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Sigh...Not a Social Butterfly

Olga Dytyniak

Blog #2 of 23

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July 17th, 2015 - 08:32 PM

Sigh...Not a Social Butterfly

Well, I've been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century social scene by the need to share my icons of all things. No I am not looking for friends. I am not interested in the minutiae of anyone's existence or what they did on their last family vacation. Pinterest and Twitter and Instagram, oh my!
A whole new language and way that people relate nowadays, so I'm being a good little artist and following all the suggested ways of having one's art be seen. Pinterest was my first and lovely to learn almost immediately. It has proven an invaluable means of building a community of artists with the same sensibilities who are looking for techniques and prototypes and formulas and all the hundreds of things one needs to master in order to become a real iconographer. It is easier to find people willing to openly share techniques online that it has been my experience to find in person. Curious, isn't it. Some artists love to teach so much that they do it for free in detailed videos. Others, whom you pay to teach you are still secretive about giving up all the goods. Back to being social, ahem. Twitter came next, and I am slowly learning to appreciate following particular individuals. But the real treasure lies in the connections that those people have, and suddenly, your yield has extrapolated radically and followers are boomeranging back at you. I have found it beneficial to hook up (in the old fashioned sense of this term!!!) with museum curators and professors of medieval history and archaeologists. You get the idea. This can be very enervating at 1:00 in the morning. Finally I have been brought to my knees with Instagram, which I'm told is currently the ne plus ulta. Correct me if I'm wrong. This seems more complicated but I'm told that this is the way to be seen these days. It consists largely of your submitted photos, taken with a phone, and very little text. In my case, I don't really know what I am doing, so my text consists of a title for my icon photo as well as a referral to a website where more information on the icon may be found. Pinterest and Twitter were largely intuitive and learning to use them went easily, but Instagram may take, no, back it up, will take more time. Stay posted and I will let you know if this butterfly can actually learn to fly.

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