Apr 24 2020 - Catching Up on Winners

One of the fulfillment sites for my pictures is Redbubble, and they recently removed Groups from the site.  Groups had functionality to bring artists work together into portfolios based on themes.  The host would curate features on a regular basis and showcase member work.  Contests were a regular part of groups as well. This was interesting and fun to submit images to groups to see which ones would be featured and how many times.  With groups gone, I have moved this kind of activity over to Fine Art America, another fulfillment site I belong to.  This is supposedly the largest site - hundreds of thousands of artists and thousands of groups.  In comparison Redbubble is international and now oriented to graphic artists.  Fine Art America is US-based and oriented to fine art and photography.  Both print and deliver one's images on a wide variety of products with outstanding quality. With bad weather keeping me from the garden, I have spent a little time on my website, hosted by BetterPhoto.  What I liked about BetterPhoto is the monthly contest, and one could enter images every day and at the end of each month, winners are selected.  Going through my images, I see winning badges in recent monthly contests.  I have focused on other things and had not been checking on the winners anymore. First is a tulip image from December 2019, a Finalist.  It's a pleasant image with great details and clarity on the tulip petals, along with relatively good shapes of the leaves pointing up, and then contrasting vivid blur in the background. A favourite orchard image that was a Finalist in January, probably thanks to the beautiful Skylum sky I added. What makes it a favourite, though, are the overarching branches in the foreground outstretched as arms inviting you into the view. The Antithirum trio was a second place winner in January. These are wonderful flowers - very thick and veined, and with good colour variation.  With work in Photoshop and Topaz filters, the background is mostly removed just leaving lines of some leaves, so that the image is also a study in the movement of curves.  The heart shape of Antithirum flowers gives it an emotional element as well and the angle of the shot with their placement makes an interesting story.

Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://www.blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Lilies by Name

I have two for-purchase sites.  The first is Redbubble.  This site has group functionality for showcasing images on the site.  I host 3 groups: All Glorious Lilies, All Glorious Gardens and Surfaces and Textures. As a host, I curate weekly features of member images, and run challenges on an on-going basis based on themes. When I took over the All Glorious Lilies Group, its scope was limited to Lilium lilies. However, most photographers and artists are not flower experts and all kinds of flowers were being submitted.  To the submitters they looked like lilies or people called them lilies.  These would include day lilies for example.  As the images were very beautiful, I looked for ways to define the scope so they could be included.  The Lily family is named Liliaceae.  I found that it used to be a large and diverse scope of plants - everything from lilium to allium (onions), irises, etc.  But that's all changed with genetic testing and it is now a very small family of plants.  So I decided to make the scope everything in the Liliaceae family and anything with lily in the common name. The list was started and grew and grew. Here's the current Handy List of Lilies.  There are over 16,000 views of this list. I looked up the Matthew verse on '"lilies of the field" to see how this related to the group. Wikipedia says scholars consider the autumn crocus, scarlet poppy and Turk’s cap lily (a lilium) to be candidates, also narcissus, gladiolus and iris. And then, wikipedia tells us the verse could also just mean flowers in general and that lily could be a word referring or any showy variety. So this is the working motto for the group. Elusive and inclusive in its reference to Lilies – a fitting verse for a group which has a clear, and yet meandering scope -  All Glorious Lilies.

Redbubble and Fine Art America are more than Sales Sites

Being a Host on an Art Site

I am a member of two art sites - Redbubble (rb) and Fine Art America (FAA) - because they sell my work.  Betterphoto is the host of marilyncornwell.com but it doesn't have any fulfillment capabilities so far.

I 'host' groups on these sites.  On Redbubble the two groups are related to gardens and flowers.  On Fine Art America the group is urban and nature macro abstracts.

The opportunity to host means I select images to feature in a display portfolio 0each week.  Over the few years, I've learned about what makes great images that have the 'wow' factor, and about putting images together into a portfolio with the 'wow' appeal.  I've discovered what makes an engaging topic for challenges where voting decides the top ten images.

Redbubble has a wonderful community of talent – here are the features this week in my garden and lilies groups: 

All Glorious Gardens

All Glorious Lilies

If you click the links above you can see the groups and look at my portfolios.  If you click this link -  All Glorious Gardens Challenge - you can see the latest images in the challenge, but you will want to sign in to vote.  

And come see the groups regularly and check out the features and gallery!

Splish Splash Carry and Comfort

Redbubble is a purchase site where I have art work for sale as prints, cards, t-shirts, stickers, and now tote bags and pillows.  I described the Splish Splash Series the other day - based on the recycling factory images.  Here is what pillows and tote bags look like.  

Canada Blooms - Inspirations of Spring

Canada Blooms was so inspirational last week.  The perennial greenhouse was a delight of flowers, grasses, and fern leaves unfolding.  I took my favourite images and have made a set of greeting cards.  Here they are: