All about my Zazzle and Society6 journey, including graphics design hints and tips, effective promotional tools and showcasing some great products from me and other storekeepers.
Trying to pin down exactly what makes these urban landscape paintings by British artist Nathan Walsh (previously) so unusual is difficult, in part because of the variety of techniques he employs to get from a vision in his mind to the final, exacting artwork.
Starting with his own photographic references, Walsh first draws an elaborate blueprint of sorts by establishing a horizon line and a host of perspective strategies that varies from piece to piece. This is followed by several months of painting with oils to achieve the final landscape that appears to be a strange hybrid of both illustrative and photorealistic styles. Photography, architecture, and painting converge to create a “painted world which in some ways resembles the world we live in,” says Walsh. “The work aims to create credible and convincing space which whilst making reference to our world, displays its own distinct logic.”
Walsh is currently preparing for a group show titled “Cityscape Paintings: Looking from the Outside In” at Bernarducci Meisel Gallery in October, followed by a solo show during the same period in 2016. You can follow more of his work in progress on Facebook.
Almost the last day!
While yesterday we looked to the future to build a plan to find readers, today we’re going to dig into our stats to find out what kind of effect the last 29 days have had on our sites. What can you see is different after the changes you’ve made?
Some of you will be seasoned pros at looking at your stats, but if you’re newer to blogging and want some starting points, these are the metrics I recommend you keep track of regularly as you go on with your blogging.
In the show notes I also link to a post I published recently that gives you an overview of how I use Google Analytics to do this kind of investigation, and I’ll describe how and why these are the metrics I choose to keep tabs on.
Every month or so I go through each of these and compare them to the previous month (I give you a quick tip on how to do this easily), and also think about how I can recreate successes in content, on social, and how well other types of traffic are doing.
Today we’ll also go a little deeper into channels to look for trends, behaviour, and other hints that will help us keep the trend on the up.
If you are indeed in the newer camp, please don’t fret about stats. It can be easy to get disillusioned in the early days, but we all feel small when we start out! Most successful blogs go for 2-3 years before they hit a tipping point of sorts. We discuss that a little more in today’s podcast also.
So open up Google Analytics and take a little dig with me. Feel free to share your most popular post from the month in the comments too – you might be surprised what has worked better than you thought it would!
See you tomorrow for the wrap up of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Podcast.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
The ProBlogger Podcast: Digging into Statistics
The post The ProBlogger Podcast: Digging into Statistics appeared first on @ProBlogger.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
The ProBlogger Podcast: Digging into Statistics
The post The ProBlogger Podcast: Digging into Statistics appeared first on @ProBlogger.
Hey it’s Friday and it’s summer, so here’s Italian sculptor Valeriano Fatica carving an awesome dragon head out of a watermelon. I especially love how he accomplished the details of the scales that seem to gradually emerge from the flesh of the melon. You can explore a bit more of Fatica’s fruit and vegetable carving here. (via Laughing Squid)
