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Beware the classic artist trap

You’ve been toiling away for months working on your big art project. Steadily, your online portfolio is growing as you add new pieces available to buy directly from your website.

One morning, you get a piece of good news - a prospective customer emails in directly and asks to buy a piece from you. Happy days! There’s even the promise of future custom, and payment is direct so there’s no chance of it being a scam. Right?

Wrong. Whenever there’s More

Porcelain Ladies

Okay here’s a question you don’t hear often: Are figurines and ornaments ‘naff’? And if so, will they ever make a comeback?? I spent my childhood growing up with one eye on the display cabinet in the dining room and my mum’s collection of Royal Doulton figures. You know the ones – pretty ladies in pretty dresses? Well, my family had quite a few, living in the Potteries district and all that. So I knew that they were quite expensive More

How to make money with your digital art

We’ll start with the bad news. Sadly, there are no easy methods to instantly make your riches in digital art, one of the most competitive industries of modern times.

That said, hard work is key and it’ll take a lot of it to turn what you love into a living. Once you get there though the job satisfaction is like no other. There are a few places where you can start however, and we’ll discuss some of the best methods More

Arts - writers bios

graphic and art supplies

1. VAZOV, Ivan Minchev (27 June 1850 – 22 September 1921). He was born in Sopot. He was a student in his hometown, in Kalofer and Plovdiv. He lived in Sopot, Brail, Odessa, Svilengrad and Istanbul. His first published poem was “The Pine” (1872). He wrote poems until the Liberation, and these poems were in harmony with the enthusiasm and the pain of the Bulgarians. He took part More

Commission’s For Beginners

It’s a great day: someone has seen your work hanging in a gallery, or online, and they want you to do a piece for them. They are lovely and rich, or have great taste, or are a lovely big company like Enigin Scam and they want to throw lots of money at you. Great! And not just any piece either: this piece is something they have been giving a lot of though to for some time, so it’s something that More

Pyramids

It is a mystery but with explanation why ancient Egyptians built the huge and massive pyramids - the wonders of the architectural world. Were they some kind of calendar? Or a temple their gods? A self storage facility for their dead God Kings? All the above?

Admirers from all over the world visit Egypt to explore and see those fascinating buildings of the ancient genius, but there is another mystery that fascinates the scientiests and historians - while the Egyptian More

Contemporary Artist, Kara Walker: Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary Yet We Pressed On)

Kara Walker’s work titled Insurrection! (Our Tools Were Rudimentary Yet We Pressed On) is dated in the year, 2000. It focuses on symbols and images of the historical era preceding the American Civil War. The subject is of slavery and southern plantation owners, defined also as the antebellum South. Her iconographies represent a collective of memories where both white and black racial groups are implicated as the source of racial discomfort. Walker has taken the proper traditional 18^th and More

Preview Royal Academy of Arts, ‘Summer Exhibition’

The Royal Academy’s ‘Summer Exhibition’ poses itself as a bastion of egalitarianism, even after 242 years since it was founded. You either get in by being a member of the club or pay. The select few who submit their registration forms and get selected are warmly accepted and ushered into the blur of the Weston Rooms where they act as the thread vein of the exhibition, while the academics choose to brood their minds with grander galleries. Get set to More

Tate Modern

So the Tate Modern is ten years old and to celebrate it is getting out its gold card and buying up some new artworks from further afield than it has done before and consequently building on its already phenomenal popularity.

My trusty old, crumpled London A-Z marks the site as, “To be completed”and I remember clearly the first time I visited the Tate. I was bowled over, not by the artworks it contained, but by the building itself. The sheer More

Drawing the Human Figure

One of the most important things to learn as an artist is how to draw the human figure. It is also one of the most rewarding things to learn. A finished painting with accurate, realistic figures in it is very satisfying to have completed. The best way to improve your skill in drawing the human figure is to do two things.

First off, try and attend a life drawing class. There is no better way to improve as an artist More