LifeStyle

1 Showcase your work
With all that time and effort taken to produce a piece of art that you are proud of it would be a shame not to share it with everyone. By creating an online art portfolio you can create a visible and organised record of years of work. An online art portfolio could be used to show family and friends your work but the real advantage is it opens up the potential to share your work amongst the rest of the world.

2 Sell your art
Whilst selling your art may not be your primary motivation, the resulting confidence gained from knowing other people appreciate your work so much that they are willing to buy it is immeasurable. It can spur you into producing similar artwork creating a popular series.

Not only does every piece of art you sell offer a financial reward but it can be seen as an additional marketing tool, your work is hanging somewhere for more people to see, enhancing your reputation and show casing your work to those whom you might never meet

We are busy, busy, busy! It makes no difference to us if it is getting close to the weekend, or if it is still Monday – we run around like mad accomplishing things in 24 hours that should take no less than 72! Even when we are ready to drop, there are more things we need to take care of. Good for us! We are doing our best to keep on top of everything in our lives. But hold on one second, are we having fun?

Having a good time often falls behind on our list of priorities. In our daily race to accomplish more and more, we forget that one of the fundamental aspects of life is being able to enjoy the things and people around us. We tell ourselves that we will relax after that work project is done, or after the school exams are over, or after we get that paycheck, or get that new car… But the truth is, after we accomplish one thing, there are other projects already waiting, other desires to be fulfilled, new challenges to be conquered.

Japanese Kanji symbols are very popular as tattoos as they are unique and they can convey a very personal and meaningful message in an artistic and exotic way.

Complex language

Kanji is one of three different types of alphabet character symbols used in a complex system of writing. The other two are Hiragana and Katakana. All three are used in different ways. Kanji conveys ideas in picture form, which may not always convey the exact meaning. Hiragana is sometimes used with the Kanji to modify or clarify the meaning.

Hiragana is used more for everyday use while Katakana is used mainly when dealing with foreign names.

The Japanese language contains literally thousands of characters. These were adopted from the Chinese, which have anywhere between 50,000 and 100,000 characters. Scholars disagree on the number but, as you can see, it is a lot. In everyday use in Japan there are around 2000 – 3000 characters.

Multiple meanings

There are no definitive standards for art in art licensing, what a manufacturer needs will vary from company to company. While greeting cards have a pretty standard 5″ x 7″ format, other product size requirements cover a wide range. If you are designing a quilt top, your art might need to be 40″ x 80″ and a magnet manufacturer may need 2″ squares. Size depends on where the art is going.

Size gets trickier in licensing since the goal is to license the same designs to multiple manufacturers for use on multiple products. The design you first license for a magnet may later become a card. If the original image is 2″ square, you might lose resolution and have to start over to fill the 5″ x 7″ card parameters.

Then there is the actual artistic process to take into account.

Every artist has a different process and you need to do what works for you. Some art that is licensed started out as large canvas, others did not. If you paint or draw too small, the resolution will suffer and not reproduce well if enlarged.

Famous black and white photography prints go for a lot of money in the art market. Have you ever wished you knew about an artist’s work when it was cheap enough for you to invest in before it started going up and up like a red hot stock tip? Well you can. The black and white photographs of Alfred Cheney Johnston, a contemporary of Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz are gaining steam.

Alfred Cheney Johnston was the famed photographer of the Ziegfeld Follies. During his reign with the Follies, Cheney shot some of the most famous and beautiful people in the world – Lillian Gish, the Barrymores, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the Madonna of the Jazz Age – Louise Brooks known by her fans back then and today as just “Lulu”.

George Washington Carver was a lecturer at the Normal and Industrial Institute of Negroes in Tuskegee in 1897. Carver was mainly involved in studying the problems faced by the farmers who grew cotton. He developed a method through which the farmers could retain and conserve the nutrients in the soil.

This was also famous as crop rotational method. It is considered as one of the most important inventions in the field of agriculture. George Washington carver suggested that the farmers plant peanuts, pecans and sweet potatoes so that the soil can be enriched for cotton harvest.

Carver also created a market for peanuts by discovering hundreds of uses for it. He did the same for sweet potatoes, soybeans and pecans. He also invented various dyes of hundreds of shades and mainly used the agricultural crops for them. Before that textile dyes were always imported from England. Carver also invented the process of manufacturing paints and stains from soy beans and he was allowed to patent this invention. However, George Washington Carver did not patent most of his inventions and as a result he did not reap any profits from his numerous inventions and discoveries.