I first started painting with oils in the summer of 1984. From 1985 to 1986 I painted under the instruction of Jimmy Peterson, a very talented southern artist from Georgia. In 1986 I won 1st place in a Georgia Arts Exhibition at the age of 16 and have been painting every since.

I joined the United States Army in 1987 and continued self-study and painting on landscape subjects in France, Holland, Germany, Italy and Hungary, painting in the plein air style. I continued to paint in the oil medium until 2001 when my wife bought me watercolors for my 32nd birthday. Since 2001, I have painted over 200 original landscape, flower, barn and seascape paintings with over 20 being commissions. I became involved in arts councils and exhibitions in Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. In 2002 I began working with other mediums including India Ink and acrylics. My favorite subjects are seascapes and I always use Arches watercolor paper, either cold-pressed or rough, depending on the subject. If I want more detail then I use hot pressed. If I want a lot of texture I use rough.

Lessons learned throughout over 25 years of painting include:

1. Never paint when you are not inspired.
2. Try to visualize what you want to paint before you paint the subject and imagine a finished product and what steps you will take to get there.
3. For larger and more detailed works, draw the image on the canvas first with light pencil.
4. Establish your own style but learn from others. Experiment with creating art using individual techniques beginning with smaller less detailed images and working your way up.

Techniques I have learned to use and call my own include:

• Use of splatter to create depth.
• Use of charcoal on finished products to add texture and shadows.
• Wet on wet, let the watercolors do their magic. Sometimes watercolors when wet on wet create effects that make you say: “How did I do that?”.
• Try not to use too much paint, start out with lighter colors and add layers of darker colors. Too much watercolor paint creates a mess that you can not fix. That is the difference between watercolors and other mediums that can be repaired by “painting over”.
• Use Art Trading Cards to practice your larger images before painting them large. This way if you make a mistake it will be on a small piece of paper and you can apply that lesson to your larger work.
• I have seen different techniques for holding the watercolor paper to your background for paintings, including stapling down the sides of the work. I prefer to use masking tape around the entire edges of my paintings.

You can read more about what inspires me and my biography at Bio page at www.derekmccrea.50megs.com/about.html

Derek McCrea is a guest blogger and a member of the Artgonia Community, you can see his Artgonia page here.

Using a smartphone, people can access your artist profiles on facebook , twitter, linkedin and any other website (like your online portfolio) right from your business card.

It’s a great way to have people connect with you and admire your art using their smartphone when they find your business cards in coffee shops, galleries or at meetings. We can’t think of a better way to use the back of your artist business cards. Of course you can also include your Artgonia profile page.

Do you have an iPad? Check out our new iPad app. Download here.

For more information see http://artgonia.com/ipad

For our artists: Your art is now automatically showed beautifully on the iPad, no need to do anything!

With this first release you are able to start a discussion topic and have other users and yourself follow-up with comments.

It’s a great way to drive traffic to your profile page and art. The most discussed topics will raise to the top giving you great exposure.

In the near future we will be adding new improvements and as always feedback is more than welcome.

Enjoy discussing with each other!

As 2010 draws to an end, we reflect on the many things that Artgonia achieved this year.

• We re-launched the site after more than 4 years online and got quite a lot of traction.
• Started our integration with facebook for faster and better promotion of our artists’ work
• Added numerous features in response to our users’ feedback
• Attracted 200 facebook friends

For all of you that joined us this year and the many that continued with us since the beginning of the Journey: Happy Holidays and a great 2011!

In the new year we will continue to innovate Artgonia to bring even more features to promote and sell your art. We sincerely appreciate your trust in Artgonia and look forward to serve you and help you in the new year.

To a great 2010 and a better 2011!

Daniel Arroyo,
Founder & CEO, Artgonia.com

Artgonia is proud to release the new “Events” feature.

You are now able to let your Artgonia users know about your upcoming art-related events like exhibitions, art shows, art fairs, etc… Let people know where your art will be displayed so that those that happen to be close-by can go visit.

It’s easy, there’s a new option in the “My Art” tab called “My events“,  simply go there to create and maintain your events.

We hope you enjoy and, as always, feedback is welcomed.

Artgonia has been steadily growing in all parts of the world and it has become difficult to know where your favorite artists are located so from today Artgonia will allow artists to indicate where they are. The new Location feature can be found in you profile page. This enables your prospective customers know where in the world you are.

More exciting features are going to pop up in the site that use this information but for know let your fans know where you are and don’t worry, you can enter as much info as you’re comfortable giving. For example you can only enter your city, or just your country  (we know you’re in planet earth already Of course if you have a showroom open to the public, you might want to enter the full address.

This is how you can enter your location:

1. Sign into you artgonia account
2. Enter your profile page
3. Scroll down to the “Location” section
4. Enter a name for your location (e.g. My town, Gallery, Studio, etc…)  > this is optional
5. Enter as much info about your address as you feel comfortable
6. Check it out in you public profile

Thanks for your continued support to Artgonia. We hope you enjoy this feature.

We have completed our first release of the facebook Artgonia application. Check it out on http://apps.facebook.com/artgonia.

It’s a great way to showcase your art without never leaving facebook. It’s the easiest way to have your art gallery right on facebook with access to over  500 Million people. Try it out! Go find your gallery and start promoting it to your friends.

It’s easy and don’t forget to add your own “Art” tab in your facebook profile for even more exposure.

In order to help you promote your Artgonia Art in other websites, we have created a set of widgets that you can include in your personal website or blog.

Simply go to http://artgonia.com/art/widgets when logged in, see how they look and copy the code.

If you need any help don’t hesitate to contact us

We hope that you find them useful and that you let us know if you’d like to see more of them.

We’re glad to announce the release of the “my favorites” tab. This will allow Artgonia users to manage and track their favorite art and artists found on the site.

This feature can be accessed through the “my favorites” tab in the main menu or going to http://artgonia.com/favorites when you’re logged into your account.

In this tab you will be able to see:

• Art that you have selected as favorite
• Art that you have voted on
• Artists that you are following

We hope you enjoy the new feature and be sure that we will be adding more information and interactions in this tab soon.