EBSQ Best Practices
II. PERSONAL GALLERIES
Ah personal galleries, this I find is quite underused on EBSQ or it's just totally used incorrectly.
If you sit and think about your art - you can probably divide it up into series, periods, or genres. I currently have ten galleries in place. I have a gallery for strictly ACEO work, Photography, Pop-tanicals Series, Body Language Series, B&W Series, Portraits, Fractals, Pop Art (for the Pop Gals), Pin Ups Series, Kris Misc (for EBSQ art shows, or other odds and ends I create),
Each of these houses specific work. The purpose for this is like a sorting tool. If you have a patron that only likes your sculptures and could care less about your drawing abilities - they can use a nifty little drop down to view only what they want to see. I am also starting to gain popularity with my custom cigar purses so I will be making a specific gallery for those, as well.
These categories are specific to my art, you will need to examine your art and styles to determine what would work for you and your art.
When choosing your categories, it is important to name them with obvious names that will actually hold more than one or two obscure works of art. More bang for your buck. If your work is not logically sorted, and named - more than likely they will not use this feature and get bored searching through all your endless artwork.
How do you create these galleries you ask?
Easy when you are uploading a new work of art there is a section towards the bottom of the listing page called: Gallery Placement.
This is where the magic happens!!!!
The first option is to choose an existing gallery, if you have created one before they will be listed here.
The second option is to create a new one. How ever you type it (caps, lower, misspelled) is how it will show to the patrons. You simply type it in. Then when you hit submit it will auto create it for you, add it to the previous drop down, and sort your art for you in one fail swoop!
The third option is much trickier, or it can be easy as pie. It all depends on how anal you want to be with your portfolio. This option is called Gallery Order.
By default, if you never enter anything in this box - to any of your artwork it will be shown in order of upload - newest art first.
For some of us this of course is not good enough LOL we would be the anal ones. We want to manipulate how our galleries are shown, we want to have total control over our galleries BWAHAHAHAHA! (sowee excuse me)
You can do this by using the Gallery Order option. For my personal gallery I like to mix it up, but have nice clean rows of artwork. Each row shows similar work from the same series when possible. This is how I like it, you might want all red on the top row. To each their own. The way this is achieved is you have to mentally assign each row a number or a range of numbers.
If I want something on my first row on my portfolio I enter the number 0. Those works of art are shown in the order they were uploaded. (I reserve this row for new art, and some of my favorites - these items are above the fold and always seen first.)
For my second row however I enter a number range starting with the number 100. Why would you do this? I want wiggle room my friend. If I want to actually change the order of those images I can number them 100, 101, 102, 103, & 104 And at anytime if I want to I can insert a whole row in front of this one by simply using the number 50.
This can all sound confusing so I did this mock up so you can see it visually, instead of fuzzy math on chat room walls. Since I used my own art there is nudity if you click this link (just wanted to warn you!!!!!!!!!)
my personal galleries order
This method works very well for me, s it's flexible and very forgiving. If I numbered everything incrementally then I would have a ton of renumbering to do all the time. This way if I want a new row to sneak in there I can simply start a new row with 110 - 114 or even 1,1,1,1,1. You could very easily go with a 1,2,3,4,5 etc count but if you ever wanted to insert a new painting early in the mix it would result in renumbering everything.
If you have a small portfolio this would be easy of course but there are some of us with over 5 pages of goodies - that becomes tedious.
Here are some easy number combos/ideas you can use to organize your portfolio
1. You could assign each personal gallery an id number. All paintings in that gallery are assigned the same number so they show up in your portfolio together. (i.e. all florals are numbered 200, or if you do florals each flower type gets its own number like daisies are numbered 500)
2. You could assign each color group a specific number so you can have all your red works shown together. (i.e. all red paintings are numbered 400)
3. Each series you work with could be assigned a number so you can have similar works shown side by side.
The options are endless.............you can even take it FURTHER because all the options above though they will sort your art, you can still control the order.
Take those red paintings. You can start numbering them at 400, then to control the order further (instead of newest to oldest by default) you can number them by 5's 400, 405, 410 etc - the lower numbers will be shown first - and all red paintings wont mingle with say blue paintings that you started with the number 600.
The biggest factor is consistency - if you are going to take the time to really put an effort into your personal galleries, it is important to keep it up. If you layout your portfolio exactly as you want it - then the next few pieces you don't take the time to place, it will jack up your whole system because they will take the first few spaces in your portfolio, thus knocking everything a few slots back - your beautiful rows are no more.
