Meganne Mills. Artist’s Special. Grade 11, Age 17. 2013 Silver Medal, Painting.

Fractured Atlas recently compiled a list of practical tips to help budding artists take meaningful immediate steps toward developing their artistic careers — one where you spend less time worrying about the hurdles that stand in your way and have more time to create your art. Check them out below!

(1) Practice your networking.

Find opportunities to meet new people, expand your professional network, and get recognized by influential players. This includes supporting other people’s art, joining professional associations, organizing a panel discussion, or volunteering at a local arts organization or project. If an Emerging Leader or arts-related Meetup group doesn’t exist in your town around a particular interest, start one. Find a theme and own it. Love bourbon and arts technology projects? Schedule informal gatherings at your favorite bourbon haunt and call the evenings Bourbon for Arts Infrastructure Geeks. Try hard to include people who primarily work outside of the cultural sector. The variety of viewpoints and opinions will make it a more dynamic and interesting group.

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Brandon Bidleman. Music Business. Age 17. 2011 Gold Key, Art Portfolio.

Robert Asked:

What are the laws regarding song lyrics and how does one get permission to use them? I have heard that titles are okay, but not lyrics. If an author wanted to use lyrics, how would one go about asking for permission? Are there legal forms and such to fill out or, after getting permission, print the songs copyright permission?

Ned Answered:

When you’re in the process of writing a book, you shouldn’t worry about any of this stuff, except from an artistic and longevity standpoint. Do you really want to include the lyrics to Rihanna’s “shine bright like a diamond” song in your book? Do you think anybody is going to know or care about those lyrics in 10 years? Books last a long time.

The answer might be yes – and in that case, go ahead and use the lyrics.

Now, if you sell your book to a book company, that’s where the lawyers come in. Read More

Emily Andrews. Overwhelming Books. Grade 12, Age 17. 2011 Silver Medal, Photography Portfolio.

Linda Asked:

You wrote and published your first book when you were a teen. Would you say it was easier in that time vs today for teen writers/everyone to sell, or is the (book) recession only a figment of our creative imaginations?

Ned Answered:

My mother used to tell me, “Every business is a hard business.” If you meet a writer, the writer will often say, “Writing is really hard. It’s impossible to make a living. Books are dead.”

But if you meet a model, the model will often say, “Modeling is really hard. You really have to hustle. And once you turn twenty, you’re done!”

It doesn’t do you any good to listen to these lines of argument. Of course writing is hard. It’s supposed to be. It’s a job.

Now, there are scary statistics. Read More

Nicole Valmana. Smile for the Rhino. Grade 8, Age 14. 2012 Silver Medal, Drawing.

There is a lot of confusion about image resolution — what is DPI? What is PPI? How do you calculate them and why do they matter?

Here’s a case-study:
Let’s say you want to print a digital image to a size 4×6 inches. What should be the dimensions for your digital image?

The first thing to know is that 300 DPI (dots-per-inch), is the standard “print-quality” resolution: let’s work backwards from there. Read More

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, created in 1935

Guest post by Katie Babick, Senior Editor of Scholastic Art Magazine

Although I am not an architect, I love to look at the buildings around me – and living in New York City, there are plenty to look at! Architecture is as much about the time and place it was built as the people who use it every day. Architecture can be about order like the classical buildings of Rome, about utility like the cold, sleek buildings of the Bauhaus, about fitting carefully into the landscape like Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic Fallingwater, or countless other styles.

How to Begin
Unlike drawing or painting, architecture can be a daunting medium. It seems like you need a lot more than a pencil or paintbrush to create a building that is interesting to look at and structurally sound. Luckily, you can begin to learn about architecture just by looking around you. The best way to develop your own style as an architect is to look at the buildings you see around you, then build on what you like (pun intended!). Read More

Megan Schmunk. Discomfort. Grade 12, Age 17. 2012 Gold Medal, Printmaking.

Guest post by Alliance staffer Courtney Buckland, Project Coordinator

While he was in high school, my brother made so many beautiful woodblock prints. I was always envious that he experimented with so many different mediums, and I stuck to the safe route with my pens, pencils and paintbrushes. He created such detailed, intricate images. They were truly incredible works of art, and thinking of them now, I would love to have them framed and hanging on my walls.

Engraving goes back to cave art, created by using stones, bones, and cave walls. In elementary school we experimented with printmaking by carving designs into apples, dipping them in ink, and then stamping them onto paper. Even a rubber stamp could be considered a printmaking tool. Pablo Picasso made more than 1,000 prints including etchings, engravings, drypoints, woodcuts, lithographs and linocuts. In 2012, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards received almost 800 printmaking submissions! Read More