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Tuesday, September 10, 2013

How to Make Time for an Art Blog

'And the Mountains Sing'          5x7         pastel       ©Karen Margulis
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It's all I can do to find time to paint!  How can I possible fit in time to sit at the computer and write a blog post?  Does this sound like something you've said?  I get this question a lot.  I had to think about the answer.  Blogging to me is such a habit that I don't think about it as making time for posting.  It's the other way around. Often what I want to post will guide what I paint. Or it at least causes me to make time to paint.
Because if I don't paint I have nothing to post. And we all know the benefit that comes from lots of painting time!  So having a blog is often my incentive to paint rather than waste time or find excuses.

Maybe you need more incentive than that.  Here are some ideas to get you thinking:


  • Take advantage of the feature to save posts to draft and publish when you are ready. This way you can write when you have a block of free time.
  • Decide on a posting schedule that works with your activities. Plan on posting at least once a week. And on posting days either write a new post or use one of your drafts.
  • Make a list or calendar with blog post ideas.  If you have good ideas ready you will save a lot of time. Most of my time is spent on figuring out what I want to post! 
  • Come up with an easy routine for posting. For example I always do my post as soon as I upload the photos of my daily painting. I am already sitting at the computer and so it is easy to open up Blogger, load the photos and write the post. 
  • Keep posting and post often! The steps involved in doing a blog post may seem time consuming at first but once you get familiar with it, the posting goes so much faster. So if it seems to take a long time....keep posting and it will get faster!


Today's Painting:  White Wallis paper with Terry Ludwig pastels. This is a view of Mt Moran in Grand Teton National Park.

3 comments:

Tim Moore said...

could you do a blog on getting good quality pics, scans for the web?..my pictures ,scans usually dont turn out well..tinted a funny color..maybe if my pics turned out better,i wouldnt get discouraged from going further..

Karen said...

Hi Tim,
I will be doing a post soon on how I take my photos. Great idea! Thanks!

Andy Crichton said...

Excellent advice, the hardest part is sitting down and starting. I set up my blog based website writing like mad from 7pm to 1am 5 days a week after work and at weekends, a bit extreme but it developed a body of work that has paid huge dividends.

Not everyone's gig though, but if it is done consistently, blogging really is like falling off a log. Build and they WILL come.