GO ... ivoteforart.com is live!

Yes, that's right ... ivoteforart.com is finally live. Actually it has been for a little over a week now. But I've been very very busy, which is why it has taken a while to write about this.


I'd love it if you visited ivoteforart.com to check out the little project that I've been talking so much about. Here's the spiel:

So far there are over 70 different pieces for sale, including amazing open and limited edition art prints and original pieces (although mostly prints).

The site isn’t called i vote for art for nothing. If you see an artwork that you like, click on that little thumb and give it a vote. The artwork that receives the most votes gets promoted to the front page for the millions of our visitors (well, perhaps hundreds) to see.

So far we've had so much fun with the launch, and have been so happy with all the blog posts and coverage that we've been getting ... It's been a very exciting week, that's for sure.

There's also a blog over on ivoteforart.com - and I guess from this point on I'll be talking about the artists and the site over there.

But what happens to Art Dabble, now that ivoteforart is live? Well, to be honest I'm not sure yet. The artdabble experience has been a lot of fun too, but I guess it makes sense to concentrate all the blogging over at my new blog. I'd better have a think about that.

On your marks ... get set ...

I vote for art, the art website that I've been busy working on, is finally about to go live. Within the next few days even ...

I'll let you know when.

More new artists

Here are just some of the new artists that will also be appearing on ivoteforart.com when it launches ... which is only about one week away!

One of the first original pieces that will be on sale is this one, Pan drives a Volvo, by Australian artist Magic Jelly.

It's an Ink & Pencil drawing & Collage, with vintage paper strips in the background. I can only hope to have more of these to sell as time goes on.

Over on the other side of the world, Barcelona-based designer and Illustratator, .Cesc. is selling 3 tre-cool pieces on the site, including this on on the right, Invaders. .Cesc does a combination of 2D and 3D digital images. Which rock my socks.

Texan-based Jason Limon is also going to be selling some prints, including 9 Voltz, pictured on the left.

The prints are all of Jason's original canvas paintings. I just love Jason's subjects. He paints batteries, bottle tops and all sorts of interesting things.

Also in the US is Ukranian born artist Tanya Pshenychny, who illustrates using watercolours. No room for traitors, pictured right, demonstrates her amazing style of work.

Next up is TOOCO. To be honest I'm not quite sure how to go about describing the work of this Argentinian artist. But we love her abstract stuff, and reckon you will too. On the left here is Before we sleep.

Now for something completely different. I'm excited to have Manchesters' Andy Council on i vote for art, with some amazing work. His creations are incredibly intricate creatures or roosters, dinosaurs and outher amazing creatures - like Cwmbranasaurus on the right. How cool?

I started this post with an Australian artist, so it makes sense to end with one too. Nathaniel Eckstrom is a Sydney based artist that I blogged about late last year. So naturally I'm delighted to have some of his pieces on the site, including this last picture, A glimpse of something new.

As you can see, there's a whole stack of artists that are going to be of the site when it launches ... all from different pockets of the world.

Make sure you check out my flickr page to have a look at all the pieces that will be on sale.

Exhibitions this weekend

I'm getting out this weekend and seeing a couple of exhibition in Melbourne. Both of which I think are going to be great.

Tonight is the opening of "Haven't we met before", at Kick Gallery in Northcote, featuring a whole whole swag of great artists:

Andrea Innocent
Brooke Bobridge
Catherine Campbell
Coralie Kane
Eveline Tatunadjaja.
Sean Morris

And tomorrow I'll be heading over to South Melbourne to see "The Drawing Machine" at the Green-wood gallery. I missed the opening night last week, but am very keen to see this one.

This is another group exhibition, curated by ghostpatrol and miso.

The Bright Side of Stolen Artwork

If I stumbled across this book in a shop, I'd almost definitely buy it. I reckon you might too. Cover to cover, it is full of a whole host of amazing artists and illustrators. Including a few artists that will be taking part in ivoteforart.com.

But if you do stumble accross it. Don't buy it. It's a fake.

It's been one of the big news stories in my next of the interweb woods in the past few weeks. All of the content in the book has been taken, stolen that is, from Darren Di Lieto's awesome illustration portal, Little Chimp Society. This includes images, interviews ... everything.

A publisher in Hong Kong ripped everything from the site, and re-packaged it into this book, which they are selling for $100. You can read more about it over at Darren's blog, Apefluff.

Understandably, Darren isn't happy. He's tried to contact the producers in Hong Kong, without much success so far. And it's looking pretty doubtful that he will get anywhere with this.

But is their a bright side? I think so. This has been a newsworthy story, picked up by artists and bloggers all over the place, which, in turn has probably generated some good publicity for Darren, and spread the word about some of the great artists that he's featured. Here's what I said on his blog:

Darren,

I’m a bit late to comment on all of this, but it’s such a shame that you had to experience this.

Having said that, you’d have to agree that the whole story has created quite a storm on the web. So, to look on the bright side, I’m hoping that you’ve picked up some new regulars over at Little Chimp, and gained some good publicity in the past few weeks.

In the process, the artists that you’re so passionate about have probably picked a whole lot of new fans as well. Surely this isn’t a bad thing?

It’s terrible that they did this without your knowledge or permission - but they did it because the content on LCS is so good. A back-handed compliment for you no doubt, but I hope there has been some positives that have come out of this experience for you.

Now I'm not saying it's a good thing that this happened, and I completely understand how dissappointed he must be.

But this sort of thing is happening a lot these days. It's like music piracy. You can try and stop it, but that hasn't exactly gotten anyone anywhere. Or you can accept that piracy like this isn't going away, and be happy that your music (or in this case, artwork) is potentially getting greater far greater exposure, to a wider audience.

What do you think readers?

Wilmer Murillo

The site will belaunching with 3 great pieces from Wilmer Murillo.

Just 20 years old, Wilmer is a freelance Illustrator from Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

His colourful, quirky and textured pieces are a welcome addition to 'I vote for art'. "Vino Paz en el Diario", pictured here, is one of the 3.

You can see more of Wilmer's work on his Virb page, flickr page, and his blog.

What will 'I Vote for Art' look like?

I think that it's about time I showed some screen mock-ups of ivoteforart.com, to give you an idea of what it's going to look like.

This first one here is the home page. Because you will be able to vote for artwork on the site (who would have guessed?), the home page displays the top voted pieces.

As well as the top voted art, the homepage will display the most recently added artworks.

Below each picture is some brief info about each artwork: the artist, the title, and the price of each piece.

Also, in the bottom right hand corner of each image is a small 'thumb'. That's where you do the voting. You can vote for as many pieces as you like, but only once. That thumb turns into a tick once you've voted for something.

The right hand side-bar is where you can login or signup, display your favourite art that's on the site, and read the latest news about ivoteforart.com

You can click on each piece and you'll be taken through to individual art pages - with more details about each piece, as shown here on the right.

On these pages, you can buy the artwork, add a comment or review about it, and of course you can add you vote here too.

So, as you can see - it's starting to take shape. I must say that the whole process has taken me a lot longer than I expected ... but it's very close now to being ready to launch.

The 'Sell' area on the top navigation bar, and panel towards the bottom of each page, is where artists can submit their work to be considered for the site. But "I vote for art' isn't going to be a free-for-all like etsy is. We'll only be adding work that we consider to be of a high standard.

I hope you like the look of it ... but either way would be very interested in hearing your feedback about it. This is only version 1, and I'm sure that plenty of things will change in the months (and hopefully years) to come.