artist/writer software

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Published September 30, 2019 by Gail Daley Writer & Artist

Have you ever been tempted to include a celebrity portrait in your art portfolio? Say you are entering a theme show and there is a celebrity whose very image just screams “I am this theme”i.e. General Patton or Pappy Boynton for WWII, Clint Eastwood or John Wayne for western art, Mohammed Ali, or an Olympic swim star for a sports theme, etc.? Well if you do use a celebrity without gaining the proper permissions, you could be sued for copyright violations under something called “the right of publicity” laws.

I became curious about this when a young artist used a drawing of a western icon as an entry in a local art show. I remembered reading about the case of a company being sued when they used President Obama’s image advertising a product on their billboard. I did some on-line investigating and found some interesting information. I discovered that public figures could actually copyright their image under some state copyright laws. This was especially informative to me because I had always thought that copyright was a federal law, not a state one. In my research, I discovered that both are true. In other words, you have federal copyright laws and the states can make additions to these laws that could affect us as visual artists. Copyright law may also vary from Country to Country.

What exactly arethe rights copyright concerning publicity laws in regards to public figures? Public figures include politicians, celebrities, and any other person who has put themselves in the public spotlight or has greater than normal access to the media.

Wikipedia:, defines these laws, as “The right of publicity, often called personality rights, is the right of an individual to control the commercial use of his or her name, image, likeness, or other unequivocal aspects of one’s identity. It is generally considered a property right as opposed to a personal right, and as such, the validity of the Right of Publicity can survive the death of the individual (to varying degrees depending on the jurisdiction). In the United States, the Right of Publicity is a state lawbased right, as opposed to federal based right, and recognition of the right can vary from state to state. The Celebrities Rights Actwas passed in Californiain 1985 and it extended the personality rights for a celebrity to 70 years after their death.” There are other portions of California’s privacy laws to protect non-celebrity individuals but they not the subject of this blog and may be covered later.

Further reading tells me that even if your artistic source matter is a photograph taken by youof the celebrity or public figure in question, you might still be liable for violation of the right of publicity act if you invaded the privacy of the person in question to obtain the reference photo. An individual’s right of privacy or publicity is infringed when their name, voice, signature, photograph or likeness appears in a work of art and (a) can clearly be recognized as the subject shown in the work, (2) the subject has not consented to their image being used, and (3) the circumstances under which the photo was taken fit one of the following scenarios. Invading the subject’s privacy by encroaching into their private affairs. This covers events occurring in private or semi-private places: i.e. someone’s home or an invitation only event.Invading the subject’s privacy by the public disclosure of embarrassing facts not generally known. For instance if you take a photograph of a celebrity and then use the photo to paint them in the nude, or publish a photo of them embracing someone not their spouse this might be construed as being invasion of privacy. Invading the subject’s privacy by commercial appropriation. Using President Obama’s image to sell a product on the billboard was a clear example of this type of invasion.

Now I am not a lawyer, but common sense tells me why take the chance? Even if you win, a lawsuit is expensive and time-wasting and just being dragged into court over something like this could damage your reputation as an artist. If you would like more information on this subject, there are several good sites on the internet.–435063.html

This is a Case out of New York State concerning a sculpture using Cheryl Teigs legs in a sculpture. Recent verdicts expand artists’ rights in celebritydepiction …





Published September 16, 2019 by Gail Daley Writer & Artist

I tried the free art price calculator on the web, and found it interesting, although pricing art is so idiosyncratic that it wasn’t really useful. In my work as a Director of Art-Tique, I am often asked how much they should charge for their work by artists who are just starting out. I always tell beginning artists that art pricing is personal (meaning every artist pretty much makes up their own rules!). However, there are some guidelines:

Make sure the price of the art first covers the cost of your time and materials.

If you want to use the “per square inch” approach, you can emulate the Printing companies who do price by the square inch. Take a survey (get prices) locally from both a high-end printer of Giclee and your local print shop (Kinkos, Office Impress) and check out the pricing on the on-line printer Fine Art America. Compare the prices.

If you don’t want to use that approach, go to a local art show, compare your art to the winning art, and check out other artists’ prices. This will give you a ballpark figure on how much other artists in your area are charging. Where prospective buyers will see the art does make a difference. I live in a large city surrounded by farming and agriculture that is not considered an art mecca for California. If I sell a painting in my area I will get less for it than if I had marketed on the Coast because for some reason, buyers think that there is more ‘cachet’ from art bought in Carmel or San Francisco than that bought in Fresno. The same painting by the same artist will earn more if marketed in a pricey gallery in New York than it will in New Jersey.

When checking pricing at an art show, you should be looking for the following criteria: Artists who paint the same or similar subject matter (abstracts, still lifes, portraits, landscapes, etc.) Be honest: is your art as good as theirs is? If you don’t know, ask a more experienced artist to critique your work. Please be careful with this; the person who does the critiquing should be a more experienced artist with some knowledge of technique and the principles of art. We love them, but the opinions of our friends and family who don’t know any more than we do about art really aren’t useful as critiques.

Enter some art shows and have a professional (a paid judge) give you an honest opinion.

Lastly, how much do you like the art? If you really like it, don’t give it away. Price it so that you will be happy if it sells, not regret that you gave it away. If it doesn’t sell, you can enjoy looking at it!

If you are still interested in using the art price calculator, here a couple of links to free art pricing sites.



Published July 16, 2018 by Gail Daley Writer & Artist

There is a lot of talk these days out there about using social networks to market your art. You can certainly reach a lot of people with your message, but simply reaching them isn’t good enough. You must convince them  to buy your stuff. A  key ingredient in successful social media marketing is creating “social authority”. Once established as an “expert” in your given field you become an authority (someone others listen to). You can establish yourself by writing on-line about stuff you know about. It doesn’t  have to be art because if you want to sell your art, its necessary to reach outside the sphere of artists you know to your target audience. It’s a funny thing, but having social authority in one sphere will give you authority other places; just witness all those celebrities who endorse presidential candidates!

Because of social media—and the direct/indirect effect of these marketers, the buying public is more likely to make decisions using what they read and see in social networks, but only if they hear about it from someone they trust. This is the reason a focused, carefully designed social media strategy needs to be a basic part of your marketing plan.

Social Networking sites allow internet users to connect with each other. Most people using social networking sites join a group: former school classmates, a means to connect with friends (like Facebook and Twitter), etc.; most  of these sites also feature a recommendation system linked to trust. Social Network sites are web-based   r allowing users to connect over the internet via e-mail or instant messaging. It can be difficult to create a network of buyers if you are not already acquainted with them most of these networking services do run on “friend recommendations”. If you want your message about your work to be picked up and sent “viral”, you must create a message that is both interesting and attention grabbing.

Viral marketingviral advertising, or marketing buzz refersto practices thatuse pre-existing social networks. The goal is to create viral messages thatattract people with high social networking potential(SNP) so that these people will tell everyone about the message. It’s like a game of gossip.

Generally three basic conditions must be met for your communication to go viral. 1) A “go-between” or “dispatch rider” must pick up the message. There are three types of “dispatch riders” required to change an ordinary message into a viral one: market devotees, social hubs, and salespeople. Market devotees are among the first to get exposed to the message and transmit it to their immediate social network. Social hubs are people with many connections; they often know hundreds of people and can serve as tie-ins between groups with different interests. Salespeople receive the message from the market devotee, amplify it by making it more relevant and persuasive, and then send it on. 2) The message must be memorable and interesting. Only messages that are both will be passed on to others and spur viral marketing. Making your message more memorable and interesting (or more infectious) can be a matter of minor adjustments. 3) the environment needs to be favorable: The timing and context of your promotion takeoff must be right too. If there is something much more interesting going on like the Japanese earthquake, your chances of getting a competing message out are not very good.

Question: how do you find these people? Well, you must put in your time developing on-line relationships. It will be necessary for you to express some type of interest in what they are doing so that they will reciprocate. I am not advocating spending hours on the net; in fact, just the opposite. However, you will needto be able to make a connection with them on some level. Keep your communications short and only respond to stuff that interests you because a phony interest can be easily spotted.

Want to know how effective you are? Here are a few free social media monitoring and measurement programs and tools:

  • How Sociable? A simple, free tool that measures the visibility of your brand across the web.
  • Addict-o-matic A nice search engine that aggregates rss feeds, allowing you to see where your brand is lacking presence.
  • Social mention: A social media search engine offering searches across blogs, and microblogs with a social rank score.


Published December 18, 2017 by Gail Daley Writer & Artist

Art is a business, and like any business, it is necessary to keep track of expenses as well as income. While you can do this by hand, nothing beats a computer program to track stuff!  I have been searching for a comprehensive program for my art business for years. While there are some all-inclusive programs beginning to be developed, I have usually found some flaw in the program; either they were hard to use, or had an incompatible photo program for thumbnails of my art, etc. There are a couple of new companies with programs designed for artists out on the internet (see links below).  DISCLAIMER: Please keep in mind that I have no practical experience with any of these programs except Working Artist. It is up to you to check them out and decide if you want to use them. Here are some links to potential art software sites along with what information I have on them:  (Free evaluation copy available) Current pricing is £150.00 (I assume this is British pounds or some type of Euro symbol).  Retails for either $59.00 or $129.00 depending on whether you want just the basic system or their Pro program.  this system says it will link to QuickBooks, web manager and has a system for I-Pad. It is also VERY expensive; licensing for this puppy runs anywhere from $5,000 down to $795.00.   Retails out for between $139 — $154 with upgrades for $59. This one comes in 4 separate editions 1) a studio edition designed for agents representing several artists, 2) The artist edition, designed the single artist to manager their business. The site also claims to have an edition for Art Fairs and for Galleries, but I wasn’t able to access them by clicking on them. This is the only one of these software programs I have any actual working knowledge of, and it was about 10 years ago that I tried to use a free trial download. At that time, I experienced considerable difficulty in uploading photos of my work into the program, as it would not accept jpeg versions for some reason. I assume they would have corrected this issue in the intervening time.  this one says it will manage inventory, contact, point of sale, has art web site templates, e-mail marketing and is available for MAC & PC. This is not that unusual as ALL of the software programs say they have both MAC & PC versions. Pricing for individual artists is $29/month, which works out to about $348 a year. Like Working Artist, this set up also has different programs for Galleries, stores consignment stores, museums, etc.

If you don’t want to purchase an expensive program, you can simply use an excel spreadsheet to track income and expenses but it is very time consuming. For expense tracking, I would recommend QuickBooks to track your expenses and income. QuickBooks, while a little on the expensive side is pretty user friendly and easily transitions into tax software programs such as Turbo Tax when it comes time to file your income tax. Unfortunately, I have heard rumors that it doesn’t mesh as well with Apple products as it does PCs. If you simply want to go the excel program route and manually track stuff, you can access copies of my system at

Yes, Virginia, I am actually using three programs to track my art and my expenses. QuickBooks for income and expenses, two spreadsheets that tell me where my art is at any given time; (Current Location Report and Painting Information Sheets) to track awards, income from each painting or prints made from it. I also use a photo file  with different sized images of my art for various uses (webpage, large-sized prints, and specific sizes for on-line show entries).

For Photo Editing I use Photoshop Elements because it is less pricey than the full Adobe editing program and as a painter, I really don’t need the maximum amount of bells and whistles you get with the full Adobe Suite.

I can’t say this often enough; back up your data!

You should keep at least two types of photo records:

A photo log with both high- and low- resolution photos of your work, kept separately from your desktop computer. A working copy can be kept on the desktop, but be sure and back up your files each month onto a separate disc or jump drive.

To keep track of your business and be able to recover your files in a disaster, you will need:

A program or system to track income and expenses;

A record that includes an image of each piece of art created and its disposition or current location.

Keep back-up copies of these items in a separate place, And up-date your back-ups monthly. Once your records are lost due to computer crashes, natural disaster or any other reason they are gone. For this, you can purchase separate auxiliary drives that have as much memory as a desktop, or you can back your stuff up into a version of the cloud. There are a LOT of cloud backup systems out there now. Automatic systems such as I-Cloud, and manual systems like Dropbox. None of these are free and if you can’t keep up the payments, I don’t know how recoverable your records might be. Check them out.

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