2014 Year in Review

2014 has been an extremely busy year for me.

Running this blog is not a full time job for me, nor is it my full time job (I'm a infographics journalist), but I spend a lot of my free time on it.

October

In October, I spent my free time either waiting for the postman to appear or reading the artbooks released that month. That month, I had a stack of books on the floor because there's no space on the shelf. There were enough books for a review each day but I had to focus on featuring the more popular artbooks first, leaving the rest to November which was more relaxing by comparison.

October broke the record of how much money I spent on artbooks to feature on the blog. It was around US $950. And that was just for October. Overall in 2014, I spent thousands. I did not go and calculate the exact amount so as not to shock myself. LOL.

Where do the books come from?

I get asked where my artbooks come from quite often when readers meet me. I mention that in the About Page. Well, most of them, 80-90%, are bought. I get a handful of review copies from companies, borrow from my sponsors Basheer Graphic Books and APD Singapore, and some copies from independent artists.

Promoting your books on Parka Blogs

I enjoy featuring the artbooks or sketchbooks of artists who send me their stuff, especially if their book fits what I usually feature on the blog. I'm always glad to help out a fellow artist.

Shipping to Singapore is not cheap so I really appreciate those who choose to send me physical copies even though I've already said that a PDF version would be sufficient.

Promoting your artbook on the blog is free. You can also expose your work to thousands of readers.

Highlights

Of all the artbooks I've featured, it's too difficult to pick any particular on to talk about. You should just check out the list of my 2014 favourite artbooks.

For the art products that I reviewed, the 14-pan Kremer Pigments watercolour set is easily my favourite. Their pigment is very characteristic in the sense that the colours are a bit off and they have really interesting granulation patterns. A friend is now in possession of my set but I still think about the joy of using it at times. I had to let it go because I've too many watercolour sets I've not finish using.

Sketching

I usually spend whatever free time I've left sketching outdoors with friends. The ones I'm most satisfied this year are the ones coloured with Kremer Pigments watercolours for reasons mentioned above.

I've also made many sketchwalk videos this year. You can watch them all at https://vimeo.com/parkablogs/videos to see the local sketchers here in Singapore.

Urban Sketching Symposium

2015 Urban Sketching Symposium will be held in Singapore, July 22-25. If anyone of you reading are coming, look out for me for I will be around.

More art products reviews expected in 2015

Because of the busy schedule this year, I did not get to sketch as often or feature more art products.

While I like to review more art products, the review process is extremely slow because I like to use something thoroughly before writing anything. For example, when I review a sketchbook, I will want to finish using all the pages.

Since most readers on the blog like art, in 2015, I hope to put out more art product reviews with the help of some friends. You can think of it as making the blog more informative (or dangerous :-P) with more variety other than just featuring artbooks.

You can see all the art products reviewed so far at https://www.parkablogs.com/content/list-of-art-products-reviewed

Amazon profile

This was a screenshot of my Amazon Profile page at the start of 2014.

This was the screenshot on Christmas. That's close to 200 items I've reviewed on Amazon this year. And that's not including reviews I don't usually post on Amazon such as the art product reviews. So that's where all my time went.

It's really difficult to squeeze into the Amazon Top 10 Reviewer -- I'm #19 currently. Anyway, I'm very happy, according to the stats, that 97% of readers find my reviews helpful.

About the Youtube videos

Recently, I've received some comments requesting narration for book videos that I post on Youtube and Amazon. Some said they expected audio only to find out that the video is silent. Your speakers are working fine, the videos are indeed silent.

Providing narration would mean that I have to spend time to post-edit the videos. One blog that I follow called The Pen Habit has recently announced to stop producing pen reviews with videos. Read his post to find out how much time and effort it takes to create a video review. It would be insane for me to provide narration for my videos because of the number of books featured each month.

The second reason is that the video will be longer if there's talking, and the file size will exceed the upload limit on Amazon (100MB). Having the video on Amazon is a priority because I want people to know what they are buying. To keep the video under the file size limit would require me to encode in lousier quality which will make the video pointless to upload anymore because you can't make out what you're looking at.

Art Tools and Gears

Art Tools and Gears is in limbo. If you're an artist who wants to get featured, contact me.

Thousands of readers will see your work. And it's free. You just have to spend time to answer some questions I throw at you.

Facebook

On 15 November 2014, Facebook announced an update that basically says that they will be removing promotional-looking like posts from the News Feed. That's even if you are the one subscribing to the particular Facebook page.

I'm not sure my Facebook updates, usually links to new reviews, will be affected.

But anyway, to avoid missing out on any stuff that appears on the blog, I suggest you to subscribe to ParkaBlogs' RSS feed. Some people say that RSS is dying but to me RSS is the purest way to accessing content that you subscribe to. There's no one to filter what you already said you want to see.

Facebook 2

This will probably interest those who're into internet marketing or promoting your Facebook page.

Parka Blogs Facebook page has crossed over 10,000 Likes this year. Yeah.

10,000 Likes is just that, 10,000 Likes. It does not mean that there are 10,000 regular readers following me on Facebook or on the blog. It just means that 10,000 people have clicked on the Like button.

You can have way more Likes on your Facebook page than daily visitors on your website. But what you want are more readers on your website than Facebook Likes.

For artists who want to promote your work. Facebook is a good place to reach out but you should really focus on putting actual content on your own website. It's almost impossible to find any particular post that you've written on Facebook. Finding stuff on your website using Google is easy. You should make your work easy to find for your readers.

Newsletter

Subscribe to the newsletter on the right if you want updates to upcoming artbooks or special promotions. I only send out newsletters when absolutely necessary. In 2015, I would send a monthly newsletter on upcoming artbooks.

Thanks for reading through this lengthy post. :-)

Cheers to 2015!