Rutgers University is holding a free symposium March 20 on legacy planning for artists.

"Etched in Memory" focuses on protecting artists' professional legacy through planning and archival practices. The program will include artists, attorneys, archivists and other professionals, addressing "the concerns of building and maintaining artistic reputations and creative output." You'll learn about preserving personal papers, business records and artwork, and assisting surviving partners, families and friends with decisions on financial issues and estates.

If you're near New Jersey, I recommend stopping by! You can see more detailed info at the Rutgers WAAND website.

In last weekend's "This American Life" (a repeat from the late '90s), there was a hilarious segment on these two guys who hired a polling firm to determine what makes people like art.

Using the data, they painted what people want. It turned out to be a landscape, with a mountain and a lake, and deer, and a family, and George Washington.

As such:



They also created most liked and least liked paintings for each country, and the most wanted and least wanted songs. The most wanted song is bland and schmalzy, but the least wanted song is charming! It includes all the elements people said they hated in music: opera, rap, children's choirs, songs about holidays, songs about cowboys, accordions, bagpipes and tubas.

Click here to listen to the whole podcast of "This American Life" for free.

Looking for something to do before all the relatives arrive? Go old-school and make a turkey hand; you could win an iTunes gift card!

To get us in the thanksgiving spirit here at Rule29, we’ve already started drawing our hand turkeys and hanging them on the fridge. But we need more hand turkeys to completely cover the fridge, and we’re asking for your help. Download the template below, use creative magic to draw a sweet hand turkey, and then scan and email them back to us at mail@rule29.com, we’ll post all of the entries below, and one lucky hand turkey will win a $25 iTunes gift card as our way to show our thanks to you. Please have your Turkeys back to us by close of business Nov. 25th or early the 26th.

Via HOW

We're giving away copies of The Artist's Magazine 2007 Annual CD—ƒ—— to 10 lucky people who take our editorial survey! Anyone who takes the survey by this Friday, October 31, will be automatically entered into the drawing. (Due to international laws, the drawing is limited to U.S. residents only.)

What do you like about The Artist's Magazine? What do you think could be better? We want to know! Let it all out in our editorial survey.

We're giving away 10 free copies of The Artist's Magazine 2007 Annual CD—ƒ———a compilation of every 2007 issue of the magazine! Anyone who takes the survey by Friday, October 31, will be automatically entered into the drawing. (Due to international laws, the drawing is limited to U.S. residents only.)

We'd love to hear your feedback. Click here to take the survey!

Hey, folks! Just snuck back on the blog to post this preview video of ArtistsNetwork.TV's new workshops, which are going live very soon! In this one, contemporary realist Sharon Sprung discusses and demonstrates how you can paint realistic skin tones:

If you're trying to promote yourself as an artist, you gotta have a website. Or if you don't have a website, set up a blog you regularly update. But if you can't commit to posting frequently and HTML makes you dizzy, there is another option: the photo-sharing site Flickr.

The site is great for casual photographers—uploading party pics or snapshots of family members has never been easier—but it also can work as a networking tool for artists and other creative types.

As long as you have digital images and internet access you can make use of Flickr. You create a username and homepage for yourself on your site (your "photostream") that displays your most recent pictures. (Or not—you can make pictures you want to keep to yourself private, or share them only with users you allow.)

Having a photostream is a great way to show your latest work, or even your works in progress. Some artists like to share pictures of their palettes, or of their studios.

When you upload a picture, Flickr automatically resizes it, and you can add "tags" to it—words to describe the image and its content. For example, the artist has tagged this painting with terms such as "daily painting," "acrylic," "dinosaur" and "wood." You can also add your photos to groups, which is great way to get more traffic on your photostream.

I also like using Flickr as an image host—by linking to the resized image in my photostream, I don't have to worry about having the actual files on the computer I'm using to post images on my blogs. (Including this one!) You can also think of it as an external hard drive—when you upload images, you're creating a backup file. Very good in case of computer meltdown!

A basic account on Flickr is free, or you can pay $24.95 a year for a pro account that ups your storage limits and removes ads from the website. I've had a pro account for about three years now, and it's been well worth it.