Blog | MARGARET PEOT | author, illustrator, costume painter, printmaker

The Moon at Tugboat Printshop

Posted on August 11, 2013 by inkblotgalAugust 11, 2013

This is a total drooly fanatic post about Tugboat Printshop, a Pittsburgh, PA concern. I discovered Tugboat on Pinterest and am entranced with their work. This is their website:

http://www.tugboatprintshop.com/

They have gorgeous woodcuts for sale for reasonable prices. There is one of the Moon that I am particularly devoted to:

http://www.tugboatprintshop.com/woodcut_themoon.htm

I have taken the liberty of attaching a picture of this amazing print here, and hope that Tugboat will forgive me for doing so, but it is only to get you to go to their site. Then you can see for yourself the step by step pictures of carving and printing the Moon, which are almost as much fun as the print itself.

Successful Artist’s Career Guide: Summer Giveaway!

Posted on July 7, 2013 by inkblotgalJuly 7, 2013

Margaretpeot.com is offering a summer giveaway of The Successful Artist’s Career Guide: Finding Your Way in the Business of Art (enter by midnight, Tuesday July 16, details at the end of this post). This book is filled with interviews with artists who tell of their varied and surprising paths to their own successful careers as artists. There’s an artist blacksmith, illustrators, a graphic novelist, a moku hanga printmaker, painters, a muralist, a graphic designer, a costume painter, and more. There is advice about plotting your course towards an art career, including worksheets that help you figure out where you want to live and what you want to do with your art skills. To give you a feel for the book, which is beautifully designed by Clare Finney (another successful artist), let’s flip through:

This is the beginning of the interview with April Vollmer, the Moku Hanga artist, and one of two her lovely pieces.

This is one of the many worksheet pages–there’s Writing a Business Plan, What Do You Care About?, Are You An Art Business?, Who Are You and What Do You Like to Do?, and more self-reflective Q and As.

This is a page with advice from costume painter Virginia Clow, with a few examples of her fantastically detailed and time-saving stencils.

A page with fun ways to keep the conduit to your infinite river-of-ideas flowing–the book isn’t JUST about business! It’s about finding out about yourself, and then making a sensible, business plan on which to build your life as an artist.

Interesting Art Jobs: I tried to list as many as I could think of and then researched to find more. There are so many ways to make a living as an artist! Maybe there are some ways you had not thought of!

An inspiring interview with artist-blacksmith Michael Bendele appears in the book–isn’t this an amazing chair? All made of iron and heat. Michael works all the time, doing ironwork and copper repousse.

The back cover–those eely things are just that–eels–a bigger picture is inside the book in the interview with artist Annie Sessler who is a successful gyotaku artist (makes prints of fish) with her business East End Fish Prints.

What are your plans? Tell me here in the comments a step you are taking to get your art career going, and I will enter you in a drawing to win a copy of The Successful Artist’s Career Guide. I will pick two winners. ENTER BY MIDNIGHT ON TUESDAY JULY 16TH. I WILL DO THE DRAWING AND POST THE TWO WINNERS ON JULY 17TH. Good luck!

Alternative Art Journals Book Giveaway

Posted on July 7, 2013 by inkblotgalJuly 7, 2013

Alternative Art Journals: Explore Innovative Approaches to Collecting Your Creativity BOOK GIVEAWAY!

Create Mixed Media is giving away a copy of my book, Alternative Art Journals at their blog The Creative Life, but you must enter by the end of tomorrow, Monday July 8th, to win. Copy and paste this link into your browser and follow the instructions to win:

http://www.createmixedmedia.com/blogs/the-creative-life/summer-reading-give-away-alternative-art-journals

Book Expo 2013 Notes, part 3

Posted on June 19, 2013 by inkblotgalJune 19, 2013

I attended one more session at BEA 2013 on social media on Thursday. And I promise this is the last set of notes! It was a session I attended a version of last year, maybe part 2 of that session. This one is called Facebook 2.0. The speaker was Cindy Ratzlaff. I got stuck on the subway on the way down, and so missed the first 20 minutes, so can’t tell you how she framed her talk, exactly.

Shortly after this, I met Kate, Dana, Amalia, Becca, and Anna at Sleeping Bear, and things started looking up again, thank goodness!

BEA Notes, Part 3

Facebook 2.0

CindyRatzlaff.com

Facebook.com/BrandNewBrandYou

Pinterest.com/CindyRatzlaff

YouTube.com/CindyRatzlaff

Cindy said:

Be Yourself. All you can be is yourself–don’t try to pretend to be anyone else. People are growing accustomed to having a window into everyone else’s personal life, so while you don’t want to get on fb and (her example) say that you just joined AA and are sober, day three (unless your book is about struggling with addiction?), you should allow a little personal stuff to fuel your posts. Be upbeat, inspirational, live out loud!
Always post a picture with every post you make. She suggested using clip art or other images in the public domain if you don’t have images of your own readily accessible. She suggested using Instagram in concert with facebook, or making it so that all of your Pinterest posts link to facebook.
Unless you are only planning to publish one book, have a fb author page that is your name, and stuff about all your books on this page. This is because if you do a book page, when your next book comes out, that old book page will become “dead real estate.” Of course, you will notice above that Cindy’s fb post is her book’s name. It is because of her Facebook 1.0 talk last year that I have two fb pages that are specifically books. Sigh.
All of your social media, including your author website, should be linked.
Consider hosting an exclusive fb book club for your best fans, i.e. the ones who are both your “friends” and your “fans.” Offer these exclusive folks discounts, links to web events (I guess like Google+ Hangouts, although I am sure there is something that fb would prefer you use), first reads, free stuff.
Ask this personal, exclusive book club to be your first reviewers–ask your publisher to give you ARCs for them.
She uses Camtasia as her video editing software (she is a mac user) and suggests Screenflow if you are a PC user.
She suggested that you consider paying to “boost a post.” She said that if you have more than 2000 fans, and don’t post once a week, that your posts don’t go to all of your fans. If you haven’t posted for awhile, you can pay to have a couple of posts boosted–meaning sent to all of your fans.
She strongly encouraged people to pay for their fb pages to be advertised. Use a simple graphic on a white ground, and some terse yet pithy text. You can do as much as your budget will allow–$100 at $10 per day, say. Then you get Likes to your page(s). Then,
She said, ultimately you want to have the email addresses of all the people who Like your author page–you want to “own” them. To do this, offer your fb fans something lovely and free, available to them if they leave their email address in the secure iFrame App thing that you can pay to have in a fb post.
Animoto video is a free service to promote your book.
There was a woman in the audience who was a senior editor, and asked kind of plaintively if there were any training programs for her new authors to learn to do this as she was finding it very difficult to get new authors up to speed, and that her authors who were savvy with social media were the ones who sere selling the most books. Cindy didn’t really answer her directly, except to agree that it was important.
Finally, she said that fb does not want you to promote your book (or anything) on line. If you try to sell from your fb page, or anything like that, they will “close you down.” So collecting email addresses is kind of on the edge of this, as I understand it.

Friday I attended a couple other talks–the Middle Grade Editors Book Buzz, and Writing for Boys (Becca also attended this one)–and they were really fun. I didn’t take one note on either of those, but just drank them in!

Here’s a couple of giant “mini-figs” made of Lego that were in the DK booth at BEA…

Mixed Media Techniques for Art Journaling

Posted on June 8, 2013 by inkblotgalJune 8, 2013

New from North Light Books: I just got my two copies of Mixed Media Techniques for Art Journaling in the mail from Cincinnati. Its edited by Kristy Conlin, and is a really nice book. Part of the Charm Journals chapter from my book, Alternative Art Journals, is included, along with some excerpts from other cool North Light Titles such as: Image Transfer Workshop, Dreaming from the Journal Page, Artist Trading Card Workshop, Journalfodder 365, and Journal Spilling, among many others.

Here’s the first two pages of my section, Charm Journals, which tells you how to make charms that can be strung as a journal themselves or sewn into journals, onto clothing (how about a vest that is a journal–and charms are sewn inside and out–what is revealed and what is concealed?), made into jewelry.

Inside the book are blank pages where you can try some of the mixed media techniques directly into the book. The blank pages are lightly stained with pale, neutral washes, and include interesting prompts.

This is an example of such a page, with an excerpt Making a Printing Plate from Collage Unleashed.

This is a really neat example of a journaling method from Creative Awakenings: a round robin journal–pick some artist friends, do a spread in a journal and send it to the next person to do a spread. Very cool…

I like this page a lot–something about the loose-y goose-y handwriting and the washy blue background are appealing to me, and of course, I DO so love an inkblot!

And finally, I really appreciate having such a nice picture of Alternative Art Journals in the back. All the books featured in the book have a cover picture, and bio info about the author. Very nice! This is a fun book and I am pleased to be included in it.

Mixed Media Techniques for Art Journaling

Posted on June 8, 2013 by inkblotgalJune 8, 2013

This is an example of such a page, with an excerpt Making a Printing Plate from Collage Unleashed.

I like this page a lot–something about the loose-y goose-y handwriting and the washy blue background are appealing to me, and of course, I DO so love an inkblot!

Book Expo 2013 Notes, Part 2

Posted on June 7, 2013 by inkblotgalJune 7, 2013

I learned many things at BEA 2013, as I always do. I did not expect to get to hear Kate Sullivan (or anyone else for that matter) play the saw. It was amazing! And I got to try, too. Kate was very generous with her instruction. Kate has illustrated and written a gorgeous book called On Linden Square for Sleeping Bear Press. Gorgeous, fluid drawings, charming text–super. Go, Kate!

Part two of my notes as regards book promotion from the sessions I attended on Wednesday before the exhibition floor opened:

BEA Notes, Part 2

Talk #3

What’s Working Now: SEO, Author Platforms and New Social Media

Four Panelists:

Lori Culwell: bookpromotion.com, loriculwell.com

Katherine Sears: CMO at booktrope.com, co author of How to Market a Book

Lisa Hazen: Web Director at Chronicle, lisahazen.com

Britney Geragotelis: thebookslayer.com

Each of the panelists spoke one at a time, and then all chimed in answering Qs from the audience at the end.

Katherine:

Step #1: Identify your target market: Who are they? How old? What do they do? What sex are they? Don’t sell to people not remotely in your market.
On all social media (fb, twitter, pinterest, blog–ALL), employ the 3:1 ratio rule. Post three things about stuff related to your book to one post about your book or yourself.
If you have trouble figuring out what to post, think about your reader and what they might want to know about. Three exercises to figure out what your reader is about are , 1. write down what you imagine is in your reader’s purse, 2. write a character study of your targeted reader, 3. go through your book and do a keyword grab. More on keywords later.
If you HATE tweeting, the people reading your tweets will know this–don’t tweet. You must find social media venues that appeal to you, that you kind of “get.” But you must find them.
She said that if your book is a women-related book, or a kids book (as mothers (more than fathers) buy books for kids), then Pinterest is a site that’s great as it is primarily women that use it. Facebook is primarily used by women and all adults ages 18-29.

Lisa:

Use your author website as an extension of your own voice.
You must have an author website
Blog, but only if you can keep it up. If you can’t do one post a week, then don’t bother.
Blog about lots of things, not just book related topics, as your readers want to know all about you.
facebook and twitter are non-negotiable–you must do them (in her opinion)
Integrated pics, posts, social media in one site: check out HappinessProject.com
Make it easy to buy books by having easy links to vendors on your site
Make it easy for you to be reviewed: Have a Press Room on your site where you have press releases, publicist contacts, and downloadable high-res images (an example of this is ReallyGoodMom.com who started with a website–the idea for their blog is they were “really good moms before they had kids”)
Keep your website up to date
Post once a week
Short blocks of content work best
Everything you do should circle back to your site–make it easy for people to find you.

Britney:

After being rejected by agents and editors alike for 9 years, she began to offer chapters of her book Life’s a Witch (teen witches–or “twitches”) at Wattpad.com, an online book community of readers and writers. She soon had 16 million readers, and then a three book deal with Simon and Schuster.
The social media things she does EVERY DAY: YouTube, facebook, Twitter, Wattpad, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, and Blog (I know…I can’t imagine)
She says that what she does online is as important as writing, in her mind. She has created this massive fan base, publishes supplements to books she has published, believes fervently in giving away free content. She gets about 5 million comments a month on all the various things she does.

Lori:

Step 1. Google yourself. What’s there? If you do all the social media things like good authors, then the whole first page of the Google search will be stuff you are in control of (and not that unfortunate, but totally understandable police incident in Utah two summers ago)
Step 2. Build a mailing list. Don’t forget–everyone starts at 0.
Do keyword research using Market Samurai, Google, or Wordtracker.com. These places track what people actually search for. So if you are writing a gluten free cookbook, say, and type in “gluten free” into a keyword researcher, and the number one thing that people search for is “gluten free pancake recipe,” then not only should that be in your book, but might also be your first blog post.
She also said find a social media thing that you really like to do and do that. She said to go to Knowem.com where you will find listed 500 different social media sites. Pick some, and try to have fun with it as this fun is translated to your audience.
Don’t be afraid of giving things away.
Use tracking software to see who visits your site: statpressvisitors, google analytics, and woopra (paid) are three to try.
Be serious. You HAVE to do this to be successful.

Stay tuned for part 3, about facebook…

Book Expo 2013 Part 1

Posted on June 3, 2013 by inkblotgalJune 3, 2013

Above is about half the swag I picked up at BEA 2013–and I was actively trying not to get stuff as I didn’t want to carry it all day! These were the things I couldn’t resist…

BEA 2013 was interesting and intense and I was happy to be able to meet some great people and see some fantastic book projects. This conference is a must for visual artists who are considering a career illustrating–kids books, medical illustration, photography, book design, graphic design. And if you are not an editor, buyer, agent or published author with an ISBN number to prove it, you can go on Saturday now when the BEA folks open up the floor to everyone–Power Readers. I attended the conference Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. On Friday I took my pedometer (always curious, possibly geeky), stopping it when I stopped to eat or meet with anyone at length, and by the end of the day, it read 13.45 miles–including the walk from the A train and back. Just in case you attendees were wondering why your feet hurt the next day.

Usually I just attend two days but decided to go on Wednesday as well this year, when the exhibit floor is closed, and listen to the various talks. The following are highlights from those talks, mostly about self promotion, hopefully not too boring. I found the talks edifying, discouraging and energizing all at once somehow. This is two sessions worth of notes–stay tuned for a couple more posts like this!

BEA Notes

Talk #1

Trends in Children’s Books

-First I made a real effort to attend the 9:00AM Bowker talk about Trends in Children’s Books. I thought it would be pictures of what has been selling, but it was actually a statistical analysis of what sells and what doesn’t. It was not terribly interesting, frankly, but there were a couple of interesting takeaways:

-Picture books sell to moms, primarily, and moms get their ideas of what to buy from 1. What appeals to them personally, then 2. friends and family, and 3. Librarians, and then 4. What their kids are interested in. A distant influence was blogs and other internet sources, but it was distant.

– Girls still read more than boys, but this gap is closing.

-Teenagers do not read on Kindles and other devices. Middle grade kids are more likely to read on these devices.

-Teenagers had a huge, unexplained drop this year in books they read outside of school for fun.

and finally

-apps and other electronic devices are not taking over the industry in kids books, not even close. Print books rule in this realm.

Talk #2

Hosting a Virtual Book Tour with Google+

with Lynette Young (@LynetteRadio and LynetteYoung.com)

Of the popular social media sites, facebook is #1 with 750,000,000 participants. In this session, Lynette Young suggested that Google Plus is number 2 with 500,000,000. (Anna asked me to look this up on line to see what the top ten social media sites are. I looked at a few sources, and while there were variations, this seems to be the consensus:

facebook 750,000,000
Twitter 250,000,000
LinkedIn 110,000,000
Pinterest 85,000,000
MySpace 70,500,000
Google Plus 65,000,000
DeviantArt 25,000,000
LiveJournal 20,500,000
Tagged 19,500,000
Orkut 17,500,000

I think the reason Lynette Young counted Google Plus as #2 with 500,000,000 followers is that they pulled in their YouTube viewers, as well they should, as YouTube IS Google.)

Lynette Young (is a book marketing guru who wrote the book Google+for Small Businesses who might be on the Google payroll) said that the hottest place for Search Engine Optimization right now (meaning the place where Google crawlers look for keywords) is video anything. Google+ has two new features that are video related, Hangouts and Hangouts on Air.

Hangouts

Google+ has a new Hangout feature. Hangouts are Skype-like where you can gather together a group of friends and have a chat about something. For example, if a group of us wanted to hang out virtually, we would all go on line at a specific time and talk with each other as a group, lift a glass to each other, show each other what we are working on. We could have a meeting once a month. This meeting is ephemeral, in that it is there for us while we are meeting, but after our meeting, it is gone forever.

Hangouts On Air (HOA)

The Hangout On Air (HOA), on the other hand, is broadcast to the public and published to YouTube. We might not want to have our meeting published to YouTube, but if my illustrator friend Dana wanted to have a virtual book signing with the puppet of Ozzie and a group of kids at a school, say, he could have someone video record, or set up a laptop pointing at him and Ozzie, and collect all the interactions (remembering, of course, to get all the parents to sign a waver that their kid’s image can be filmed and appear on line) That, then, would be published to YouTube with all its potentially gritty reality intact. And Dana would tag the HOA (somehow–I have not done it, but when I do, will let you know) with lots of keywords that would take people to his website, to buy his book, etc.

I believe it cannot be UNposted to YouTube, but there is an editing feature. So, for example, if your spouse wandered in while you were doing a HOA, you could edit out that few seconds in a not-terribly-artful way.

The Reason We Might Care

Google+ has tons of book tour hosts, writers groups, book clubs, and other hyper-focused groups by the gazillions. These people are constantly looking for content. In other words, they want you. To find a bookclub that has an HOA, you would search “bookclub#HOA”. You can interview a friend, and have them interview you and this can be posted to YouTube (w links to buy your book, to your website, blog). You can set up a laptop in your kitchen and let us all watch you make a banana caramel tart that is posted to YouTube (w links to your cookbook, website, free recipe download).

She suggested that a group for writers can host book tours for each other. So, for example, the writer’s group I belong to could host book tours for each other. Fun!

Ideas to promote Your Book in Google+

Seek out book clubs
Interview other authors
Hold a Fan Q&A
Create or Join a Google Community
Look for book reviewers in your genre
Run a live Google+ event
Create a Writers Group
Do Virtual book signings
Start a discussion group around your book topic
Host your own book tour

Tree Faces

Posted on May 12, 2013 by inkblotgalMay 12, 2013

Have you ever been walking in the woods and had that curious sensation of being watched? I have been seeing tree faces everywhere recently! I have been taking pictures of them, drawing into them, and writing about them, all as a kind of journaling-meditation. It is an “anthropomorphization” of the woods for sure, and makes a woodland walk a less solitary activity!

Sometimes they are not faces, but gestures, like this first one: Come on!

Or this frowning young cyclops, an Oh! of surprise, and a disapproving frown:

Drawing Surrealism

Posted on April 9, 2013 by inkblotgalApril 9, 2013

There is a wonderful exhibition at The Morgan Library called “Drawing Surrealism” (http://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/exhibition.asp?id=70) that is full of interesting stuff–automatic drawing and painting, decalomania, inkblots, collage–all works on paper, very inspiring. The show is up til April 21st and is excellent.

The following images are actually from the comprehensive hardcover show catalog, in order, Mednikoff, Michaux a rubbing of coins by Ernst and a collage by him, too: