The BAREBRUSH BLAST

January 2012

Barebrush Headlines:
   *Call for Entries: February N*des-of-the-Month, NEW!PhotoArt N*des, NEW!Best-of-the-Rest
   *Color Profiles to Aid Art Buyers for E-Commerce

Deadline: January 21

Call for Entries for February 2012 N*des-of-the-Month, PhotoArt N*des, Best-of-the-Rest

Please feel free to contact me about anything for which you want further information. Highlights of this BLAST:


Call for Entries February 2012 N*des-of-the-Month, PhotoArt N*des, Best-of-the-Rest

Curator for the February 2012 calendars will be David Reuss, artist, illustrator and teacher, as well as active board member of the Salmagundi Club and the Society of Illustrators in New York City. When asked to provide a personal statement for the art selection, Mr. Reuss wrote:

“Strength is what appeals mostly to me in art. The work can be any medium, style, subject or size. However in the end the work must have power.”

For details about the call for entries, click here. For the web page which shows dynamically the prizes, conditions and polls for each calendar, see the Call page.

Color Profiles to Aid Art Buyers for E-Commerce

Art buyers often consider color scheme (to match or complement a room or other art) in addition to subject, genre and media. The Barebrush search process will include all of these. Although the search page is not yet on display, the search data is already computed and stored in the database for almost all of the artworks.

As you may realize, the color profile display for the e-commerce implementation is already in place on the website. The color profiles appear on the detail pages of artwork by Barebrush Featured Artists.

The color profile process is an automated analysis of each artwork (pixel by pixel) against a color classification array. The math is daunting: 16+ million possible colors, analysis of each pixel in each artwork, over 180 reference colors (for classification), whittled down to the 15 colors of our rainbow display. In the end we chose 4 reds, brown, orange, yellow, 3 greens, 4 blues, and violet to represent classify all of the colors we found. In addition, we added light, mid tone and dark to represent the neutrals.

There are 4 parts to the color profile. Three are already on display on the art detail pages for Featured Artists:

You may notice that some new works take 1 or 2 seconds to produce the profile information, while the older works do not have the time delay. The process of getting the information stored in the database is resource intensive and is not yet part of the current production process. When finished, all the data will load quickly directly from the Barebrush artworks “color info” table. It was a major job to develop and test the profiles and then store them in the database for routine retrieval.

The color profiles we have now are still a work in process. We may have to do some tweaking here and there. The best news is that the profiles will be individually adjustable, so if you see a profile that seems off, please let me know by artwork ID and I will look into it. The artwork_id appears in the locator bar when your page displays the artwork detail. Here is an example of a link with the artwork_id at the end of it: http://barebrush.com/art.php?artwork_id=3967 (my own work, for example). Be sure to say which of the colors seems off (too much or too little). I can test the artwork individually and see what is going on with it.

The fourth part of the color profile is the color search. The plan is to add the color profile to the other dynamic search factors for a very rich search algorithm. Shoppers will be able to search by artists and for such categories as: major colors, originals or prints, price ranges, genre, media, location, subject and more.

Since some artists have original, one of a kind works and others are working in multiples, I want to provide a system which will allow painters to sell original paintings (or prints, limited or unlimited), photographers to sell limited or unlimited prints of their work and sculptors to sell their originals, whether unique or in a casting series. Selling artists (who must be Featured Artists at Barebrush) will also be able to sell books, note cards, tees, mugs or other merchandise, as long as the base image is on the Barebrush website.

The progress made to date, in addition to the color profile process, includes the "art warehouse page" on which the artist selects the Barebrush images which are the basis of the products he or she wishes to sell. Once the art is selected for selling, then the next step is to add the products and the art buyers’ interface which will make the experience easy and worthwhile.

Quick Strokes and Dashes

Here are some other notes, largely repeats (for newbies):

  1. Facebook Frustrations

    2. For many months, Facebook was set up to receive the automatic update of the nude of the day directly from Barebrush when the email went out to the day’s artist. This worked flawlessly until May 22, 2011, when it suddenly stopped working. Looking around the Facebook site, I found many Facebook users in the same boat, equally frustrated. We tried the automatic blog feed provision in Facebook, but it seems that the feed works at apparently random times and grabs the listings in random order -- not a very good procedure for the Nude of the Day as we want to see it.

    Our temporary solution is two-fold:

    1. We manually post the nude of the day to the Barebrush page in Facebook, and
    2. We created the Private Portal for Barebrush artists and art lovers (mentioned below). The private portal is updated automatically, just by the action of time passing.
    3. Of course, there is a third solution -- follow me on Twitter and you will get a Tweet every time the Nude of the Day is updated.

  2. Red Book, Blue Butt

    For anyone who missed it or wants a collectible from our first-ever “brick & mortar” show, My N*de Valentine Feb. 2011 is still available for purchase online. The complete book preview is at My N*de Valentine: all of the artists, all of the art in the show plus a nice introduction to the Barebrush concept.

  3. Private Portal for Each Calendar Series, Together

    4. When you go to the private portal, you will see the art from all three calendars. The default display shows the N*de of the Day in the center with the title and byline below it. On either side, viewers will see thumbnails of the PhotoArt N*de of the Day and the Best-of-the-Rest daily image. Click on the image and you go directly to the detail page, complete with the provenance and links to other work by today’s artist. Click on either of the side images, and that image becomes the central image. The top banner of the private portal is a direct link to Barebrush.com. When you get to the Barebrush main page from the private portal, whichever image is your central image will be the image which appears on the main page. You can customize your experience to see whichever of the three calendar images you prefer — and you don't even have to be a member or sign in to do it.

  4. New Calendars Mean More Monthly Winners

    The announcement of the Curators’ Choice and My Fav N*de winners appears each month on the first in Barebrush News & Events. For November, we will have the results of two new polls relating to the new calendars, My Fav PhotoArt N*de, and The Peoples’ Choice. When there are sufficient entrants into these polls, we will be able to institute a Curators’ Choice award for them as well.

    For newbies:
    As most of you know, the winner of the Curators’ Choice wins 65 points and the place of honor on the front page of Barebrush.com for the month following the poll. Points can be used to list art, to purchase or renew a Featured Artist page (30 points or $25 per year). Listing points are also used to enter Barebrush invitational “brick and mortar” shows, such as our first-ever gallery show: My N*de Valentine. And yes, we are planning for My N*de Valentine 2013.

With best regards,

Ilene

PS: As always, your feedback is welcome. Please feel free to comment, question, complain, or throw tomatoes. And once more for good measure, thanks again for your interest and enthusiasm for Barebrush.

Ilene L. Skeen
CEO
ILS Designs, LLC
372 Fifth Ave, Suite 7D
New York, NY 10018

917-806-7992