This last week has been quite busy for us here and I managed to blog but only short posts so today is a kind of catch up day to let everyone know whats been happening here in the studio.
iArt – Modern Art Information for artists magazine art site.
First of all I have been working on an art information website for artists and (non artists too!) to enjoy visiting. Its called iArt – meaning information for artists and you can visit here – iArt. I say that the website is for non artists too, as it really is an all rounder art magazine style website. We have artist interviews, articles about art in general as well as the more in-depth articles for artists from art marketing, beginners in photography to learning to paint and draw. It has taken a few months to get is to where it is today, lots of hard work, however its trundling along quite well now. I have met some wonderful artists along the past few weeks, it has opened my eyes to different style of art and painting and also to appreciate the different styles too. Its so easy when you are a pet portrait artists to get caught up in your one genre and not look outside the box. So hopefully creating this site will not only be a great resource but also allow me to learn and develop in my own work too. I have certainly learnt a lot more about webdesing, seo and social media in the process! We have a Facebook page and Twitter too so come and follow us in both places! So I hope you enjoy visiting the site and please leave comments as we would love to hear your feedback.
Rabbits, Stoats, Weasels and buzzards…..
We spent the weekend out of the studio and in the garden fencing. We have an electric style fence around our garden to keep out the foxes so our chickens safe. Its a green mesh invisible style one so it blends in with the greenery but stops foxes coming in. So far the hens, which are happy and free rang in the wooded area, have been safe. We have been having rabbits in the garden though, they have been eating my vegetables and we weren’t sure how they were getting in. We knew that we would have to find out where but we had been busy so we netted the vegetables until we had the time to look.
I went out early Thursday morning around 7am to let the chickens out Tom alerted me to rabbit remains in the top garden and a headless rabbit in the middle garden. Tom chases rabbits but doesn’t kill them, he runs along parallel to them – for the thrill I think! Always stops chasing when we call which is pretty amazing. We can walk him though sheep just fine, he’s scared of them more than anything, same as the chickens hes scared of the chickens! Hes a dafty. Now flys – flys are different. Full scale war when he sees a fly and he will eat it. Anyway….we knew that a fox couldn’t get in, although we weren’t completely sure and asked our neighbours what could have been the culprit to kill and take the head away of the poor rabbit and eat a whole other rabbit to leave remains. We were told it could have been a stoat or weasel that killed them and then we know that a buzzard had interviened as there was a huuuge buzzard style dropping next to the remains. As we weren’t sure what had happened we spent the weekend making sure and fixing the fence to make it 100% secure. Hopefully stopped any way of a fox coming through and also found and blocked all the holes up where the rabbits were getting in. The vegetables are pretty non existent now sadly, due to the rabbits but it has made my mind up that next Feb time I will order a pollytunnel to grow all the veg in and I am really looking forward to it.
Website Updates and Pandas : )
No pandas in the garden..yet : ) but as you can see our blog and main pet portraits website has had a bit of an update. I have added a new navigation a long the top of the site, the gallery navigation is now on the blog and the navigation has moved from right to left to integrate with the site more. I have tweaked some pages, renewed the navigation along the bottom of the whole site, deleted some old content and generally had a bit of a tidy up. This is how our site will stay from now on, no more major changes in the pipeline, just update of content as its working well. I just need to overhaul the dog, cat and horse sites to be inline with this site.
So where did the Panda come into all this you ask! Well, Panda is the new google algorithm and it is very interesting. Google are trying to improve their service and listing only high quality sites with good content and de-ranking other sites. If you have a website go and read up about it to make sure you are following their guidelines.
Portraits and Happy Clients
Last but certainly not at all least, one of our clients has sent an amazing range of photos of Nick portrait with their cats. I have added three photos below, but I have added the whole range on a testimonial feedback page here – Happy Cats Portraits. Have a look as some of them are wonderful, with louises’ cats looking at the painting. Louises fireplace is beautiful too and its worth having a peak at that aswell : )
Nick has started another cat portrait, the deadline portrait of Barney and Zorro and I have taken some photos of Nick working on it, so I will blog those tomorrow. My next job is to overhaul the cat website and I will add a link here when its finished.
cat portraits in oils on canvas by Nick Beall
Cat Portraits in Oils by Nick Beall
Cat Portraits in Oils by Nick Beall
