The Artist's Magazine is happy to announce our 2008 All-Media Online Competition! You can compete and win in seven categories this year: (1) Oil and oil pastel; (2) acrylic; (3) watercolor; (4) pastel; (5) mixed media and collage; (6) graphite, charcoal and colored pencil; and (7) digital art! Click here to learn details about the prizes and how to enter.

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:

• Painting valued at $3,100 turns out to be a Rembrandt self-portrait and sells for $4.5 million at auction.

• A great profile of Marlene Dumas.

• A neat website from a neat illustrator (via pica + pixel).

• Just for fun: the sky from above (via Coudal)

Want the whole world to know about your latest project or prize-winning piece? We just put up an article to help you maximize your exposure: Write a Press Release in 16 Easy Steps.

Michael Chesley Johnson takes the pain out of writing an eye-catching, concise press release with these tips. I couldn't agree more with some of them—like #4, "Give a precise location." You wouldn't believe how many press releases I get here at The Artist's Magazine that neglect to say what city and state the event is happening in.

The 11th tip is also important—keep it short! You've only got a few seconds to catch the interest of the editor or writer. No. 15 is a good one—make sure you're sending the release to the right person. Don't send a news release about your pastel workshop to a magazine or blog that only writes about digital art. And sending a release about an event happening in two weeks won't be of any use to a magazine that comes out quarterly.

Have any of you had particular success or spectacular blunders relating to press releases? Post a comment about it!

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.

Just a quick link today: The Art Law Blog, which includes a conversation on orphan works, as we've been discussing.

After almost three weeks of judging, we've done our part and sent the finalists on to the five category jurors! Below you can see us hard at work in the conference room where we were holed up:

Clockwise from left: Managing editor Chris, art director Dan, yours truly, associate editor Holly and captain my captain Maureen.

It was such a good feeling to pack up the slides and instructions and ship them off. And we are so excited about the art we've been seeing! Everyone has favorites, but there's no telling who the winners will be. Stay tuned!

Maureen found this one! Thoughts on existentialism for a rainy Tuesday...