How to Write for an Art Blog

Writing for art blogs is an extremely creative process because it combines both the creativity of one’s art and the creativity of creating a blog post. When writing any type of blog post it is best to keep your ideas short and to the point but with art blogs many bloggers go into a lot of detail when describing the process of their art, from the beginning ideas to the finished product. In the example shown below, Deanna Wood blogs about a new commission in which she used oil pastels and the steps she took in creating this piece of art. Due to this intense detail and the fact that art blogs create defined communities of artists, it is pretty common to see artistic vernacular that would most likely be confusing to someone who is not an artist. Also in the example, Wood uses vernacular such as “solvent transfer” which makes this specific blog post much more specific for other artists.

Another feature of art blogs that is a type of dialogue is the use of images. It is not just the actual writing that communicates ideas to the readers but also the artwork, usually in the form of uploaded images. But besides making the images speak in tandem with the writing, remember to keep in mind that as an art blogger you are writing for an audience of other artists so it is completely okay to write in an inventive tone and dialogue that enhances this community.

Target audience: The most important thing to keep in mind when writing an art blog post is the audience. Because most readers of art blogs tend to be artists themselves, many art bloggers write for this specific audience.
Topic: For an art blog, the topic can truly be anything. You can write about a piece of artwork you just finished, something you are in the process of creating, ideas you have been mulling over, etc. Many artists choose to focus on the marketing side of the art world in their blog which also targets the artistic community.
Tone: Some art bloggers use their art blogs as a way to display their creative writing as well as their actual artwork. Because of this a poetic tone is often employed to get readers immersed in the creative mindset and to make the blog posts more interesting.
Length: The length of the art blog posts is definitely up to the blogger. Most just get their ideas across to the reader and then stop. The fact that there are rarely introductions or conclusions takes down the lengths of the posts a bit.

Example of an art blog post from Deanna Wood’s blog Artist, Emerging:
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Commission, Part 3
I wanted to blog about the other pieces I created for my commission, and this is the second on that I worked on.

The original piece is two 12" x 12" panels that I created about 5 years ago, while I was in grad school.
If I remember correctly, the panel on the left has white paper and a color copy of clouds glued to the surface. I drew the triangles with oil pastel and did a solvent transfer of the telephone pole from a copy. The right panel is similar - white paper, oil pastel, and a solvent transfer. Except I can't remember how I made the transfer on the right so much lighter...
So they wanted this piece to be 48" x 66". Since the original was a diptych, I decided to do this piece on 2 panels as well, so the panels ended up being 48" x 33".