Many artists and design professionals make a substantial amount of their income from the relatively passive stream of stock art sales. Useful icon sets, stock photographs, wordpress themes and illustrations. During the course of your art career you'll find you'll start lots of project and never finish them or find that they do not meet your clients needs. The many stock sale channels on the internet are a great way to monetize these poor orphaned works.

Stock art is an excellent passive income...
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Here follows my interview with Cheryl “Ireful” Roelofsz jewellery designer, painter, poet, photo manipulator, stock photographer and general Descriptor of Scorn (ok I made that last bit up)

Having set up my own blog adding pretty (I think they’re pretty dammit don’t judge me) bits and some (I hope) useful bits, some shameless self promotional bits and a whole lot of strange written bits, I decided it was time to add some ridiculously soppy lovey bits. In order to do that I’m going ...

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Ok as everyone can see i've been quite the busy bee this week.

• I felt I needed a bit of a content break so I spent some time working on the design and layout of my sites.
• I also have a new Digital Painting project underway I've asked the owner of the stock image for permission to display the image on my site and am still waiting. I have actually prepared a project page for this image but won't be publishing it publicly until i get permission.
•  Over and above that I've Uploaded a new P...

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I’ve often worked on a piece of art for ages. From the time I start piecing together an idea and looking for stock for a photo manipulation until when I’m done with the last tweak weeks may have passed. I set fairly high standards with my manips there’s no real excuse for being sloppy when everything is fixable.

As it happens when I’m done with a photo manipulation or digital painting I tend to have invested so much time in it that I’m pretty much blind to any flaws. I...

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When I started with my first steps into producing art two years ago I had no idea of how this would escalate and change my life. I don’t need to add any hyperbole or exaggeration when I say I was artistically illiterate at the time. I couldn’t speak art I couldn’t think art I definitley couldn’t create art. The school system and my peers had taught me very effectively that art was the domain of the gifted. I should leave art to the professionals and I’d spare the world the pain of v...

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When I look at art I try and not over think it but once I’ve identified a piece I like I really enjoy figuring out why I liked it. This is also a great way to figure out what elements you find pleasing and each detail learnt will add to your reportoire and increase the quality of your own work. Taking the time to analyse the work of artists you admire or work you love will help you understand the way the artist thinks and in the case of photo manipulation also the techniques used. Imitation...

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I've just included a gallery to this site and in honor of this i've decided to do a quick intro to my favourite 5 photo manipulations.

1. First light - First light is hands down my favourite piece. Technically the effect was really hard to create and the stock quite difficult to work with. However this is one of those special pieces where everything just seemed to to click.

2. Mine Alone - Mine Alone was the first piece that got any kind of substantial comments or page views. This manipulatio...

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Art Communites: 5 things to look for and why I’m still looking

I have been a member on DeviantArt for 2 years now and recently decided to start looking around for a new community site for many reason but my main reason was to push at my comfort zone and try and find a challenging community which would engage me.

Ultimately any involvement with a community is an investment in time you could be spending on your art, work or social life so choose well.

Having a look at the web I found that ...

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I have spent about 2 years dabbling in the arts. It all started on the 13th of March 2007 when after about two months of anonymous surfing I eventually decided to take the leap and register at DeviantArt it took me another 2 months to actualy upload a piece of art. One of the things that struck me initally was the quality of the work and the willingness of the artists to share resources and critique.

During the first year i taught myself photo manipulation, which to this day I find to be ve...

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