247: Instagram vs. Facebook vs. Twitter

Along the East Bench, 16" x 20", oil on canvas

DURING the opening of my abstract show the gallery director for the event suggested I post images of the show on Instagram. Since I didn't have an account she showed me how to set one up, taking a photo for my profile, and giving me a quick tutorial about hash tags. Before I knew it I had a respectable looking feed and several followers.

Since then the same gallery, Alpine Art, decided to mount a one-person show of my woodcuts in April 2016. The intermittent abstract posts evolved into daily posts about the art of woodcut. I have also posted images of my print studio and equipment and have purposely kept the captions informative but short. So far I have 43 woodcut related posts with 233 images to go (I use the app T-Zero to calculate the days until the show).

I've been pleased with the success of Instagram. In a matter of months I have 129 followers. By contrast I've been blogging via Blogger for six years and, even though I have over a half million visits, I only have 178 followers. Instagram is primarily a visual medium and is perfect for visual artists. It's easy to see who is worth following with no obstacles to hitting the follow button.

I do have some complaints–the resolution size on phones is quite small. I wished you could click on the images to get close ups (which you can do on the Saatchi app). I also wish I could track my own likes, like Pinterest, to keep a log of favorite images. They have a like button for connecting with other users but a love button for compiling an archive of your favorite images would be a plus. Although the feed with Instagram is uncluttered I wish you could post with italics, bold, and other graphic flourishes to make the text even more visually engaging. But even as it is Instagram makes Twitter and Facebook look as inviting as a tax form.

Contacting people is not as easy as it should be, either. I listed this blog in my profile and got a message saying it was an illegal URL meaning you can't have the word blogspot in the address–a futile attempt to make Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) a proverbial walled garden. I got around the lame prohibition by using a Tiny URL address.

One thing I like is posting simultaneously to Facebook with a large image. But simultaneous posts to Twitter are text only which is pretty pointless with a visual medium like Instagram. People can still follow me via Facebook or Twitter, I just post automatically to them via my Instagram account which keeps my life simpler.

I use the app InsTrack to get analytics although it's pretty clunky and is always needing a buck or two to expand its usability which is hugely irritating. If you know of a better Instagram analytics app please comment below.

In short, Instagram is currently my social media of choice. If you want to follow along click the link to the right of this post. I hope you'll give it a try. I look forward to your comments either on this blog or via Instagram.

UPDATE: As of August 2015 you can simultaneously post to Twitter with a high resolution image.

Brad Teare– August 2015

246: Best Studio Lighting

Northern wall of studio model

I HAVE  struggled with lighting in a variety of locations over the years including a basement studio. I'm currently building a new studio and I really want to get the lighting right. I need both good daytime lighting as well as optimal night lighting (I can be a night owl sometimes). For an overview on how to achieve optimal studio lighting click here.

After struggling to imagine where to place the windows in the future studio I was inspired by the book Imaginative Realism by James Gurney to build a model replicating widow placement. Using my iPhone I filmed the model at various times of day to see how light would illuminate and reflect throughout the space. This level of previsualization is critical to get a real world idea of how light reacts with the environment. If you need tips and inspiration on how to use modeling for previsualization I highly recommend Gurney's book.

The model helped me avoid several errors–not enough skylights and not enough light toward evening–which I remedied by adding two extra skylights and a tall window on the north end of the western wall. The model also confirmed that the eastern windows, placed at about ten feet off the ground, would allow the exact amount of light needed during morning painting sessions.

The video below shows how I observed and improved the lighting possibilities at different times of day.

Brad Teare –August 2015

245: Using photoshop to adjust an abstract

ACRYLICS allow me to paint over an abstract as many times as I need to–the surface texture only gets richer. One of the tools I use to help me move forward with a thickly textured canvas is Photoshop (you can also use Corel Painter,  Clip Studio Paint, or Procreate if you have an iPad or PC tablet). In the video I use my old ModBook but you can use any tablet that works with your computer.

In the video below I imported the image to the right and began painting over the digital file in Photoshop (the original lacks subtlety of saturation and value). If you aren't familiar with Photoshop or you need more info on how to make textured brushes I highly recommend the tutorials at the Society of Visual Storytelling.  One of the best tutorials on how to make your own brushes is Chaos to Control by Lee White. Don't let it bother you if your style isn't similar to White's. He focuses on making your own highly textured brushes and I found it very applicable to my textured abstracts.

I don't always use photoshop for corrections but it can be a handy way to pre-visualize what you are trying to accomplish.

Brad Teare –August 2015

244: Poetry and Power

AS ARTISTS why do we express ourselves the way we do?

When I was younger I played in a rock band. One evening we were playing to a full house at the aptly named Rogues Inn in Manhattan, Kansas. It was the usual crowd and they were hard to please. We picked a song from one of our own compositions–one that had the vaulting power of the progressive rock of that era. We dove into the tune and found our way through the oft practised song.

But that night something was different. A musical fusion took place that transcended our abilities. When we finished we were met not with the usual smattering of applause but with dead silence. Every head was turned and staring at the stage. After a few heartbeats wild cheers and thunderous applause erupted.

Unlike my bandmates, being a musician was a pastime for me. I really wanted to be an artist. As we basked in the adulation that night I thought that's the kind of power I want to infuse into my art one day.

My career since then has tried to embrace that kind of vaulting power–but in visual form. Our art can be many things but it is good to know our prime motivations. One reason I like the art of woodcut is that it easily captures the raw power of the artist's mark. I now see that many missteps in finding a clear artistic path have been from combining two paradoxically exclusive elements–poetry and power.

Artists such as John Twachtman fused their art with a poetic response to nature by using subtle nuances of value and color. Others, such as Lawren Harris, pursued the power of the visual image using divergent contrast and the clash of saturated color. Poetry and power are two ends of a continuum. You can have a mixture of both but you cannot have a mixture of one hundred percent of each quality. You have to compromise. You have to understand the emotional response you are trying to evoke and add the right amounts of each quality to express your intention.

An element of great art is harmony of intent. Not knowing where the emotional intent of your painting is on the poetry/power continuum gives a mixed, and therefore, weak message. Even though viewers may not consciously detect conflict they will react with ambivalence and vacillate between the two emotional poles.

Brad Teare –August 2015

Note: The Lawren Harris book below is pending but I'm enthused to get a copy as I think he's the best of the Group of Seven. Let me know if you have seen a copy.