Pamela Smith is a guest blogger for Imagekind who is one of the top experts in interior redesign and decorating. She is the owner of PSRedesigns, which specializes in “one-day interior makeovers.” We are happy to share her insight of new decorating trends and great tips on successfully decorating with art. Pam was a founding member of the redesign organization IRIS and is now proud to be a part of the National Redesign Institute as an instructor of interior redesign, real estate staging, and decorating. Read on to find her expert hints and tips.

Art has a lot to do with connecting: connecting emotionally, visually, and viscerally in one very important triad between the art, the viewer and the environment. As a guest blogger for Imagekind, it’s my pleasure to connect with you, introducing you to some valuable information on art and your interior spaces. And thanks to the world of blogging, I hope that this information connects to a world of art enthusiasts. Thanks Imagekind!

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Choosing art can be a difficult process. Not only are there millions of pieces out there for you to sift through, look at, dismiss and decide upon, you must also have a good understanding of what it is you are trying to accomplish when decorating with art. Below are five simple tips that can make selecting artwork easier and ultimately more enjoyable.

For My Flickr Friends by Laura Olson

1. Connect with it: Art is many things to many people, but when choosing how to decorate with it, it needs to be yours and yours alone. Whether the piece inspires you, calms you, excites you or just generally makes you happy, that is where you need to start.

2. Blend it: Not only should the artwork affect you internally and emotionally, it must help create a space that surrounds you externally. Whether it is furnishings, accessories or the people who occupy the space, the art you choose should be a reflection of that and be able to pull it all together.

Orion by GALACTIC SHIFT

3. Hang it: What good is wall art if is not on the wall? Here are a few tips for hanging your artwork:

• Bigger is often better by creating more of a statement.
• Go with small prints on narrow walls and large works for large surface areas.
• When hanging wall art over furniture, it should generally not be longer than the piece of furniture.
• Hang art so that the center point of the piece is at eye level for the average person.

Ask For Directions by Dan Jesperson

4. Mat it: A white or subtle cream mat brings the focus to the artwork itself. To create maximum impact with your prints, consider choosing a mat that contrasts your wall color: light mat with a dark wall and dark mat for wall painted with a light color.

5. Frame it: Usually, when selecting a custom frame, you want to avoid choosing a color that is too similar to the color of the mat you chose. Blending and selecting mat and frame colors that are evident within the painting itself can provide a cohesive and complete look.

Videos on YouTube have advertised just about everything else alongside their clips, why not your work? Here at Imagekind, we’re starting to see referral traffic from member generated videos, driving users to their art galleries. Investigating this a bit we see plenty of opportunity for any artist who who’s inclined to create some unique video around their subjects, and market themselves while their at it.

Sites like YouTube make it very easy to get video going online, so all you need is a camera, or screen capture software (if there is a digital component to your work), and maybe some video editing software (you can find some basic applications for free online). 

You might already want to use video sites like this to host video for other other purposes, but as long as your becoming your own “auteur”, you might as well fill out some details for those who happen upon your clips while browsing these sites.  Going further, you could create a detailed profile that helps your audience identify and check out all your work, giving some connection to the subject matter and style of your episodes.

The crucial component in creating a video that gets watched is creativity.  Keep reading and we’ll go through some of the artists we found that have tried different approaches to gain views numbering from the hundreds to tens of thousands – even over 4 million!

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We consider Imagekind a rapidly growing community within itself, giving artists of all stripes tools to meet others with similar styles and creative interests. You can find new fans for your work, get inspired by others, and learn about the business of art with other’s trying to revolutionize the way artists represent themselves. Heck, we even have a pretty happening Forum.

However, we’re still pretty young, and we realize there have been plenty of other artist based social communities around for a while – we’ve even featured a few in these digital pages. And then there are the big two – the one’s who put “Social Networking” on the map, ant least the virtual map. MySpace, and Facebook – you know what they are, but do you know how useful they are for artists? And can you find Imagekind and it’s friend’s network on these sites?

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As everyone probably well knows, Imagekind is a terrific way for artists to sell prints online, but we often are asked how artists can sell original works online. There are probably several venues where this can be facilitated, but one website in particular finally seems to enabling this in a very artist-centric manner, so we thought we’d share it here. The website is called ArtFlock, and it has a few nice additions to what any artist may have previously had available to them online, and some other key winning factors.

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