Anniversary

For My Readers - Click to Activate Gif

Happy birthday, The Colorist readers. Thanks for giving this blog legs, and for your kind input over the course of the year.

For My Fellow Bloggers - Click to Activate Gif

For my fellow art bloggers and fellow bloggers-at-large, here's a hearty thank you. The blogroll links most of you, and I feel that the community we share is a great, and a new, venue for artists' expression.

Blogging

When I began this blog a year ago today, I had an almost morbid fear of computers. We had that fear in the pre-PC days and the feeling was immortalized on film by Stanley Kubrick. "Open the pod bay doors, HAL..." (Then, your blood runs cold! See the scene at You Tube, if you have an extra 9 minutes to burn on this creepy, suspenseful clip.

The world that I was born into was a completely different one than we now inhabit. The short story of that is there were no personal computers. Can you imagine? A current Country song has some great verses to explain this whole matrix change we "old guys" feel. Bucky Covington sings, "We had three TV channels you got up to change", and reflects on how my childhood in the fifties and sixties was "Not just a different time, it was a different world."

In the course of the year, I have not mastered, but at least been able to function on this template style blog. I got competent and confident enough to also put up my website in a template site. I will credit two resources for my blog's "look". One: my fellow art bloggers. I observed what they were using as far as tools are concerned, and chose the few that seemed efficient and productive. Second: help sites like Dummie's Guide. There, I learned how to add headers to my HTML and much more. Yes, it is just cut & paste, but for a non-science guy, it is an education.

The other growth area for me has been learning to use Photoshop. It is an essential tool for art fair artists, such as myself, and I would hazard to say that it will become an essential for any fine artist who is starting out today. I began by posting humorously bad photoshops of myself and Vincent van Gogh, and have enough experience with this tool to accomplish a number of projects with this incredible tool. Keep in mind I had heard that universities offer whole degrees in Photoshop!

My Advice? Write from your own muse, and do this habitually. Add a photo or artwork on every post. For heaven's sake, use the language! Spell check! Read your post for grammar and syntax! Thuh-ankk yyyoouuu, claaaaass.

Next: The future at The Colorist.