Creative Cogitation

I met Jonathan Man­ning, @BladeTheArtist, via Twit­ter. He imme­di­ately embraced the idea of doing an inter­view. I am excited because Jonathan pro­motes his art using online video. He is self-described techy and his entire artis­tic jour­ney is online. Jonathan’s answers reflect a cer­tain play­ful out­look on life. I hope you enjoy his art as well as find­ing out more about this artist who has embraced com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­ogy in such an inter­est­ing way. (more…)

Novem­ber 7, 2011 UPDATE: My Trees For Life Paint­ing did sell at this event along with many oth­ers.  The last tally I read said they had made more than 5,000 pounds for their char­ity.  Not bad. Not bad at all.

I gen­er­ally do not con­tribute paint­ings to black-tie char­i­ta­ble events. There are a num­ber of rea­sons why, but mostly it is because I do not feel char­i­ties in gen­eral play win-win with the artists who donate to their event. The artist gets noth­ing for their dona­tion of time, money, effort except a warm fuzzy and that is a lot to ask when a char­ity is ask­ing for a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of an artist’s poten­tial gross income.  (more…)

The Bold Brush of Artist Franziska San Pedro This inter­view is a first in a series of inter­views I plan on doing with artists I have met online and in other places.  I recently com­pleted my first online inter­view with Franziska for her blog so I feel there is a cer­tain sym­me­try sat­is­fied with hav­ing Franziska as the first inter­view for my blog.  Franziska’s abstract land­scapes have bold color and well-defined strokes.  I hope you enjoy images of her art as well as find­ing out a lit­tle more about the artist that cre­ates such brightly col­ored impres­sions. (more…)

While I Paint Just a Kiss

Occa­sion­ally I do a series of paint­ing in process pho­tos. To me it is enjoy­able to see how some­thing goes from an idea in my mind’s eye to con­vert­ing plain white can­vas into lay­ers of paint wrought with mean­ing. (more…)

I have been insanely busy this year already.

First I would like to give a shout out to Two orga­ni­za­tions who have fea­tured me in the last month. Most recently I am the Fea­tured Artist at Artsyshark.com. Also ArtofDay.com included me in 18 Great Paint­ings, Illus­tra­tions, Draw­ings, Sculp­tures & Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy. Both fea­tured works from the Binary-Birds series, which is Art that proudly pro­claims your are a mem­ber of the Social Media Tribe. They are some­what geek-y, nerd-y, usu­ally humor­ous obser­va­tions of Social Media & other forms of elec­tronic com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Thanks to both of these web­sites for includ­ing me in their venues. 

Retweet by Jake Beck­man. An orange canary sings to four other yel­low ones who seem to be lis­ten­ing. The binary in the back­ground reads “Retweet.”

Right away I did a 4-day artshow in the 5th Ave shops dis­trict in Scotts­dale, AZ.  It was lovely weather to be out­side inter­act­ing with the pub­lic.  That was fol­lowed by Art­bridge Thurs­days, which is an event I reg­u­larly par­tic­i­pate in. This week I am tak­ing a week off because I am attend­ing in the SmArtist Tele­sum­mit. I find myself being ener­gized with lots of ideas about how to mar­ket my art bet­ter.  I am cur­rently lis­ten­ing to the ses­sion on Cor­po­rate Art Con­sul­tants while writ­ing this blog.  The same thing hap­pened last year, but I found it hard to sus­tain the emo­tion.  I am learn­ing some new stuff at the 2011 ses­sions, but I am reminded of all the balls I let roll away last year that I must pick up again.  I need to move my newlet­ter to mail chimp, I need to work on this blog a lot more often, I need to keep pro­duc­ing art while work­ing on my mar­ket­ing & sales.  It feels overwhelming. 

Still I guess I should enjoy my lit­tle vic­to­ries too.  I did get more adept as social media in 2010-I am dejakester on Twit­ter & Face­book and I have an art fan­page on Face­book too.  Binary-Birds came to light in 2010.  I did res­ur­rect my newslet­ter & blog in 2010.  I did have my NYC artshow in 2010.  I met all kinds of won­der­ful online Tweet­ies in 2010, includ­ing David San­dum who got me inter­ested in #twit­ter­ar­tex­hibit, which is hap­pen­ing in Moss Nor­way through the end of January. All good things I can build on. It looks like 2011 is off to a roar­ing start! Hope­fully I can sus­tain the momen­tum. )

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.