The Art of Art Education

The Art of Art Education

Whether you are a young student just about to step into the world of further and higher education or you are an artist who is considering attending a few classes at the local arts college, this week I will be giving you a few practical tips that should make any decisions slightly easier to make or at least make you a little better informed around what to look out for.

We will be covering a number of considerations that you will need to take into account, including:

• What to look for when selecting a school or class
• What to look for from careers guidance
• Teaching practice
• Understanding individual learning styles
• What facilities offered by the school matter
• Setting expectations
• Preparing a portfolio
• Alternative learning options 

To bring you this article I have drawn on my experience not only as a past student and as a professional artist, but also from my work within an educational context having qualified as a teacher of further education back in 2002.

Making Choices…

It’s that time of year for many young people who are about to leave schools they have grown up in and move in to the bigger world of colleges, universities, and other schools. For many the choices will be daunting, for others the choices might be straight forward because the chosen schools are close to home or have an outstanding reputation.

It’s not just young people who have to make decisions around choosing the learning program that feels right for them either. More and more adults go back to college on a part-time basis to pick up new skills or follow dreams that they had when they were younger too. Learning shouldn’t stop just because we are done with school.

When it comes to arts related subjects the choices are bewildering for academic programs. Art, graphic design, photography, and many other arts related subjects are all very different disciplines and knowing which courses to do together or which to singly focus on isn’t exactly an easy choice for those who are unfamiliar with the world of further and higher education at whatever age. When you are younger you might not even have any idea about what it is that you want to do in the future as a career and many older people are still figuring it out too!

Whilst I cannot even begin to tell you exactly what you would be suited for, I can tell you that you should pick subjects that you want to learn and that you should pursue any dreams that you have from the off. Even if you don’t feel that you are any good at a particular subject or you feel you lack a certain skill set right now, don’t let that put you off following your heart. In time and with practice you will build on your skills you can become great at whatever you do. This sounds like a cliché but it really isn’t, once you do start enjoying what you do, work will never feel like just a job.

If you wish to pursue the dream of working in the arts as an artist in the future than attending an art school or college can give you skills and opportunities that would be difficult to achieve as quickly or quite as well by not attending. Of course there are no set rules cast in stone that say absolutely that to be an artist you have to attend art school or college, but having a formal arts education will not only allow you to refine your skills, it will challenge and expand your mind so that you are better able to take your art in directions which you might otherwise be unable to do, or it might take longer for you to do. 

Not only that but the art world is tough even for those established in their respective fields so having a formal education will set you apart from those who have not been through similar programs. In short if you have an opportunity to study you should take advantage if you can.

Not having a formal arts education doesn’t prevent you from joining the world of the arts, it does though make you more aware of the arts world a little earlier on. That of course isn’t to say that either route will tell you everything you need to know. Joining the arts world as an artist or as someone who works in the field of the arts also means that you will need to continue learning even after completing a formal education. 

I know many artists who never attended a single class and many of them have made a comfortable living from doing what they do, but one thing they all have in common is that despite never attending class, they all continue to learn. 

When I started out I went straight into a very different career and studied orthopaedic science and I also had a very special interest not only in art but in cyber-security. I wasn’t a great student whilst in school and it wasn’t until the day I left that I started to really take to learning. The problem for me was that I took every course available other than the arts! It wasn’t that I couldn’t decide what to do, it was probably more down to circumstance and holding down a steady career and many of my academic choice were driven by my career.

Even though I had been selling my artwork from the age of sixteen it wasn’t until I was almost 27 that I went down a formal route of education in the arts. Now more than two-decades later I continue to learn new things about the art world every single day. 

A one, two, or three year programme of formal education isn’t anywhere near the end of the learning that you have to do. Whether it is watching tutorials, reading, practicing, or visiting galleries and museums, learning the art of art never ever stops.

Choosing the school…

When it comes to choosing a school, college, or university it is often a difficult choice. All will claim that they are great at what they do, but the proof of greatness is in the quality of provision and the positive outcomes that learners achieve and of course what those learners go on to.

Choosing a school can also be a very personal decision, sometimes it can come down to preference, other times it can be down to who else you know who will be attending the same school, or it could be the cost or lots of other factors too, not discounting that not every school or college might not deliver the exact curriculum you are looking to participate in.

Choosing a school that is right for you is a priority whether you are at the start of your career or whether you are in another career entirely and just want to go and do a part-time course which fits in with doing your current day job. 

When I undertook my studies I was working a 40-50 hour a week day job and then had to attend college three nights each week and fit in all of the project work that was required of the course. Never underestimate just how much work you have to do outside of classes, I thought rather naively that three nights a week would cover it. In reality I ended up working five days a week on the day job and then studying every single night and every weekend too. 

There are other factors that you also need to consider when choosing a school such as how the programme they offer will help with your art and your longer-term career in the arts. 

Not all schools and colleges will offer the programme you want to study and ensuring you are on the right programme for your chosen discipline is going to be key to where you go and what you do in the future. You need to have at least an idea of which artistic discipline you wish to focus on longer term, or ensure that the programme offered is broad enough to give you a few options. 

Ask yourself how the programs offered will qualify you for the art career you choose. Many who undertake arts courses, diplomas, and degrees move into other disciplines in the art world and not every student who undertakes an arts education ends up being an artist. 

There are so many career choices within the arts. You might not want to be an artist at all, perhaps your interest is in becoming a curator or an appraiser of art or perhaps you want to work in a gallery or museum. In which case having some business skills might be a worthwhile addition to your skill set too. 

Careers…

Whenever you look at school choices also look at the career choices linked to each of the courses and programs that the school, college or university offers. Ask questions like:

• Does the college have a programme that supports my long-term aspirations for a career in the arts?
• Do the college have work placement programs that provide useful work experience in an appropriate field?
• How many students have found sustainable work after completing the course or programme? Bear in mind that employment statistics can be padded in a number of ways – a good school or college should prepare students in a way that companies want to employ them, so ask who those companies and organisations are and how many students they have hired.
• Does the school or college have an impartial careers, information and advice service? This is so important because as great as schools and colleges are, it is within their interest to bring students on to their programmes. In short, the cold truth of this is that the tail really shouldn’t wag the dog. Access to impartial careers, education, advice and guidance is critical in making the right choices as a student.

Teaching and learning styles…

It’s a given that colleges, schools, and universities should have well-trained and committed staff who carry out all sorts of activities not just teaching or lecturing. However, it is important to know that the staff who will be delivering the course are qualified in the course that they are teaching and that they also continue their professional development. 

Some teachers will have very specific ways of delivering any subject and that’s not always the student’s preferred learning style. As students we all learn differently. Your learning style will probably be very different to my learning style. Each of us are unique but knowing what your own learning style is certainly helps. You will probably already have an idea of what your preferred learning style is. Mine is very much a mix of doing something practical and reading information but yours could be very different. 

Individual learning styles depend on environmental, cognitive, and emotional factors and prior learning and experience. It is important that educators are familiar with the concept of individual learning styles so that they can offer a broad range of teaching styles throughout the curriculum that they deliver to meet the multiple and often very different needs of the learner’s within their charge.

Whilst you might already be aware of your preferred learning style, styles can change sometimes as we adapt and learn new things, and I believe it also depends to some extent on the subject being delivered. 

The primary learning styles are:

• Visual – We learn through the use of visual cues and images. We understand graphical elements better than the written word
• Auditory – We learn through listening and speaking – we understand verbal instruction and often use repetition as a study technique
• Kinaesthetic – We learn by doing. Practical exercises will help kinaesthetic learners understand better and allow them to figure things out by undertaking any given task.
• Reading and Writing – We learn through reading and writing and we can often take abstract concepts and turn them into words and essays.

Always ask questions around how teaching is delivered and how and when individual learning plans are formed. A personal learning plan should help both you and the teacher to gain an understanding of not only your learning style, it should identify weaknesses and strengths so that delivery of the program can start to address any shortfalls and build on any strengths. 

Asking questions around how much experience education staff have should never be thought of as being rude or discourteous, nor should we ever assume that teaching staff have lots and lots of experience. For the most part they do and will have, and whoever teaches you should ideally be committed to teaching, but this is about you just as much as anyone else. Just as in any employment role, sometimes staff lose commitment or might not always get the opportunity to continue with their own development.

This is about your learning and you are about to commit a significant amount of time to the course and inevitably even a significant financial outlay so you absolutely need to know that it will be worth it.  Whilst new teachers with less experience than others will bring in new and very welcome fresh ideas, it is nice to know that experienced staff will be on hand as much to support the newer staff members as well as to support you.

Opportunities to study further…

Some schools and colleges will supplement the learning with work experience placements so it is worth finding out what these placements offer and whom those placements are with. That to a certain extent will help you gain valuable experience that employers want and need in the creative industry and it is good to have experience on your resume.

Other subjects such as math skills and literacy are vital in any job in the 21^st Century and if you are particularly weak in any of those areas knowing how the school will support your learning to include these skills is something that you might also need to consider. Often literacy and maths skills will be embedded within courses so if you feel a little weaker in one area or another you will still have the opportunity to develop these skills over the duration of many courses and programs. 

Many courses will have entry requirements particularly in the UK where math and literacy skills are often a pre-requisite of joining or participating in many of the courses available. But you should never underestimate just how much you will come to rely on both maths and literacy skills in the creative industry.

Whether it is calculating sizes, pricing, or writing an artist’s statement or producing an advert, these are essential skills to have a good knowledge of and even more so if you are planning on working in fields such as graphic design where project statements have to be written and quotations for work need to be given to clients.

You might want to consider setting up your own creative business once you have completed the programme so it is also important to consider any business skills that you might need. Today more than ever an artist has to be everything to everyone, and marketing yourself and your work is a significant part of what being a visual artist or creative is about. Again never underestimate the skills that you will need moving forward, which might even include things like web design.

Many of the programs available today will complement entrepreneurial courses and programs, some even include elements of marketing and presenting work and the business of art and the creative industry. These are skills which can be gained later or in parallel with whatever you are studying, but I firmly believe that being an independent artist or graphic designer today, absolutely needs you to have an entrepreneurial spirit.  

Check out the facilities…

Some schools will specialise in one or more art forms or disciplines so ensure that what you really want to do is covered by your programme of study and by the school itself. Does the school use the latest industry standard software applications and do they have the equipment to be able to use the software properly, these are the types of facilities that so many students forget to take into account.

Instead when it comes to facilities many students will be looking for things like gym access or having a coffee shop on campus or just somewhere to chill in between sessions and whilst those kinds of facilities are important, they are not as important as knowing if the school or college has a well-stocked library or if they have access to the library and other facilities out of classroom hours. I know that in the university I am affiliated with, the most popular time to access the library is at 3am!

You need to put the work in…

Applying to go to an art school or college is similar to applying to go to other colleges that don’t specialise in the arts but many arts schools and colleges are tough to gain entry into and especially when they are viewed amongst the best places to learn and study. I know when I went to college all those years ago I wasn’t anywhere near as prepared as I could have been for the amount of work that was to head my way even before I stepped into the classroom.

Being prepared…

What I have written so far will certainly help when it comes to narrowing down your choice of college but that’s not to say at all that you will be accepted on to a fine arts programme at all. Competition for places at the best colleges and schools can be high, and it will seem as if literally everyone wants to become an artist, so many applicants, yet so few places.

Not everyone will be offered a place in a top college. They all have rigorous admissions processes and you might not be the first pick at your first pick college. That shouldn’t put you off applying anywhere you want but you should definitely be prepared if your top pick says no.

Chose a range of colleges to apply to including the less selective ones who might have less competition for places. Your second choice might not be your first preference but generally most colleges deliver similar or the same courses so the final outcome is the same, it is just the journey towards completion might be delivered differently or that some colleges are seen as being able to build much better foundations. 

The one I attended wasn’t even in the top 50 at the time, but after completing my studies there was no doubt that they helped me to learn so many new skills. In fact it was the same college I then trained as a teacher of further adult education and I wouldn’t have picked any other college to do that.

Prepare your portfolio…

A strong and coherent portfolio is a must have so you need to make sure that your portfolio not only looks good but has a strong body of work included and that the work is properly documented.

A portfolio isn’t just about showcasing your technical skills it should communicate your passion for the arts and inspire anyone who views it. Never be tempted to put absolutely everything you have ever created in your portfolio either. Select works which speak to you and choose works that communicate your goals and aspirations as an artist.

I always think of a portfolio as something that lives and evolves. I have a few portfolios which are used for different things and they constantly change. I have a portfolio of my older work so that I can demonstrate my progress as an artist, and I have a portfolio of design work with no fine art included at all. I also have another portfolio of work I have completed for commissions and yet another couple for my more recent landscapes and abstracts. All of them are interchangeable so I can quickly produce a new portfolio for whatever purpose I need it for.

What colleges look for in portfolios is different depending on the chosen program and the admissions process for each college. Always do your research and check out the admissions pages on the websites of each of your chosen colleges, and be prepared to make adjustments to your portfolio to match each of the colleges you will hopefully be gaining an interview with.

Talking of which…

Not every college or school will have an interview process but if they do there is no need to panic. The interview is just as useful to you as the student as it is to the college to ensure that they have the best students. Besides, later on in life you will need the interview skills if you are bidding for work as a freelancer or seeking your first job in the industry.

Interviews are two-sided affairs. This is an opportunity for you to explain what you would like to get out of the programme and also an opportunity to make sure that the college is a good fit for you and for the college to find out if you are a good fit for them. 

This is the perfect opportunity to discuss your longer-term aspirations and you can present your portfolio and be there to explain anything that might need explaining. You do however need to be prepared to talk about you and your work and this is something that many even established artists aren’t always good at. For every person that attends an interview with a confident approach you can dare bet that there will be many others who attended and were even less confident than you. 

Many students approach the interview with some trepidation but the key to a successful interview is showing that you have confidence in your work. If you have read the admissions process and carried out sufficient research you should have no problem explaining how you and your work has a fit with what the college you wish to attend. They expect potential students to be nervous and many will give a little leeway to those students who are nervous.

I have to say though that I was not prepared for the interview process which involved taking my portfolio along and sitting in front of a panel of art experts. The panel of experts didn’t all work in the college, some worked in high-end galleries affiliated to the college, and others were museum curators and a respected judge of fine art exhibitions. If there was ever a time I wished I had been better prepared this would have been it.

Prepare as much as you can even if it is just sitting in front of a friend and getting them to ask some questions and carry out some research because many past students will have shared their own experiences somewhere online.

Community… 

Attending an art school or college is a great way to learn but over a career of being an artist, the learning will and should never stop. Colleges are where new friendships are formed and where you will start to forge lasting connections with peers and mentors, and also those working within the industry already.

As an artist you will need to know how to form relationships and you will over-time need to master the art of self-promotion. Self-promotion in the real world is very different to the type of self-promotion you might already be doing on social-media. You will need to also develop your networking skills and you need to become an advocate of you.

Always take into account the links that colleges have and how you might be able to use those links into the wider arts world to advocate you and your work. So when you are considering which school or college you want to attend it is also worth finding out about the links the school or college have with external galleries and anyone connected with the art world. 

Finding out for example if the college will give you the opportunity to show your work more widely through organised events will give you an idea of how well connected they are, and it is worth finding out if they have agreements in place with local galleries who offer opportunities to students to display their work outside of the curriculum. This will give you some freedom to start building relationships on your own which is what you will be doing for a majority of your time when you finish your studies. 

Many colleges will have connections with many industry insiders and they will organise social events off-campus too. These are exactly the events where you will be able to formulate new contacts and keep in touch with the local arts scene. They are excellent for developing your networking skills and they are also excellent opportunities to become known locally as an artist or an emerging artist.

Setting expectations…

The one factor that will always overshadow everything else is how the chosen course will lead to a high paying job once you have completed it. Here’s where we need to set an important expectation. If you want a highly paying job from the off, then being an artist isn’t necessarily the job that will allow you to achieve this. 

Even after completing any art related field of study, the art world is generally a tough environment which is highly competitive. That shouldn’t put you off, but it should prepare you to work a lot harder to secure any position in the future. 

Graphic design is another discipline of the arts and employment positions are often highly paid at the top end of the scale, but you will need to be prepared to work your way up any corporate ladder. Again experience tells me that the industry want and need great graphic designers, but they also need to come with at least some experience beyond the experience of attending any art college or school. So another expectation that needs to be managed is that you will be unlikely to land a high paying role as a creative until you have started to gain some significant experience in your field, but that’s like any job really.

According to Payscale (https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/common-jobs-for-majors/art) the top positions paying the most money are for those with graphic design skills and are for positions such as Interaction Designers and Creative Directors. 

Fine art artists rank 38^th on the list with only 18% holding a major in the field of study, so that should give you an indication that many more fine artists are working without having a major. All the more reason to hold one perhaps?

What I have always found interesting is that artists who produce the art always seem to land a lower earning position than those who sit around an executive table in the arts. That’s probably a wider discussion but one certainly worth considering if you are about to choose any art related subject.

Remember also that choosing a visual art path doesn’t have to be about any one thing or another. Graphic designers might work on advertising or they might specialise in typography, and those with fashion design qualifications might become pattern makers, or work in merchandising. There are so many sub-disciplines within the arts so think about what you will be happiest doing. 

Attending any art college or school will not turn you into a professional artist, graphic designer, photographer or any other discipline overnight. That will come later as long as you put in the hours and the work but the connections you make during your time in college or art school can certainly help you to achieve your longer-term aspirations. 

Should I attend or not?

Only you can decide whether attending a school or college to undertake an appropriate course is going to be worth it. For some people it is a given and for others, not so much. You can certainly do something in the arts world even if you don’t hold the piece of paper which says that you studied for X number of years, it will though put you a little more ahead if you have studied something formally.

For those of you who are already working in the arts world and not holding that official piece of paper then the decision is around whether or not going through a formal arts education will be of benefit to you. My three years studying certainly helped me to run my own business and it opened up possibilities that without attending I would never have had. Could I have achieved similar without the piece of paper? Well I did for eleven years without it, but since studying things have certainly picked up a pace. Whether that is solely down to the education I honestly couldn’t say one way or the other but there are many times when I think about what I learned back then and since then that has influenced the way I do things and the choices that I make. I can say as can everyone of a certain age, I wish I knew then what I know now.

For me it was more about the social aspect and building up the confidence to go out and network more than anything else, those to me were my weakest areas. Prior to studying I think it is fair to say that I was somewhat of an introverts, introvert and those who know me and engage on a personal and professional level with me will know that I’m far from being an introvert today, well at least publicly anyway. But I think that period of study showed me the importance of continued learning and prepared me better to continue learning even today. 

Mature students…

If you are already in the industry and you are wondering whether the right thing is to go ahead and gain formal qualifications there are alternatives you can try out before committing finance and time to any formal arts program. 

The expense alone of attending the best art schools might be the ultimate barrier. I have a bit of a thing with the cost of attaining a good arts related qualification, it can be ridiculously expensive and I know very few artists who make the kind of living that would be needed to pay off any student loan quickly. A comfortable living perhaps but a living where you don’t have to overly worry about finances is a little harder to come by. 

Artist run schools are something that you might want to consider. When I carried out my program of learning we hardly ever covered the business of the art business, the marketing and the way the new world of the internet, paid advertising, and search engine optimisation worked, and all today are critical skills to have when going it alone. This would have been really useful to have in place all those years ago.

An artist run school might cover much more of the business and it will be based on relatively recent experience of the art world including the art of self-promotion.

Online courses are plentiful, so many of the world’s leading academic institutions offer free online courses that make access to a more formal arts education achievable for everyone with access to a web browser. Some of these courses are better than others, some can be done in a few hours, some extend to over a year, but this is a great way to see if entering a formal route would be the right way for you to go.

The Open University in the UK has a wide variety of free open learning courses which are not only available in the UK but to overseas students too. Take a look at their website and see what’s available in the history and arts section at: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses/full-catalogue 

They offer a range of free arts related courses which last anywhere between 1 and 20-hours and you can get a certificate of completion. Some of their free courses even count as credits towards a full degree! 

Distance learning is something that might help if you are trying to juggle a day job and whilst you continue working on creative projects. I have a lot of time for distance learning providers and am even considering participating on one of the OUs six hour programs called Art in Renaissance Venice which you can find here: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/culture/visual-art/art-renaissance-venice/content-section-0 

All you need to do is create a free Open Learn profile. It is well worth taking a look through their business courses too. You can even download most of the courses to do offline or on an eBook reader! Why not take a one hour course and let me know how you get on!

If you are worried about that certificate, there are new ways of validating the education you have undertaken without it needing a piece of paper. Open Badges https://openbadges.org/ allow you to earn digital badges for the skills you learn online and in person and they are then able to be shared through a digital backpack as verifiable records of your learning. The Open University even offer digital badges in many of their offerings.

Open Badges are backed by organisations such as Mozilla, IMS Global, and LRNG, amongst many others who recognise them, and I truly believe that these are more likely to become even more relevant over the next few years, especially when we are marketing our work online where you can place your learning credentials within your online portfolio. That for digital creatives is such a powerful tool.

Using Social to Learn…

Of course there is also an option which is rarely considered yet each of us probably have immediate access to, and that is social media. We can learn a lot from our peers and other artists yet we rarely use the power of social media to actually learn anything new. 

I have been thinking of setting up a brand new group on Facebook for a while but this time it won’t be one where thousands of people post calls for artists and post artwork with a statement that says 24x30, oil, $300, this one will be around continuing education as an artist and being a part of a collaborative group of those eager to learn much more. We would also identify open learning resources and courses and offer support to each other.

Not necessarily led by one person, but led by the artist community who joins. Regular readers will know just how much I favour collaborative working and supporting each other as artists, so having a group of artists who are there who just want to learn rather than promote, I think would be a great way to learn together.

Posting links to online articles, courses, tutorials, live streaming our own work in progress, or joining in Skype community chats, I think this has potential to be something quite special. I would however anticipate that only a small number would want to be part of this type of group but as we have access to groups on Facebook, it seems like an opportunity for us all to spend five or ten minutes each day doing a little more learning.

If this is something you would like to be a part of let me know and if there is enough interest I will set up the group. Even better if you would like to become an admin or moderator, having set up three groups over the past few years I am under no illusion at all just how much time a group can take to administer.

And while we are on the subject of groups…

Finally before we close I thought it would be a good idea to mention my three Facebook groups! The Artists Exchange, The Artist Hangout, and The Artists Directory are my three groups already on Facebook but I think it is time to refresh them slightly. With just over 20,000 members between the three groups they have grown considerably over the past year alone. 

What I am noticing is that many just use the groups as another channel to market their work without them ever engaging or actually visiting the group. Sharing blindly without having any input into the community and this isn’t helping those players or anyone else. So, over the next few months I will be introducing a few updates and enforcing the existing rules much more rigidly. I expect that we will lose some members, but better to lose those who are not engaged than to turn the groups into just more of what I now call Craig’s List groups. 

Myself and the admins already do a lot of work behind the scenes when administering the groups, but with the new focus on engagement metrics within Facebook I really believe that we’re not doing any artist any favours if there is no engagement in the group as a whole and bad players continue to blindly share not even knowing the rules of the group they are posting too. 

I will also be making some adjustments to the privacy of the groups and making them into closed communities rather than public groups. That was something I had been avoiding but public groups really do seem to attract more spammers. Just this week I had to remove a member for posting an online contest to win a Walmart gift voucher and a hamper – nothing at all to do with the arts and another who decided that we all needed a brand new pair of fake Roy Bins sunglasses for the summer. We don’t because we got them from your counterpart counterfeiter last year thanks. 

Good luck…

Whatever your reasons for choosing to go through a formal arts education or not, I hope that this week’s article has given you plenty to think about and I hope too that you are now better prepared to make some of the most significant decisions that you will need to make over the coming years. 

Education whether it is formal or informal is just so very important as an artist, and continuing that education even more so. If you spend an hour a week on YouTube or on any of the social-media platforms, try to make it count. Art should continually evolve as should you as an artist. You should always strive to make your next work better than your last otherwise it will stand still and anything that stands still gets left behind. 

Even if you are established consider joining local arts groups or community events to celebrate the arts, and keep an eye open for what is around the corner. In my past 30-something years in the arts world things have changed dramatically and they continue to change pretty much every day. If you’re not learning about those changes before they happen how can you ever be fully prepared for the next challenge?

If you do participate in any of the Open Learn courses from any university, leave a comment below and let’s us know what you are or have studied! 

Stay creative folks!

About Mark…

I am an artist and blogger who specialises in abstracts, landscapes, and seascapes. My work is sold in more than 150 retail locations across the USA and Canada including The Great Frame Up, Framing and Art Centre, and Deck the Walls and you can also buy from Fine Art America or my Pixels site here: https://10-mark-taylor.pixels.com 

All artwork and art collectibles sold through Fine Art America and Pixels also come with a 30-day money back guarantee and any proceeds from sales through Fine Art America and Pixels go back towards maintaining this site for the benefit of other independent visual artists and art buyers. It takes a huge amount of time to write articles and support the many artists who reach out to me for advice outside of this site, so even buying a greetings card through my Pixels site allows me to keep doing it! The great news is that I have just lowered my artist’s commission on Fine Art America and Pixels across a range of products for a limited time!

You can also follow me on Facebook at: https://facebook.com/beechhousemedia and on Twitter @beechhouseart