If you would like to suggest a website, artist or topic for Lines and Colors, you can email me at charley@linesandcolors.com
It can be helpful to put either “lines” or “colors” (or “colours”) in the subject line of your email to help it get past the spam filters.
I appreciate your suggestions for sites I might be interested in writing about, but please try to be familiar with some of the sites I have written about, in terms of subject, style, level of professionalism and website presentation quality, before submitting a link.
Non-starter topics
As a general rule, I do not write about:
· Kickstarter projects (or indiegogo, etc.)
· Contests or give-aways
· Calls for entries
· New “portals”, community sites or places for artists to sell or display art
· Modernist, non-representational or “abstract” art
· Grafitti art
· News that does not involve a destination site (or sites) with lots of art images for my readers to enjoy
No aggressive watermarks
I have a policy of not featuring artist sites on which the images are watermarked (by which I mean defaced with watermarking to discourage reuse as opposed to simple identifying credit lines or website addresses).
No Facebook pages, logins or accounts
Please note: that I will not link to Facebook pages or other sites that require an account or login to view content. (I have stopped linking to the New York Times and the Art Renewal Center for the same reason; and no — “everyone” is not on Facebook.)
However, galleries on other group portfolio sites like ArtStation, Behance, deviantART, CGSociety, etc., that do not require a login are fine.
I will also link to artists’ ongoing crowdfunding sites, like Patreon (but not time limited campaigns like Kickstarter). However, enough images of the the artist’s work to be interesting must be available elsewhere, without requiring a login.
No pop-ups
I will not link to sites that require the dismissal of a pop-up (whether an ad, or “sign up for our newsletter” prompt) to access the site (Artist Daily, I’m looking at you).
Why so cranky?
Am I cranky about this stuff? Yes — because I feel it’s important to give my readers the smoothest, most barrier-free experience possible when I link to a destination site.
I can’t always reply
Please bear in mind that a suggestion is just that, a suggestion. I can’t guarantee that a suggested site will become a topic for a post.
Also, please understand that I often can’t get back to you and tell you why I didn’t write an entry about the suggested site (or didn’t write one yet). My schedule is pretty difficult most of the time and I’m lucky if I can write my posts, let alone handle a lot of correspondence.
I also have to point out that I have a long (long) list of sites and suggestions to go through, and it’s getting longer not shorter, so even the suggestions I use may take a while to appear.
I don’t mean to discourage you
I’m just trying to save you some trouble about what not to submit. Now that’s said, I hope I haven’t discouraged you from letting me know about a cool artist or web site you’ve seen, or your own work or site.
Thanks!
-Charley
charley@linesandcolors.com