20 Online Resources for Artists and Art Enthusiasts

20 Online Resources for Artists and Art Enthusiasts

Are you passionate about creating and appreciating art? There are tons of resources online to help with learning about, understanding, buying, selling, and collaborating on art. Here is a list of 20 resources artists and art enthusiasts should check out:

MyArtSpace.com - MyArtSpace.com is a free online community for contemporary art. The site features over 50,000 artists and art enthusiasts around the globe.

DeviantART - This free online art community is a spectacular place for artists to share and sell their collection. DeviantART features digital art, photography, traditional art, film, and animation.

Planet Photoshop - Planet Photoshop is a free site for photoshop tutorials, resources, and reviews. The tutorials cover a wide range of tools and effects that digital artists will find useful.

NoBullART - This online art gallery allows artists to promote, sell, and connect with the art community for free. NoBullART also has a large art community that promotes events, shows, and offers tips.

Saatchi Online Gallery - Saatchi Online Gallery provides a way for artists to display their work to thousands of people around the globe. Within this site, users can also buy art, connect with other artists, and receive critiques from others.

Art - 3000 - This free online gallery offers a place for all artists and photographers to display their work. The site also allows artists to communicate with potential buyers and does not charge a commission.

ArtGraphica - ArtGraphica provides free art lessons and tutorials for anyone interested in learning to draw, sketch, or paint. The tutorials focus on teaching artists to see the world around them.

Digital Art Tutorials - This digital site focuses on bringing professional digital techniques to everyone. The tutorials are a great way to get straightforward instruction or find inspiration.

Artmajeur.com - Artmajeur hosts a large collection of artworks from some of the best contemporary artists worldwide. Within this site, artists will find an online art gallery, artist list, upcoming events, and classifieds.

VisualProgression - The VisualProgession site is an art community for digital artists and graphic designers to share and connect with other artists. Within VisualProgression, artists will find a place to display portfolios, discuss techniques, and more.

GFXartist - GFXartist is an art community designed for digital artists. The site allows artists to browse tutorials, daily news, communicate, and share their work with others around the globe.

723.com - The 723.com online community offers a place for artists, photographers, and models to showcase their work. The free site features unlimited space for artwork, a personal gallery, critiques, and the ability to connect with other artists.

20th Century Art - This art course, offered free by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, takes a critical look at European and American art. Throughout the course, art students will discover how movements in history affected art.

Artabus - Artabus is a free online art gallery for contemporary artists to display their pieces to the world at large. Art enthusiasts can browse through thousands of sculptures and paintings.

Creative Spotlite - Creative Spotlite houses free lessons for artists and crafters of all expertise.

Arts and History - This free Open University course explores the changes in art during the Enlightenment period. This is a great course for art enthusiasts who want to learn more about are appreciation.

Artcyclopedia - This art history site is great for discussing and learning about top artists, masterpieces, and art news. The Artcyclopedia indexes over 2,300 art sites and links to 180,000 artworks.

ArtWEEN - ArtWEEN is an online artistic community for artists to connect, keep up-to-date on art news, and get international exposure for their work. The site also features weekly artists, galleries, museums, and students.

ArtPromote - This site, created for artists and art enthusiasts, features thousands of galleries, exhibits, artists, and museums. ArtPromote also provides free resources for artists to advance and manage their careers.

Tutorialized - Tutorialized provides free tutorials for digital artists and graphic designers. Artists can find tutorials for Flash, Fireworks, Illustrator, Photoshop, AutoCAD, and much more.

Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about online degree programs for OnlineDegreePrograms.org.

Education Sites in Second Life

I wanted to search for sites in Second Life in a different way then I have been in my research, sotoday I decided to do my search according to discipline. After about six hours of searching and looking around you can see what I have compiled so far, and these are just examples, my search was by no means exhaustive..but I am exhausted! What has excited me about this project is to look beyond the traditional University/College builds that I have been looking at and seeing some concrete examples of how Second Life can be educational content, an interactive learning environment, and a showcase for creativity.


I wanted to provide the educator who is interested in Second Life as a means of providing opportunities to teach students in an immersive environment to see what is going on in Second Life in their specific discipline area, there is a great deal of going on in a variety of areas. I only looked at mathematics, psychology and a smattering of religious, cultural sites. Given time I hope to look at more areas in the future so watch this blog for more! My first search was for Mathematics, this search pulled up four sites which included:

1) David Wheeler Institute for Research which is a closed site.

2) Life Art Gallery which has a companion website: imaginary2008.de The SLURL for this site is; http://slurl.com/secondlife/eduversa/183/68/21 Check this one out soon as it seems to be going away at the end of December.

According to the websitethis is: An interactive travelling exhibition by the Mathematischen Forschungsinstituts Oberwolfach for the Year of Mathematics 2008 in Germany. Its intention is to display visualizations, interactive installations, virtual realities, 3D objects and their theoretical background in algebraic geometry and in singularity theory in an attracting and understandable manner. It’s a unique science experience!


This site is also a part of a larger region in Second Life known as Eduversa..the Eduversa Website gives more details (in German but the website can be translated using Google Tranlator).

Another math site is the University of Warwick: SLURL here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Warwick%20University%20Maths/99/109/36

Möbius Band Statue by RHAS Raymaker/RHASCORP 2007

From a notecard at the University Warwick Site in SL: Möbius Band

The Möbius strip or Möbius band is a surface with only one side and only one boundary component. It has the mathematical property of being non-orientable. It is also a ruled surface. It was discovered independently by the German mathematicians August Ferdinand Möbius and Johann Benedict Listing in 1858.

A model can easily be created by taking a paper strip and giving it a half-twist, and then merging the ends of the strip together to form a single strip. In Euclidean space there are in fact two types of Möbius strips depending on the direction of the half-twist: clockwise and counterclockwise. The Möbius strip is therefore chiral, which is to say that it is "handed".

Other images from University of Warwick:

Finally I came to Kira Cafe in Second Life:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/BaikUn/222/91/251

KIRA website = http://www.kira.org


From a notecard I got from their Second Life site:

The Kira Institute is an interdisciplinary virtual institute based in Second Life. Its mission is to investigate distinct views of reality, beginning with the question: “Starting with science, what else is true?” We are a real life non-profit organization and we celebrated its 12th anniversary on 24 February 2009.

Psychology:

Derby University Project website inPreview Psych

Second Life site: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Derby%20University/164/123/22

Information from the Second Life site;

Problem-based Learning in Virtual Interactive Educational Worlds for Psychology (PREVIEW-Psych)

We are transferring problem-based learning techniques and technologies from Coventry University's PREVIEW project for the Psychology subject group. The project is developing Psychology scenarios and ‘intelligent avatar’ technology within Second Life.

Sarlumn: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Juwangsan/152/66/508


Sarlumn Blog:

This work draws upon a few primary themes and ideas. Broadly, it is a response to the corpus of existential philosophy, psychology, and literature, especially the writings of Sartre, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Hesse, Rank, Becker, as well as Joyce and Bertrand Russell and others far more obscure, such as the American poet Robinson Jeffers.

Thothica Art and Psychology:



Information on the Thothica community can be found here at this community website.


Second Life: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Clemson%20University%20Dev/131/139/28

Art:

From a notecard retrieved at the site:

The Walkway Gallery at Thothica was established in January 2008 to provide a platform to showcase aspects of the Thothica communities creative output, both individually and collectively , in a gallery setting.

Each exhibition will :
1. exhibit the work of an individual
2. exhibit the response of the thothica community to a particular theme, idea or issue
3. exhibit the works of collaborative teams

the works might be created in RL, SL or both

Religion:


Virtual Haj

http://slurl.com/secondlife/IslamOnline%20dot%20Net/83/12/27



Islamonline.net Second Life Site


From their Facebook page;

Description:

In 2007, IslamOnline.net (IOL), along with a handful of
volunteers, launched its first project inside the virtual
world of Second Life.

From here on in, it has been an ongoing story of growth and success!

IOL already has several projects range from entertainment to museums to virtual creations of real life spots.

With an ever growing, international staff from several different cultures, IOL’s community inside the virtual world is growing rapidly.

Latter Day Saints:


http://slurl.com/secondlife/Zarahemla/16/44/26


This site provides many links back to various websites with information on the LDS so if you visit keep in mind how interactive this site is given the level of information available on the web.


Retrieved from an article on the Second Life site of LDS:

Skyler Goode is the creator of an online Mormon community in a virtual reality role-playing game on the Internet called Second Life, or SL for short. In real life (RL for short), he is Keith Thompson, a high priest in the Stayton, Oregon, ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What began as a hobby to fill time has become a personal mission to create a real sanctuary where people can feel spiritual while role-playing in a virtual world.

Another link to an articleon the LDS presence in Second Life.

I visited Opera Joven's Second Life project website and site in Second Life:
the private island of Opera Joven is dedicated to show the most important elements of the culture heritage of the State of Jaliso: The Cathedral of Guadalajara, the Hospicio Cabanas, Los Arcos, La Minerva, The Tequila Landscape and the Tequila.

The Second Life site of the Institute for the Study of Virtual Worlds is here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Educators%20Coop%202/246/156/21

And finally I found this general site The Institute for the Study of Religions in Virtual Worlds information from their group is as follows:

SRVW is the SL group associated with the Institute for the Study of Religion in Virtual Worlds, located in the Educators Coop at the University of Texas at Austin. The Institute was founded for the purpose of providing a forum for scholars and interested others to exchange ideas about the function, use, and meaning of religion and ritual in virtual realities such as SL.