate vintage pieces
that will require some often insane amounts of research to be carried out. If
you are an artist who prefers to follow a genre that’s a little more straight
forward where you are creating a single body of work with a more linear subject,
retro and vintage might be more of a challenge and whilst many might initially
think it’s easy, they quickly find out that it's not. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The other caveat is that
whilst there are broader markets for vintage and retro work, in that you can
often justify swapping the subject matter whilst retaining an overall theme,
I’m not convinced that any retro and vintage work will necessarily be seen in
the same light as more traditional artworks in terms of value. It also tends to
be placed in different kinds of retailers or galleries. It does tend to do well
in particularly touristy type areas, but it can also be a very crowded market. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My own experience is that this
genre has historically for me, been very much an aside from my usual style of
work, but having done this for so long my client base is relatively healthy
especially for 8-bit art. That may be in part because there just aren’t the
numbers of artists working in a specific 8-bit niche, so I think that in some
cases, it could turn into more of a labour of love unless you can gain a
foothold in a particular vintage or retro niche and then maybe branch out from
there. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As with any art market, there
will always be a market for everything, as I have said many times before, even
bad art sells with the right marketing. But here’s the real rub, if you think
there will be a ready-made buyer base eager to purchase retro and vintage style
work, things aren’t quite so simple. You still have the marketing work to do
just as you would with any subject, medium or genre, but the base for this work
is broad and it might very well be a nice aside from, collection of work. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It is a busy market, there’s a
heap of retro and vintage work already out there, but I think there is a lot of
replication. I can’t even count up the number of times I have seen a slight
twist on a twist of a theme, and some of the work does seem to be thrown
together without too much of an insight into the past. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are some phenomenal
retro and vintage artists out there who tend to get overshadowed by a lot of
templated vintage and retro art that isn’t in any way created with authenticity
front and centre. What I mean by this is that this is the style of art that can
usually be found in the imported print market with localisations applied to it.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you take vintage signage as
an example, there is a lot of it that is the same but it will be printed with different
place names to meet some local market. For me, this is really souvenir art,
often overpriced but priced for a specific tourist market. It meets some level
of need in the absence of more authentic work but when you hold it up to the
light against what I would term as being genuine retro and vintage-inspired
art, you can see a huge difference in the quality and in the historical
accuracy. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_R1UGwyjn8U/YHlgo9VbW5I/AAAAAAAAGgg/Us8V7UIEvHUcZEaX9V_CZeF2yB8lYnLdQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/love%2Bcornwall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Retro vintage sign cornwall cream tea" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_R1UGwyjn8U/YHlgo9VbW5I/AAAAAAAAGgg/Us8V7UIEvHUcZEaX9V_CZeF2yB8lYnLdQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/love%2Bcornwall.jpg" title="Love Cornwall retro sign" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Love Cornwall is available from my Fine Art America and Pixels store, notice the background detail of wood panelling with an aged and sun-bleached look.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Platforms such as Etsy have
massive appeal to vintage and retro buyers and there’s some great aged work on
there that is way better value. More often than not it’s priced even more
competitively than these imported mass-produced prints and if you want even
more authentic pieces, there are plenty of artists who have really managed to
nail the detail on Etsy. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What has the potential to harm
the retro-inspired market is the new ads we’re beginning to see on social media
that promise Print on Demand artists access to more than a thousand or more print
ready designs for less than forty bucks, you pay your money and then you get to
download a lot of images. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These packages are filled with
faux-retro inspired works which may or may not be licensed for commercial use
in some way, they’re being touted as an ideal business start-up in the T-Shirt
and print market, but I can’t see the original artists making anything out of
these. They’re essentially downloads of ready to upload images designed with
the sole intention to take the buyers money and offer a quick way to populate
an online store. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Again, maybe I’m retro old
school but I’m not convinced it’s either moral or ethical. I’m sure some people
would welcome the idea of being able to open a POD account to compete with real
artists, but this type of thing does nothing at all to preserve the integrity
of a market and an industry that has, in all fairness, taken its fair share of
the pandemic beating which has left a lot of real artists out in the cold.
Maybe the POD companies will pick up on these when a million and one of the
same designs start to appear, although I’m not holding out any hope that they
might do that. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro as a side hustle or main
business?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When I think back to creating
images back in 1980 and 1981, and then moving through many different home
computer systems, I have always managed to find a market for a particular
vintage style of digital art. There was a brief time in the very early nineties
when it became less popular, but by the time the internet became available to
those members of the public who had an interest in it in 1993, things really
were back to normal as websites were being created and those building them
needed small fast loading images. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This style of work for me was
never a primary business model back then, mostly because everything was still
too young to be called retro as we would know retro today even though the word
retro was first used in the 1970s in French, rétro, short for
rétrograde originated from the Latin word retrogradi, which essentially meant
to "move backward." It wasn’t really until the mid to late nineties
that I began to notice that people were still feeling nostalgic over the still
relatively recent but increasingly less available original home computer
systems. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We had seen retro used in many
other contexts by this time though, retro clothing was big as I remember in the
nineties. As a trend, I think we can safely say that retro and vintage is more
than just a trend, and if it is, it is perhaps the longest-running trend in the
history of well, trends.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I said earlier, nostalgia sells, and when
we look back through art history, many of the greatest pieces of art have told
some kind of story or presented some kind of narrative about the past. Where we
once would have seen antiques and family heirlooms, we now see cultural items
becoming our most treasured keepsakes and rather than passing on the heirloom
from generation to generation, we’re now very much in a time where we’re
purchasing those items instead.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Maybe it’s not even nostalgia
in the truest sense that we are yearning for but rather, we need to fill a
craving for emotional continuity. We see it time and time again, Hollywood
re-release new versions of old films, music labels reissue old albums
remastered for new ways of listening and badge the packaging with the term
special edition or anniversary edition, jolting us into a celebration of our
past. As consumers, we buy using emotion, and then we justify with logic, we
feel first and think second. As artists who then sell memories packaged as art,
we become more like impresarios of memory. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">However you term retro,
vintage or nostalgia, it’s certainly an easier sell than art. It’s the
emotional hook, it invites the viewer to tell their story and as they tell it
they become ever-increasingly emotionally engaged. It’s hook, after hook, after
emotional hook.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When you sell memories, you’re
no longer only selling art, you’re selling the viewer a memory back, you’re
selling them on your business and the experience you are giving them, and you
are selling them a connection. In short, everything that you typically want to
sell to someone whenever you are selling art, your hardest job is getting them
in the proverbial door to begin with. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether you decide to follow a
full-on retro path is something that only you can decide. For me, it
compliments my usual body of work although if I was to focus on retro I don’t
think I would ever be searching for anything new to create, we have an endless
supply of history to work with. Nostalgia sells, emotional continuity puts us
all on a path towards our very own individual emotional horizon, it shapes how
we think, how we behave, what we love, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>perhaps
remembering where the journey has already taken us is what gives us the proof
that our lives have some evolving meaning. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Get in touch and share your
memories!</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Do you have any special memories
of growing up that you wish you could relive, or do you ever get reminded of
yesteryear by certain sights, smells or sounds? I’d love to know that it’s not
just me who hankers for the olden and golden days of childhood!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Until next time, as always, stay
safe, stay well, look after each other and stay creative!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark x<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I am an artist and blogger and
live in Staffordshire, England. My days are filled with art, dog walking and
listening to Rick Astley! You can purchase my art through my Fine Art America
store or my Pixels site here: <a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</a> and you
can purchase my new works, special and limited editions directly. You can also
view my portfolio website at <a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank">https://beechhousemedia.com</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you are on Facebook, you
can give me a follow right here, <a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</a>
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at <a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</a>
<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If you would like to support
the upkeep of this site or maybe just buy me a coffee, you can do so at my new
Go Fund Me link right <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-an-independent-visual-artist" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p><p></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-4519270344825898572021-03-26T08:43:00.001+00:002021-03-26T08:43:57.027+00:00Your Art Career Part Five - Unpacking Ideas<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Get Niche – The Niche Guide to
Art Markets</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--lmMb164t9Q/YF2PgOolCcI/AAAAAAAAGbM/46chVQcOA303Vwai0_T983bw5Rzo42qsgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/Unpacking%2BIdeas%2BCover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Cover image for blog unpacking ideas" border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1080" height="336" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--lmMb164t9Q/YF2PgOolCcI/AAAAAAAAGbM/46chVQcOA303Vwai0_T983bw5Rzo42qsgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h336/Unpacking%2BIdeas%2BCover.png" title="Your Art Career Part Five" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Your Art Career Part Five - Unpacking Ideas</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In part five of my “Your Art
Career” series, we take a look at what buyers really want from art in an ever-changing world. Finding a niche audience who are actively on the lookout for very
specific subjects can be a lucrative business opportunity for artists if it is
tackled in the right way. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><h1 style="text-align: left;"><span><a name='more'></a></span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>The Challenge!</b></span></span></h1><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Finding a niche that appeals
to buyers searching for specific subjects and genres can provide you with a readymade
buyer base and entice new buyers to take a look at your regular work too. But
just how difficult is it to find a niche that is perfect for you and what niche
do you even choose?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s a challenging question to
answer but it’s worth saying that sometimes we do have to think very much
outside of the proverbial box to find a market for our creativity and sometimes,
we need to have the crazy idea that we can begin to unpack so that we can shake
out the bits of the idea that will stick. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Changing Landscape…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We’ve spoken about the
pandemic a lot over the past four articles, but we can hardly ignore how much
the world has changed over the last year. I think most people would agree that
it has not only changed the world, but it has also changed people too, and especially
when it comes to their artistic tastes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Weirdly, many people I have had
conversations with during the pandemic have been telling me that they have
become even more exposed to different genres and art mediums as they have been
discovering more art online rather than visiting physical art spaces which often have limited choice or a bias towards a
particular medium or genre depending on the collections on display. To me, this
was initially a little surprising because I would have thought that people
would be making a beeline towards the familiar but then I noticed I was doing
this too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Our tastes, behaviours and
actions are defined by what we are exposed to, so it makes sense that widening
the breadth of art that you consume will widen the breadth of artwork you begin
to appreciate. What you begin to appreciate will, if you’re an artist, begin to
influence the work that you create, even if it does so subconsciously. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When it comes to buyers, it also
makes sense that as their appreciation for artwork evolves and as they begin to
become exposed to more art, they too become influenced in their tastes and
ultimately in their buying decisions, and I expect that the pandemic itself is responsible
for deep psychological changes that have changed how and what and even who we
want to connect with. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OCO792y9eKQ/YF2QL5c6blI/AAAAAAAAGbU/59V68O-UT0gXjQhAzXUK6isRxK1kCu7TwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Africa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Africa yin and yang art image" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OCO792y9eKQ/YF2QL5c6blI/AAAAAAAAGbU/59V68O-UT0gXjQhAzXUK6isRxK1kCu7TwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Africa.jpg" title="Africa by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Africa - One of my recent creations!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The markets have definitely
changed too, and as we have been seeing
over the previous articles from the employment market data and the data that
surfaces the number of state benefit claims, in the short-term at least, the economic
impact of the pandemic is going to continue to affect some buyers ability to
buy, or rather, it will in the typical markets that the majority of working
artists are working in, and this can manifest in all sorts of ways. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Buyers might not find
themselves in a position where they have quite as much disposable income as
they once did pre-pandemic and it’s important that we don’t forget those buyers,
we need to ensure they remain engaged in the interim because we desperately
want them to return. Making our work affordable in different formats is one way
to keep those buyers engaged, but also engaging with them is the prompt that
reminds them that you haven’t forgotten them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Having said that, as I have
written over the previous few articles, buyers are still out there, but they
might not be the same buyers or looking for the same thing. Equally, we shouldn’t forget that not everyone
will have been financially impacted by the pandemic in a negative way but it might
make it more challenging for artists to keep track of where their market is, at
least for a little while longer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some buyers will have
discovered a new style of art that they have now fallen in love with, and
because we have mostly been hidden away at home for the best part of an entire
year where entire countries have been placed into lockdown, people have been
finding more and more things to keep them occupied at home. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A quick glance through the latest
videos on platforms such as YouTube or the pins on Pinterest and one would be
forgiven for thinking that everyone has become an interior designer as many
people have turned to home improvements to spruce up their space, especially
as more and more people work from home.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Video conferencing, as much as
I am no longer a fan and I’m not convinced I ever was, has presented
opportunities for artists. One of the things I have noticed throughout the many
hundreds of conference calls I have been forced to endure over the past twelve
months is that people are actively looking at the Zoom factor in the art that
they are selecting to hang on the wall behind them, and that’s something that I
had never even considered pre-pandemic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think it’s fair to say that
there were more than a few of us who became self-aware of untidy shelves, even
I moved a bookcase to another wall to avoid the camera, and I’ve noticed a lot
of people who are now definitely curating the books on their bookshelf. What
really highlighted this for me was when one of my long-time collectors got in
touch with me to pass on some compliments he had received about one of my
pieces that had made its inaugural appearance on Microsoft Teams! Psychologists
looking back on this time in years to come will probably have a field day analysing
our lockdown behaviour!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rk4pQp1v5BQ/YF2Qqc5wAHI/AAAAAAAAGbc/0zboBAajz8Ez0vnCqcZh3MomerSvTLNKQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/clockwork.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="yin and yang art with cogs and steel" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rk4pQp1v5BQ/YF2Qqc5wAHI/AAAAAAAAGbc/0zboBAajz8Ez0vnCqcZh3MomerSvTLNKQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/clockwork.jpg" title="Clockwork by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Clockwork by Mark Taylor - Available from my store now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There’s something else in
that, I really don’t think we should underestimate that the Zoom factor could
very well be playing some kind of a role in artistic choice which is in itself,
a sentence I never ever thought I would ever write, but here we are. I suspect
that some artistic choices have been influenced by the need to Zoom. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Having witnessed a few familiar
works on conference calls of late I would think that video conferencing has
certainly influenced sales of some artworks where celebrities have appeared on
camera with an appealing work in the background. It would be fascinating to dig
into the data to see just how much Zoom and other conference platforms have
influenced art buying decisions lately, I can picture it now, reruns of zoom
calls to collect business intelligence on art trends.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This changing behaviour and
the resulting sea-change in artistic taste has left some artists and graphic
designers somewhere between a little and a lot exposed and others perhaps wondering
why they didn’t take a new direction with their work much earlier. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Throughout the pandemic, many
artists have had to be creative in their approach to the business of art,
others have lost entire markets and with them, the artists have lost their
revenue streams. This has meant that in many cases, the pre-pandemic business model where there was a heavy
reliance on offline face to face interactions has either had to dramatically change
or the artist has had to consider new ways of working to make sure that the
financial gaps continue to be filled.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether you are an established
artist or someone who has found the creative sector after previously working in
an entirely different career, finding any market for your work can be arduously
difficult even in the best of times. In a pandemic, the reality that many
artists and indeed many small businesses have faced has often been a scenario of
fight, flight, or adapt and steer an entirely new course.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rjbsTcw46TE/YF2RGR-C0QI/AAAAAAAAGbk/yEjupoPxqwkGchoreW1U1xMLbsNDGHxCwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/flora.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="jungle print art yin and yang symbol" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rjbsTcw46TE/YF2RGR-C0QI/AAAAAAAAGbk/yEjupoPxqwkGchoreW1U1xMLbsNDGHxCwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/flora.jpg" title="Flora by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Flora - another work in my recent Yin and Yang series!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Getting Niche…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As always, when it comes to providing
any kind of artistic insight or advice, there’s a proverbial gorilla in the
room that has to be addressed whenever anyone talks about deviating from your
main body of work, but deviating from your forever niche is often uncomfortable
and it’s a subject that is often avoided, but I’m not sure we can. If you have
lost a market, you have to adapt. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today we’re not really
discussing the niche that is in itself offering prints or offering your work on
anything other than a canvas, we’re talking about figuring out what work might
sell better than the work you usually create given the unprecedented times we
all find ourselves in. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There will be a few artists
who will be nervous about creating anything other than their ‘norm’ for fear of
appearing inconsistent and upsetting the purists, but to counter this, the other
piece of advice I generally issue out to the artists that I mentor, which is a
little blunt is that the purists aren’t generally having to pay any of your bills.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Consistency is something I
have written about previously and to summarise, there is an opportunity for
artists to work on very different creations, so long as there is no ambiguity
or confusion introduced and you continue to keep the promises you previously made
to existing collectors. A good example is in, not selling previously sold work
as a print when you long ago made a promise to collectors that you wouldn’t, or
it could be adding another ten pieces to the limited edition of 100 you have already
sold. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Consistency in art is
important, but there is more to consistency than consistently producing the
same type of work, consistency is about much more than that. Consistency means
all kinds of things depending on the market, it could be, not turning up to an
exhibition with twelve very different works with all of them in very different
frames so that they appear to be created by twelve different artists, or it
could be creating collections of different work outside of your usual body of
work and not providing any separation between the new and the old which can
confuse buyers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Consistency is an
interchangeable term, it could just as easily apply to the quality of your work
regardless of the medium or subject, or it could be consistency in how the work
is presented, or the message, it doesn’t and shouldn’t default to meaning that
an artist will forever be compelled to produce one iteration of one thing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I don’t really think that
producing one thing over and over is really healthy for an artist because we
have to evolve, we have to figure out new techniques, and we have to make sure
that our main body of work is always fresh, we can’t always find that freshness
if we never get to stretch the creative muscle beyond our comfort zone. Even if
you never publish the work you create outside of your usual body of work, it’s
really important to have the ability to stretch your creative muscle in other
ways and even more important to strive towards mastery of your technique.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That might sound a little blunt
too, but, there will be purists in the art world who would baulk at the very
idea that an artist would ever deviate from their main body of work, but you
also have a responsibility to those who have previously collected your work to
ensure that you not only survive in uncertain economic times but that you also
thrive because that’s good for collectors too. There is nothing worse for a
collector to hear than the news that their favourite artist has lost their
passion or has given up. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you have any doubt about switching
to a completely different medium or genre, or subject, the trick is in ensuring
that there is some delineation between your usual work and your new niche or niches.
Creating collections as an aside from your main body of work is perhaps one of
the best ways to go about separation, but with so many great platforms online,
it’s entirely feasible to utilise a different platform to reach different
markets.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When we talk about niches, we’re
not necessarily talking about limiting yourself to your previous or current
portfolio, the right niche can be the complete opposite of your usual work in
terms of medium and subject. I know a few artists who selected a niche and
stuck with it for many years but then got backed into a corner where they became
frustrated with the subject, and that’s never a good place for an artist to be.
<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lBw_sGMFtFI/YF2RuDME9aI/AAAAAAAAGbs/hMc8OoOtrS0wovF_J-e0fsKnGE13bGvVgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/summer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="summer landscape in yin and yang image artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lBw_sGMFtFI/YF2RuDME9aI/AAAAAAAAGbs/hMc8OoOtrS0wovF_J-e0fsKnGE13bGvVgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/summer.jpg" title="Summer by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Summer by Mark Taylor - another addition to my store!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Finding a new niche is not
necessarily about figuring out a way to remarket what we already do either, although
it could be. You might want to create smaller or larger works to attract new
audiences or offer your work on alternative products, but it could be looking
to create something entirely new. That’s essentially what we are covering here
today, creating something very different from your usual work and if you have
lost your zest in one subject but have found it in another, it’s probably a
sign that you are ready for a change. Think about the likes of Jackson Pollock
and there is already a precedent to change, artists have been doing this
throughout art history, so you certainly won’t be the first artist to jump in a
different direction. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That’s really the point here,
finding a niche is about finding something that you feel passionate about. As a professional artist, that also means that
you need to ensure that there is a market, the two do go hand in hand sadly
because ultimately, you do need the ability to generate the funds needed to
carry on producing your artistic first love. That’s often another conversation
that is avoided, but when you are creating art professionally and it’s your livelihood
that’s at stake, if it’s not working it has to change, or the marketing has to
change or the market itself has to change, just as it would if any business starts to
flag behind. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What generally stops us from making
a move into a new niche is either fear of the critic, or the inner critic, or
the thought that we’re selling out to cash in, and yes, every artist I have
ever met with very few exceptions would say that they produce the art they
produce out of passion. Of course, that passion we have is exactly what makes
us artists, but when you are a professional artist, there is this dark sad
reality that to professionally deliver your passion there is a financial outlay
that needs to be recovered. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So with that uncomfortableness
out of the way, the next step is to give yourself permission to begin exploring
new niches so that you can decide if they might work for you. Just as I have
been doing over the previous articles, I have been looking at the data,
carrying out the research, and asking the questions, not just over the course
of writing this article, but over the course of taking a deep interest in all
of the various art markets over the past decade, something that the economic
crisis back in 2008 taught me to do.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x7lhW4knZeI/YF2SdpOOQmI/AAAAAAAAGb0/8C0-DPITuFgoUi8VCcLilB9TdhkQC0-8ACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/empty%2Bdeckchairs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="deckchair on beach art" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x7lhW4knZeI/YF2SdpOOQmI/AAAAAAAAGb0/8C0-DPITuFgoUi8VCcLilB9TdhkQC0-8ACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/empty%2Bdeckchairs.jpg" title="Empty Deckchairs by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Empty Deckchairs - There is something more poignant about this work given the times we are in.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You still need to find an audience
and a market for your work…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Dropping your usual body of
work, even temporarily, to create something that you believe will sell better
isn’t without its own set of challenges. You still need to find both an
audience and a market for your new body of work rarely does anything magical
happen without expending some effort. Just painting something that appears to
be popular right now doesn’t necessarily mean that it will instantly sell, so
whatever you decide to focus on will still require you to do some homework to
figure out where the marketing needs to be focussed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Many who start out on the
creative path have to very quickly work out who the audience and the market
will be for whatever it is that they produce, although, for the most part, that’s
something that isn’t always worked out upfront and in some cases, it’s something that isn’t worked out for quite
a while after. I get why it’s not always possible to commit to a specific
subject and medium that will become your forever choice, at least at the beginning
of an art career and this is one of the reasons why you might see new artists
testing the water by creating a horse portrait one day and an abstract the next
and then attempting to market both pieces to the same audience. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Testing the water though requires
a little more than dipping in a single toe, it might, in the above case require
you to produce twenty or thirty of each genre or topic, maybe less, maybe more,
and it also requires you to work out where the marketing should be focussed for
both the abstracts and the horse because those would be two very different
markets. Remember what I keep saying over and over, you can market your art all
you want but if there aren’t enough of the right eyes viewing it, it’s just not
going to sell.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Being a newcomer in the sector
is more than a little challenging, we create some art, make it available for
sale, but at least initially, we might not have an idea about the type of
person who might fall in love with it enough to buy it. It’s one of those
perpetual circles, it’s also a trap because it becomes impossible to define a
marketing strategy until you know exactly the kind of person you are marketing
to. Art careers should come with a warning label that says, be prepared to walk
in circles, until you figure stuff out, but with niches, the right ones can come
with an almost templated audience and market giving you at least a clue about
where to focus your marketing attention.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The benefits of multiple
niches…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The world is very different
today, with the relative ease of getting work out there, it is possible to work
in multiple niches that have a touchpoint with multiple markets. The only
caution I would add is that the more niches and markets you work in, the busier
your life will be, and it won’t always be good busy, nor will it be easy
juggling that many balls and spinning that many plates whilst maintaining any
level of quality. But, in the midst of a pandemic the artist who strives,
thrives, just don’t get too carried away, and maybe explore one additional niche
at a time and never underestimate the additional workload.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So long as your messaging is
clear and you’re not confusing your audience, multiple niches are a good way to
cover multiple bases in terms of finding buyers who can subsidise the work that
you have a real passion for creating. I am going to add in a caveat right about
here, never try to be everything to everyone, it’s impossible and you will end
up pleasing no one. This is something I learned quite late on in my art career, I previously thought that there was little merit in deviating away from my
regular landscape work which I have always been passionate about creating and
then frantically running around getting excited about the two hundred ideas I
had, that needed to be created there and then. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I began dipping into work
beyond the landscapes just after the last financial crisis, although I had
always had a little side hustle on the go with my video game artwork, but back
then, the market for 8-bit art was limited. It was my designs for restaurant menus
that had come about initially as a favour for a friend, that made it financially
possible for me to create my 8-bit retro computer and arcade game art which back
in the day didn’t have a huge commercial market, but which I still really enjoy creating to this
day. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As retro gaming is one of my hobbies
and has been since I first picked up a computer in 1979, I’m able to work on
those pieces without it feeling anything like work, I am never more in my
element than when my mind is travelling back to my childhood! Today, I’m less
reliant on subsidising that work and over the past year I have seen an increase
in commission requests and although I rarely promote my work in this area, it’s
generally word of mouth from a long-time collector base who are equally into
the retro games scene.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nV7OLNszTSk/YF2TNZcPIHI/AAAAAAAAGb8/iTi0lB5M9Sc5_0ZNyDOzORXPPxvdabBzgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Tear%2BDown%2BThis%2BWall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="1980s vintage technology art" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nV7OLNszTSk/YF2TNZcPIHI/AAAAAAAAGb8/iTi0lB5M9Sc5_0ZNyDOzORXPPxvdabBzgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Tear%2BDown%2BThis%2BWall.jpg" title="Tear Down This Wall by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Tear Down This Wall by Mark Taylor - One of my favourite works ever!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It’s the same with book covers
which are definitely not my first love when it comes to design projects, but
they do serve a purpose that makes other art and the purchase of art supplies
and technology to continue creating my regular work a little easier to fund,
and the pandemic has meant that everyone who thought they had a book inside
them decided to write it. Last year I was having to turn work away for book
covers which given the situation is remarkable. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So we can clearly see the benefits
of adding a niche or two to our main body of work, it is possible to work
across genres, mediums and subjects, but you do kind of need to want to do it. Unless you are really not bonding with your
usual style, subject or medium, I would certainly suggest that you keep going
with that in parallel, there are never any guarantees in the art world other
than the guarantee that art supplies will keep increasing in price.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are a few caveats as usual,
bear in mind that not every region will lend itself to every niche, neither
will every niche lend itself to any single artist, and any success still
depends on the amount of effort you expend on marketing and figuring out the
markets, and of course, how you approach the business end of art. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Any niche requires you to work
out the how and the who and the where, but as I said a little earlier, niches
can at least give you a slightly better clue about where to begin, but you
absolutely do have to be passionate about whatever niche you select otherwise
it shows in what you produce, even if you can’t see it yourself.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The following should provide
you with at least some idea of the art of the possible. It’s not meant to be the
defacto, this is what you must paint to sell art and make money list and you
might not bond with any of the subjects at all, but that’s not really the point.
This is to get you thinking, not just outside the box, but thinking about how
to create an entirely new box because sometimes, that’s really what it takes to
thrive and in some cases, survive.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Outside the box or a new box?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">While I was writing this
article my good friends at <a href="https://www.artfinder.com/blog/post/most-popular-art-themes-scenery-in-lockdown/#/ " target="_blank">Artfinder</a> reached out to share what they had been noticing on their website in the way
people were changing their behaviours and searching for different art, they had
been finding out that the most popular searches since last year had been for
uplifting scenes of nature.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Here’s what they had to say:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whether it's a painting of a
dreamy coastline, a lush green forest or even a National Health Service (NHS)-inspired
rainbow, here are the top searches on Artfinder and Google UK over the past
year:<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Searches for artwork
containing beaches and trees increased 94% and 74% respectively on Artfinder
during the first lockdown (March-June 2020) as many looked to replicate a part
of the outside world in the face of uncertainty</span></li></ul><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Spiking during the first
lockdown, Google searches for forest-themed art grew again as restrictions
tightened in the autumn, increasing by 91% during September and October
compared to the same period in 2019 </span></li></ul><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">While we might normally
associate paintings of beach scenes with summer decor and holiday homes, the
term ‘beach artwork’ saw a 24% jump in Google searches during the second
lockdown in November 2020 compared to the previous month, 53% more than the
same period in 2019</span></li></ul><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Unsurprisingly, artwork
containing rainbows also enjoyed a sharp rise in interest thanks to new
connotations with the NHS fight against Covid-19, seeing a 370% rise in
searches on Artfinder during the first lockdown period.</span></li></ul><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Following the announcement of
the most recent lockdown in January, Artfinder also saw a rise in interest for
abstract artworks, suggesting we are now looking for an alternative escape from
reality. From intense volcanic landscapes to boldly coloured sunsets over rolling
hills, the peak and troughs for particular searches reveal just how significant
global events continue to be in the shaping of art trends.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Michal
Szczesny, CEO of Artfinder says</span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> “Pablo Picasso once said that
‘<i>art washes away from the soul the dust
of everyday life</i>’ and all over the UK, and indeed all over the world, we
can see that people have been washing away the dust of stay-home orders by
seeking out art that depicts soul-soothing settings such as beaches, forests
and oceans.”<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">“By the beginning of 2021, we
can see that buyers are turning from familiar, often comforting scenes, to
artworks that may in some instances feel more intense, more profound, and which
are not rooted in those sights that people are missing as a result of still
being stuck indoors.”<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">The largest online marketplace
for art, Artfinder is a VC funded startup, backed by the investors behind
Spotify and Zoopla and growing fast, with 110% growth in 2020. Investors
include </span><b style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">Wellington Partners, Oxford
Capital, Cambridge Angels</b><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">, plus private investors in the UK, the US and
Switzerland. In August 2019, Artfinder became the art world’s first B Corp,
solidifying its commitment to its values to support artists and make art
affordable and accessible.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Other Niches…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Artfinder findings are also
a really good indicator that buying behaviour has changed, abstracts,
landscapes and rainbows, in particular, are amongst the most popular artworks
being sought out by buyers, at least in the UK. Abstracts are interesting, but
as an artist who has been painting abstract works for a few decades, I have to
say that they’re not the easiest of genres to pick up and run with as an artist.
They can be deeply emotional and exhausting works to create, and I tip my hat
to any abstract artist who can make a career out of creating them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My own deep dive around niches
has drawn some similar conclusions of late, abstracts have been much more
popular recently, and I haven’t noticed any slow down in my own landscape
creations, but as I indicated earlier, there are a number of other niches that
seem to becoming more popular of late.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JYxRrb4R-eE/YF2UrLXPFgI/AAAAAAAAGcE/PqY1fHfWXjUeN-Suol8ehnvojH7UiSWOQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Art%2BSupplies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Art supplies fabric art" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JYxRrb4R-eE/YF2UrLXPFgI/AAAAAAAAGcE/PqY1fHfWXjUeN-Suol8ehnvojH7UiSWOQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Art%2BSupplies.jpg" title="Art Supplies by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Art Supplies by Mark Taylor - one of my digital fabric creations and the glitter doesn't get everywhere!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The retro revival…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retro demands its very own
article to be written (I have already made a start), but I’m not sure if the
pandemic has had anything to do with it, although I expect it has, but lots of
people are becoming increasingly interested in rediscovering their childhood
memories. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Nostalgia has always sold, yet
I remember reading an article in Popular Science magazine not all that long ago
that suggested that nostalgia was thought to be a disease in around 1688 with
the term nostalgia originating from Johannes Hofer who coined it in his medical
dissertation describing it as a combination of the Greek words nostos, or
homecoming and algos, or pain. It was a type of homesickness associated with
soldiers who fought far-off wars.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Today, nostalgia, vintage, retro,
are all terms that can take us immediately back to childhood memories, either
through a visual cue, smells or sounds. For me, there is nothing that takes me
back to my childhood more than the sound of video game arcades and the pings of
Pac Man or Galaxian, and the mere mention of 8-bit or Atari has me weak at the
knees, but then I am the stereotypical geek, and probably one of the originals
because I was involved in the scene at the age of ten. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I also remember those day
trips we had at school and certain places always remind me of the days pre-the
responsibility monster showing up at the door. What I wouldn’t do to just go
back for a week or two and relive some of those experiences, although I’m sure
they wouldn’t be quite as I remember them, maybe the memories are better!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Regular readers will recall
that I have written about my early days creating video game art for 8-bit home
computers and an early video game (that wasn’t particularly great and didn’t
particularly sell!), and today, with podcasts such as the Ted Dabney Experience
(those hot tub stories from Atari are true), Retro Asylum (which is a superb UK
based podcast about the UK microcomputer scene from the eighties), and Maximum
Power Up which looks primarily back at the home computer magazines from
yesteryear, the stories of the time are being retold as remembered by the
people who were there at the start and these podcasts are creating not just a
buzz, but an entire retro community.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There are a lot more people
getting involved in the retro gaming scene today than there were pre-pandemic, but
I think retro is also heading some way beyond gaming. Childhood toys, home décor,
eighties music, retro TV shows from the seventies and eighties are all popular
when you look online and one only has to look at the prices for vintage toys
and tech on platforms such as eBay to notice that there is rising demand.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Surprisingly, this is also a
niche that seems to be attractive to those hard to reach millennials too, four
of my 8-bit commissions, last year came from the millennial generation who
probably wanted one of the original dinosaurs to create their art.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Of course, retro is not just
about the golden days of video games, although if you ask me, retro is all about
the golden age of video games, there is plenty of choice in choosing a
topic, subject or theme that goes far beyond video games.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Retrofuturism is also a niche
that is worthy of some exploration. This is a genre that looks back at how
people in the past thought the future might look, and I’m still waiting for my
flying car. One of the classic examples that always stands out to me when retro-futurism is mentioned is the Tomorrowland area at Walt Disney World. This to me,
really sums the genre up and even watching a video of the area is like watching
a living piece of retro-futuristic art.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Some of the techniques that do
seem to be becoming increasingly popular when creating retro art are the use of
blur and grain to highlight and shade text and add more depth to an image. The
use of faded fonts, typeset font effects and hand-drawn brush fonts will give
even modern pieces a retro vibe. Colour palettes are just as important, get the
palette wrong and the work can look too modern, get it right and the colours
used can trigger emotions and memories that will hopefully sell the art. Check
out websites such as Adobe Color and Pantone who do a fantastic job around
summarising the most on-trend pallets.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EmFYFg5T61Q/YF2V_VCd04I/AAAAAAAAGcM/LQx9rSGj6podB3jHdZVl9_Tg1LmU3DMFgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1221/glow%2Bover%2Ba%2Bdry%2Bstone%2Bwall.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="sunset over a dry stone wall" border="0" data-original-height="1035" data-original-width="1221" height="542" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EmFYFg5T61Q/YF2V_VCd04I/AAAAAAAAGcM/LQx9rSGj6podB3jHdZVl9_Tg1LmU3DMFgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h542/glow%2Bover%2Ba%2Bdry%2Bstone%2Bwall.PNG" title="Glow Over A Dry Stone Wall by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Glow Over A Dry Stone Wall - One of my traditional landscapes - That wall would have been quicker to create if I had built it out of stone, each piece was created individually!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Symbolism…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">A symbol can speak louder than
any words. Symbolism in art has been used throughout art history, and I think
in a similar vein to retro, we’re all at least on some level, looking for deeper
meaning. Designers are utilising symbols more and more frequently and in a lot
of cases, the symbols, rather than being an addition to work as we might see
in more historical pieces, are becoming the central focus.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Throughout art history and
even to this day, symbols would be used to convey some deeper meaning. No, it wasn’t a UFO, those star shapes and
symbols that looked like our ancestors were frequently visited by alien life
forms were mostly never related to aliens at all. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Symbology was used as a way to
describe something that was difficult to show in a picture, a peach for example,
often symbolized virtue and honour, a beetle, eternal life, and colours were
used to depict certain conditions or situations, so to put a twist on a phrase,
it probably wasn’t aliens.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But here’s another niche that
can be unpacked a lot more, symbols can elevate clothing, be tied into social
causes which we will come onto in a moment, and even made up logos of non-existent
companies can give work a retro-futuristic feel. There’s lots of depth within
the genre to explore and allow your creativity to stretch a little further.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Authentic Representation…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is certainly a niche that
many artists have jumped into, but there is a fine line between authentic
representation and cultural misappropriation, it is a niche that needs to be
approached with care and respect. Work that authentically depicts diversity can
be immensely powerful, and because all people are different, the artwork doesn’t
have to be bound by stereotypes or sameness. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Highlighting various cultures,
beliefs, ages, and identities, gives artists a truly blank canvas on which to
create some truly one of a kind works, but as I said, it’s a niche that also
needs to be approached with care, consideration, and respect. It’s not
something that should be used solely as a mechanism to generate quick cash
because buyers and viewers will see through it and you could very well lose any
credibility.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Back to nature…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Nature has underpinned much of
my art since the mid-nineties, but I don’t think I can ever recall a time when
nature hasn’t felt so important. Maybe this is due to lockdowns, maybe it is a
yearning to get back outside into the fields and forests, and maybe because we
are seeing the dramatic effects of climate change more than ever before. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Where retro provides the
feeling of security, nature provides the feeling of relaxation and calm and in
many cases even a sense of escape, something that we could all do with a little
more of after the past year. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Looking back through my own
data and numerous notes, there is something that has specifically changed in today’s
nature-inspired artwork, it’s now much simpler than it was even just a couple
of years ago. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Nature is being used more
often in product design, even when the product isn’t at all related to nature
or where it has only some very tentative links with the subject. Packaging
design is certainly something that is being outsourced more than it once was, so
there’s another opportunity for artists and designers. But you might also want
to think about the not so obvious products that need outstanding design to
attract buyers. Beer and alcohol can design, particularly with the small micro-breweries
that have been springing up over the past few years has seen some beautiful
works of art featured on the products, often using psychedelic vector-based
line art. Whenever I look at certain beer cans, why do I immediately think of
Adobe Illustrator, maybe it’s an artist thing! <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nhvQsctGOBc/YF2W6BiU2cI/AAAAAAAAGcU/xtu9FKw5gpM8dzICwvwqyrupE6HPtLDJgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1434/sold.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="abstract artwork" border="0" data-original-height="1434" data-original-width="1201" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nhvQsctGOBc/YF2W6BiU2cI/AAAAAAAAGcU/xtu9FKw5gpM8dzICwvwqyrupE6HPtLDJgCLcBGAsYHQ/w536-h640/sold.PNG" title="Sold by Mark Taylor" width="536" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This work has the title of 'SOLD' - you wouldn't believe how many people congratulated me on the sale - even before I released it! Maybe the title really was too symbolic or deep! Anyway, it is available as a print in my store!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Wildlife, Conservation and
Social Change…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Wildlife is always popular,
and more so when it can also support local wildlife and conservation groups.
When you create work with a specific purpose that also has the potential to
raise funds for various worthwhile groups, it not only comes with a ready-made
audience, often the charity or organisation that the work supports will assist
with marketing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Word to the wise here though,
whenever work is created for charity it needs to be created out of love and
respect for what the charity stands for rather than virtue signalling or as a
way to easily put work in front of an audience. In short, it has to be done for
the right reasons because when it isn’t, buyers can see right through this too.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Equally, the charity or
organisation involved needs to be on board, and any agreements reached around
sales need to absolutely be written down and agreed upon by both parties. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Wildlife and conservation also
tie into art with a socially conscious design. The past couple of years have
been filled with socially conscious artworks, often works that support not just
local charities but local communities raising and championing awareness of
local or even international issues. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">These works particularly appeal
to those who are conscious of the growing crisis that is climate change and
recently, socially conscious design has been increasingly used to highlight
regional issues and politics, and whilst it always has been, the work feels
more prominent than at any time I can recall. I have seen some incredibly
powerful work around the Myanmar protests but I am seeing much more work created with renewable materials,
great art doesn’t have to cost the earth it seems. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">This is also exactly the kind
of art that has been creating discussions on social media, not just the
regular social platforms but on platforms such as Reddit which really is a
platform that knows and understands how to do engagement well. Brands have been
using social consciousness more and more to rally around various issues and
challenges that affect their buyers, even outside of their core marketing
efforts. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What you perhaps need to
remember with socially conscious artworks is that this isn’t anything new.
Artists throughout art history have documented almost anything and everything,
and even modern artists such as Banksy have put social consciousness front and centre
of the art that they produce.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fBkOnZsqAX4/YF2X1TxVzgI/AAAAAAAAGcc/urwAHDiQq6gjscqeqRTUakM6aalbFc3HQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/yeti%2Bselfie.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Yeti holding a cell phone artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fBkOnZsqAX4/YF2X1TxVzgI/AAAAAAAAGcc/urwAHDiQq6gjscqeqRTUakM6aalbFc3HQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/yeti%2Bselfie.JPG" title="Yeti Selfie" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We have a real problem with electronic waste when a Yeti finds a cell phone near base camp! Yeti Selfie is available in my store!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Pop Art…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Pop Art is another niche that looks
easy, but can feel impossible as an artist to master, though it can be
lucrative when they find an eager audience for it. The simplicity of works from
Warhol was never really that simple, and nor were Warhol’s most famous works
as recent as many would think. His Cheddar Cheese Soup Can from the Campbell’s
Soup Can series was created back in 1962, yet it is at least in terms of its
concept replicated frequently even today and I’m certain it will never be
bettered. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Over the past couple of years
I have noticed a resurgence of art with a slight twist on Lichtenstein’s famous
works such as Drowning Girl which was created back in 1963. Hang a print of
that piece on the wall today and it wouldn’t look out of place in the most modern
of interiors. Great pop art, love it or hate it as many people do, is timeless
and that in itself is difficult to master.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Pop Art is a movement that originated
right here in Britain in the 1950s and became popular elsewhere in the late 50s
and early 1960s. There are distinct nuances between pop art created in disparate
geographic regions, as one would expect when art is representative of the
popular culture that it portrays. That’s exactly what lends pop art to more localised
markets but perhaps that could also be a reason as why some artists fail to
find any traction with it, there is a risk that any local cultural references
can become lost on a wider audience, so if you do select this niche, think
carefully about which markets you intend to place it in.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Comic Art…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is an element of comic
inspired art that sits quite neatly with or in between retro and pop art.
Utilising halftone dots, an effect that was introduced into the 5X update to
the art creating application, Procreate on the iPad, which reinforces perhaps
just how popular halftone has become. Comic art is about much more than
halftone dot effects, it’s about telling a story with bold colours and strong
composition and it’s not always about creating cute or angry characters and
surprisingly, it’s not all about anime.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As a genre, it also lends
itself to a fusion of pop art and retro, with limited but bold colour palettes, grainy textures,
halftone effects, and aged fonts that maybe have a retro-futuristic feel, there
is plenty for artists to dig their teeth into with this particular genre.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Pet Portraits…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Perhaps one of the staples of
the niche or side hustle for many artists has the potential to become the main
source of income if the marketing is on point and in front of the right
audience. This is one area I have written about on this site previously, and it’s
also one of the niches I have been keeping a close eye on over the past half a
dozen years or so. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Pet owners and I count myself
as one of them, love their pets, they’re part of the family, oh, and they
rarely answer back! It is though, a little more complex than offering a
portrait of a dog or cat. Going down the pet portrait rabbit hole can see you specialising
in specific breeds, specific animals because it doesn’t always have to be about
dogs I guess, and exhibiting not just at art shows but at major dog and horse
shows if you are painting horses. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is often both a local
and wider audience interest in animal art so it lends itself to very well
across every territory and that’s something that not every artwork subject gives
you the freedom to do. But, bear in mind, there is a high bar set for pet portraits
and some seriously great work already out there. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d-D-O480DQ4/YF2Yv7DbsXI/AAAAAAAAGck/91MLyrCa-S0R_Tst3eu9lJuHn294t3xEACLcBGAsYHQ/s1423/garden%2Bparty.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="jungle art with animals" border="0" data-original-height="1423" data-original-width="1072" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d-D-O480DQ4/YF2Yv7DbsXI/AAAAAAAAGck/91MLyrCa-S0R_Tst3eu9lJuHn294t3xEACLcBGAsYHQ/w482-h640/garden%2Bparty.PNG" title="Garden Party by Mark Taylor" width="482" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Garden Party - Still one of my popular works even after all this time! Every single flower and leaf was created as a separate artwork for this piece!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Florals…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I wasn’t sure whether or not
to include florals as a specific niche, in part, because this is another area
where there is already a high bar and plenty of art, and with a slightly heavy
heart, I have to say that there might be too many artists attempting florals with
the misconception that they’re easy and quick and appeal to a wide audience. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Where florals become
challenging is when you surface them in front of an audience, there’s a lot of
noise in this space and to pull florals off, you have to do them really well. Not
every artist can master the shape and form of floral designs and do it
consistently well and very few can achieve the delicateness that florals need.
Once again, I tip my hat to any artist who works in floral design because to do
it consistently is challenging.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Having said that, florals can
be absolute gold if you get them right. Flowers and floral designs have always
been popular and if they can be marketed in the right place and aimed at the
right audience, they too can be a lucrative source of income, but it is a highly
competitive market and as I say, there are genuinely few artists who do florals
really well but hey, art is supposed to be subjective right?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Get them right and the market
can be opened up to include many of the special days we celebrate each year
such as Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, and it also opens up new spaces
to place your work in. Think about garden centres, high-end gift shops particularly
those in tourist hotspots in the countryside, and it’s a niche that lends
itself to much more than traditional paintings. Clothing and gifts, serving
trays, mugs, dinnerware, home décor, it’s another deep rabbit hole with plenty
of rewards possible, but remember, the bar is high.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Building the new box…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The niches above should give
you an appetite for the art of what is possible and as I intimated earlier,
these are not necessarily the niches that will categorically work for you and
your artistic style, or even your geographic location. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">They are niches that I have
been observing over the past decade and they are niches that I have noticed
have been particularly strong throughout. I have been looking and collecting
all kinds of business intelligence during that time and above all else, it’s
really beginning to tell me that we don’t always have to look to the obvious. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">However, this next part is, I
think, it is fair to say, on a slightly higher level, but if you are looking to take
your creativity in a completely different direction as an aside from your
everyday creations, or in a direction that has the potential to create an
impact outside of the traditional art space, we need to look towards
building that entirely new box. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The example I’m going to use
for this, as I say, is on a very different level to selecting a new medium or
genre, but it does I think, demonstrate that an artist or designer or creator
has the potential to utilise the skills they have in other areas. So whilst I’m
not suggesting that you unpack what I am about to fly through and run with it,
what I am suggesting is that we don’t always have to think in linear ways about
how we apply our creativity to make a living. We don't have to immediately dismiss the crazy idea!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When we begin thinking in
non-linear ways, we can then more easily expand the idea out to work out if it
fits with the skills we have or the skills we wish to master. My advice to
anyone looking towards any new niche is to think of a hundred crazy ideas, and
if you have some confidence in your own ability I am pretty sure you could pull
99 of them off regardless of how crazy they might seem. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iTbUqapABsc/YF2ZpelQfAI/AAAAAAAAGcs/PUAe4Tex3BAGNCTS7_F-c_2GFz2b44pnwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/tropical%2Bparrot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="parrot artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iTbUqapABsc/YF2ZpelQfAI/AAAAAAAAGcs/PUAe4Tex3BAGNCTS7_F-c_2GFz2b44pnwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/tropical%2Bparrot.jpg" title="Tropical Parrot by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Tropical Parrot by Mark Taylor - Also available now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The Content Creator Example:</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">As artists, we immediately
think about new subjects to paint and draw but the creative sector is much
broader and wider than painting and drawing, or being what I can only term as
being stereotypically creative, think sculpting, pottery, ceramics, or anything
else that might immediately spring to mind if you were asked to list what a
creative does. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The talent you have for being
creative can be applied in all sorts of different ways, but we’re not always
aware of how our creativity can be used in other disciplines, maybe because we
wouldn’t necessarily think about using our creativity differently from the way we
have always used it, sometimes I think we’re creative until we’re not.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the biggest areas I
have been seeing rising demand for, in part because it has been a major focus
of mine for a number of years while I have been assembling and leading a major
project to deliver three studios to do it is that of content creation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whilst I’m applying that
caveat again that this might not be an area that would suit you, it does
demonstrate how to run with an idea and then unpack it until you discover what
you can do with it. Sometimes the crazy idea needs a deep dive to work out if
it has legs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">When we think about content
creation we might think about creating social media posts and yes, it can be
that, I always love to see social media profiles of graphic designers who take
their craft to the nth degree on social, and some social media folk in big
organisations are becoming lockdown rock stars. Think Wendy’s and the infamous
and often brutal tweets, or UPS suggesting that if you were wondering where
your parcel is, try next door. The self-deprecating responses that have a ring
of truth are always the ones that seem to resonate the best. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Content creation or specifically
the design of content can also be a lucrative business that supplies e-learning
content and resources into multiple industries. This is also a career that I
have found to be more attuned to creatives than traditional technology
developers, so it really does have a great fit with the creative sector.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Working from home has seen a significant
increase in demand for e-learning and interactive content creation. Businesses that
have staff working from home still have a responsibility to provide those staff
with training and the most effective way to do that in the midst of a pandemic,
and I would suggest even outside of a pandemic, is to deliver that training
online. The difficulty most businesses have is with the price that they get
charged for commissioning a professional content author to create it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Yes, it is another specific
skillset that you will need to learn if you were to decide to follow this
particular route, and it’s not straightforward to master either, but there are
also openings that allow artists and photographers to get involved in other
ways. Think about what I said about matching the skills that you already have
to different disciplines, most things involve some element of art and design
these days.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you didn’t want to engage
in the process of building content, you could look to supply the market that
does build it with the things that they need. Image licensing can bear fruit if
your portfolio is strong, as can sound effects and music, but if you did decide
to try your hand in the actual creation of content then you will find a lot of
support and tutorials available online and much of it is freely available.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you were to follow the
creator route, then understanding things like learning management systems such
as Moodle and Canvas and how they can be integrated into websites is kind of
mandatory, and if you can get to grips with professional authoring tools such
as Articulate 360 or Adobe Captivate and pull those skills together with an
understanding of accessibility standards, suddenly you have a brand new enterprise
that can quite happily sit alongside your usual creative output and probably
even take over from your usual creative output.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Articulate 360 and Adobe
Captivate are the tools that I have been using for a while and the tools that I
installed in the three studios I recently set up, but having other tools such
as Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, Affinity Publisher, or Adobe Photoshop or
Adobe Illustrator is essential because you will need to create the assets that
get used within the learning packages. So once again, thinking your next niche
through and unpacking it might help you to develop more options to use your
creativity in a market that is growing at quite a click. If you can use
Illustrator, why limit your audience, content creators need those services too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-os4RfokJE4s/YF2aQ0JKnbI/AAAAAAAAGc0/l8jKDk93_6sqQs8leDHhfT41qcaSwugWACLcBGAsYHQ/s1228/pool%2Bparty.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Flamingos in water art" border="0" data-original-height="1228" data-original-width="1227" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-os4RfokJE4s/YF2aQ0JKnbI/AAAAAAAAGc0/l8jKDk93_6sqQs8leDHhfT41qcaSwugWACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/pool%2Bparty.PNG" title="Pool Party by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Pool Party - One of my most searched for artworks! Yes, also available!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">There is though, another niche
that is ideally suited to those who have been offering creative tutorials over
zoom or skype or social media, but it’s only when you begin to sit down and
unpack these niches and the demand for them that you can then begin to join the
dots and apply your own creativity and skills to them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Tutorials delivered over
social media or video conferencing are fine, but if you need to scale the
business, technology quickly becomes limiting. Embedding an e-learning
management system into your website allows you to add students, enrol them in
units or courses, track and manage their progress, set assignments and keep in
touch and even grade them and there are automation options to reduce the amount
of input and time needed to manage the process of managing students. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">We can begin to see the
potential with something like this but let’s really unpack that niche a little
more. There’s also ample opportunity for the upsell, personal one to one video
tutorials, providing additional support, access to a podcast or private social
media group or forums, and these are generally the things that students expect,
they are also seen as a premium service. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">But you could go even further,
selling the instructional videos, templates, patterns, even the equipment that
students might need to use which can often be found online as white label
products which you are then able to put your own branding on. Beyond that of
course, there are the obligatory conferences once we’re out of the pandemic,
live webinars, and sampler courses offered at lower price points, and it’s a
model that can lend itself to yet another subscription. More than this, you never
only offer the course once, it is a repeatable model that can grow exponentially
and it allows either fixed date enrolment or roll on roll off course starts to
keep the flow of students when you are using a tool such as Moodle to deliver
it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So we now have a completely
new niche and in this example we’re looking to professionalise the tutorials we
have been offering, so let’s unpack it a little more. Maybe we could offer the
model as a franchise for other creatives to run with their tutorials or
offering your learning packages which are then syndicated. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You could then go even further
taking the entire model a step further by getting your teaching resources
certified by an official awarding body so that they are recognised as an
official qualification or recognised as official CPD so that what you offer has
some value and academic worth. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">That then becomes the value
add, the premium price point, and the difference between what you offer and
what everyone else is relying on pay per click to never quite deliver.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Can you do this on a limited
budget, in truth, probably not, or you can but not on any level that is scalable.
So once again, let’s unpack that thought too. My advice is to maybe look to other
creatives to form a partnership and share the workload and initial costs,
ultimately, you will need additional hands anyway so you might as well begin with having them in place
from the off.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Unpacking any ideas that you
have, no matter how crazy those ideas might first initially seem rather than
dismissing an idea as too complex, too samey, too far out there to be remotely possible,
before exploring the depths of that idea to see if there is anything that might
stick, allows you to better visualise the idea or the niche you want to
explore. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Whilst it is probably easier
to pick any number of other niches to pursue as an artist than the example I
used with the content creation above, that’s not necessarily the point of the
example, the point is very much that when you think about niches in the
creative sector, you don’t have to be limited, and if you spend some time
unpacking the possibilities of whatever niche you choose, you can quickly come
up with ideas that can support your existing creative endeavours or you can more
easily begin to identify things that can become new creative endeavours in
their own right. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I think one of the best ways
of unpacking any niche to see if it has a fit for you is to think about it as
if a friend is setting a business up in that niche, all you then need to ask yourself
is what can you do to help, what can you bring to the table that will help
them and that is what will help you.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">In short, if you’re not
selling because the market isn’t there right now, it might be time to unpack
some of those crazy ideas you have had over the years to see what might have
enough legs to carry you through.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Your chosen niche could be anything
at all, it’s a brave soul who takes on the learning curve of using a platform
such as Articulate, but art and design is used in so many aspects of life that
there will always be a market that can be accessed and if you can solve or make
a problem easier and you feel passionate enough about it, that’s the niche you
need to be in. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C_TgFvigSds/YF2a8iSMD0I/AAAAAAAAGc8/Klog15yneRAKje4iL16KjrcZFs9pAtUzQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1235/twin%2Bsails.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="ocean landscape art" border="0" data-original-height="997" data-original-width="1235" height="516" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C_TgFvigSds/YF2a8iSMD0I/AAAAAAAAGc8/Klog15yneRAKje4iL16KjrcZFs9pAtUzQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h516/twin%2Bsails.PNG" title="Twin Sails by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Twin Sails is one of my earlier works and still available as a print!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Research the niche…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My advice to anyone regardless
of the niche they decide to follow is to first make sure that the niche is
something that you have a passion for, and secondly, make sure that you fully
research what you’re getting into. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">My very first foray into book
covers just over a decade ago was a learning curve that wasn’t easy to master, I
had no idea about ISBN codes and spine widths, trim and safety lines, today
most designs can be produced using templates depending on who is publishing the
book.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Think about the markets and
indeed whether or not there is one for whatever niche you decide to pursue, and
explore who is already working in that niche. What are they charging and what are
people already paying, and how strong is the demand. These aren’t questions
that you need to ask just because you have a new direction to work in, these
are the very questions that you need to be asking regardless of whether you are
selecting a new niche or not. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Master the Niche…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You will need to be mindful
that any new niche, subject or genre will take some time to master. There’s
plenty to do while you build up any new techniques and skills but mastering the
art of patience as always with art is the key to setting out on the right
track. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Market the Niche…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Marketing is just as important
with your niche as it is with your primary work, but you might want to consider
if there should be any form of separation and how you might apply it. I know
for most people who set out on the path to professional art that marketing is
the one thing that most of us never really enjoy, but it can be fun. It comes
down to having confidence and thinking about marketing as being a core part of
the creative process. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I do know the pressure that
marketing can put on artists, it’s something that has often made me feel like a
drowning soul waving his arms frantically in a raging sea, but without
marketing and seeing it as an essential part of the creative process, we wouldn’t
get too far. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Prs8_a0ZNV0/YF2bmhG0qfI/AAAAAAAAGdE/V4b-0Pauba4o9fGWmF5nS42IvJD7Yhh3gCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Adrift%2Bat%2Bthe%2BGolden%2BHour.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Boats on water landscape art" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Prs8_a0ZNV0/YF2bmhG0qfI/AAAAAAAAGdE/V4b-0Pauba4o9fGWmF5nS42IvJD7Yhh3gCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Adrift%2Bat%2Bthe%2BGolden%2BHour.JPG" title="Adrift at the Golden Hour by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Adrift at the Golden Hour - From my Adrift Collection of seascapes with empty boats!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">The art of the business of art…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">It really comes down to the
art of the business of art. I have heard so often from artists that they would
much rather be spending all of their time creating, but if that’s what an
artist really wanted to do then they would be working as an artist for someone
else. The business of art is an essential part of being a self-employed
independent creative and when your confidence in this area grows, it becomes
almost second nature.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Over the past five weeks we
have broken down the skills that artists routinely use every single day and judging
by the emails and messages I have been receiving each week, many of you have
been surprised at just how epic you really are, so I have every faith in your
ability to take forward a new niche, add it to your portfolio and become an
even better artist for doing it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Coming Soon!<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Hopefully, this article will
have certainly got the wheels spinning and provided you with a few useful pointers in
working out exactly what your next creative challenge might be! If you have tested
out a new niche or already create in multiple niches, let us know what your
experience has been like by leaving a comment below!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you have found this series
useful, let me know that too so I can plan on spending more time pouring
through the data, meandering my way around the interweb and spending a few
sleepless nights pulling it all together, it’s worth it for me even if it only
helps one artist make a success of their business!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">What’s next? We’ll be taking a
stroll down memory lane as I unpack the niche that is retro. For the eagle-eyed
amongst you and for those who managed to get past the first paragraph this
week, you will have noticed that I completed an eighties inspired retro piece which appears above, so I will be unpicking that to give you
a little insight into all of the visual queues that you might have missed in
the work!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">So until next time, as always,
stay safe, stay well, stay creative, and above all else, look after each other!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Mark x<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">I am
an artist and blogger and live in Staffordshire, England. Like every blogger, I
have two dogs and enjoy country walks! Unlike every other blogger, I really do
enjoy country walks!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">You
can purchase my art through my Fine Art America store or my Pixels site
here: </span><a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"> and
you can purchase my new works, special and limited editions directly. You can
also view my portfolio website at </span><a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://beechhousemedia.com</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you
are on Facebook, you can give me a follow right here, </span><a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at </span><a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">
because it’s always great to connect and sometimes I even have mildly
interesting things to say!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">If you
would like to support the upkeep of this site or maybe just buy me a coffee,
you can do so at my Go Fund Me link right <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-an-independent-visual-artist" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">Any
donations received are used to ensure I can continue writing independently for
independent artists. I self-fund this website through my art sales on Pixels
and Fine Art America, so any donations, even the cost of a coffee through Go
Fund Me </span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 200%;">helps to relieve the pressure of maintaining
such a regular schedule.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span> </p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-82245510420702532762021-03-12T08:29:00.000+00:002021-03-12T08:29:04.034+00:00Your Art Career Part 4 - Going It Alone<h1 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"> <b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Your Art Career Part Four –
Upskilling</span></b></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U0fehqI9iKQ/YEsZ-VsJ7xI/AAAAAAAAGZQ/52cYIakvBF0fWHiYaDXEodga10sjLYSCACLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/part%2B4%2Bcareer%2Bcover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Computer, abstract background, cover image for art career blog" border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1080" height="336" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U0fehqI9iKQ/YEsZ-VsJ7xI/AAAAAAAAGZQ/52cYIakvBF0fWHiYaDXEodga10sjLYSCACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h336/part%2B4%2Bcareer%2Bcover.png" title="Your Art Career Part Four" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Part Four - Going It Alone...</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">In the fourth instalment of my
latest series looking at your career in the creative arts, we dig down into the
skills that you need to be a self-employed or freelance creative in the 21<sup>st</sup>
Century. We also discover the skills that businesses rely on when hiring that
you will have to bring to the game when you are working for yourself.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b>This week’s big question?<o:p></o:p></b></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">One of the big questions we
need to ask and hopefully go some way to answering this week, is whether we can
we learn anything from other businesses and employers in general about how we
should be tackling the challenges of running a creative business in the midst
of a global pandemic and beyond? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What are the critical skills
needed for any business to be successful in some of the toughest times ever,
and are these businesses responding differently today than they did
pre-pandemic?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DFhQP0EEOU4/YEsayf-YgkI/AAAAAAAAGZY/qIxQSGxHt9sLsbWQ0ICxPe4ixD-g4rb1ACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Art%2BSupplies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="material art, craft supplies, artwork, artwork in frame, brick wall," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DFhQP0EEOU4/YEsayf-YgkI/AAAAAAAAGZY/qIxQSGxHt9sLsbWQ0ICxPe4ixD-g4rb1ACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Art%2BSupplies.jpg" title="Art Supplies by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Art Supplies by Mark Taylor - One of my latest artworks!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">How the industry changed…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If you are thinking of joining
the millions of creatives who have taken the leap to go it alone, or you are an
existing creative looking to figure out what skills you might need to build on
to continue running your creative practice as a business, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>it might be worth getting some context around
exactly what we know has changed over the past twelve-months so that you can
decide if you need to upskill, and if you do need to upskill, in what area you
need to focus your learning on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I think it’s fair to say that
everything has changed in an industry where physical brick and mortar galleries
and stores have been labelled during global lockdowns as being non-essential,
and whilst art fans might disagree with art in any way being labelled as
non-essential, these really are unprecedented times, but what we haven’t seen
is art showing any signs of stopping. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There do seem to be way more people turning
to the creative sector today than ever before, and buyers, even the ones who
aren’t necessarily buying at the moment, are still turning to the sector for
their creative fix.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">To coin the cheesiest pandemic
phrase ever, these really are unprecedented times. Shows and exhibitions have
been cancelled, and there are a lot of independent artists who have been left
out of pocket and left scrambling to figure out alternative ways to connect and
engage with their audience, often using the most creative ways imaginable to
stay relevant. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Many creatives have been looking towards widening their
portfolio to offer more and more so that they can appeal to a wider range of
buyers, some have reduced output to focus on the markets that are still around.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The biggest pandemic change
for most businesses was the video conference. Initially, the zoom meeting
became the new go-to exhibition, but even in the past few months, I’m getting the
feeling that people are genuinely tired of this kind of experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People seem to be becoming a little detuned
to the message, it’s an intensive experience when you repeat it over and over,
and I think most of us are a little zoomed out right now.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">As a human race, we just
weren’t prepared for a pandemic, and I’m not so sure any of us had a plan other
than to turn to the most obvious and relatively quick and easy technologies to
keep in touch. On one hand, we have seen an acceleration of the acceptance of transacting
and communicating online, but on the other hand, we only really had one
response to pretty much everything at the beginning of the pandemic and that
was to turn to video conferencing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">While conferencing platforms
are useful, so useful they have saved many businesses from going under, but I
think we also need to be much more creative in how we communicate and engage. We
need to figure out better ways to communicate in a post-pandemic world, and as
we really have no clue as to how long social distancing measures will go on, we
can’t run the risk of people and ultimately, buyers tuning out because they’re
tired of tuning in. That could be a real issue, those who spend most of their
working week communicating in front of a screen might very well decide to turn
that screen off come the weekend. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FiZVAy6jjDs/YEsba3J2tLI/AAAAAAAAGZg/jFnKEI9YE-8lDE1yg3c1cDlj7Rh6cZahwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Anyone%2BFor%2BTennis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="tennis ball, tennis racket, fabric art, landscape, surreal," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FiZVAy6jjDs/YEsba3J2tLI/AAAAAAAAGZg/jFnKEI9YE-8lDE1yg3c1cDlj7Rh6cZahwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Anyone%2BFor%2BTennis.jpg" title="Anyone For Tennis by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Anyone For Tennis by Mark Taylor - Another new creation!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What the pandemic has done, is
to make online much more relevant even beyond the video conferences. Platforms
such as Etsy have become the trendy space to buy handmade crafts and art, where
at one time, the big transactions that people are making today were solely the
reserve of the physical gallery space in pre-pandemic times. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">That’s a good thing, we’re finally
seeing the legitimisation of buying art online and that’s something that many
of us already working in the creative sector would have been thinking as being
impossible for at least another half a decade or so, but, I think we do need to
be cautious and ensure that this legitimisation doesn’t become a fleeting trend
due to people tuning out because they’re becoming tired of not so much the
message, but the manner in which the message is delivered. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">This enthusiasm, or rather the sudden need for online everything has also raised the digital bar. If you could
get away without having a website and a social media account pre-pandemic, you
can’t get away without having one today. So when we think about the new skills
we need to run a business in a world that is hopefully soon to be emerging from
the pandemic, getting much better at digital has to be high on the list of new
skills that you need to master as a post-pandemic business owner.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Suddenly, our websites have to
compete with websites created by entire web development teams, and it’s tough,
really tough when you are a solo business owner with a limited budget and one
pair of hands. Whilst we have access to the exact same tools that professional
web development teams have access to, we also have to factor in the learning
that needs to be undertaken to make use of them and let’s not forget the ever
spiralling costs associated with everything that we creatives do, whether it’s
updating a website or buying creative supplies. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Outside of the online space,
those in the creative sector are having to become much more entrepreneurial and
much more focused on engaging with their markets, some of which may have
disappeared entirely as a global pandemic hasn’t just been felt through the
loss of life, it has put a real squeeze on the purse strings of one time art
buyers too, and let’s not forget the digital divide, even today, not everyone
gets regular or indeed sometimes, even any access to the internet.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There will be many who might
not be currently able to afford the luxury of art when they absolutely have to
find the money to purchase the proverbial essential widget, or put food on the
table, or keep a roof over their head and so the list goes on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Empathy is rapidly becoming an essential
skill in business and particularly when dealing with your buyer and collector
base who might suddenly not be collecting or buying. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">On a deeper level, the empathy
we need to master is about defining, understanding, and reacting to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the concerns and needs that underlie others’
emotional responses and reactions, it’s also a skill that absolutely can be
learned, but first, we need to become much better at communicating with the
market and way better at listening. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">So while we work out what
skills are needed to find new markets, we also need to develop skills that mean
we don’t forget our old markets, skills that might include becoming better at
communicating, or marketing, or whatever else is needed to ensure that those
buyers we once had eventually return and we continue to retain the buyers who
are still around.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It’s really a lot less
simplistic than that, there are many other variables at play but none of them
change this one single truth, the markets for artists and creatives have
changed with maybe the exception of the ultra-high-end gallery markets. Travel
restrictions might have made some of those high-end markets more challenging,
but a multi-million buck Matisse is still very much a multi-million buck
Matisse. What most artists and creatives have to focus on today, is that the
markets that serve the majority of working artists are very different from the
million-plus-buck Matisse market and they’re markets where money matters more
and are more susceptible to change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It’s not all bad news, there
have been some positives and new markets have begun to emerge in some sectors.
Ultimately, people are still buying art, they just might not be the exact same
people as before, and they might not be popping up in the exact same places.
Some artists will have found new markets, others will have lost markets, so we
now need to add yet another skill to our toolbox that will once again give us
the ability to rediscover and find our tribe once again.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What skills do we need to run
a business today?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If like me, you have spent any
time reading any number of the countless articles online that suggest the top
five or ten things that you absolutely need to be doing differently during a
pandemic to make your business successful, what you might have found is that most
of those articles have been pointing out the obvious and it’s mostly stuff that
most creatives will already either be doing or will quickly figure out for
themselves, there’s nothing that feels different at all. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">None of the magic wand
solutions I have recently come across, provide me with a warm fuzzy feeling
that they’re anything remotely like a magic wand, they’re things we absolutely
need to be doing, but I think we also need to be doing much more, the creative
sector has always been a tough gig, I think we’ll need more than a handful of
tools moving on. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Most of the articles I have
been reading have mentioned the need to get better at digital, most of them
also mention becoming delivery oriented, and they all seem to focus on better
planning or motivating the workforce. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I’m not convinced it’s quite
as simple as that, whilst those are important skills, we can plan, build better
websites, go for a walk to find some motivation, all we want, but unless we
follow any of that up with affirmative action, I can’t see how we move forward.
Besides, for most creatives, the workforce count is usually one and it’s harder
to become motivated when you are charged with motivating yourself.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">That’s not to say that
planning doesn’t play a role, nor that any of the other suggestions won’t be
helpful, but they will be much more useful if we combine them with the skills
that are already proven to be the skills that are needed to operate a
successful business in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What worries me most about
many of these online one-pagers of advice are that they’re taken as being the
five or ten or however many things that will save the day and the focus shifts
to only ever doing those things. The creative business is about much more than
following five or ten simple steps, it always has been.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What I think might be the better approach is to not forget the other hundred and one skills that were
already needed pre-pandemic to run a successful business. Sure the life
preserver is welcome in a storm, but I think I would much rather prefer to know
exactly where the lifeboats are too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GtAS6vWTx4k/YEscTacfarI/AAAAAAAAGZo/J3j3zqwpRFws4EWhIzZeiMuv3fa0S6kzQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Blue%2BJean%2BMountains.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="fabric art, landscape, blue mountains, framed, brick wall," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GtAS6vWTx4k/YEscTacfarI/AAAAAAAAGZo/J3j3zqwpRFws4EWhIzZeiMuv3fa0S6kzQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Blue%2BJean%2BMountains.jpg" title="Blue Jean Mountains by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Blue Jean Mountains by Mark Taylor - More new artwork!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">We need to look at the
employment data again…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Whilst most businesses won’t
be openly sharing what their business intelligence is telling them about what
skills are needed in a pandemic and post-pandemic world for fear of also giving
away an advantage to their competitors, most businesses are already showing
their hand as to what skills they think they need without even realising it. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">When a business posts an
advert to fill an employment vacancy, they’re also listing the most desirable
skills that the candidate should have. This is a really good indicator that
allows us to figure out how businesses are thinking they should be responding
to the pandemic and the economic uncertainty that comes with it. If other
businesses are focussed on doing something very specific to engage their
market, I think we really need to be doing whatever that thing is too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">A Quick Word About The Data…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Once again, as with the data
over the past three articles, I looked at UK data sets but this time focussing
on job posting analytics that identified the key skills that businesses were on
the lookout for across all occupations and all industries between December 2019
and December 2020. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The total number of job
postings was some 54.87million, but the number of unique job postings equated
to only 10.69million. Why the discrepancy? Most jobs are posted multiple times
in different places, so the posting intensity is 5:1, or 5 job postings for
every job available.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">How does this compare to your
territory? Once again, the data sets from other countries aren’t as accessible
to me as the UK one that I use is. Some countries collect data in a similar way
to the way, data is gathered in the UK and some countries and regions might have
their own version of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) or a similar entity
within government that collects and collates the data so that it can be
interpreted in the right way. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Some countries and governments
publish this data online, but it’s then often aggregated by third-parties which
isn’t always accessible, and this data, regardless of its country of origin or
its source is generally on the expensive end of not cheap to access, but this
is also where we get the business intelligence we need, directly from the
proverbial horse’s mouth which is generally a much better way of finding out
the reality. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The data I have been using
throughout this series is modelled through a top-end commercial employment
market intelligence tool that uses a range of structured and unstructured data
sources to formulate a series of economic projections, it also comes with a
high-end price tag, but needs must, and that’s another reason why I had to
select only one region-specific tool.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Whilst the data is UK centric,
the anecdotal, and in comparison, a small volume of formal data from other regions
and territories that I could find, and from literally pouring through more than
300 overseas job postings manually, I began to get a clear steer that broadly
similar economies in geographically disparate locations wouldn’t be too
different. Skills needs are often more similar than you would think, regardless
of where the skills are needed. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Some quick back of a stamp
maths and I could work out that job postings in similar economies were coming
out at a similar kind of 5:1 ratio that I mentioned earlier. However, I will
caveat this with, that this was a manual process and it was a small sample in
comparison to the UK data set I have been using. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Also, you need to bear in mind
that I’m not as efficient at sorting through complex data as an algorithm that
has been constructed for this purpose would be. It would have been nice to have
access to a similar economic modelling tool for other territories, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>but, for the proverbial starving artist who
writes a non-monetized blog, it is what it is, but I think what has been
identified in terms of skills needed, is roughly on a par with everywhere else.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">In terms of the broader
employment market outlook, there was a slight alarm bell that began to sound
when I looked at the most recent 30-days of job posting activity here in the UK.
There were fewer job postings overall (across all industries and occupations) whilst it isn’t unexpected, it is definitely a sign that the short-term
employment market economy isn’t performing brilliantly. That’s not really something
that you would especially need a data set to figure out, but the data does
confirm it and I suspect, if I had run the same queries previously, that would
have been an emerging trend over the previous articles too and right the way
through 2020.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What I wasn’t able to do was
to work out whether the same decline was definitely being seen in other
territories, but my hunch is that it probably is given where we’re all at with
the pandemic and collating anecdotal evidence on platforms such as Reddit and
LinkedIn, amongst others, does seem to back that up, but again, not in the
numbers you could draw a firm conclusion from so it is very much a best
semi-educated guess but we all know times are tough. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">A good example to highlight
this lower UK job posting activity was that the number of unique job postings
on February 20<sup>th</sup> 2021, was 21.2% lower than the number of jobs
postings on the same day in 2020. Every one of the thirty days up until the 20<sup>th</sup>
February showed a similar decline in job postings using the same comparison. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jJ8pL5WkSBs/YEsdPjghC8I/AAAAAAAAGZw/6Cna42JLuzUfbCRNReUSvQoiqrkZ-8HwACLcBGAsYHQ/s1908/Job%2BPosting%2BAnalytics%2BPart%2B1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="employment data analytics for the UK 2021" border="0" data-original-height="935" data-original-width="1908" height="314" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jJ8pL5WkSBs/YEsdPjghC8I/AAAAAAAAGZw/6Cna42JLuzUfbCRNReUSvQoiqrkZ-8HwACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h314/Job%2BPosting%2BAnalytics%2BPart%2B1.PNG" title="Employment Data Analytics UK 2021" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We can also see from this that jobs were advertised for an average of 31-days.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Again, no real surprises here,
and remember, this data set went much wider than the creative industry and
included every industry from the available data set, not just the creative
sector which I have focussed on in previous articles. What this week’s dive
into the data demonstrated more than anything else, was that the overall
employment market has declined, although the creative sector is still broadly
on track for a long-term rise in demand for creatives.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The data also showed the gap
between last year and this year wasn’t becoming wider each day during the
period I looked at, so there does seem to be an element of stability in the
market, even if it currently paints a slightly bleaker picture than it did last
year. The increase in demand for creatives, whilst not a sharp incline
involving hundreds of thousands of new openings is at least a gentle stroll up
a moderately challenging hill, right the way through to 2027.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Figure 2: 10 days of job
posting activity in 2021, compared with the same 10 days in 2020.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J9ysCxKDeRA/YEsdr5z1MbI/AAAAAAAAGZ4/PsBUCUl-QdkLOBuKdfRgwYQkbDj07u4ngCLcBGAsYHQ/s1846/10%2Bdays%2Bof%2Bjob%2Bpostings%2Bin%2B2021%2Bcompared%2Bto%2B2020.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Job Postings compared to previous year data" border="0" data-original-height="758" data-original-width="1846" height="262" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J9ysCxKDeRA/YEsdr5z1MbI/AAAAAAAAGZ4/PsBUCUl-QdkLOBuKdfRgwYQkbDj07u4ngCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h262/10%2Bdays%2Bof%2Bjob%2Bpostings%2Bin%2B2021%2Bcompared%2Bto%2B2020.PNG" title="Job postings compared to the previous year" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Job Postings Compared to the previous year... worrying decline but stable.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">As an aside, the numbers we
see across the broader employment market in themselves, might also go some way
to possibly explaining why it’s more challenging to sell artwork today. It
doesn’t take either a rocket scientist or economist to figure out that way
too<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>many people are feeling the pinch of
the pandemic in their pockets. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Not only have many people lost
their jobs, companies are definitely not posting anywhere near the same level
of new jobs to replace the ones that have been lost. Suddenly, the data isn’t
just showing us the skills that companies are asking for, it’s giving us a more
specific view of how the markets for the majority of working artists could be
being adversely affected and how they might be affected for a little while
longer. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">In simple terms, if buyers
don’t have the money, they’re generally not buying art because art doesn’t
solve the same kind of problems that the proverbial widget might. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">However, this week isn’t about
the jobs neither is it specifically about the economic outlook, I’m in no way
close to being an economist, but I absolutely know that as creatives, we need
to continue to find our tribes and we need to bear in mind that once we find
them, they might have very different buying behaviours to the behaviours they
had before, even their tastes might have changed. I know mine have as I have
been looking at more art from more places online in the absence of an open
gallery or museum. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">So this week, it’s about
identifying the skills that we now need as independent creatives to run our
businesses beyond the five or ten things that some online channels are
suggesting are the handful of skills that are going to save us.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What’s the data saying?</span></b></h1>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"></h2><h1 style="text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Top
Hard Skills Needed by Employers…</span></b></h1><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Skill,
Number of Job Postings identifying the skills needed</span></b></span>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Auditing,
417,333<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Accounting,
344,147<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Nursing,
339,167<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs), 300,551<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Agile
Methodology, 298,123<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Business
Development, 294,313<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Warehousing,
259,777<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Mental
Health, 255,449<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Selling
Techniques, 221,255<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">SQL
(Programming Language), 214,447<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Customer
Relationship Management, 199,397<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Forecasting,
190,941<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Personal
Care, 190,571<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Risk
Analysis, 190,099<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Financial
Services, 185,407<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Procurement,
173,120<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">JavaScript
(Programming Language), 172,875<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Data
Analysis, 162,275<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Budgeting,
159,951<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Python
(Programming Language), 157,228<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Project
Management, 154,557<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Automation,
154,329<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Learning
Disabilities, 153,723<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">New
Product Development, 147,143<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Customer
Experience, 142,754<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Association
Of Chartered Certified Accountants, 139,457<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Advising,
136,997<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Numeracy,
136,644<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Amazon
Web Services, 132,401<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Pharmaceuticals,
129,181<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Supply
Chain, 128,188<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Service
Delivery, 126,681<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Business
To Business, 126,056<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">C#
(Programming Language), 125,123<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Risk
Management, 123,388<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Personal
Protective Equipment, 123,358<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Autism
Spectrum Disorders, 122,895<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Software
Development, 121,778<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Strategic
Planning, 121,229<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Rehabilitation,
119,545<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Restaurant
Operation, 118,934<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Purchasing,
115,277<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Microsoft
Azure, 115,085<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Booking
(Sales), 114,310<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Software
Engineering, 110,044<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Stakeholder
Management, 107,172<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Account
Management, 103,514<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Job
postings are collected from various sources and processed/enriched to provide
information such as standardized company name, occupation, skills, and
geography and covered the period between December 2019, and December 2020 and
covers all occupations across all industries. Primary Source, Economic
Modelling. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What
we get from the hard skills…</span></b></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Out of
the 50+ million job postings, remember, those postings only advertised
10+million jobs, the skills listed were ranked as appearing more often. Further
down the list, when you get to the lower tens of thousands, you can expect to
see hard skills such as graphic design, product design, and other creative
skills. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If you
remember the numbers from the previous articles, they will be relative to the
number of creative positions being advertised. So whilst graphic designers
might be in demand, as a proportion of the total employment landscape across
all industries, the numbers will be relatively small because it’s a smaller
sector than say, a sector such as healthcare. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Most
of these skills also apply far more broadly across multiple industries and
whilst not every skill will be useful in the creative sector, we can see how
businesses who are also in the position of rediscovering their tribe are
looking to tackle the challenge.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U97iNsQC2Dw/YEsejPQNXcI/AAAAAAAAGaA/kuB_P5TJ2LM_TmhQYEKaT80wW6wvXDauQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Happy%2BSummer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="abstract tree artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-U97iNsQC2Dw/YEsejPQNXcI/AAAAAAAAGaA/kuB_P5TJ2LM_TmhQYEKaT80wW6wvXDauQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Happy%2BSummer.jpg" title="Happy Summer by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Happy Summer by Mark Taylor - Available Now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There
are a few surprises on the list of the hard skills and some not quite as surprising
skills needs that have been identified. Business Development and sales always
seem to be more in-demand whenever the economy is struggling, perhaps because
we’re trying to leverage new markets. I saw a lot of this back in 2008/2009
too. If a business is struggling, often they will hire more salespeople to hopefully
make more sales.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Selling
technique is an obvious area we need to focus on, we need to apply new
techniques if old ones stop working, and there’s an interesting one around
automation. We perhaps need to begin thinking about automating much more as
creatives because we are in a busy industry and even more so when we are in it
alone. But, bear in mind, that automation is about much more than scheduling
your next sales tweet. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Companies
are looking more and more towards chat-bots <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>which are finally becoming sort of useful,
even if I don’t particularly like them, so when we think about automation we
need to focus on very specific enterprise automation and what that could mean
in the creative sector.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There’s
much more of a focus around digital and web-based skills, I think we kind of
grasped that one early on in the pandemic but supply chains and service
delivery, are two skills that really stand out to me. I need to improve my
supply chain particularly the post-that-Brexit thing that happened over here, and I
am seeing much more of a need to deal with people placing direct orders rather
than the more typical online orders previously where I wouldn’t necessarily be
involved in the sale, I think that’s telling in itself and we’ll come back to
that a little later. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Strategic
planning isn’t really new but it’s a new concept to a lot of first-time
business owners, in that they often forget to do it, or they do, but it’s
really not that strategic. Business to business is a key area that has real
potential for creatives and I’m getting a sense that more businesses are
beginning to focus on the customer experience, something I have written about
countless times before on these pages and it is something that people will
doubtless, be yearning for after more than a year of online-only transactions.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">So in
terms of hard skills, we can begin to build up a nice little picture of the
direction of travel for businesses who are looking to recruit, but what about
the soft/common skills?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kMqU7SSODCw/YEsfOM_ToEI/AAAAAAAAGaI/mJXbVE2RJmc_PEAAgQy6JZ_dklGMRgpPQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Surface%2BRust.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="mountain abstract art with rust effect" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kMqU7SSODCw/YEsfOM_ToEI/AAAAAAAAGaI/mJXbVE2RJmc_PEAAgQy6JZ_dklGMRgpPQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Surface%2BRust.jpg" title="Surface Rust by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Surface Rust by Mark Taylor - Also available now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Top
Soft Skills Needs Identified by Employers…</span></b></span></h1>
<h2 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Skill,
Number of Postings identifying skills needs</span></b></span></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Communications,
2,614,882<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Management,
1,948,404<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Customer
Service, 1,245,274<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Sales,
1,228,857<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Enthusiasm,
946,449<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Leadership,
779,568<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Planning,
755,144<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Innovation,
721,619<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Teaching,
708,235<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Detail
Oriented, 706,023<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Self-Motivation,
637,060<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Operations,
554,732<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Problem
Solving, 494,516<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Research,
450,133<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Presentations,
433,672<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Interpersonal
Communications, 408,168<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Basic
Math, 358,308<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Microsoft
Excel, 357,854<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Influencing
Skills, 304,076<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Time
Management, 288,959<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Infrastructure,
288,052<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Microsoft
Office, 283,415<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Teamwork,
257,549<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Mentorship,
248,878<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Verbal
Communication Skills, 238,042<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Resilience,
227,409<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Written
Communication, 221,643<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Computer
Literacy, 216,531<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Professionalism,
215,557<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Negotiation,
210,669<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Training
And Development, 204,576<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Decision
Making, 195,641<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Compassion,
192,527<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Microsoft
Outlook, 190,460<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Coordinating,
181,991<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">English
Language, 181,737<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Sourcing,
172,323<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Integration,
158,349<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Proactivity,
157,127<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Microsoft
PowerPoint, 155,794<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Self-Starter,
151,686<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Prioritization,
149,118<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Governance,
148,923<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Troubleshooting
(Problem Solving), 144,130<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Writing,
142,957<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Consulting,
142,272<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Empathy,
133,604<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Hospitality,
131,821<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Accountability,
122,561<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Construction,
121,657<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk65506386;"></span>
</span><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What we get from the soft
skills…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I think, above anything else,
I am getting a sense that most of the common/soft skills are going to be skills
that every creative, especially self-employed creatives, will already have to
some degree and once again, the focus is squarely on customer service. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If we have any of those skills
already, it becomes more around how we refine those skills and in what order of
priority we refine or build upon them. These softer skills mostly with some
obvious exceptions reflect tasks we perform every single day, but what’s
really telling, is in how these skills are now being ranked in terms of their
importance. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">We need to be much better
communicators and I think this goes much further than social media because
social media is in itself, a soft skill that shows up in a number of data sets
under its own heading and quite a way further down the list. I think it also
goes beyond social media in that social media isn’t the amplifier for business
that it once was, and there have been a lot of people who have transitioned
away from using the various platforms of late. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Word to the wise here, never let
politics, conspiracy theories, or anything that gets delivered in the news or
personal opinions get in the way of good business. If your buyers are on social
media, regardless of your political leanings or beliefs, you need to be on
social media too, but we also have to be much better at engaging and
communicating with those who are still sticking around.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Perhaps the unsurprising
skills are the ones we need to pay more currency to, there’s a strong emphasis
on customer service so we really do have to become better people, people, and
empathy, as I mentioned earlier, is a skill that employers are looking out for
which confirms to me that we need to be much more focussed on having plenty of it
when it comes to running a business. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oaE5UbNH9fs/YEsf81HqNLI/AAAAAAAAGaQ/Rqy84mvclnM_j47DRr2y56I_mn-7PRVlwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1434/sold.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="abstract Art" border="0" data-original-height="1434" data-original-width="1201" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oaE5UbNH9fs/YEsf81HqNLI/AAAAAAAAGaQ/Rqy84mvclnM_j47DRr2y56I_mn-7PRVlwCLcBGAsYHQ/w536-h640/sold.PNG" title="Sold Abstract Art by Mark Taylor" width="536" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The title of this is "SOLD" which confused a few people who thought they could no longer buy it!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There is one more thing that
surprised me while I was carrying out this piece of research, and it was that when
I ran the same queries for the previous three years prior to the pandemic, the
skills that employers made more mention of in their job postings, were very
similar in each of those previous years. What has changed is the order of
priority for some of the skills that they are identifying in the job postings. Empathy, for example, was much lower on the list pre-pandemic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">In short, whilst businesses
are definitely responding differently to the pandemic, they’re not focussing on
having some magical skill set or a handful of skills to make their response. It
is a combination of every skill they mostly already had that will guide a
business through the choppy waters of a pandemic, with a real emphasis now on
developing better people skills. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Enhancing the way we do business…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It’s becoming clear that the
skills that are now being asked for in job postings are skills that put more of
a focus on things like building relationships, growing a web presence, building
robust business development practices and there’s a growing emphasis on
becoming more strategic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The real stand out skills do
seem to be much more focussed on being better at communicating and focussing on
customer service, perhaps the two staples of any business and they’re usually
skills that artists and creatives mostly already have, it’s simply a question
of how well those skills are used and whether there is room for improvement. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I
think during and post-pandemic, in order to win the business, I revert back
to my long-standing advice that I have given on this website over and over
again through the past half a decade or so, and that is to make sure that you continuously
refine those skills so that you are at least one percent better than the
alternative choice. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">How to develop those skills…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The harder question to answer
is what does it really mean to be a better communicator or better at dealing
with people, or better at the other things we need to be better at? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Maybe it’s some kind of
self-development or a course that we need to participate in to improve or
refine our knowledge, but before that, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
think, whatever we need to be better at, begins with having a lot more
confidence in your own ability and casting the inner critic to one side. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">You can have the best ideas
and the best strategy ever, but if you can’t land them perfectly and land them with
confidence and clarity, those ideas are much less likely to get noticed, and I
think that’s true with a lot of the skills that we routinely use. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I can attest to confidence
being a learnable skill too. There was a time when I was maybe the world’s
least confident person, and to be honest, I’m still the world’s least confident
person, but the learnable skill is in recognising that you really do know what
you are doing and having an objective or outcome in mind when you are
explaining the idea. There’s a really simple way to gain clarity and that is by
asking yourself whether your objective is to inform or empower. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Other people skills I think
we can pick out of the very long list of essential business skills, is the
ability to listen better. That’s not just about listening to what is said by
your potential market, but also listening even more intently to what’s not
said. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The more you know about your market, the more confidence you will gain
and you will be able to draw the audience out by asking better questions. Once
you begin to ask better questions, you can then begin to level up the
relationship-building skills that have been identified in so many of those job
postings too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What else should we focus on?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I’m a big fan of having a
mentor, I’ve mentored a number of artists over the years and have always relied on having a mentor for myself, recognising that none of us has all of the
answers can be massively empowering. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I’m also a big fan of having a
mentor who focusses only on accountability, someone who can provide the occasional
prompt or reminder that you need to have something completed, someone who can
challenge you when you haven’t completed that task you promised yourself you
would complete last week. You will always go further, faster if you are
intentional about moving forward, sometimes we just need to be nudged in the
right direction, particularly when we work alone because it is so easy to
become distracted and even easier to talk ourselves out of doing something. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Another consideration and one
that we have so often talked about on these pages is networking, and in
particular, how any networking you do has to be smart and strategic rather than
an exercise in either what networking can do for only me, or to collect
business cards that you will store somewhere and never again pick up. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Networking where both parties
can add value to each other is the only kind of networking that is worth
spending any time on. If everything is one-sided, it’s not networking, it’s
simply the hope of a shortcut without the effort and it rarely ever works and
if it does at least initially, it’s never sustainable.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">When we talk about networking,
it’s usually with an eye on a beneficial relationship that’s transactional but
it doesn’t have to be like that at all. A network of your peers, where each can
be supportive, bounce ideas around, provide the occasional nod of appreciation,
talk about what is and isn’t working, that’s the kind of networking that is way
more valuable to every party than the traditional networking where the
relationship is made with getting the gig in mind.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4xFs7Yuyk0E/YEsh0JvdJ7I/AAAAAAAAGaY/4JSWYehcMBYpblsuW1caAf5LPm9T8XR9QCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/adrift%2Bunder%2Ba%2Bglowing%2Bsky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Purple sky with boat on the beach" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4xFs7Yuyk0E/YEsh0JvdJ7I/AAAAAAAAGaY/4JSWYehcMBYpblsuW1caAf5LPm9T8XR9QCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/adrift%2Bunder%2Ba%2Bglowing%2Bsky.jpg" title="Adrift Under A Glowing Sky by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Adrift Under A Glowing Sky by Mark Taylor - Available from my Adrift Collection</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Whilst there are a few skills here
that don’t really play a huge factor in the skills needs that businesses are necessarily
advertising for, skills such as being able to network should be in the toolbox
by default. I cannot think of any business that can survive without at least an
element of networking and as the world is evolving rapidly, the pace of change
is too much for any single person to keep abreast of.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Post-pandemic, I truly believe
that people will want to engage more, and when we consider how the creative
sector is evolving through this leap towards platforms such as Etsy, we can also
see how buying behaviour is already changing. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If I had to put a finger in
the air and try to predict how buying behaviour might change the way we connect
with our markets, looking at the skills needs across all sectors as I have done
for this article, I might be minded to suggest that we haven’t quite seen all
of the changes, we are going to see as a result of the pandemic just yet. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I’m reasonably confident given
the skills needs we have been seeing throughout this article, and indeed, this
series, that we’ll see people begin to look for human interaction as part of
that online experience as we emerge from lockdowns and the absolute requirement
to do everything online. So I think we ought to be cognizant that the online
model whilst it won’t go away or be fully replaced by an offline model when the
world eventually reopens, it will need businesses to think about how they build
interaction and engagement into what they do online in order to provide a
richer experience that will entice new markets in and keep existing markets
interested. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jTxpjpVIagQ/YEsiYX6ZMmI/AAAAAAAAGag/IIPuUiebDt4IWO3ayNYm2jQM4UNNgzZ2wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/adrift%2Bon%2Bturquoise%2Bwaters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="turquoise Sky, empty boat on ocean" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jTxpjpVIagQ/YEsiYX6ZMmI/AAAAAAAAGag/IIPuUiebDt4IWO3ayNYm2jQM4UNNgzZ2wCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/adrift%2Bon%2Bturquoise%2Bwaters.jpg" title="Adrift on Turquoise Waters by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Adrift on Turquoise Waters by Mark Taylor - Another work from my Adrift Collection</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It’s
safe to say that online won’t go away post-pandemic, it’s convenient so it will
stick, but as creatives, we might need to think about doing something other
than reverting to the video conference default. What that will be is a little
more challenging to predict, but I think as a starting point, hybrid business
models that flip online and offline and pull it all together into a seamless
experience will be the way things eventually go, I also think the technology
needs to catch up a little before it happens. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk66285533;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">That
is likely the way that video conferencing will go too. If we look at what has
happened with video conferencing over the past couple of years and specifically
over the past twelve months, we are already seeing a disaggregation of services
where you don’t have to rely on having a particular video conferencing
technology installed on your device, you simply accept an invitation and the
video displays in a browser window. The conferencing platform is just a
delivery mechanism that users don’t necessarily have to see.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk66285533;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The
calendar becomes the disaggregation layer, all the user needs to really know is
when to be in front of the computer to open a link, they don’t always even need
an account. So if we convert that into something that could be used in a hybrid
delivery model for our creative businesses, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to
see websites emerging with built-in video conferencing, where the website
becomes the virtual equivalent of a physical store complete with staff. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk66285533;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Imagine,
a virtual store where you get to speak to real people face to virtual face,
just as you would if you walked into a physical store, or a gallery and all
without a chatbot in sight.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk66285533;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Now
that’s essentially a hybrid model that provides a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>much richer experience, and maybe that’s
where the skills need is beginning to emerge. You need to be great at customer
service, you need to be great at communication, sales, and have empathy, and
you need to become much better at digital and I also think that a model like
this is going to be challenging to get right but the rewards for anyone who
cracks it could be huge.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk66285533;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">So
working on these additional skills that we now need to run a business in a
post-pandemic world, also means that we are building skills to take advantage
of services when current technologies become more and more disaggregated to
provide those seamless, rich, interactive, personal, experiences that buyers
will be yearning for and robotic chatbots can’t provide. AI will never be
better than the humans programming it, and machine learning can’t learn empathy
in the same way that humans can.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk66285533;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JxSY0XubEmA/YEsjQ1zoAYI/AAAAAAAAGao/60mQpAZRVe8ggOyDqTY1AfFQ0yVemjeBwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Night%2BWalk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="super Moon over forest, artwork, brick wall," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JxSY0XubEmA/YEsjQ1zoAYI/AAAAAAAAGao/60mQpAZRVe8ggOyDqTY1AfFQ0yVemjeBwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Night%2BWalk.jpg" title="Night Walk by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Night Walk by Mark Taylor - One of my recent works, also available now!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk66285533;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Build
those skills!</span></b></span></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk66285533;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">There
are hundreds of skills that we rarely ever notice we have when we run a
business. I sat down and listed a page full of skills that I didn’t have before
running a business but now use every day, and I have to say I was shocked, and
maybe even a little bit proud of myself. The skills I have today have mostly
been developed not through any formal training or education, but from
collecting experience. </span></span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">As I mentioned earlier, skills
building is as much about believing in yourself as it is studying some academic
program, I would go so far as to say that building your confidence is the
number one critical skill you need because confidence can really get you
through anything. We need to deal with the inner critics who are adept at
shutting us down whenever we dare to try, and we need to embrace our own
vulnerabilities, because they’re the very birthplace of innovation, creativity
and change. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Beyond that, once we have that
confidence in the bag, we can stop flying under the radar, and I have a feeling
that is exactly what so many small creative businesses do, subconsciously engineering
staying small, because small is comfortable, it doesn’t draw attention, it
stops us sharing our best or weirdest creative work, more than that, it also
doesn’t sell art. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If you are looking for five or
ten skills that will transform your business, I think you might be well served
to stop looking, I think the real skill moving forward is to develop your
confidence, stop being small and be open to the way things are changing. You
got this!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Next Time…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">To wrap this series up, in the
next article will be looking beyond the data we have been focussing on up until
now, and we will be thinking about widening the portfolio to meet new markets.
I’m pouring through other data sets with an eye on discovering the art and
creativity that is currently in vogue with buyers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">For those who noticed that I
haven’t been around as much for the past few weeks, apologies! I don’t think I
have ever been quite so busy as I have been recently, and I have been
attempting to catch up on some much-needed rest from this glass back I seem to
have developed. Thanks to everyone who has reached out and a special thanks to
those who have continued to purchase my work, I am still as humbled today
whenever any of my pieces sell as I was on the very first day of my
professional art career more than three decades ago. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">So, if you have any tips for
your fellow artists, need any advice, or just want to say hi, feel free to
leave a comment. If you find this article useful, maybe others will too, so please
feel free to point people towards this site! Keep an eye and an ear open for an upcoming Podcast with my good friend and fellow artist, Joshua Greer from BAM VFX - also check out his YouTube channel and be awesome!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Until next time, stay safe,
stay well, look after each other, and absolutely always stay creative!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Mark x<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><a name="_Hlk57970688"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">I am
an artist and blogger and live in Staffordshire, England. You can purchase my
art through my Fine Art America store or my Pixels site here: </span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"></span><a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</span></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"> and you can purchase my
new works, special and limited editions directly. You can also view my
portfolio website at </span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"></span><a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">https://beechhousemedia.com</span></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">If you
are on Facebook, you can give me a follow right here, </span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"></span><a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</span></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"> You can also follow me on Twitter
@beechhouseart and on Pinterest at </span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"></span><a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</span></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">If you
would like to support the upkeep of this site or maybe just buy me a coffee,
you can do so at my Go Fund Me link right <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-an-independent-visual-artist" target="_blank">here</a>. </span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk57970688;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Any
donations received are used to ensure I can continue writing independently for
independent artists. I self-fund this website through my art sales on Pixels
and Fine Art America, so any donations through Go Fund Me take the pressure off
and allow me to carry on writing independent articles to support independent
visual artists, the price of a coffee really does make a huge difference!</span></span><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1509211490004130639.post-41472447905283376942021-02-15T09:54:00.003+00:002021-02-19T19:43:49.521+00:00Your Art Career - Part Three - Career Pathways<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Your Art Career – Part Three -
Career Pathways</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H3D8V6JvPyQ/YCo7kmU2PeI/AAAAAAAAGVs/z4uLQ61q4Kc6E1DgZz-ojcI_UOsHuFj1gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1080/cover%2Bpart%2B3.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Your Art Career cover image paper and art supplies" border="0" data-original-height="566" data-original-width="1080" height="336" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H3D8V6JvPyQ/YCo7kmU2PeI/AAAAAAAAGVs/z4uLQ61q4Kc6E1DgZz-ojcI_UOsHuFj1gCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h336/cover%2Bpart%2B3.png" title="Your Art Career Part Three" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Your Art Career Part Three</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">With more and more people
looking to the creative sector as an alternative career choice that is ideally suited
to work from home, It’s probably fair to say that many who have recently
come into the sector searching for a new career will perhaps by now be
realising that the industry is a little different to how many of them imagined
it might be. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">This week…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HKPrTaiFUv4/YCo8AdAeHBI/AAAAAAAAGV0/yxEbT5jUHXgC3u54qnc6FPs4B_JPp7TpgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/natures%2Bthread.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="natures thread fabric art by Mark Taylor" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HKPrTaiFUv4/YCo8AdAeHBI/AAAAAAAAGV0/yxEbT5jUHXgC3u54qnc6FPs4B_JPp7TpgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/natures%2Bthread.jpg" title="Natures Thread Fabric Art by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Natures Thread - Digital Fabric Art by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">In my previous two articles in
this series, we took a look at the creative sector to figure out the most
in-demand skills. This time, we go a little further and explore the types of
roles and we ask the question, do I build a career as an employee or go it
alone? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">We also take a look at some of
the employment data, and other information such as location quotients, the kind
of information that could provide valuable insight into being able to find
employment or running your own business, data that could also be very useful
when figuring out where the markets for art really are, whether you work for an
employer or not.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><i>Here’s what we will cover this
week:</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Employed or Self Employed?</span></b></li><li><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Understanding the Employment
Landscape</span></b></li><li><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Where to find the vacancies</span></b></li><li><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Who’s Hiring?</span></b></li><li><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Selecting your creative discipline
</span></b></li><li><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Self-Development and training</span></b></li><li><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What to expect when working in
the creative arts</span></b></li><li><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">How to demonstrate your skills</span></b></li><li><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Alternative creative rolls</span></b></li><li><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">How to get noticed</span></b></li><li><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Recognising the skills you
have</span></b></li></ul><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">So yes, this is another deep
dive, but one that should begin to build a wider picture of the creative arts
landscape over the coming years in terms of employment and building out your
career to give you the best chance while you build up any additional skills you
might be missing. Oh, and you also get to see some of my latest creations too!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mtGE_wFb_yg/YCo86tF65yI/AAAAAAAAGWA/LwE4J6ml8rUXHr478YZ7On57PgeI_A_CgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Midnight%2BStill.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Midnight, moon over mountains, art" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mtGE_wFb_yg/YCo86tF65yI/AAAAAAAAGWA/LwE4J6ml8rUXHr478YZ7On57PgeI_A_CgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Midnight%2BStill.jpg" title="Midnight Still by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Midnight Still by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The Creative Sector is a
different kind of industry…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It’s certainly different, and
for the majority of working artists, it’s not so much nibbling on canapes at a
gallery opening, it’s usually a skipped lunch to meet a deadline and multiple
hours a day marketing your creations online while figuring out if you can squeeze
just a little more paint from that tube of titanium white. Such glamour, we
artists really know how to live and don’t get me started on the hundred and one
things you can do with ramen noodles.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It’s also one of the very few
industries that are as broad as it is long in terms of the diverse range of
opportunities that it presents to creatives regardless of their chosen
discipline. That’s something that I really love about the creative arts, but it
can also mean that figuring out how the industry works and which bit of the
industry is more relevant to what you do, can be overwhelming, even character
building at times and not every segment of the industry is quite as accessible
to everyone as the next.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There’s also an element of
frustration that creeps into the creative arts sector. Creative arts and the
art world more broadly can either be full-on love, light and peace or reminiscent
of some film plot about the Mafia, and there are thousands of variations in
between. It’s also the only industry I know that genuinely has no real, cast in
some biblical stone kind of rules, but somehow still manages to have a million
and one ways to interpret them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">For those of us who have been
working in the industry for any length of time, the new faces joining the
sector is a welcome sign that the creative arts are as popular as ever, maybe
even more popular than ever, but if you are new to the sector you are probably
finding out right about now that it’s not the easiest of sectors to navigate
and particularly if you are trying to find your own place and space within it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Over the past couple of
articles, I have poured over the date to find out if the creative sector is still
a great career choice, and would it still be possible to find employment within
the sector, especially given where the world is with the pandemic. I also poured over the
data to find out whether or not a post-pandemic world might lend itself more
towards self-employment or freelancing, which is the way many creatives already
go.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l8E9AI1ME-4/YCo9jOLbycI/AAAAAAAAGWI/Qb3aVoUggt01eHiP8pER7tZeqslX-lATACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Nearly%2BThere.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Mountain, snow, prayer flags, artwork," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l8E9AI1ME-4/YCo9jOLbycI/AAAAAAAAGWI/Qb3aVoUggt01eHiP8pER7tZeqslX-lATACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Nearly%2BThere.jpg" title="Nearly There by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Nearly There by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Employee, Freelance, or
Self-Employed?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The choice between working for
an employer or working for yourself is not one that you will always have
control over. It will depend very much on which direction you want to take your
creativity and it also depends on your skill set, geographic location,
willingness to travel, and the usual multitude of factors that you have to
consider when you look at taking on any new job or tackle any new career, and
of course, it also depends on the market for whatever you create. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Whilst the employment market
intelligence I’ve been looking at over the past few articles has shown a
general upward trend in the number of creative vacancies from companies and
organisations, the directly employed workforce is generally only the tip of a
very large iceberg in the creative sector. What floats below the surface is a
greater volume of microbusinesses, and freelance creatives, artists, performers
and even those working in the associated occupations such as sales and
marketing in galleries with many gallery based staff working on a commission
basis. A lot of other industries have multiple touchpoints with the creative
sector so it makes the kind of research I’m carrying out here, well, let’s say,
it’s a challenge and an always-moving target!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It’s also worth noting that
this very tip of the iceberg, despite its upward trajectory, is still a
relatively small tip of the iceberg, we’re not necessarily seeing the big
numbers that you might associate with more typical day jobs, but none the less,
it’s an upward trajectory and employers are still hiring. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">However, what’s positive news
without a bunch of caveats, after 2020, if you want a slightly less dystopian
view of the world, you might want to binge-watch the Handmaids Tale, yes, even
with these jobs trending upwards, it’s still an incredibly tough gig, but so is
almost every other job and career right now.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Employment Markets aren’t
always what they seem…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There may be a thousand jobs
in a specific creative discipline but those jobs might be based at opposite ends
of the country. The local jobs markets for creatives might be small or even
non-existent in your location, yet if we look at the data, we can see the
opportunity that exists for creatives but can’t always necessarily find the
opportunities that exist for creatives. It’s a bit of a conundrum, which is
also a really great word, but allow me to explain.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There will always be some local,
regional, and national variations, but a greater need for multiple creatives in
one specific region of whatever territory can skew the overall optics by
artificially inflating a national need. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">In short, it can look as if
there are plenty of employment opportunities when you run the numbers, but
that’s not to say that anyone locally will be hiring. What might be happening
here, is that there is a significant skill need in one region which then skews
the overall numbers because we tend to look at overall skills needs throughout
an industry rather than what’s necessarily going on in any local industry.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">To put that in its simplest
terms, the numbers are actually saying, hey, we need lots of people over here, but
we don’t need anyone over there. The volume of jobs still exists, they just
don’t always exist where you ideally want to find them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Another thing to consider is
that if we were to look at this through the lens of an economist, which I’m
definitely not, we would need to look at something called the location
quotient. Maybe the easiest way to think about this is if the creative sector
accounts for 2% of the jobs in your region, but only 1% of jobs nationally, the
LQ for your region would be 2 ÷ 1 = 2.0 in your area when compared to the
nation. In other words, your area’s creative workforce would be twice as big as
normal, concentrating the industry in your region and you have to remember that
some industries are only prevalent in certain geographic areas, you wouldn’t
find a dock worker loading ships in a landlocked village.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Practically speaking, high-LQ
industries with significant numbers of total jobs are usually critical pillars
of any regional economy and that’s because they tend to generate income from
non-regional sources. Here’s why: we assume that in the “average” economy,
industries fulfil local economic needs first and they produce just enough goods
or services to meet those needs. If they produce more than that (as indicated
by being larger than average in terms of jobs), then we assume they are
creating a surplus that is exported to other regions. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">This reasoning simplifies a
lot of economic realities of course, but it remains a good rule of thumb when
you need to quantify how concentrated the workforce is in any particular area,
and how vital to the economy a region's workforce is in any particular industry.
<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M3o1oiEN3qQ/YCo-FcDe4PI/AAAAAAAAGWQ/qy2pkhwtkxw2l6ftCWWYdgxrZeehoWIVACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Pause%2BFor%2BA%2BPrayer.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Prayer flags, mountains, snow, artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-M3o1oiEN3qQ/YCo-FcDe4PI/AAAAAAAAGWQ/qy2pkhwtkxw2l6ftCWWYdgxrZeehoWIVACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Pause%2BFor%2BA%2BPrayer.jpg" title="Pause For A Prayer by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Pause For A Prayer by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">That’s kind of important to
know when you are seeking employment opportunities. Yes, there could be plenty
of employment opportunities out there, but you might have to think about
relocating to access them and again, it comes back to, hey, we need lots of
people here, but we don’t need anyone over there, but the area with a need for
lots of people will sell whatever they’re creating to the people over there. Keeping
up? This next bit is a sizzler for those who are currently self-employed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Why is this LQ stuff important?
Because a market exists over there, despite no one being employed in that area
to serve its needs. Think about that, it’s really useful to know when you’re
thinking about going it alone. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">With the self-employed or the freelance route, that kind of information could be vital in working out whether
or not there is a market in the region you want to work, it could tell you how
viable it is, and it could even tell you if there is a niche that’s waiting to
be filled with a more local producer, equally, it could also tell you not to
waste your time and to focus on somewhere else. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If the ducks are at least in
the same pond, even if they’re not necessarily lined up, your new market could
be right on your doorstep but you will have to be at least one percent better
than the alternative option of bringing the product or service in from over
there. Starting to make sense yet?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It could also give you an idea
of work that’s usually only available outside your immediate area but which you
could potentially undertake as a freelance or self-employed creative,
especially now there are fewer employment borders with a real surge in the
acceptance of working from home. All of that information is incredibly useful
when you are working out where your market might be, even if you are already
working in the sector either for someone else or for yourself. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">This is something that
underpins the age-old question that I hear from a lot of artists and have
probably asked myself, just where is my target market? In this case, it’s in
the area that the high LQ area serves, we know there’s a market because what is
made over there is being exported over here. Of course, that’s a single factor,
but it’s the one factor that could tell you that you are at least in the right or
wrong area. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Still not finding the
vacancies…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">One thing you will need to be
cognisant of when looking for employment in the creative sector is that not
every creative job or job title will be advertised. Firstly, the creative arts
are still a sector where the portfolio speaks louder than words, and it can be
quite an insular industry in that there could very well be jobs that get filled
by knowing someone already working in the industry, and again, those jobs will
only be the tip of the creative iceberg.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Another point to remember, is
what I talked about back in part two of this series, that not all creative jobs
are obvious or identifiable from the job title alone, hence you really need to
be focussing on the skills that employers need rather than the job titles
employers label on their payroll. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">More and more, and you
especially notice when you read posts that businesses share on platforms such
as LinkedIn, there is a shift towards talking about skills rather than
qualifications. If you can demonstrate that your skills are better than anyone
else, there’s a better chance that you will gain the position as opposed to
someone who might have the formal qualification but who lacks the experience. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The best advice I can give you
here is to reiterate what I said last time and to apply to fill the skills needs
of an employer instead of applying to fill a job title. I often hear employers
say that there is never a problem finding people, there’s a real problem
finding any with enough skills or experience.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2oOv4qtVIIU/YCo-dXxYGkI/AAAAAAAAGWY/cyNgXWMX7csxpZ55A5OnhbFrkl0WSkjnwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Mountain%2BPass.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Mountains, artwork, painting," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2oOv4qtVIIU/YCo-dXxYGkI/AAAAAAAAGWY/cyNgXWMX7csxpZ55A5OnhbFrkl0WSkjnwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Mountain%2BPass.jpg" title="Mountain Pass by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Mountain Pass by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Who’s hiring?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The top industries I found
when I looked through the employment <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>market information in the UK were also the
most obvious ones that anyone working in the creative sector might be well
attuned to already. When I looked further afield through other data sets, as I
have done throughout each of the articles in this series, the data I was
finding was telling a similar story in other regions beyond the UK. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Employment opportunities in advertising
featured high on the list, as did publishing, but the data that I interpreted
as showing some slightly longer-term promise was, as I suggested in my previous
two articles, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>around graphic design, 3D
design, animation and video games (art, graphics, 3D) which isn’t too
surprising given the surge in interest in video games throughout the pandemic. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Coupled with a new generation
of games consoles, the employment market in this area certainly feels as if it
has been invigorated. According to MarketWatch, the worldwide revenue from
video games in 2020 would reach some $179.7billion, which puts the industry
well ahead of the global movie and North American sports industries combined. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">As an industry, it’s not just
those who have the skills and are able to produce code, there is a real need
for visual artists, voiceover artists, actors, producers, animators, camera
operators, photographers, and yes, it’s a world or two or even ten, away from
the days of Pac Man and Space Invaders, but the key here is that it’s not an
industry that most creatives might immediately think about getting involved in.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The other key roles that are
currently in demand can work across a broader gamut of sectors. Graphic
designers, 3D and animators, are all in-demand skills.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What’s your discipline?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The skillset that you have, or
are willing to gain, will be one of the critical factors that will determine the
kind of role you can expect, and to an extent, this will also determine whether
it is better to work for an employer or to go it alone. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If you are as yet to find your
creative zone, then looking at the longer-term outlook for the creative sector
is going to be what should be guiding you through your, at least, initial professional
development. A creative career isn’t something you can build in a day or a
week, it’s a long-term commitment to continuous development and training, and
the real art is in selecting the right development and training that will serve
you longer-term at the right time. It’s great that you follow a continuous professional
development route, but you have to be very strategic about the CPD you chase.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">That really does feed into
another piece of advice I would share with any new or even not so new creative,
your development as a professional in the creative sector will never stop. You
will have a forever need to pursue a mastery of your craft. It’s not just
expected professionally, it will be expected by those who buy into you and buy
into your work and if you do want to follow a paid employment route, this
development will be seen positively by those doing the hiring, so long as it
makes sense. A three-year art course followed by a month-long tutorial about
rocket science would be confusing to anyone, the rocket science would be seen either as research for an artwork or you still haven’t decided what
you want to be when you grow up. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Initially choosing to follow
the professional development options that will pay the bills, rather than the
options that you feel more comfortable in following, doesn’t preclude you from
following your dream in another sector of the creative arts in the future, in
fact, it will give you the broadest range of options and experiences, and
again, it has to be strategic, and it has to make sense.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Building a robust skillset
isn’t something you should shy away from in the creative sector, and to be
fair, over the past three decades or so, I’ve been noticing a kind of skills
carousel. Skills that are needed today might not always be needed tomorrow, but
more often than not, those skills needs have a tendency to come back around
again. The ideal would be to make sure you can ride almost every carousel horse
in between as the ride spins around, especially if you are self-employed or a
jobbing freelancer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Today’s skills needs…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">So what exactly are the skills
you might want to pay some extra attention to? Fear not, I ran the numbers for
this too, and once again, the data is based on the UK data sets, but I also carried
out some comparisons manually from the data sets that are publicly available in
other countries. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Although those overseas
datasets are not always as comprehensive, or rather they often are, but they’re
not always publicly available, I was able to gather some anecdotal data from
multiple sources that when combined with the data that is publicly available
begins to demonstrate that the skills needs are broadly similar in
comparatively similar economies around the world. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The UK data sets I use aren’t
freely available, but with limited funds, and even more limited time, the picture I am about to paint is first, my gift to you, and secondly, as good
as it gets until I can afford to buy access to more data sets! Your welcome to
buy me a coffee though!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">How I tackled this was with my
usual mix of, I would like to say skill, but mostly it was drawing from three-plus
decades of experience, together with checking hundreds of job postings to make
sure I had selected the right kinds of data. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I looked at an occupation comparison to see
exactly where the real growth is within the creative sector, taking data from
between 2019 (pre-pandemic) and then running projected economic models right
the way through to 2027. I made the executive decision rather than anything more
scientifically informed, to select nine creative occupations which included:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Graphic Designers</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Arts Officers, Producers and
Directors</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Photographers, audio-visual
and broadcasting equipment operators</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Product clothing and related
designers</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Musicians</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Archivists and Curators</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Artists</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Glass and ceramics makers,
decorators, and finishers</span></li></ul><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Whilst some of those
occupations are not necessarily the ‘get your hands in the paint’ kind of
creative, they are closely tied to the industry and might be considered great
roles to work in alongside your art practice if you want some extra stability
and need to keep the cash coming in for new art supplies and food, and probably
in that order. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I also chose these because
they were the creative disciplines that seemed to have the most data available
and because as we have discovered in my previous two articles, these are really
the kinds of roles that are showing the most promise when it comes to looking
at the numbers. This time, I went a little further and looked way, way, into the
future. No, I don’t have a crystal ball, but I do have data coming out of my
ears!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What you will see from the
data sets below, are some quite significant projected increases in demand right
the way through to 2027, and surprisingly, a decrease too. Artists for example
are set to decline by 2027 in the UK, and artists are also the only occupation
from the nine which will see that decline.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-viNdhFodJyM/YCo-7dDY8WI/AAAAAAAAGWg/Xz166TrvGyIgPBpXTgPF19C0YoApg5nZgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1913/occupation%2Bcomparison%2BPart%2B1.PNG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="creative occupation data" border="0" data-original-height="1699" data-original-width="1913" height="568" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-viNdhFodJyM/YCo-7dDY8WI/AAAAAAAAGWg/Xz166TrvGyIgPBpXTgPF19C0YoApg5nZgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h568/occupation%2Bcomparison%2BPart%2B1.PNG" title="Creative Arts Occupation Data - Economic Modelling" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Creative Arts Occupation Comparison Data - Economic Modelling</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OzXi_XWIdxM/YCo_TrZcLZI/AAAAAAAAGWs/V8dIcb0qn1koBI48_O4kyeMaqJLSD1MPgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1881/occupation%2Bgrowth%2Bpart%2B2.PNG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="occupation data for the creative arts" border="0" data-original-height="1778" data-original-width="1881" height="604" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OzXi_XWIdxM/YCo_TrZcLZI/AAAAAAAAGWs/V8dIcb0qn1koBI48_O4kyeMaqJLSD1MPgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h604/occupation%2Bgrowth%2Bpart%2B2.PNG" title="Occupation Growth - Creative Arts - Economic Modelling" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Occupation Growth - Creative Arts - Economic Modelling</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7CklSxF8g1U/YCo_ol_apeI/AAAAAAAAGW0/0KbXZm7rkfkSr5YN2qt1ectyZu5zyVK6ACLcBGAsYHQ/s1860/occupation%2BGroup%2Bshift%2Bpart%2B3.PNG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="creative arts occupation data" border="0" data-original-height="1814" data-original-width="1860" height="624" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7CklSxF8g1U/YCo_ol_apeI/AAAAAAAAGW0/0KbXZm7rkfkSr5YN2qt1ectyZu5zyVK6ACLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h624/occupation%2BGroup%2Bshift%2Bpart%2B3.PNG" title="Creative Arts Shift Comparison - Economic Modelling" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Creative Arts Shift Comparison - Economic Modelling</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hyUll2dwFwk/YCo_-SMP7UI/AAAAAAAAGW8/l11FvBbZNDsnUjJhwi8N_HTtPvK7gCtRgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1877/location%2Bquotient%2Bpart%2B4.PNG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="location quotient for creative arts employment" border="0" data-original-height="1799" data-original-width="1877" height="614" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hyUll2dwFwk/YCo_-SMP7UI/AAAAAAAAGW8/l11FvBbZNDsnUjJhwi8N_HTtPvK7gCtRgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h614/location%2Bquotient%2Bpart%2B4.PNG" title="Creative Arts Location Quotient - Economic Modelling" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Location Quotient - If regions had been included, there would have been different outcomes, this is based on national data. Source: Economic Modelling</td></tr></tbody></table></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">For artists, this outlook might
appear worrying, but we also have to remember that the majority of working artists
will not necessarily appear in this data, remember, we’re talking about the paid tip
of the iceberg here and not every artist will have the job title of artist, so
we perhaps shouldn’t pay it too much currency or get overly concerned about it right
now. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It’s also worth remembering
that when you look at data, you can get the data to tell you exactly what you
want to hear if you torture it in the right way. There is a decline in
employment, there might not be a decline in need.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">That decline in employment
opportunities could be due to an ageing population and not enough new artists
joining the profession or projected to come into the sector. It could be an
increase in the number of artists transitioning to another discipline or area,
with those numbers then falling off the employed table in the diagram. Equally,
it could be that other disciplines will just be in more demand, or, as I
suspect, it might be the case when I look at all of the data, that artists are
evolving with new skills and being consumed into other roles, or holding other
job titles. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The majority of working
artists today are likely to be working alone as microbusinesses and freelancers,
and through self-employment, as opposed to being employed by an employer. Which
brings us back to that underlying iceberg again, and any published data that
I’ve been able to find, really does tend to only focus on the tip of that
iceberg which points squarely to those who are directly employed and the self-employed,
and wouldn’t necessarily cover the artists I prefer to think of as, working in
disguise.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What I mean by that is those
artists who art, but have an alternative job title. Cynical me also thinks that
alternative job titles could either be to grandiose a position, or I suspect, for
some employers, to be able to pay less, and/or get more. Like I said, three-decades
plus of experience, there’s little I haven’t seen.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The self-employment, freelance
and micro-business data is more difficult to find quantifiable data for and to
separate out entirely from the overall workforce. In-part because the creative
arts and the art world more generally, could never be an industry that could
be accused of being overly transparent. Equally, if you are an artist, then
considering including a skill such as graphic design in your toolbox will
certainly be a worthwhile next step in your career development if only just to
hedge your bets. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NCIp_-xQEjY/YCpAjVLtfzI/AAAAAAAAGXI/kTuTbtIJCO4Imb-BAJF1fvKR3pqkqOAqwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Chase%2BBlue.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Cannock Chase, Pye Green Tower, Artwork, Stag," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NCIp_-xQEjY/YCpAjVLtfzI/AAAAAAAAGXI/kTuTbtIJCO4Imb-BAJF1fvKR3pqkqOAqwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Chase%2BBlue.jpg" title="Chase Blue by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another work to add to the Chase Collection - Chase Blue by Mark Taylor</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Other Factors to Consider…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Whenever you look at
employment markets there will be some other factors that you might want to
consider, jobs are changing and depending on who you ask, the robots are taking
over. The risk of automation within various industries is something that is
often looked at when modelling employment market projections. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I have run the numbers around
automation, and for the most part, the roles that we generally see in the
creative sector doesn’t look like they’re going away anytime soon. Having said
that, Hollywood is utilising CGI more and more and there has been more than the
odd murmur that computer-generated actors will be used in more films, they’re
less picky, a lot cheaper, never complain, mostly do as they’re asked, but
we’re some way off and while it might be useful in a pandemic, in regular
times, we might all prefer to see real people, but ultimately, who do you think
will create the CGI? Yes, creatives, artists, 3D modellers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Just to finish off with that
data, the occupation group location quotient doesn’t really show anything in
this data set I have shown because I didn’t compare the regions to the national
labour market needs, but if you looked at where the jobs are more likely to be
when you compare the national job postings with regional postings, the picture
would probably look different pre-and post-pandemic as more people work from
home and more companies, particularly in the creative arts sector, have embraced
new ways of working. A job that once required a commute can now probably be
done at home, something I have been saying since, well, computers and Skype. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I think I’m about 99.9%
confident that location is less likely to be a major issue for employers,
post-pandemic. We’re living proof right now that the arts don’t stop
completely when the world does and employment borders really aren’t a major
issue, at least for now.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What can I expect as a
creative, day to day?<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">You can breathe again now, the
data is mostly done with, we have the numbers, we have an idea which way we
want to structure our creativity, although we might not be too sure what we
should expect. Bear with, I found the data that sorts this out as well.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The creative sector and the
art world more broadly, even beyond the visual arts, is generally less like
other industries in how it works and what you do. I’m going to caveat this with
something I have said multiple times before on these pages, that you could put
an artist in charge of Tesla, or any number of large corporations, or you could
put an artist in space, and be confident that the work is going to get done,
and probably better.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The work you will generally
find will often be project-based and could be short-term, so there is a higher
probability that you will need to be either freelance or self-employed and you
might have multiple projects on the go at the same time. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">A lot of creative work is
project-based which usually means that the work is almost always timebound and
has to be delivered by a specific date. It can also come with some strict
deadlines that have massive knock-on effects, and there is an absolute
requirement to be flexible. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Lower salaries aren’t uncommon
at the beginning of a creative career, many would probably argue that they’re
not uncommon throughout a creative career, and for those who do go down the
self-employed or freelance route, this can often mean that secondary employment
has to continue to be an option for most, at least for a while. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Higher wages and salaries
usually, come with experience although there are certain disciplines within the
creative sector that will always attract higher wages and wages are massively
affected by location, and the number of creatives with relevant in-demand skills
within a region. If you are always seeing openings for specific disciplines in
an area, that’s usually because of three things, either there is a high churn of
staff which might be a red flag, or there’s a lot of demand, or no one has the necessary skills. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If we look at the employment
market information from my two previous articles, graphic designers are
currently in demand, so those with Adobe Illustrator skills and some talent,
can potentially earn more and find more opportunities, and wherever there is
high demand for a skill and a deficit in the skills available, the remuneration
usually increases. It’s all about supply and demand, which sounds cold, but did
I mention that the creative sector can also be alarmingly brutal at times too?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Working hours are a perpetual
challenge, particularly when you are working on commissions or projects with a
need to meet strict deadlines, but there is also ample opportunity to work
fewer hours than you might in other jobs, but hours can vary between companies,
regions, and often even companies within the same region. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If you are running a business,
there are no rules that say you must commit to a hundred-hour working week. I
know plenty of artists who haven’t got this memo and continue to work
incredibly long hours, and I also know plenty of professional artists who work
around family commitments, others who also have a day job, and despite the lack
of hours being put into the business in comparison with some, they are still finding
some level of financial success, or at least some financial security. It really
is about working smarter, but if you want a ten-hour a week business, it is
entirely possible to have this in the creative sector, and yes, there will be
trade-off somewhere else.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">However, bear in mind that the
actual act of running a business is something else that needs to be factored in
when you work for yourself. Sadly, it’s not all play in the creative sector so
you will need to dedicate some time to the business side of creative art, along
with the other never-ending list of tasks that need to be carried out and
repeated almost every day.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Continuous professional
development is critical for anyone working in the industry at whatever level.
Artists will need to hone and refine their skills, as will graphic designers,
as will anyone who creates art. On the non-directly-creative side of the
sector, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>those working in museums and
galleries, for example, will need to keep pace with what’s going on in the wider
arts community and as new works are added to collections, they will need to
become knowledgeable in those works and the artists responsible for creating
them. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">In some disciplines, and
particularly where a creative is working for an employer or attends shows and
exhibitions, frequent travel is often required. This is especially the case
when the creative discipline is involved in film and theatre, the music
industry, or generally touring or marketing. From experience, I can tell you
that three or four nights spent in a hotel during the week isn’t anywhere near
as exciting or glamorous as it sounds, nights can be incredibly long when
you’re away from home on business, but the first three weeks are fun, try doing it for thirty-years though.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Work environments vary greatly
from working from the comfort of your own home to working in commercial production
studio environments which could be a dimly lit office in the city to a full-on
purpose-built studio with plenty of natural light, and everything in between. You
might find that your location changes daily in regular non-pandemic times, or
you might find that you will have space within an office where you are the only
person employed as a creative, or you might be one amongst many in a
multi-disciplinary team. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If you are a visual artist
operating as a small business and you are alone in your endeavour, there is no
typical day. Creativity will be interspersed with marketing your work, building
up relationships with collectors, maybe looking towards shows and exhibitions, and
you will be responsible for so much other work too. You will, in short, become
the CEO and entire workforce, although this can apply just as much if you are a
self-employed sculptor or a graphic designer.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3-g_dPgx8Kw/YCpA-4Rfy1I/AAAAAAAAGXQ/WUpczOc-m50JqmID5uMRBY8Rbz-wGUlYgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Night%2BWalk.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Moon over forest, super moon, woodland," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3-g_dPgx8Kw/YCpA-4Rfy1I/AAAAAAAAGXQ/WUpczOc-m50JqmID5uMRBY8Rbz-wGUlYgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Night%2BWalk.jpg" title="Night Walk by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Night Walk by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">What do you need to work in
the sector?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Broad shoulders. It’s a sector
that is either glide or grind and little in between. It can be a tough sector
and even tougher if you are running a business, and whilst the sector overall
is not without its own unique problems, it is still one of the best sectors to
be involved with, and it is, for the most part, accessible to everyone at least
on some level.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It’s not as completely
necessary as it once might have been to hold a formal qualification in the arts
or in traditional design-based subjects, so long as you have the skills and
ideally the experience. What you will get from formal art or design
education is a grounding that will provide you with some of the underpinning
knowledge that you will then build the rest of your career on. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It also depends on which
discipline you want to follow as a career choice. If you are thinking of
self-employment, for example, you need to be thinking very strategically about
what skills you need in place and when. It’s going to be much more useful in
the short-term to develop critical business skills than it is to study a
subject like art history. As important as art history will be for a visual
artist, it is a subject that you will need to master over the span of a career,
but if you are setting up a business tomorrow, you’ll want the skills to do
that today. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Arguably, the formal study of
art can be done at any time and it never really stops and once you begin to have
any kind of career, that’s when it really starts. The business of the business
of art is what will give you the more immediate skills you need beyond creative
talent that will at least provide you with some economic forward momentum. Art
isn’t a single qualification that culminates in some award of an end of
curriculum certificate and then you are done, it’s a lifelong discovery and a
never-ending journey of learning. Business, on the other hand, is much more
immediate. Either way, you will be forever learning after the learning of whichever
subject you take on first. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If you are looking to pursue a
career in a non-creatively critical role, perhaps working as a curator or
within a museum or gallery, then having that formal art education insight and grounding
is going to be much more essential more immediately, although, I would expect
high-end galleries would also put customer service and business skills at the
top of their wish list too. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If you are looking to learn
the skills you need to become a functional-creative, for want of a better
phrase, someone who wishes to create the artwork or the product, to become an
artist but who currently has none or few skills, then you will get much more
out of a structured academic program that teaches you how to use the tools that
you need to produce the work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">As well as being strategic in
how you develop your skills, it is also about being openly honest with yourself
and recognising where your own skills need to be improved. If you want to
become a graphic designer but have zero skills in using an application such as
Adobe Illustrator, that becomes the skills gap, but you might have some idea of
the application already which means there is a smaller skills gap that needs to
be filled. In short, you need to learn what you need to learn and when and you don’t
have to learn it all in one go, and besides, I don’t think anyone really can.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">How you fill that skills gap
also then needs to be strategic, after all, we all only have one lifetime to
cram everything into, so for some, it might mean that a formal academic route
will suit them better because they need the broadest understanding of how
Illustrator works, for others, it might be a workshop or online tutorial to backfill
some of the missing skills. As long as the end result is that you have the
relevant skills for a given task, it’s just not all that important to an
employer how you gained those skills, as long as you can demonstrate that you
have them. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qr8PzUBRxx0/YCpBbppyPWI/AAAAAAAAGXY/a9Sg-Ij0DUAUhDYGo2M5NjeTVN-DEk27wCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Red%2BMoon.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="blood moon, red moon, artwork, art print, forest," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qr8PzUBRxx0/YCpBbppyPWI/AAAAAAAAGXY/a9Sg-Ij0DUAUhDYGo2M5NjeTVN-DEk27wCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Red%2BMoon.jpg" title="Red Moon by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Red Moon by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">How do you demonstrate skills?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Ultimately, there are three
ways that you can demonstrate to an employer that you have the necessary skills
they’re looking for, you either show them a certificate which validates some
kind of formal study, although arguably, that doesn’t always mean that you can
do what the certificate implies, or, you can physically demonstrate those
skills so that the potential employer can validate those skills, or you can do
what you should be doing along with everything else, and present an up to
date portfolio. Any creative agency, business, design studio, or even commissioning
client who isn’t interested in your portfolio isn’t, or shouldn’t be, hiring. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The portfolio, and this
applies whether you hold some formal qualification or if you are self-taught,
is the creatives best and most valuable asset and should always, always,
always, be kept up to date with a range of your best work, not your entire life
work.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It should be relevant to the
viewer, so you might need more than one portfolio in order to present the most
appropriate one, and you might want to have a living portfolio that changes
frequently. This is usually the best approach if you are looking for a position
with an employer, they will usually look for a snapshot of the skills you have
today rather than a historical nod to the skills you once had yesterday. Remember
what I said about open badges and micro-credentials earlier in the series, they’re
becoming increasingly important when it comes to validating all kinds of hard
and common skills.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">The portfolio is one of the
best tools that a creative has, it should become a shrine to their best work,
yet I so often hear of artists and those from other creative disciplines who
haven’t updated them since they last left art school in 1886 or whenever it
was. Even if you are working in the sector today, or already have a successful
business with a bottomless pit of clients knocking on the door, you should
always keep that portfolio up to date, and bear in mind that both digital and physical
portfolios are useful to have.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Proving skills via a portfolio
is one thing, but today's creative sector is more of a multi-disciplinary one
than it ever has been before. What this means for creatives, is that even if
you follow a traditional visual art route such as acrylic painter, you will be
better served if you also have a further discipline or skillset that you can
utilise.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Amongst everything else that
you need to have in your skillset, and regardless of the creative discipline or
path that you follow, you also need to be resilient, patient and take my
advice here, heed the words I uttered a little earlier, it really would be
awesome if you could grow a very thick skin and broad shoulders too. You will
take critique from professional and amateur art critics alike but none of that
critique will ever be as brutal as the critique that you will take from
yourself. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AOc5AsfYZZw/YCpB_a_A3DI/AAAAAAAAGXk/avXNXT-NEl4j59P6cTZ3cCnlR-Hz6lH8QCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/which%2Bway%2Bnow.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="mountains, landscape, snow, artwork" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AOc5AsfYZZw/YCpB_a_A3DI/AAAAAAAAGXk/avXNXT-NEl4j59P6cTZ3cCnlR-Hz6lH8QCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/which%2Bway%2Bnow.jpg" title="Which Way Now by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Which Way Now by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">So what career options are
there?</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">In both of my previous
articles I mentioned that the creative arts were broader than the occupation of
artist and graphic designer. The creative arts grow exponentially in their
diversity when you also consider the compatible occupations I mentioned in my
previous article. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Just to recap, compatible
occupations are roles defined as having similar daily tasks. It’s worth noting
that those compatible occupations can be as far away from the role you may have
had in mind as is possible with some appearing to be quite random opposites. Yet
the kind of work undertaken requires very similar skills to perform a range of
broadly similar tasks on a daily basis even if the outcome or end product or
service is very different.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There are so many disciplines
or occupations within the arts, and many of those disciplines and occupations
stretch across a multitude of industries. Some of them we might not immediately
even think about, so there is a risk that some extraordinarily creative roles can
be missed altogether.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Many of these compatible
occupations might be more relevant in non-pandemic times, but it’s worth knowing
that compatible occupations are an option, particularly when you are after a stop-gap
until something better or more suitable comes along. There is nothing worse for
a true creative than to be stuck in an uncreative role, although the world is
tough right now and you might have to compromise, but that shouldn’t mean that
you have to or must compromise forever.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z5hafj3TLbI/YCpCQB8eBBI/AAAAAAAAGXs/wYsAPfqURwc4dqbJnIOT2C7NQg9SMsq2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Another%2BWay%2BAround.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="mountains, river, snow, woods, forest, birds flying, artwork," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z5hafj3TLbI/YCpCQB8eBBI/AAAAAAAAGXs/wYsAPfqURwc4dqbJnIOT2C7NQg9SMsq2QCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Another%2BWay%2BAround.jpg" title="Another Way Around by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Another Way Around by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Other Jobs…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Let’s take a look at some of
the jobs that are frequently advertised that might not immediately spring to
mind when you are looking at joining the creative sector. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Exhibition and Events Staff – </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">If you
want to build a network, where better than to do that at an art exhibition or
event. Just because you are working behind the scenes or even front of house,
doesn’t mean to say that you will be shielded from being exposed to some of the
movers and shakers within the industry. Of course, this is going to be very much
a post-pandemic option and exhibitions will change, there’s a likelihood that
we’ll all be learning to live with things like social distancing for a while,
but I can certainly see hybrid, online, offline events happening in the
short-term.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PhEfHwFexiE/YCpCkH0D4cI/AAAAAAAAGX0/OrarJn0ggrItK8TaY8ZA-5KgxR9R7bfDwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Surface%2BRust.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="rust, mountain, abstract art, mount Fiji," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PhEfHwFexiE/YCpCkH0D4cI/AAAAAAAAGX0/OrarJn0ggrItK8TaY8ZA-5KgxR9R7bfDwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Surface%2BRust.jpg" title="Surface Rust by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Surface Rust by Mark Taylor</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></span><p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Art Movers and Logistics – </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">When a
multi-million dollar artwork needs to be moved, there’s a little more to it
than collecting it in a truck and driving it to its next destination. Often
months of preparation is required to schedule the move, making sure that
temperature-controlled transportation or hermetically sealed containers are
available, protecting the works from damage and making sure that the work turns
up at the next destination in exactly the same condition as it left its last,
regardless of whether it has just travelled around the globe. There’s also the
insurance to deal with, scheduling flights, and even accompanying the work on
the aircraft until you can hand it over at the other end. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Video Games – </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">I
often see recruitment campaigns for the video games industry, huge
organisations such as EA (Electronic Arts), Rockstar, and smaller indie studios
have a huge reliance on digital and 3D artists, musicians, voice-over talent,
actors, and apparently they sometimes have a need for coders too. Not an
obvious choice for an artist who maybe isn’t quite so into gaming, but it’s an
option.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Theatre Productions, TV and
Film – </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">from creating props to painting scenery, there’s an entire
creative industry within a broader creative industry. This is also an area that
can be fruitful in terms of supplying cleared artwork for use in TV and film
sets. If you can expedite the clearing process (the process of getting
permission to utilise your work in the production), there is ample room for
creatives to get their work on screen, although you will sometimes have to also
sign an NDA and you won’t always be able to discuss where your work is going to
appear or where it has appeared, but sometimes you can. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Theming/Set Dressers – </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">I have
to say that I am so envious of the creative teams at companies such as Disney.
When I grow up I still want to be a Disney Imagineer, and this is a creative
role that really will have you thinking outside of, not just the box, but the
universe the box is in. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">From window dressing to
dressing the sets in TV and film, or creating make-believe lands in a theme
park where the rock is sculpted by hand, theming can require some exceptional
creative thinking. It is also about making sure that a period drama has the
props that are factually and historically correct for the time period. It’s a
skill that must be honed over decades and these roles often require you to
have knowledge of specific historical and cultural areas. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There are other roles that
need creatives, community arts workers who are not only responsible for
educating their community, they can often be asked to set up arts and culture
events or work with disadvantaged groups and these roles can be great at
building local community engagement.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">If helping people is your
thing, then roles such as an art therapist or art psychotherapist are not just
about general mindfulness, these creatives are involved in helping people with
significant and complex issues to get well through art. They might assist with
communications problems or mobility or mental health issues, so you will need
to champion the healing and therapeutic power of art and creativity. Often, art
therapists and similar occupations will have some sort of requirement for
broader health and social care related skills. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">More traditional roles – daily
tasks and median wages:</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">For the following roles, I
looked through the economic models to get an idea of how much each role
typically pays when you work for an employer, and I looked at the related
occupations (similar careers) from the O’NET data and I extracted the typical
daily tasks that are used when modelling labour market intelligence. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Bear in mind that the median
wages are based in the UK – nationally rather than regionally and are the
mid-point pay scales, not what you would necessarily earn with experience, and
not what you would necessarily earn as a new entrant with less experience. In
other regions and territories the median might look different, it would
certainly, be interesting to see if it matches your experience wherever you are
based.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It’s also worth noting that
there is a potential to earn more through self-employment and freelancing,
there’s also a risk of earning less. Recompense is also subjective, and if you
are an established artist with a collector base, you could hypothetically earn
an annual salary from the sale of between one and a handful of pieces of your
work, but let’s also set some expectations here, that’s going to take some time,
luck, skill, and serendipity. Back to planet pandemic or earth, as we once knew
it, let’s take a look at the jobs.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xTrqIjUN1g0/YCpC_yACf3I/AAAAAAAAGX8/3uA_HkIqsPIMVcgr_AFMELngJEhkwLtDQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Towards%2BThe%2BLight.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="sun, blue mountains, abstract art," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xTrqIjUN1g0/YCpC_yACf3I/AAAAAAAAGX8/3uA_HkIqsPIMVcgr_AFMELngJEhkwLtDQCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Towards%2BThe%2BLight.jpg" title="Towards the Light by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Towards the Light by Mark Taylor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Graphic Designer – median UK
salary - £28,244 per year</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Daily Tasks<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Produces or oversees the creation
of the final product.</span></li></ul><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Liaises with other parts of the
production team to ensure the graphic design fits with other elements, processes
and timescales.</span></li></ul><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Prepares specification and
instructions for realisation of the project.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Prepares sketches, scale
drawings, models, colour schemes and other mock-ups to show clients and
discusses any required alterations.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Undertakes research into the project, considers previous related projects and compares costs of using
different processes.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Liaises with the client to clarify
aims of the project brief and discusses media, software and technology to be used,
establishes a timetable for the project and defines budgetary constraints.</span></li></ul><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Top ten in-demand skills</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Adobe Photoshop</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Adobe Illustrator</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Adobe InDesign</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Graphic Design</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Adobe Creative Suite</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Animations</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Branding</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Adobe After Effects</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Brand Management</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Typography</span></li></ul><p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Similar Careers: </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Merchandisers
and Window Dressers, Pre-Press Technicians, Conference and Exhibition Managers
and Organisers,<b> </b>Artist.<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Artists – Median UK Salary
£26,472</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Daily Tasks<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Produces works on commission
basis for clients.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Markets and sells finished
work directly to customers.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Liaises with writers and
publishers to produce book illustrations.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Uses artistic skills to
restore damaged artworks.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Approaches managers of
galleries and exhibitions in order to get finished work displayed.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Builds up composition into
finished work by carving, sculpting, etching, painting, engraving, drawing,
etc...</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Prepares sketches, scale
drawings or colour schemes.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Selects appropriate materials,
medium and method.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Conceives and develops ideas
and ways of working for artistic composition.</span></li></ul><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Top Ten in-demand skills:</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Autodesk Maya</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Animations</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Adobe Photoshop</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">AAA Server (Authentication
Authorization And Accounting)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Painting</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Autodesk 3DS Max (3D Graphics
Software)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Visual Effects</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Unreal Engine</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Game Engine</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">ZBrush</span></li></ul><p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Similar Careers: </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Advertising,
Creative Director, Graphic Designer, Printers, Pre-Press Technicians, Florist,<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Arts Officers, Producers, and
Directors – Median UK Salary £37,457</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Daily Tasks<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Selects, contracts, markets
and arranges for the presentation and/or distribution of performance, visual
and heritage arts.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Manages health and safety
issues.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Ensures necessary equipment,
props, performers and technical staff are on set when required.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Prepares rehearsal and
production schedule for main events, design of sets and costumes, technical
rehearsals and dress rehearsals.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Breaks script into scenes and
formulates a shooting schedule that will be most economical in terms of time,
location and sets.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Directs actors, designers,
camera team, sound crew and other production and technical staff to achieve
desired effects.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Chooses writers, scripts,
technical staff and performers, and assumes overall responsibility for
completion of the project on time and within budget.</span></li></ul><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Top Ten in-demand skills:</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Animations</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Adobe Photoshop</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Post-Production</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Adobe After Effects</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Adobe Premiere Pro</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Video Editing</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Photography</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Scripting</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Motion Graphic Design</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Storyboarding</span></li></ul><p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Similar Careers: </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Web
Design and Development Professionals, Advertising, Creative Directors, Artists,
Graphic Designers, Pre-Press Technicians, Customer Service Managers and
Supervisors,<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Glass and Ceramics Makers,
Decorators and Finishers – Median UK Salary £23,598</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Daily Tasks:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Applies decorative designs and
finishes to glassware, optical glass and ceramic goods by grinding, smoothing,
polishing, cutting, etching, dipping, painting or transferring patterns or
labels.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Cuts and joins unfired
stoneware pipes to form junctions and gullies, moulds sealing bands on clay
pipes, prepares and joins porcelain or earthenware components and assists
crucible makers and stone workers with their tasks.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Throws, casts and presses clay
by hand or machine to form pottery, stoneware or refractory goods such as
bricks, crucibles, ornaments, sanitary furnishings, saggars, cups, saucers,
plates and roofing tiles.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Makes models and moulds from
moulding clay and plaster for use in the making and casting of pottery and
other ceramic goods.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Makes artificial eyes,
laminated glass sheets or blocks, glass fibre tissue, wool, filament and
matting, marks optical lenses and assembles rimless spectacles.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Uses hand tools and operates
machinery to heat, bend, shape, press, drill and cut glass.</span></li></ul><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Top Ten in-demand skills</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Optics</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Optical Engineering</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Physics</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Zemax</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Photonics</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">New Product Development</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Simulations</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Systems Design</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Manufacturing Processes</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Prototyping</span></li></ul><p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Similar Careers: </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Moulders,
Core Makers, and Die Casters, Machine Setters and Setter Operators, Printers,
Metal Workers, Rubber Process Operatives, Plastics Process Operatives, Chemical
Process Operatives, Routine Inspectors and Testers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mJ2qzJHl2ug/YCpDb-Xm6LI/AAAAAAAAGYE/ignBJTv2MWQ_AhiTwYBpb2Tx0q5jpKwXgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Three%2BPeaks.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Abstract Mountains, mountain art, snow, yellow, gray, painting," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mJ2qzJHl2ug/YCpDb-Xm6LI/AAAAAAAAGYE/ignBJTv2MWQ_AhiTwYBpb2Tx0q5jpKwXgCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Three%2BPeaks.jpg" title="Three Peaks by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Three Peaks by Mark Taylor</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Photographers, Audio-visual
and Broadcasting Equipment Operators – Median UK Salary £29,194</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Daily Tasks<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Operates sound mixing and
dubbing equipment to obtain the desired mix, level and balance of sound.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Manages health and safety
issues.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Operates equipment to record,
edit and playback films and television programmes.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Checks operation and the positioning of projectors, vision and sound recording equipment, and mixing and
dubbing equipment.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Controls transmission,
broadcasting and satellite systems for television and radio programmes,
identifies and solves related technical problems.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Takes, records and manipulates
digital images and digital video footage.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Photographs subject or follows
action by moving the camera.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Operates scanning equipment to
transfer the image to computer and manipulates the image to achieve the desired effect.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Inserts lenses and adjusts
aperture and speed settings as necessary.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Arranges subject, lighting,
camera equipment and any microphones.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Selects subject and conceives
composition of a picture or discusses composition with colleagues.</span></li></ul><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Top Ten in-demand skills:</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Photography</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Adobe Photoshop</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Image Editing</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Digital Single-Lens Reflex
Cameras</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Public Liability</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Adobe Flash</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Broadband</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Audio Equipment</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Digital Recording</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Data Recording</span></li></ul><p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Similar Careers:</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"> IT
User Support Technicians, Telecommunications Engineers, TV, Video and Audio
Engineers, Printers, Pre-Press Technicians, Routine Inspectors and Testers<b> <o:p></o:p></b></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Pre-Press Technicians – Median
UK Salary £26,783</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Daily Tasks:</span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Arranges and pastes printing
material onto paper ready for photographing.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Processes film setting or
desktop publishing output to produce an image on film and transfers to printing
plates and digital output.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Examines proof copies, checks
for quality and accuracy and makes any necessary alterations.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Scans and retouches digital
images to create sample proofs, plans and lays out artwork to match planned
design.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Uses computer applications to
generate images and text.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Determines from specification
the kind and size of type to be used.</span></li></ul><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">No data available for
in-demand skills</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Similar Careers: </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Web
Design and Development Professionals, Library Clerks and Assistants, Tailors
and Dressmakers, Print Finishing and Binding Worker, Florist, Merchandisers and
Window Dressers, Routine Inspectors and Testers<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Archivists and Curators –
Median UK Salary £29,940</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Daily Tasks:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Answers verbal or written
enquiries and gives advice on exhibits or other material.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Liaises with school and other
groups or individuals, publicises exhibits and arranges special displays for
general, specialised or educational interest.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Negotiates loans of material
for specialist displays.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Develops and promotes ideas
for exhibitions and displays.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Allows access to original
material or material not on display for researchers.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Makes sure that storage and
display conditions protect objects from deterioration and damage.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Examines objects to identify
any damage and carries out necessary restoration whilst preserving original
characteristics.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Maintains indexes,
bibliographies and descriptive details of archive material and arranges for
reproductions of items where necessary.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Classifies material and
arranges for its safekeeping and preservation.</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Examines, appraises and
advises on the acquisition of exhibits, historic records, government papers and
other material.</span></li></ul><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Top Ten In-demand skills:</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Collections</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Curation</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Museum Collections Management</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Exhibitions</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Loans</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Art History</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Archives</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Library</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Museum Studies</span></li><li><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Auditing</span></li></ul><p></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Similar Careers: </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Library
clerks and assistants, school secretaries, stock control clerks and assistants,
personal assistants.</span></span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-n0lhkCSZqhI/YCpDzObocxI/AAAAAAAAGYM/5tsRhomGo2gb9axtQ2DTwwejWELOgEFwwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Spring%2BMeadow.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="spring art, flowers, floral, yellow, gray, abstract, design, graphic design," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-n0lhkCSZqhI/YCpDzObocxI/AAAAAAAAGYM/5tsRhomGo2gb9axtQ2DTwwejWELOgEFwwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/Spring%2BMeadow.jpg" title="Spring Meadows by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spring Meadows by Mark Taylor</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Securing those employment
opportunities…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">So, we have finally figured
out where employers are hiring and this might be a precursor before going it
alone. Just how do you begin to secure that elusive position and especially in
the midst of a global pandemic when competition for any employment is at an
all-time high?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It’s a difficult one to
answer, much of your success will be dependent on a number of factors, but let’s
assume that you have the all-important portfolio, the next thing that you will
need to do is to find out as much as you can about how the potential employer
likes to be engaged. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Some will categorically state,
usually on their websites, that speculative applications are not accepted, others
will provide detailed routes of submission (similar to galleries) and others
will direct you to application forms or ask you to make contact. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remember though, that many creative positions are
not necessarily advertised so you might be just as well submitting a
speculative application, wherever you cannot find anything to suggest that you
shouldn’t. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Internships, and offering to
work for free on a trial can be viable ways to demonstrate your skills, but
beware that there will be companies who will take advantage of any offers of free
work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paid internships are a much better
prospect, but they can be difficult to find and there is usually a lot of
competition. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Maybe the best strategy is a
combination of all of the above, but also thinking about you as being a brand.
How do you sell you?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Get Noticed…<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Never wait until you have left
your earthly coil to get your work noticed. If you and your work are getting
noticed, there’s a much better chance that those employers and commissioners
looking to take on the services of a creative will look to you.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Enter art competitions, be
active on networks such as LinkedIn and Twitter, and make as many connections
as you can, but also, make those connections meaningful. Don’t network with the
ambition to simply collect business cards, networking has to be strategic and
it has to add value to both you and whoever you are networking with.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Start a podcast, start a blog,
set up a website, and use those channels to showcase your skills, and use those
as a forum to add value to those who are reading and listening. Much of the
industry is still very much stuck in tradition and word of mouth is as popular
today as it was before the world had the internet. Having these platforms will
allow you to extend your presence beyond the core day, and because recruitment
is often one of the biggest employer expenses, they will often be looking
online to fill the positions they have. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Consider community-based work
and volunteering. This is very different to free work or internships, this is
about putting back into the community. It’s a little like networking, it
shouldn’t be carried out with a single-sided intent, you have to offer a value
to the community, but if anyone in the community needs the kind of services
that you offer, you could already be at the top of the list. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Think about the common skills
you have too…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Whenever I have read a resume,
it’s always felt like a long list of academic achievements and a timeline of
different jobs, but rarely does it tell me anything. If anyone ever reads my
LinkedIn page, which to be fair, I haven’t updated since I knew better, it
reads like some random list of things I have done or achieved that would give
anyone reading it causes to question how crazy my life has been. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">It also doesn’t mention a heap
of stuff I have done that would make slightly more interesting reading, and
neither does it give you any inclination that I’m actually an okay public
speaker, or that I’m pretty great at making coffee. It doesn’t mention the
skills that most employers really want such as, the ability to communicate
effectively, turn up to a job on time, be polite to others (but only after
coffee), and my current resume doesn’t mention the skills that don’t have a
paper qualification to verify them, but these skills are often at the top of an
employer’s wish list. If I were to list them, hey, even I would reach out and
offer me a job!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Never underestimate just how
much value employers place on someone who can show a little common sense, and
while it might be common sense to mention the softer skills, they’re not always
mentioned in conversations with potential employers. As for common sense, surprisingly, it isn't that common.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">There are some key soft
skills, sometimes known as common skills that are increasingly in demand from
employers, so I went back to the data and drew this out, and then looked at a
number of job postings to see whether or not the skills had been listed within
the adverts as being desired or useful to have, here’s what I found.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Creative problem solving and
innovation – </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">was mentioned more often and not just in the
creative sector job postings I looked through. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Communication Skills – </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">No surprise
here, but one thing I did notice was that digital communication skills were
also mentioned. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Effective Time Management – </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">This seems
massively important as almost every job advert I looked through mentioned time
management as being a required skill. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">EQ & EI – </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">IQ
seems so last year, maybe even last decade. The emotion quotient, or the
ability to show empathy, and think emphatically about the people around you is
a sure sign that organisations are beginning to think more and more about
mental health and other issues that need a level of emotional intelligence. It
was good to see that emotive issues might finally be being addressed in the
workplace. Hats off to employers for adding this one.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Collaboration – </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">This is
something I have been talking about on this site for a number of years. If collaboration
isn’t one-sided as it often is, the power of a hive-mind and the collective
abilities of people can be massively useful in the creative arts sector and the
art world more broadly. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">When it comes to collaboration,
we also have to address the real elephant in the room, and it is that
collaboration is still very much an alien concept for some. A what’s in it for
me attitude is something that isn’t particularly useful in the creative sector.
Used strategically and ensuring that all those collaborating add value,
collaboration can be one of the best long-term tools that you can master.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Listening Skills – </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Increasingly
important in a world where the video conference is used as much as it is, the
ability to actively listen and engage in the right places has been a little bit
of a dying art for a number of years. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Adapting to change – </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">There was
no real surprise that this was mentioned as much as it was, we’re in the middle
of a pandemic, the world changed, we all changed, we’re not even sure what
normal ever was or will be in the future. Of course, you will need to be able to
adapt, it’s a new world my friends. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">The ability to learn new skills
– </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Hence
I mentioned earlier that employers are keen to see professional development,
even if they’re not quite as keen as they once were to see the formal qualification.
Employers need to have assurances that you have the ability to learn and master
new skills and besides, this is what you are designed to do, you’re a creative.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">Leadership Skills – </span></b><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">I’m
sure there are plenty of employees around the world who are crying out for a
leader to lead them. Leadership skills demonstrate that you are able to grow
beyond the role, and that’s critical for employers as they will also be
planning employee succession. It’s even more critical in a world that is
frequently uncertain about what’s next, like I said just now, we’re in the
middle of a pandemic, the world is screaming out for leadership. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PSBlq2X7Mh4/YCpEMTsMo0I/AAAAAAAAGYY/gV3KOflfcho90HPuDYS31i0jnACdGnEvwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/adrift%2Bunder%2Ba%2Bglowing%2Bsky.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="glowing sky, boat, ocean, shore, painting, tide, waves," border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PSBlq2X7Mh4/YCpEMTsMo0I/AAAAAAAAGYY/gV3KOflfcho90HPuDYS31i0jnACdGnEvwCLcBGAsYHQ/w640-h640/adrift%2Bunder%2Ba%2Bglowing%2Bsky.JPG" title="Adrift Under A Glowing Sky by Mark Taylor" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Adrift Under A Glowing Sky by Mark Taylor</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><br /><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></span><p></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Good Luck!</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">All that is left to say this
time is that, I wish you every success whichever way you go. If you want to be
employed as a creative or want to go it alone and build a small business or an
empire, I wish you every success and please know that I want you to succeed. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Sometimes, all that someone
needs to succeed is for someone else to believe in them. The fact that you made
it this far into the longest post I have written in forever, and three parts
into a series on growing a career in the arts, tells me all that I need to know
about you. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">I’m not going to be all
glitter and unicorns, this is one incredibly tough sector to become involved with
and even when were are not in the midst of a pandemic, there are way easier ways to earn a buck.
But here’s what I believe, if you are a creative, an artist, a graphic
designer, anyone with a creative bone, someone who has the soul of creativity
running through their veins, then not being in a creative role isn’t a choice. I know that you will always be looking for the creative angle.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">You have to want it, remind
yourself frequently just how much you want it, and there will be times when the
path of least resistance is giving up, but if being a creative is anything, it’s about not giving up, that’s really not what you do, and I don’t even think you can.
Now go, go be creative, look after each other and as always, stay safe!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">Mark x<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h1 style="line-height: 200%; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large; line-height: 200%;">About Mark…</span></b></h1>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">I am an artist and blogger and
live in Staffordshire, England. You can purchase my art through my Fine Art
America store or my Pixels site here: </span><a href="https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com/" target="_blank"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com</span></a><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"> and
you can purchase my new works, special and limited editions directly. You can
also view my portfolio website at </span><a href="https://beechhousemedia.com/" target="_blank"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">https://beechhousemedia.com</span></a><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">If you are on Facebook, you
can give me a follow right here, </span><a href="https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia</span></a><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;">
You can also follow me on Twitter @beechhouseart and on Pinterest at </span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"><a href="https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia" target="_blank">https://pinterest.com/beechhousemedia</a></span><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="line-height: 200%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;">If you would like to support the upkeep of this site so that I can continue bringing you independent writing and practical tips, please consider donating the cost of a coffee right <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-an-independent-visual-artist " target="_blank">here</a>! </span></p>Beechhouse Mediahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08960315146755602924noreply@blogger.com2