I’m not certain how the statistic was arrived at, but the figure being bandied about is that 60% of the world’s paintings come from a single village in China.

Dafen (Dafen shequ) is actually more of a suburb than a village, lying outside Shenzhen, a city of 10 million northeast of Hong Kong. In the early 1990’s a group of 20 or so artists moved to the area at the urging and under the guidance of artist/businessman Huang Jiang, and began turning out quantities of replicas of famous paintings by artists like Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Dali, Rembrandt, the French Impressionists and others.

The enterprise became wildly successful and more artists were recruited, a number now believed to be in the thousands. The paintings are sold through a number of outlets, both brick-and-mortar and online (do a Google search for Dafen paintings), while some of them are original in design (think ads for “starving artist sales” and cheap “sofa sized paintings”), most are copies of famous paintings and are clearly promoted as replicas.

While there are replica painting enterprises with similar processes in other countries (notably Russia), nothing approaches the scale of the output from Dafen.

The area has become a gated community, with a large sculpture of a hand with paintbrush outside its gates, and indulges in its identity as an art center, even to the point of facsimile painting “matches”, in which a hundred or more painters compete in creating replicas of the same painting in a timed event (image at left - AP).

The site and journal for REGIONAL, a design and research network whose founders are currently working in Shenzhen, commissioned some of the Dafen painters (many of whom studied at art academies) to turn their painting skills from painting replicas to painting self-portraits. A few of them are posted along with the article Self-Portraiture and emerging artistic consciousness in Dafen ‘Oil Painting’ Village, accompanied by a photo of the artist and one of their representative facsimile works.

The images at top, taken from the article, are of painter Xu ZanPeng, who specializes in Russian Baroque painters, including a detail of one of her replica paintings of Kramskoy’s Unknown Woman (see my recent post on Ivan Kramskoy).

I doubt there is any town in the world into which oil paint, brushes and canvas are trucked in, and paintings trucked out, in such quantities. According to the Chicago Tribune, Dafen shipped over $120 million in paintings last year, which is a lot when you consider that the prices are usually quite low.

I guess it’s good that there’s a large worldwide market for oil paintings, even if it’s not exactly the kind of market for which we might have hoped.

[Link to REGIONAL article via BoingBoing]

Ben Grosser is an artist and composer who also directs the Imaging Technology Group at the Beckman Institute. As a painter, Grosser paints large scale non-represenational works. After being frustrated early in his painting career by the cost of large easels that would accommodate his desire to paint large canvasses, he decided to build his own.

Impressed by the helpfulness of the free information of various kinds on the web at the time (1998), Grosser decided to contribute his plans to those interested and posted them on his website.

He has continued that practice and the plans, which are detailed, accompanied by a materials list and photographs, are available freely on his web site today.

With them, he states that even a novice, with borrowed tools and no woodworking experience, can build their own large easel for under $100, handling paintings as well as some large easels costing many times that much.

There is also a gallery of photos from people who have built their own easels using Grosser’s plans (images above, bottom row), as well as emails with anecdotes, descriptions of customizations and clever enhancements, and even stories of easels built from scrap materials for under $20, some of them looking wonderfully rough hewn and rustic.

Grosser was offering easily downloadable PDF versions of his plans, but his generosity was repaid by scavengers ripping off his free plans, stripping out his credits and selling them on eBay as if they had created them; so he has had to discontinue the PDFs. The web based plans, however, remain available.

If you decide to build an easel, be sure to send him photos and comments about your experience.

[Link via Ujwala Prabhu]

I’ve always been fascinated by self-portraits (not that I’ve done that many myself). Here is not only the artist’s personality expressed through their work, but through their own inner or outer vision of themselves.

Many of history’s great paintings have been self portraits, from Durer and Rembrandt to Sargent and Van Gogh, artists have made self-portraits into powerful statements with the full force of their personality and artistic skills.

One of the most intriguing things about self-portraits is the variety of approach, in terms of materials, the nature of the composition, attitude of the artist as sitter, and the background, setting and objects an artist can choose to surround themselves with.

American Artist, the venerable artists’ magazine, has opened the entry process on this year’s Self-Portrait Competition, in which the selected winners will have their self-portraits published in the magazine. The magazine’s web site has a slide-show of recent entries, about 70 of them at this point, which already constitute a colorful (in more ways then one) assortment of approaches and interpretations of the idea of self portraiture.

In addition, they have provided an inspirational gallery of self-portraits from the history of art, including some greats like Durer’s Christ-like advertisement for his painting skills as a young artist, Chardin’s lifted-eyebrow self-appraisal of his scarfed head, three of Rembrandt’s always remarkable self-images, Sargent’s dignified banker-esque stare, Élisabeth-Louis Vigée-Lebrun’s beautiful 3/4 length portrait with palette, brushes and full-dress finery, Anders Zorn’s frank self-appraisal, several of Ergon Scheel’s stark, gaunt visages and van Gogh’s hauntingly electric, blue and green study of intensity and emotional chaos.

That said, you can submit your own portraits, haunting or otherwise, to the competition for their entry fee of $20, and $5 for additional entries. The info page has general information and the registration page has the terms and conditions. The deadline is May 1, 2008 and entry is limited to U.S. residents.

I don’t know how many pieces will be displayed in the magazine. At any rate, it should be worth checking the recent entries page occasionally just to see the the variety and range of the entries.

(Image above, left to right, Row 1: Ted Burn, Dianne Panarelli Miller, Virginia Blechman; Row 2: Daniel van Benthuysen, Peter Nuchims, David Frank; Row 3: Johanna Uribes, Jim Kilmartin, Koo Schadler; Row 4: Cesar Santos, Spencer Sharp, F. Michael Wood, Ying-He Liu. The unfortunate shadow at the top of each image is the product of the cheesy slide show application the magazine has, for reasons that are beyond me, chosen for this display.)

ArtDemonstrations.com is a blog in which the author has collected and shares links to various art demonstrations and tutorials he has come across on the web.

Some of them are more useful than others and they take several forms, from a few steps in a painting process shown as photos, to longer step-by step breakdowns, to time-lapse videos of the creation of drawings or paintings (like the portrait drawing by Barrett Bailey shown above), to full half hour or more videos of painting demonstrations.

At first I thought that the blog might be from someone associated with SmartFlix, an instructional video rental service that features a number of art instruction DVDs, because of the ubiquitous banner. There is also a list of text links under his Google ads that look like a blogroll, but are actually links (presumably paid links) to items in the SmartFlix store. These are videos that might be of interest, but the listings feature no actual online demos or articles.

Apparently, though, SmartFlix is just a sponsor the author encountered after doing a short post on them. (They’ve contacted me as well, but I haven’t had a chance to check into the service yet. I’ll try to rent a video or two and give you a report in the near future.)

Some of the ArtDemonstrations.com posts are links to short promos for artists’ commercial video releases, including short excerpts from a new instructional painting video, The Portrait Sketch, by Jeremy Lipking, as well as other video clips of him.

In addition to Jeremy Lipking, the blog points to demos by other artists that I’ve mentioned on lines and colors, including Tony Ryder, Duane Keiser, and a couple by William Whitaker (from the blog’s listings for November, 2005)

Other posts mention books and web archives of books, as well as tidbits like old film of Picasso at work and a PDF of an article on Sargent’s painting methods (PDF link 28k) posted by Craig Mullins.

In addition to Mullins there are a few mentions of concept artists, though that’s one of the largest areas of available tutorials on the web, particularly in the portals like CG Society and ConceptArt.org. Still, most people with a particular interest in concept art are aware of those sources and I think ArtDemonstrations.com is better aimed at the broader art community.

Unfortunately, the author, who I can find referenced only as “Jeff” (and is apparently an artist himself and has contributed one or two of his own demos), doesn’t seem to post often; and has not yet included a number of readily available painting demos I’ve come across on YouTube and other places.

The idea of trying to collect a central reference for available art tutorials on the web is a terrific one, and I would love to see it pursued more aggressively; but instead of complaining, I should be thanking Jeff for sharing what he has.

Kevin Turcotte is another of those artists who has a somewhat vague web presence. I don’t think he has a site of his own, but he posts his small paintings as a participant in the group blog, Paintopolis.

He shares Paintopolis with James Martin, Jeremy Engleman and Marty Havran. There is little direct information about any of them on the blog, but I’m guessing that they all work for Disney animation in some capacity, as the one other bit of information I’ve been able to come up with on Turcotte is his IMDB listing; which credits him as background artist or background supervisor on films like Sinbad: Legend of the Seven seas, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, The Road to Eldorado, The Prince of Egypt, Pocahontas, The Lion King and Aladdin.

You’re left with the impression that the blog exists basically for the benefit of the artists themselves and/or their friends, because, except for the artist’s names and a few short notes about the posted images, no background information is provided.

Turcotte seems to be the most prolific contributor, frequently posting small landscapes that he describes as “lunchtime paintings”, quickly realized and fresh with the painterly immediacy that the limited timeframe implies. These are done primarily in oil and occasionally in watercolor. Likewise he often posts both oil and watercolor figure paintings, from appearances done in a classroom or workshop setting. These are also wonderfully painterly and quickly but surely rendered.

There are also quick studies of flowers and still life subjects as well as a few more fully realized paintings.

In browsing through the blog, which unfortunately is one of those Blogger affairs that doesn’t have an “earlier posts” link and requires you to fidget through the archives links to see past the first page, you’ll also encounter the work of his fellow Paintoplois bloggers, whose “off-hours” work is also worth attention, even if they don’t think it’s worth any explanation, bios, or other background information.

Though there aren’t many pieces available online, the variety of subject, medium and approach, and the high quality of each, make the sketchblog of Simon Otto well worth a visit.

Otto’s blog is actually just excerpts from his contributions to insert name here, a group blog he shares with several other talented artists, who, like Otto, work in the film industry.

Otto himself is an animator at DreamWorks Animation. Though I couldn’t find any of his professional work online, you can see a list of his credits on IMDB.

His blog posts range from plein air oil paintings to digital sketches (apparently also painted on location with a laptop), to figure painting, to a series of wonderfully appealing sketchbook pages. The latter feature drawings apparently done in pencil and white body color on cream paper, and are my favorites of his posted work.

It’s an unusual approach; most toned sketchbook drawings tend toward ink and wash or monochrome watercolor. The combination of pencil against the cream and white areas, along with accents of textural tones created with lines, a technique more common to pen and ink, makes for nicely subtle and varied tonal range.

Occasionally, Otto will work with black body color or ink in place of the lighter tones, and he will sometimes punctuate his sketches with small areas of red or other colors. He’s not shy about tackling complex architectural subjects or cityscapes; rendering them in confident but sensitive lines and arranging them in interesting compositions.

Many of his sketchbook drawings are annotated with notes or dates, but for some reason they have been flopped in posting so that they read backwards, along with signs in the images. That does little to reduce their charm, however, and at the end of the available blog posts you’re left looking in vain for more.

Unfortunately, neither Otto’s blog, or the group blog from which it is extracted, have been updated since July. We’ll have to hope that Otto and his fellow artists get inspired soon to resume posting.

It’s nice to start the new year by looking forward, but it can be just as instructive to look back; and there are some great resources that make looking back easier and more fruitful than ever.

Project Gutenberg is a great idea. Not just in the sense of “great” as “terrific”, but in the sense of “great” as “milestone” or “extraordinary”.

If you’re not familiar with it, Project Gutenberg is an attempt to digitize and archive as many public domain cultural works as possible (as opposed to archiving technical information). Started in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, and maintained and contributed to by thousands of volunteers, the archive already contains the full text of more then 20,000 books that are old enough to have moved into the public domain.

These are archived as free eBooks in several formats, Plucker a format that can be read on a Palm device or smartphone with the open source Plucker Viewer; HTML, which can be read online or downloaded as a Zip file; and plain text in ascii and utf-8 encodings. There are also audio books, sheet music and pictures.

Even though the length of time it takes for a book to become public domain was extended by the Copyright Term Extension Act, as the result of intensive lobbying by Disney and other corporate entertainment barons (hence its nickname as The Mickey Mouse Protection Act because the change happened as MM was about to slip into public domain), there are still a number of books in the archive printed after color printing became economical enough to include good reproductions of illustrations and other paintings, in addition to the older pen and ink illustrations.

Unfortunately, the weak link in the Project Gutenberg chain seems to be that the scanning and preparation of many illustrated books for the archive has apparently been done by individuals with no knowledge of graphic arts basics, and/or by brain damaged rhesus monkeys, resulting in the frustrating presence of a number archived illustrated books in which the illustrations are dark, blurry, over-compressed smears, or ratty, scratchy GIF files. (The latter is sadly the state of their archive of the wonderful John Tenniel illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. For better resources, see my post on Sir John Tenniel).

Thankfully, this is not always the fate of illustrated books in the collection, possibly because some graphics knowledgeable people have volunteered to help. A case in point is Masters of Water-Colour Painting by H.N. Cundall (HTML version here), a book published in the 1920’s with color plates of great watercolors, like the plate above, “Palazzo Contarini Fasan on the Grand Canal, Venice” by Samuel Prout.

There are some other gems in the collection but you have to look for them, a process that’s not always as easy as is should be. The project has a decent search feature, if you know what you’re looking for, but is weak on browsing. Repeated searching can bare fruit, the terms “painting” and “painters” will return different results. Try the Advanced Search or Catalog Overview page, from which you can use the Anacleo, Yahoo and Google search features.

Also, once you find a title you like, look in the “Bibliographic Record” section toward the top of that entry’s main page for the “LoC Class” link, in the case of the above title, the class is “ND: Fine Arts; Painting“, and returns some good results.

Digging will be rewarded.

Obviously, a project like this depends on contributions of money and time (they are always asking for help in the form of distributed proofreaders); and, though I can’t speak for the program, it looks to me like it might benefit in particular from they help of individuals with some knowledge of digital media and graphic arts.

[Masters of Water-Colour Painting link via Acuarela]

I recently did an update on James Gurney, and I don’t normally do two posts about the same artist in such quick succession, but I finally had a chance to spend some time enjoying my new copy of his latest book, Journey to Chandara, and I was just knocked out.

Journey to Chandara (more detail here) is another in his series of Dinotopia books, fantasy adventure stories set in a “land apart from time”. All of these books, and particularly the new one, are the kind of books for which even that wonderful term “lavishly illustrated” is inadequate. To say these books are fantasy adventure stories is insufficient as well; they are excursions into the science, history and, in particular, art of previous centuries.

In a way somewhat more subtle than William Stout’s playful series of dinosaur images that make reference to various painters and Golden Age illustrators, Gurney likes to combine his fanciful images with his fascination for the styles and techniques of great artists, particularly those of the 19th Century, from Charles R. Knight to Daniel Ridgeway Knight.

In the new volume, this phenomenon is even more pronounced than before. This is a quest adventure to a distant part of Dinotopia. From Waterfall City, which is an idealized European city (think Rome + Venice + Mongo, which Lucas & Co. “borrowed” uncredited as the inspiration for Naboo in Star Wars Episode I), Gurney’s dinosaur and human characters “journey to the east” on their way to Chandara, the Dinotopian equivalent of China. On the way, they visit an ever widening variety of places with their attendant variety of landscapes.

In the process, we see Gurney observing, absorbing and playing with the techniques and subject matter of a host of great landscape painters (which I have to think is the real inspiration for the story). In particular he shows his affection for painters like Caspar David Frederich, John Constable, J.M.W. Turner (particularly his early work), and a number of the “Orientalist” painters (like Jean-Léon Gérôme), who took their own journeys of exploration.

Gurney also continues his obvious display of affection for 19th Century Academic painters, the Pre-Raphaelites, great illustrators like Maxfield Parrish and N.C. Wyeth, and even M.C. Escher.

Somehow, he manages to mix in his knowing winks and thank-yous to these artists with dazzling lighting and dramatic compositions that will enthrall modern adventure fans, as well as inventive designs for places, characters and props that would be the envy of many accomplished production designers and concept artists, and make it all feel like part of a whole. Remarkable.

There is another aspect to this book that makes it my favorite of his published works to date. The reproductions seem even better than in the previous volumes, even though they were excellent. You can see more of the artist’s brushstrokes and the surface quality of the paint. This may be due to the quality of the reproduction, or the way in which the works were photographed, or it may be that Gurney himself is getting more painterly and confident as he continues his restless exploration of the art of painting. I suspect it’s a combination of those factors. The paintings are in oil but Gurney occasionally achieves watercolor-like effects where the paint is thin enough to let the white of the support, and at times hints of the underlying drawing, come through.

Beyond the subtle details for art lovers, and the illustrated adventure itself, Gurney adds, as he often does, features like imaginative cut-aways of the interiors of structures and devices that appeal to the 12-year old inveterate Popular Science reader in many of us. This includes inventive conceits like the use of a brachiosaurus as a fire truck, with an escape ladder on the back of its neck.

The level of detail extends to invented alphabets based on dinosaur tracks and and a separate, beautifully done, National Geographic style Traveler’s Map of Dinotopia. The attention to detail in this volume rivals that of Chris Ware’s amazing book/artifacts.

Gurney also continues to mix real science and history in with his fantasy. He goes on to explore Escher-like surface tessellations (made, of course, of dinosaur tracks) and the presence of the Fibonacci series (the “golden section”) in the surface patterns of seeds and flowers. He shows real designs for astrolabes, demonstrates how an abacus functions; and illustrates, in a detailed, David McCauley-like cutaway, an explanation of how a windmill works.

Of course, on top of that we get image after image of Gurney’s beautiful renderings of dinosaurs; all manner of dinosaurs — large, small and in between. Again, he is including real science. In spite of the fanciful setting, Gurney strives to keep his renderings paleontologically accurate, and the book’s dust-jacket features, amid raves from Ray Harryhausen and Walt Reed, notices from renowned paleontologists like Michael Brett-Surman and Mark Norell. In some cases the relation of the dinosaur images to the story is subtle enough that that the fantasy element is subdued and the images just look like particularly beautiful straightforward paleo illustrations, making me hope that Gurney has plans for such a book up his sleeve.

All of this plus the way that Gurney has allowed us to look over his shoulder as he explores the work of great artists from the past, adds up to a package that is an absolute treat.

Gurney continues to cover his own journey, as he travels in support of the book, on his blog, Gurney Journey. The blog is increasingly fascinating and features posts on his process and technique for the book, on the practice of studying and borrowing from the masters, and the subject of painting in general (see his recent post on his favorite How-To books). It also features larger reproductions of some of the paintings than those on the Journey to Chandara section of the Dinotopia site, along with preliminary studies and sketches, and even some of Gurney’s recent landscape paintings.

Original paintings from Journey to Chandara and his other books are currently on display in exhibitions in Los Angeles and Oshkosh, Wisconsin. See my previous post and Gurney’s Dinotopia Exhibitions page for more links and details.

In the thirteen years I’ve been on the web, twelve of which I’ve spent doing professional web site design, and the last two of which have sent me to hundreds of artists’ web sites, I’ve come to the inevitable conclusion that the thing artists want most when placing their art on the web is for it not to be seen.

There are millions upon millions of bad sites on the web, but artists really work at it. Never have I seen such an array of sites in which artsy designs, misplaced cleverness, highbrow concepts, amateur clumsiness, arrogance and ignorance have been painstakingly employed to drive visitors away.

As a result of this obvious desire of illustrators, painters, comics artists, concept designers and other artists not to be seen, I’ve created a collection of handy tips for how to send editors, art directors, gallery owners, prospective buyers, webcomics readers and casual users hastily clicking away in search of some portfolio site other than yours.

Got your note pads ready?

Use a “free” hosting service that only charges by making your site display pop-up ads. Hey, free is free, right? Besides, everybody loves pop up ads. Don’t bother with real web hosting from decent hosting services even though it can cost $8 a month or less, and don’t bother to look for reviews of hosting services on reputable sites like C/Net. Also ignore the fact that blogs, when used with “pages” instead of “posts” can serve as easily constructed, pre-designed and free web sites.

Don’t take the trouble to get a domain name. Art directors will remember “mac.com/users/~joeblow/web/portfolio/intro.html” much more easily than “joeblowillustration.com” when they go to hire their next artist. Plus “tripod.com/members/~janedoe/paintings/gallery/thumbnails.html” is so easy to mention in conversation or recommend to someone else, and it looks great on a business card. Don’t consider the fact that domain names can cost less than $10 a year, and are often free with real web hosting accounts. Hey, the good ones are all taken or squatted on, right, so why bother? And if you do get a domain name, longer names that are more closely associated with your name or studio, and might be easier to remember, can’t possibly be a cool as bizarre, clever, short ones that have nothing to do with you or your work.

Speaking of “clever” be sure to use a clever interface design and enigmatic navigation. All art directors and gallery owners love to play guessing games, and they have plenty of time to click around until they’ve figured out where on your nifty “concept site” you’ve hidden your artwork. They’ll be so impressed with your high concept that they’ll feel the art is that much more valuable when they finally find it.

In fact, make them wait a bit in anticipation. Use an Intro Page, especially with a long, clever animated Flash intro that that can’t be bypassed, to make sure they’re in the right mood when they arrive at your fabulous Splash Page, the entire purpose of which is to force them to search for a tiny, almost invisible, “Enter Site” button and click on it in order to get to the Main Page, which should be as confusing as possible and from which they must choose “Creative”, or some other euphemism for “Portfolio”, in order to arrive at the Gallery Selection Page and be presented with choices for which section of the Gallery they want, hopefully named in some arcane terms only you and the members of your fan club would understand, and then choose a Sub-gallery, and ideally a Sub-sub-gallery, before showing them any images. Make them work for it so they’ll understand just how important your images are! Hey, they wouldn’t have gotten this far if they weren’t, right?

Use lots of bright, intense colors in the design, particularly in the gallery area. You want to make sure the colors in your images are suppressed and overshadowed by the design. After all, the web site itself is the important thing, isn’t it?

Use tiny, square thumbnails with a nondescript crop from some obscure corner of the artwork. You wouldn’t want someone to miss the fun of playing “Concentration” when trying to remember where a particular image is; and if the thumbnails clearly described the images, visitors might actually go to one they like in the eleven seconds they have to look at your site.

Even better, why bother with thumbnails or preview images when clever little dots, squares or enigmatic shapes are so much more artsy? Everybody already knows how cool your stuff is, they’ll certainly take the trouble to click through all the shapes to find an image. Plus if they come back looking for a particular image, they have the fun of discovering all over again!

Use “pop-up and close” style gallery navigation. Don’t let them be lazy and click through all of your images with a simple “Next, Previous, Thumbnails” style navigation, they might go through your whole portfolio! Better to make them work for it, open each image in a separate pop-up window and click to close it again before they can click on the next image. Your fabulous art is worth the trouble! For an extra incentive, make them wait for a JavaScript that cleverly re-sizes the pop-up window every time before displaying your image. In fact, the more pop-up windows, the better! Pop up each gallery, gallery subsection and individual image in a separate pop-up window! Wheeeee!

Speaking of Javascript, be sure to use one that makes the user’s browser window reposition itself, or forces it to full screen when they arrive at your site. Nothing says “Welcome” like yanking the user’s browser out of their hands and making it clear you don’t think they know how to view your brilliant design properly because they’re idiots.

Here’s another good trick, use JavaScript on your thumbnails so that they can only see your full size images on rollover, and the instant they move the mouse, change the image. The self-control necessary to keep the mouse steady, or carefully take their hands off of it to view the image for more than a split second will keep them on their toes. You don’t want any slackers looking at your stuff! Plus, this has the added advantage of making them wait for the images to pre-load before they can see them.

While you’ve got the JavaScript book out, pull out the Flash book too. See if you can find some ways to make your galleries hard to scroll, keep the text from being read by search engines and make the images take forever to display, either by long fades, dramatic transitions or resizing display areas. (Ignore the fact that Flash can be used responsibly and effectively if you learn how; that stuff’s for sissies!)

Be sure to put your site in frames! You wouldn’t want someone to be able to conveniently bookmark a page, or send a link to an individual page to, say, another art director. You want them to go through the entire navigation process everytime. Putting your entire site in a single Flash file is good for this too.

As long as you’re coding, make sure your site is Internet Explorer specific. You don’t want any bums using Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, OmniWeb, UNIX, LINUX or a Mac to access your site. If they can’t get a real computer, they should get lost.

Don’t bother to find out how to make your site search-engine friendly. True artists have always languished in obscurity. If you do go insane and decide you’d like your site to be found, don’t take the trouble to go to searchenginewatch.com, or similar sites, and learn anything about search engine optimization; be sure to hire a black-ops, fly-by-night search engine optimization outfit from a country whose name you can’t pronounce, that has sent you a spam email promising to post your site to “hundreds of search engines”. (Those stories about 90% of all searches taking place on the top four search engines? Just rumors!)

Play some tricks! Use nondescript links, that unsuspecting users think are to other pages in your site, to send them without warning to eBay, your blog, a Flickr gallery or to start the unwanted download of a PDF file. What fun!

Wow ‘em with sound. If your visitors are in an environment where music is inappropriate, and only have their sound on so Microsoft Word can seranede them when it belches out a document, they’ll appreciate the welcome relief from boredom that your surprise music explosion brings to them, their unspecting co-workers, and their boss, who needs to loosen up anyway. On the other hand, if they’re in a sutuation where music is acceptable, they’re certain to like what you have picked out better than what’s on their iPod, and they’ll appreciate the surprise mash-up of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Dust in the Wind. Besides, your taste in what music they should listen to is obviously much better than theirs. If you’re creating your navigation in Flash to keep it hidden from search engines, you can add bonus sound effects to the buttons! And don’t let some namby-pamby usability expert talk you into subtle little camera shutter clicks to give user feedback when they click on a button; imagine some art director’s deilght at the button for your “About” page emitting a sound like a Star Wars light saber slicing through a jet engine housing!

Don’t learn anything about usability, information design or good navigation practices. If you’re making your site yourself, you don’t want to stifle your creativity with such things, nor do you want to be aware of them if you’ve hired a “creative” web site designer or agency who has promised to make your site “cutting edge”. All that nonsense about making a site easy to use just gets in the way. Make sure you don’t read books on web site usability, like Steve Krug’s Don’t make Me Think. Don’t try to look at your site like someone who’s never been there before. Hey, you know where everything is, if some newbies can’t figure it out, screw ’em!

Keep ’em guessing. The home page is the first impression visitors have of your site, Whatever you do, don’t set aside a space on the home page, or at the top of your blog, to give first time visitors a succinct description of who you are and what you do, or tell them what kind of site this is. What fun is that? In fact, do what you can to make the intro to your site as enigmatic and obscure as possible; this is très chic. Besides, all the important people have already been to your site and know the score; and the newcomers will love the feeling that they have arrived at the gate of a clandestine private club, and will appreciate the challenge of figuring out the puzzle while they decide whether or not to apply for membership.

Don’t focus! Since everybody important has already been to your site, design your home page for their benefit and fill it with the latest news of your comings and goings, or your insightful ruminations on last night’s episode of Lost. Don’t waste that wonderful home page space on introductions for strangers! Oh, and while you’re at it, make sure to cram as much as possible on your home page. It’s the most important page, right? So everything should go there. Make it long and scrolling and squeeze stuff into every corner. You don’t want any wasted white space! The more stuff vying for attention, the better! MAKE EVERY LINE A HEADLINE! Mix colors! MAKE YOUR HEADLINES LOOK LIKE LINKS! MAKE YOUR LINKS LOOK LIKE HEADLINES! Be sure to underline, italicize and bold all kinds of stuff for EMPHASIS!!. Isn’t this fun?! Don’t forget, the computer gods gave you a milliOn fOntS for a reason; it would be a sin not to use them.

Once you’ve made your images inaccessible, make yourself inaccessible. Suppress any unwarranted urge you have to include a brief bio. At the very least substitute a clever “fake” bio that’s sure to leave ‘em laughing. Or, if you must add a real bio, be sure to write a lengthy multi-pager with your entire life story, your views on all aspects of art, religion and politics and the details on your penchant for eating Oreos dipped in Diet Coke at 4am in your Sponge Bob underwear. Don’t include a short description of your working methods, that might be too interesting or informative. Make certain your contact information isn’t available, or be sure it’s presented as some kind of weirdly arranged interactive form, the location of which is hidden and the page for which makes it clear how much you don’t want anyone to contact you unless you already know them, because they’re obviously “fans”, and as such, beneath your notice.

Most importantly, make sure the images themselves are too small to really convey any feeling for your work. Remember - all visitors to your portfolio site are malicious parasitic thieves, out to steal your precious artwork and print it on millions of knock-off T-shirts in China! Don’t give them anything that makes your work look good enough to steal!!   Better yet, keep your work safe by not putting it on the web at all! If your work is in print, you need to write your senators and demand they outlaw inexpensive scanners, which can actually be used to grab a high-resolution, printable image of your art. Now that I think of it, it’s better to prevent your work from appearing in print too. Keep it at home in a drawer so no one can see it but you!

Or just watermark everything. Now we’re talkin’! Make sure your watermark is big and ugly and obliterates any remnant of appeal your tiny images might still allow to be present in your work. The best phrase to watermark across your images is: “I think you’re a thief, you’re not worthy to look at my brilliant work and you wouldn’t understand it anyway! Go away!”

See how easy it is? By following these simple rules, or just a few of them, you too can make your portfolio site as magnificently unappealing as many other artists! So grab your copy of Front Page and have at it!

Addendum: Due to the overwhelming response to this article, and the many requests for information that have stemmed from it, I’ve started a less entertaining, but hopefully more directly helpful, series of articles on the subject of How to Display Your Art on the Web.

[Note: Apparently the high number of visits from lines and colors readers has overtaxed the bandwidth allotment of this artist's site, and the site is temporarily offline. You may have to wait a while, perhaps several weeks, to be able to view it again. In the meanwhile, you can still access The Limner's Contract on Google Video, and many of the videos mentioned in the article by viewing the ones Suncage has posted on YouTube.
-Charley]

I will be the first to admit that, when it comes to painting “en plein air” (outdoors), I am a fair weather painter. Days when it’s even mildly chilly find me sitting cozily in font of a computer monitor, or the in the comfort of a heated studio indulging in the convenience of photographic reference.

That doesn’t stop me from admiring the determination of some dedicated plein air painters, and being outright amazed at others.

Suncage (pseudonym of UK painter Jon Hall) is in the latter category. He is astonishingly dedicated to painting outdoors regardless of circumstance; painting in wind, rain, cold, and all manner of unpleasant conditions.

His site and blog are a little short on introductory information, but some of this dedication may have come from a challenge he set for himself that he called “The Limners Contract“. (”Limner” is defined as someone who describes something by painting or drawing. It comes from a root meaning illuminator, from which we also get illustrator. Limner also can refer to ornamental painters in the American colonies.)

Suncage’s Limner’s contract was essentially a contract with himself to complete paintings from life, on site, every day for a year. In the course of the project he created over 500 painted sketches and chronicled the endeavor with photographs and video.

You can see come of Sungcage’s work in his online Gallery. He also maintains a blog, which is often devoted to Podcasts he makes about his plein air painting process.

His site includes a record of other painting projects, including ICE, the Robert Stephenson Awards in which he is painting a dozen icons of civil engineering in the country’s North East.

Last December, Suncage entered an open challenge form London’s National Gallery Podcast to create a piece of audio based on a picture in the National Gallery. He created the winning piece based on his impressions of the thoughts Pissarro may have had while painting a winter landscape in Fox Hill, Upper Norwood during his stay in London. Suncages’ own video about the piece, in which he intersperses the audio piece with his description of his own experience painting in the same location, may be a little confusing unless you’ve seen the original National Gallery Podcast in context (scroll down to view the Podcast. The segment on Fox Hill is a bit past halfway in the video.)

Suncage has provided numerous video accounts of his outdoor painting experiences. Those of you who, like myself, have seen one too many PowerPoint demos, may blanch as his overindulgence in iMovie/Keynote style video transitions, but the stories he has to tell about painting on location stand on their own.

He also has a preference for caging his voice in an echo effect and submerging it in electronica. Personally, I find these unnecessary distractions from his otherwise fascinating stories about painting on location and the challenges he has set himself in his desire to work under all conditions.

Of particular interest to me is his 12 Quick Exercises in painting the same scene repeatedly, as Monet did. Suncage works with this idea in multiple quick sketches on the same day, and in repeated visits to the same scene on different days, spaced both days apart and seasons apart. Within that process, he works in many different approaches to the application of tone and value (images above).