Using Pinterest as an Artist's Tool...

What's all this "Pinterest" stuff about? Why would anyone want to view endless scrolls of random photos, you ask?  As an artist, it is one of the most useful and innovative tools out there!

Pinterest attracts creative, "right-brain" people.  It is a mecca for artists to connect with other  artists and creative people in general,  to share like minded ideas and tastes.

I am not the only one thinking about Pinterest right now...Jackie Jordan director with color marketing  with Sherwin Williams just did a blog on it!  She discusses the four phases of obsession with Pinterest and she is pretty accurate!

When you first start an account on Pinterest, all the photos you see are a jumbled hodge-podge under the Pinterest grouping of "everything".  As you see a photo that interests you, you can pin it to your account and start boards with topics that interest you.(color, murals, trompe l'oeil, etc) You should credit the owner or photographer of each photo in the description, give credit where credit is due.  This is a place to visually organize your ideas into categories where they can be viewed with one click of a mouse.  You will begin to see a pattern as you pin more things that you are drawn to. You will more easily find other people with similar interests and then, you have the choice to see "everything" or "following" which are the photos pinned by the like minded people you follow.

You can create boards (think virtual bulletin boards) to show a client when working on an upcoming project. I recently finished a large ceiling involving a trellis design and have another one coming up for walls, so naturally, I have a board entitled Treillage that clients can view and visualize what will be in their home. People enjoy seeing a succession of photos  that they can pick and choose certain aspects from to define their style for the upcoming project.

These are photos of my Pinterest page and some of my boards. I work out ideas for projects through pinning countless photos on a project board and see many other artists doing the same thing. When you see someone pin twenty pictures of a certain bird, details of their feathers, etc, you know they are working on something that will have a bird in the composition.

All of the photos on this post are from my boards on Pinterest. You can also use the search box and find a dizzying amount of photos on a particular subject and add more pins to your boards. You can also pin things from the internet as well as any file or personal photo you have.  The more you pin and the more people you follow, the more inspiration you will find daily, even hourly, while browsing on Pinterest.  I urge you to visit their site and stir your imagination even more with like minded people from around the world!