Scrapbooks have been around for a long time and very fashionable in the crafts world for many years. I have one my mother kept and one I began in high school but haven't had the time or interest to start one until recently when I discovered Pinterest. Most likely you know about this site and perhaps have an account. My first glimpse left me "nonplussed".... I didn't get it. It just seemed like a site where people were posting images of stuff they wanted to buy. Well that is true in many cases but that is only a small part of how to use this site.
Weeks later I returned to the the site and began to read and realized there is a ton of art presented there and it's a wonderful way to compile digital scrapbooks (Pinterest calls them boards) of art you like, love, admire or otherwise have an interest in. I'm not going to go into detail about how this works but basically you "pin" images from other sites you find online onto your boards. If someone wants to know more about the images they can click on it and they will be taken to the the location where you found the image thus opening the door for a viewer to become better acquainted with your work. Other people on Pinterest can also "repin" the image onto their boards.
I haven't had any detailed discussions with anyone about how they feel about having their images pinned on these boards but my personal feeling is that it's free promotion for the artists. As long as no one is making money from this or putting your art onto mugs, t-shirts, decorative pillows or textured art boards I'm ok with it. If you don't want your work pinned it's easy enough to block people from taking images from websites.
It has been very interesting to go back and look at what I have personally pinned. It gives you a clear snapshot of what is catching your eye. It also reminds you how much wonderful work is being made. Right now I need to create more boards with more specific categories as the number of pins is growing.
With all this beautiful work now identified I've decided to do a series here at Studio 24-7 of some of the artists whose work I've been introduced to via Pinterest. Each post will have one image, a link to the artists site if I can find one and some comment as to why I feel the work is interesting, exciting, beautiful, challenging, unusual etc. or perhaps something more to encourage you to visit their website. Hope you'll enjoy the collection. This adventure will start soon.
Thank you for spending time at Studio 24-7. I love hearing from you and Remember:
Commenting is FREE!!!
