Want a cool new website of your own ?

Don't you wish your website was just like me ... ?

Note: If you want to start with the cheap deal, skip to the end before you go back and read the rest of the sales pitch!

I know there are plenty of artists out there who, like me, would like a clean simple web presence with a contemporary feel and no clutter, where it's easy to add new work and manage things without having to pay your web designer to update the site when all you want to do is put up the new painting / installation / photos / construction / video etc. you just made.

• You don't want it to cost a fortune and take weeks to set up.
• You do want it to be a highly professional showcase for your art and an easy point of contact where people can find you.
• You don't want to have to divert yourself from the business of making art and teach yourself web programming because it's too expensive to get someone else to do it.

That's why I decided that, having had fun setting up my own site, and seeing that I think I have a good idea of what most artists want from a website, AND since I was a computer programmer and website guy in a previous life, I'd offer a cost-effective solution for other artists. So here's the deal:

1. Setup: £395 gets you up and running with a new clean and contemporary artist website with your own domain name, similar to my own site at martinherbert.com. It should take around 2 weeks from when I receive your content. You pay a deposit of £195 when you order and the balance when it goes live.
2. Maintenance option 1: If you are happy managing your own site content and reasonably confident that nothing will go horribly wrong then you can pay £12.50 a month (or £140 a year) to cover domain name renewal, hosting on the web server, and email/phone support for minor issues. I will give you instructions on how to upload your own content to add new work to the site and so on. If you need me to do more work on the site, then it costs £50 per 'incident' (which is tech speak for fixing something when it goes wrong).
3. Maintenance option 2: On the other hand, if you'd rather not get involved with managing the site at all and you just want me to look after everything for you, then you can pay £25 a month (or £275 a year) which means I will upload all your new work, make all and any changes you want and fix absolutely anything, as quick as I can. No extra costs (unless you want a total rewrite of the whole site of course!).

I think that covers more or less everything! If you'd like to talk about putting together a new artist site, please get in touch via the contact form on my website (click here) or email martin [at] martinherbert.com.

One last item: I need to do a couple of websites quick so I have more to show to potential clients, so I'm offering the first two sites at a knock-down set-up price of £225. If you'd like a really CHEAP deal, get in touch quick!

Peace and stuff, 

Martin

Last day of trading ...

"What Snake Saw in the Smoke" : Digital Painting : Copyright © 2013 by Martin Herbert
On sale at etsy.com!

So... end of an era!  Today is my last day of trading under the name "Spirit Visions". For reasons previously noted (here), I'm abandoning all the branding and concentrating on making fine-art under my own name. From now on I'm leaving the selling and making money to the people who are best qualified to do it - i.e. the dealers and gallerists. There is something considerably liberating in freeing myself from the self-induced pressure to be marketing manager, advertiser and salesman as well artist. Hopefully that means a lot more time and energy to make a lot more art! To that end there will soon be a new website at martinherbert.com, and to keep in touch you can follow this blog (see "Follow by email..." at top right) and subscribe to the newsletter (click here).

(Of course there remains the small matter of finding one or more dealers who are actually prepared to represent me, but, hey ... details. Actually, of course, I wouldn't be making this move if I didn't have some encouragement in that direction!).

Anyway... today is the last day and I should, for the last time, point out that all fine-art prints, posters and greetings cards in my shop at etsy.com are on sale for the last time today at HALF PRICE.  Enter the discount coupon code CLOSING50 during checkout for 50% off your whole order. Click here to go to the shop.

There ... that's the last time I will need to make any crass commercial announcements through social media! Time to celebrate!

All the best,
Martin

Check it out! I have seen the new show and It Is Good -

General view of the show at MoMA Wales

We went by MOMA at the Tabernacle Arts Centre in Machynlleth the other day to deliver a new DVD (now up and running - hooray!) and a piece I had to re-glaze after a mishap on the way last week (now taking up residence in the gallery window), and found that gallery technician Peter has done a great job of hanging. Amazingly he managed to get all 15 pieces into the space available and it's all looking very splendid.

 

The exhibition continues until June 6th, and there will be a private view on Saturday 18th May at midday.

Photos by Vivi-Mari Carpelan.

Not my pic behind the desk - that's a Kyffin Williams from the permanent collection.  What illustrious company I keep!

New fossils discovered

"Fossil Xenopelagica 2" : Digital painting, 30 x 30 cm at 300dpi : Copyright © 2012 by Martin Herbert

Made some new digital work over the last couple of days, for the first time in ages.  My entry for the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers "RE-Open" exhibition at the Bankside Gallery in London.  Got to wait until July to find out whether anything has been accepted now.

To produce the new prints, I reworked some of the unlikely realms images by using them to make 3D 'relief sculptures' which I then lit to look like they were engraved on various surfaces.  The original idea was to have them on a stone surface to make them look more fossil-like, but I found the lack of colour wasn't quite working so I ended up, after some trial and error, with something that I think looks more like a hammered copper sheet... Whatever, they're still called 'fossils'!

"Fossil Xenopelagica 6" : Digital painting, 30 x 30 cm at 300dpi : Copyright 2012 by Martin Herbert

The premise behind unlikely realms is that there is a whole collection of 'virtual' fauna and flora, both macroscopic and microscopic, to be documented.  They exist only within the computer, but can be drawn and photographed just the same as real natural organisms.  More coming soon as part of my ongoing project Synthesis.

"Fossil Xenopelagica 7" : Digital painting, 30 x 30 cm at 300dpi : Copyright © 2012 by Martin Herbert

One last one with a different surface - I decided at the last minute to do something a bit more colourful.  During experimentation I also found a process which makes the 'fossils' look as a if they are engraved on slate - will try to do some if I have time.

For the techies, no - they are not just made using the 'emboss' filter in Photoshop / these are actual 3D models lit using XenoDream from Stirling-Thornton.

"Fossil Lacestar II" : Digital painting 30 x 30 cm at 300dpi : Copyright © 2012 by Martin Herbert

A wander through the heart of the artist... Entry for the Oriel Davies open 2012

"Functional Pumping Heart Model" : 71 x 52 cm : Ink, pencil, gouache, egg-tempera & transfer print on handmade paper :
Copyright © 2011 by Martin Herbert

New drawing I've entered for the Oriel Davies open exhibition for 2012 - a good show to enter work for in that the first prize is not only £1500, but also a one-man show in 2013.  Now that would be useful!  Vivi-Mari has entered as well ... fingers crossed.

Title - "Functional Pumping Heart Model".  Original drawing in sepia ink and clay pencil on handmade khadi paper, with transfer printed elements including a photo by Vivi-Mari (which is why it's only 'sort of' a self-portrait - I did lots of things to it, but the original photo is hers - I guess that really makes it our first collaboration - another one coming soon!).  A symbolic journey through the many byways of the heart.  I thought of the old idea of phrenology, assigning mental functions to different areas of the head, and transferred the idea to the assigning emotional functions (and dysfunctions) to areas of the heart.  Not for sale online yet, until I hear whether it's been selected for the show (mid Feb), but I'm always willing to entertain offers.  Now.. on with the next piece, in between decorating the house ready for Christmas, etc. etc.....

"Functional Pumping Heart Model2 (detail) : Copyright © 2011 by Martin Herbert

 I'm really into the Indian khadi handmade paper at the moment - it's 100% recycled cotton rag (made of offcuts from the t-shirt industry), completely non-acidic (i.e. archive quality), and has a superb heavy textured surface for the drawing techniques I'm using.  This is the first piece where I've used transfer printing, which I think looks great for including what are essentially collaged elements - Vivi-Mari's photo portrait, and the text captions I made up to add to the heart.  The heart drawing itself is based on an anatomical engraving from the original edition of 'Gray's Anatomy'.

"Functional Pumping Heart Model" (detail) : Copyright © 2011 by Martin Herbert