Posting Paintings on Plein Eire

One of the best aspects of Plein Eire site is the ability to post your paintings easily. Amateur and professional artists are equally welcome to share their plein air work. However, we know that commercial galleries visit this site regularly to view the artwork on view. Therefore, it is important that all the paintings are well-presented and the site maintains a consistent, professional appearance. To ensure this, it is essential to follow some simple guidelines. Below are a few ground-rules and some tips to help with posting your work on Plein Eire :-

GROUND-RULES :

• Only artwork which is genuinely plein air may be posted.                                           This is a plein air site, so please respect that ethos. There is nothing wrong with studio painting but it does not belong here and there are other websites where you can post whatever you wish. So while it is possible to have a plein air portrait or a still life painted out of doors, it should primarily be direct, alla prima, about the place, the moment and the light. Needless to say, this demands a level of honesty from all members that each painting posted by them is substantially painted en plein air. In other words, with no more than minor corrections and 'tidying up' added off-site.

• 'Plein Air Paintings' may only feature your painting.                                               By all means, post photos of paint-outs, other artists at work, easels and equipment or the view you were painting but such photos must be uploaded to this site as a Blog or a Forum discussion thread or posted as a Video.

• Artwork must be photographed presentably.                                                            This means the artwork should be in focus, with minimal glare, no flash used and square-on, not tapering. Crop the image to exclude the frame. See the discussion thread 'Photographing Paintings' for some helpful tips on how to take shots of your paintings with a basic digital camera.
•  All paintings posted under 'Artwork' or 'Plein Air Paintings' must be posted without borders, frames, easels or background. 
• As the site matures, Plein Eire's admin team will be increasingly rigorous in deleting items which do not meet these criteria.

• TIPS :

  • Use 'My Portfolios' to organise your artwork by theme, by year, by event or painting holiday.
  • Under each uploaded artwork is an instant link to share it directly to your Facebook page.
  • To share a group of paintings on Facebook, first collect them into a Portfolio or album which you can title and select the option to share the portfolio.
  • Add some basic information about your paintings: eg. title, size, medium and support.
  • Adding an anecdote or a comment about the work may make it more interesting to viewers.
  • At your discretion, you may invite criticism or advice about a painting which is unresolved.
  • A community site is all about the quality of the dialogue. So, when commenting on others' artwork, do try hard to be as specific as possible rather than only to say 'very good'.
  • Add 'Tags' - keywords - as search filters when uploading or editing your artwork photos. For example, a painting of a boat in Rosslare, painted in 2010 on your holidays could have 'boat', 'Rosslare' and 'holiday 2010' as tags to group your images in different ways, as you want.