Paintmap blog

Painting the International Year of Forests:

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime Rodríguez) — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 10:11:00 +0000

“The history of human existence and civilizations is intertwined with forests and trees. Forests are crucial for the goods and services they provide, which people all over the world depend on. Strategies to enhance the contributions of the world’s forests to social development, livelihoods and poverty eradication are vital at a time when unsustainable practices and economic crises continue to threaten healthy forests and the people who depend upon them.” (U.N., I.Y.F.).

This is an update of our Paintmap Forum Project "Painting Forests for the People", presented as a contribution to the activities in the framework of the United Nations "International Year of Forests" (www.un.org/forests).

Paintmap contains many paintings about forests and tress and we would like to create a gallery to collect your paintings about different kinds of forests (deciduous or evergreen, tropical or dry forests, etc) as well as those trees that have some special meaning (aesthetic, natural or emotional value) for you the painter.

Why don't you spend a few minutes sending your "green" paintings to the "Art and Nature" Paintmap Forum?

Our Technical Team has made the process even easier than before for those of you who have your paintings previously loaded in Paintmap:

1. Enter Paintmap and go to “Your paintings”
2. Go to your selected painting and click on "Send to the forum"
3. Select the forum “Art and Nature projects”

At this moment our goal is simply to develop the Gallery with some basic "rooms" or categories. Depending on the success of the initiative we would make new proposals about the organization of the Gallery as well as how to proceed to send the project results to the United Nations Forum on Forests before the end of the IYF.

Thank you in advance for your interest and participation!
Jaime

Note: you can visit the seeds of the gallery at:
http://forum.paintmap.com/index.php?topic=76.0

IMPORTANT!: Sending your old Paintmap paintings to the Forum

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime Rodríguez) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:31:00 +0000

You have probably heard about our Paintmap project “Painting forests for the people” launched to celebrate the U.N. International Year of Forests.

In our previous post we explained how to send your new paintings to the forum at the same time than uploading them in the Paintmap site. But let suppose that you want to send one of your previously uploaded paintings (for example, you are interested in participating in our extremely interesting "Art and Nature" forest project). How to do it?

The process will take you a few minutes only:

Enter Paintmap and go to “Your paintings”
Go to your selected painting and click on “Edit”
Go to the bottom of the page, check the box Post this painting in the forum? and select (in this example) the forum “Art and Nature projects”

Hoping to have your participation in the Paintmap Forum,

Jaime Rodríguez

Connecting Paintmap and the Forum

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 03:34:00 +0000

As our friend PhilIrish suggests, we have to work to give you an integrated experience between the new Forum and Paintmap.

In order to move in this direction, now you can post your new paintings directly form Paintmap to the forum. This is the checkbox you will find in the new upload form.

In addition you will be able to choose the board that suit your painting.

At the other side we are making your map more accesible from the community. All your posts will show your last map linked to your Paintmap Profile.

We hope these first features and the unique login system help you to enjoy both faces of paintmap.

The new Paintmap Forum!

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 19:44:00 +0000

We are so excited to present the new Paintmap Forum.

All of you, both newcomers and old Paintmap members, are invited to join this forum to share your ideas, comments and projects about not only the artistic or technical side of the paintings but also about the environmental, geographical or historical significance of the painted subject. Paintmap is the opportune place for environmentally concerned artists and people in general, so you should feel free to introduce any topic that could help to use art as a tool in nature and heritage conservation.

The Forum is being launched with a few topics covering the artist’s way of doing (plein air, studio, using reference images or Google geopositioned photography). A Paintmap unique character is the possibility of channeling your environmental and artistic proposals to the community through our forum “Art and Nature Projects”. You can also go directly to the forum “Our endangered environment” to present those works of immediate relevance for the conservation or protection of a landscape, a historic landmark or something of special value to you. Of course, you will have the possibility of posting stuff that was not allowed in the Paintmap site: reference images, work in progress, demos, close-up images of your paintings, etc: the forum “Paintmap complementary stuff” will be the right place. Without forgetting some general interest places to introduce yourself or to comment about any idea you have in mind...

As a visitor you are free to browse posts but you might be interested in posting your own comments, paintings or projects...If this is so, why not creating your account? It is free of charge and you will become part of a community of people linking art and environment.

Link | http://forum.paintmap.com/

More about Cool Places in Paintmap

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime Rodríguez) — Tue, 24 May 2011 19:45:00 +0000

Ideally a Cool Place should be a “hot spot” of paintings and painters aggregation resulting from the popularity of the site. It may be a monument, a city, a forest, a protected landscape, a river or a whole country, etc, it depends on paintings subjects and spatial distribution. Also ideally a CP should be as concrete as possible: better a city than a country, better a forest than a state, etc.

Because of the size of the Paintmap community, most of the proposed CPs at this moment are due to the activity of one or a few painters, but this is not a problem to establish a CP.

The goal should be to fill the left part of the Paintmap screen (sixteen paintings) to define a CP, as in this example of the Highlands, Scotland

However we have also proposed CPs with a lower number of paintings just as a sort of attractor encouraging people to consolidate these artistic hot spots, as it is the recent case of Montreal, Canada:

Ideally, the CPs gallery would evolve towards a progressively smaller and separate spots but it is possible to find coexisting CPs at different scales. “Holland”, “Arnhem (Holland)” and “Utrecht (Holland)” are an example of this possibility:

So, there are many reasons and possibilities to propose a Cool Place as well as to propose a change of their present scale or its geographical identification.

Local painters should be the protagonists of this activity, up to this moment mostly carried out by us, the Paintmap Team.

Hoping to have your inputs!

New in Paintmap: fantastic close-up painting scanning

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime Rodríguez) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:45:00 +0000

Wouldn’t like to come close to a painting and see the artist’s brush (or knife, pastel, pencil, etc) stroking? To me this is one of the most useful ways to learn about the artist’s style and now Paintmap offers such an interesting possibility. Look at these examples to appreciate the usefulness of the Paintmap close-up tool:

http://www.paintmap.com/?item=1224
http://www.paintmap.com/?item=1071
http://www.paintmap.com/?item=429
http://www.paintmap.com/?item=2677
http://www.paintmap.com/?item=528

However, to obtain the maximum benefit from this new tool images should be uploaded as close as to the maximum size allowed (5 Mb jpg). Unfortunately, many of the paintings already uploaded are small in size and the close up tool doesn’t help too much.

Thus, we would encourage the Paintmap community to upload from now their pictures at the largest size possible. Uploading will take a bit more time but advantages will surely compensate for this minor inconvenient.

In any case, our close to 2500 painting collection includes a large amount of works that can be close-up explored, so enjoy them!

Help us translate Paintmap into your native language!

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 21:30:00 +0000

We’re finally launching our translation project and we’re looking for volunteers from our growing community of users to help.

The translation process is simple, easy and fast!. Paintmap highly appreciate your contribution and you'll be mentioned on the Paintmap team page.

New languages

1.- Download the translation file. http://www.paintmap.com/lang/en.po (Right-Click and Save Target As).
2.- To open translation files .po you need an editor, you can use, for instance Poedit. Download Poedit and install it in your computer.
3.- Translate the file. Write the translation in the down-left window and save it.

Finally send it to contact@paintmap.com.

Existing language

You can update one of the existing languages with Poedit:

- Spanish: http://www.paintmap.com/lang/es.po

Some notes

- Full document is "only" 153 strings.

- If you already sent a translation file, wait until your translation is online to download the translation file again.

- Translations status for each sentence is indicated by color in Poedit:

Blue means not translated
White means translated
Yellow means "fuzzy" translation.

- Fuzzy means that there is a translation for that entry or the system tried to figure out one, but you need to check it manually before is used. Once you correct it it changes to white color (translated). In some cases the fuzzy translation is completely Ok and doesn't need to be changed, then just click on the "rain" icon in the toolbar and it will change to white (translated).

Two thousand paintings and a new design on Paintmap.com

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:25:00 +0000

Paintmap this week has reached two thousand paintings, with more than 300 artists collaborating. To celebrate, we have updated our web design.

With fewer elements and a clearer interface, we hope to have a site that makes it easier to explore and navigate the painted world.

Thank you, all of our users and artists, for your support!

Http://www.paintmap.com

Three new Cool Places!

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime Rodríguez) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 19:11:00 +0000

The Great Lakes area is becoming one of the hot spots of Paintmap. We have identified three new Cool Places: "Milwaukee", "Chicago" and "Nicolet National Forest" (this last thanks to the recent contributions from Larry Seiler)...Thanks to everybody and, please, remember that you can suggest additional Cool Places at spots where paintings accumulate or because of a particular feature that requieres the attention of paintmap community or visitors.

Improving artists' map

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 07:52:00 +0000

This week we have made some minor corrections to Paintmap, such as the related paintings for a place and the maximum zoom level applied to the detailed map of a painting.

In addition, we have added a new improvement to the painters' profile. It's a new way to calculate the zoom to your map, selecting only the area that covers any painting.

Through these changes we are giving a better view of some groups of paintings. Some examples:

http://larryseiler.paintmap.com/
http://pskardenni.paintmap.com/
http://martyc1.paintmap.com/

The Tag System

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:22:00 +0000

Hi all, I would like to highlight a new feature in Paintmap.

This is a new way to categorize our content, from now on you can select a group of words to define themes, figures, colors etc. that apear or represent your painting in any way.

The idea behind it is:

First, power up the searches with this new information.

Second, add the new exploration by category.

Finally, it will help us to ask for content and work with a thematic angle (as Phill suggest) in the future through our blog and community.

Artists are not the only welcomed people in Paintmap

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime Rodríguez) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:37:00 +0000

Until now it seems usual that Paintmap formally welcomes people when uploading paintings, not at the moment of joining. We should realize that Paintmap is a community to be enjoyed by both artists and people looking for visiting places through the artists'eyes. Consequently, I would suggest that Paintmap welcome everybody joining Paintmap, whether or not they upload paintings. The joining rate is still low enough to permit a personalized welcome; perhaps some day we shall see that kind of automatic response that machines produce but, by the moment: WELCOME EVERYBODY!

Fixing mapping problems and improving Paintmap features

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime Rodríguez) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:49:00 +0000

Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000105 EndHTML:0000004065 StartFragment:0000002342 EndFragment:0000004029

Phil Irish detected that when you were clicking on an artist`s profile page, his images were no longer shown on the world map. We are happy to announce that this is now fixed (thanks again, Phil!).

There were other location-related, small problems (for example, the name of the location under the mini-map window) that have also been eliminated.

On the other hand, we have found the way to take out that part of the Google copyright text that appeared over an uploaded image producing an annoying effect.

Looking for improving continuously,

The Paintmap Team.

Why some map windows do appear empty?

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime Rodríguez) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:30:00 +0000

You have probably seen that, after uploading a painting, in some cases the map window at the right of the painting appears empty. There is no the map image that you probably selected at the time of uploading but a repeated message saying "Sorry, there are no images of this region at this zoom level". Why do this happen?

When you upload a painting, Paintmap displays the map at a predetermined zoom scale and, in some regions, Google has not images at that scale. The consequence is a map window without a map and a feeling of frustration for the autor of the painting. Faroe Islands is one of these problematic regions but there are others. For the visitor or the author himself to see the map of the uploaded painting, the only solution in this case is to reduce the scale (using the bar or scrolling) until an acceptable image of the region is displayed.

In Paintmap we are not happy with this inconvenient and the solution we envisage is to find the maximum zoom scale compatible with all the world regions. That would be then the geolocation scale shown for all the paintings, although the visitor will always have the command of the tools (zoom bar, scrolling, hand lateral displacement) to explore the painted region, since this is one of the core objectives of Paintmap.

We'll eliminate this inconvenient as soon as possible. In the meantime, we thank you for your patience.

Redesigning Painmap, next changes

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:15:00 +0000

As you can see, this week we have started to redesign paintmap.

It's going to be a long process and we expect to get a better user experience. Our plan includes some major changes: add a new and easier way to upload paintings, improvement of the user profile with a new artist map and Bio and a new search box to search for artists and users.

We continue working to make Paintmap.com a better place.

Digital Art and the unique goals of Paintmap

noreply@blogger.com (Jaime Rodríguez) — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:11:00 +0000

Recently Paintmap is having the frequent loading of photographs simply processed with some of the Photoshop “artistic” filters. Even more, some of the original photographs come from Panoramio, as you know the correct web site for geo-referenced photographs.
This is an illustrative example:

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/15162691
http://www.paintmap.com/?item=1408

In my opinion, this is placing Paintmap’s “Digital Art” cathegory in a difficult position and makes necessary to take some decissions about what is acceptable and what is not in Paintmap, independently of the scope and potentials of the so called Digital Art as well as its consideration in the artistic forums existing in the web (for example, WetCanvas or NellArteforum).

A possibility would be to restrict Paintmap’s concept of Digital Art to that using traditional techniques such as virtual brushes on virtual canvas without the aid of filters, effects, cloneing, painting over or plugins (this is the content of the “Painters Alley”, Digital Art subforum in WetCanvas).

A wider concept would include the potentials of image processing and a quick tour through the WetCanvas Digital Art forum will show you the diversity of software options (Corel, Gimp, Twisted brush, Dog Waffle, Art Rage) displayed by digital artists. Photoshop is considered a software mainly used for photo retouching and contributions using this software are very scarce.

In my opinion, to help discriminating CREATIVE digital work from what it is not, Paintmap's administrators should request to digital artists a short description of the digital method employed. In this context I would suggest the rejection by Paintmap of simply Photoshop processed photographs.

Paintmap cool places, do you know any other great place?

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Sun, 17 May 2009 13:59:00 +0000

If you find a new location plenty of beautiful paintings, now you can suggest new cool places to us.

1. Login with your account and look for a place from the home page map, please check the list of places before suggesting a new one. You can select any zoom level to get a good painting selection.

2. Click "add location to favorites" and set a descriptive name for this area.

3. Finally, go to "Your paintings", and select "suggest cool place" from your list of favorite places.

We are waiting your new cool places!.

Update your bookmarks: paintmap.blogspot.com

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Sat, 16 May 2009 18:29:00 +0000

We are migrating our blog to Blogger, the google service.

This way we will improve the security and we'll be able to add new services as google friend connect to help you to participate.

Please update your links, RSS and bookmarks to: http://paintmap.blogspot.com.

How-to: Embedded Paintmap Maps

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:17:00 +0000

We are working to add more features to the Paintmap Maps for our artists and users, we also strive to make it even easier for non-programmers to embed maps into their webpages.

This is the basic code needed to get a Google Map running on your site (or blog!):

Let's see how to change the size map and filter the paintings by author.

You can edit the value of: width="450" and height="250" to play with the map size.

To set the map center edit the string (lat, lng and zoom variables) and remove jaime (change to all) from your code to show all paintmap paintings or add your own user:

author=jaime&lat=34&lng=8&zoom=3

Some examples, show all artists:

All artists with a wide zoom:

If you have a blog, you can add your map in a new page or post thought the HTML editor (visual -> html) and using the same code.

Finally, if you need some coordinates you can use any simple geocoder as: http://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/geocoder/singlegeocode.html to get them and apply the zoom you need.

Google Earth, Maps and our new KML!

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:00:00 +0000

We Are Proud To Announce our new KML file: http://www.paintmap.com/paintmap.kml.

With this link your are going to be able to explore all paintmap contents through Google earth and Google Maps.

For Google Earth, you have to have installed the google app, its free, download it here: http://earth.google.com/. Then you only have to click here http://www.paintmap.com/paintmap.kml and select, open with Google earth to enjoy.

This new feature works with Google Maps, to see all paintings over the Google Maps interface only visit: Maps!.

In addition you can add paintmap onto your website, please, read our How-To here.

Important for newcomers!

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 22:00:00 +0000

In our blog section you will find a tutorial to start registering, uploading and managing your paintings Coming into Paintmap (I): registering and uploading images, (II) managing your paintings, published on May, 29, 2008. Please read these documents to see the basic steps of these processes.

Another important point to be taken into account is not to forget the double aim of Paintmap, both artistic and environmentalist. Some recommendations to make your posts coherent with this spirit can be read in the blog posts A plea for describing painting subjects, published on June 14, 2008 and Preserving the environmentalist spirit of Paintmap, published on July 28, 2008. Please read them and, if you consider opportune, we would be very pleased to have your opinion and suggestions about this community project.

500 paintings: time to take a breath and clarify some criteria

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:41:00 +0000

Paintmap has just reached 500 paintings distributed all around the world including the submarine environment. During this time, the Paintmap team was more concerned about solving technical problems and improving the site easy-of-use although always paying attention to the preservation of Paintmap’s spirit and goals.

In this context, we are sorry to feel obligated to discard some paintings because of the fact that they do not conform to our basic objective: the subject has to contain some message relative to some definite geographical point. The Paintmap team realizes that controlling this requirement is sometimes difficult or ambiguous and the contribution of the artist through his/her comments is then fundamental.

A nice example of this is the painting and the comment by Linda Brachach (http://www.paintmap.com/?item=631):

“These are some of my treasures that I left behind when I sold my cottage in Lanai City. I could not take them, but I wanted to remember them.”

This comment gives to the painting the information required to be considered a coherent contribution to Paintmap.

A purely conceptual painting, whatever its artistic value could be (the Paintmap team does not include art critic members) is outside the goals of Paintmap and we encourage conceptual artists to make use of the appropriate forums for their contributions.

Finally, we would like to note that some of the initial contributions to Paintmap could perhaps be considered of this nature because at that time we were observing the tendencies of people’s interest in Paintmap. After 500 paintings we have a more clear set of criteria to manage and decide about the adequacy of member’s contributions to preserve paintmap’s character but we will always be open to your comments and suggestions about this issue. Thanks!

New paintmap server. We move to Chigago, the greenest City for a Data Center.

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:15:00 +0000

This week, paintmap has moved all its services to a new dedicated server located in Chicago.

We have almost doubled the RAM, improved the drive arrays and got a CPU upgrade. Furthermore, we think the new location will be a good place to have a global coverage.

This way we hope to improve our visibility on search engines and give a better service to our American users.

Thank you for your patience.

New paintmap server, we move to Chicago, the greenest city for data centers.

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:53:00 +0000

This week, paintmap has moved all the services to a new dedicated server located in Chicago.

We almost doubled the RAM, improved the drive arrays and got a CPU upgrade. On top of that we think this location is a good place to have a global coverage.

This way we hope to improve our visibility on search engines and give a better service to our american users.

NEW AND IMPORTANT: About paintings being moderated

noreply@blogger.com (Luis) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:34:00 +0000

As you have probably detected, after finishing the “beta” version we have considered that, in order to preserve Paintmap spirit (see our blog post, july, 28) moderating submitted paintings is a necessary step before these are definitively published.

One of the most common reasons to “freeze” a painting is the lack of a comment by the artist about its painting. In relation to this, we have to recall another blog post (June, 14, “A plea for describing painting subjects” ) including JoeKaz’s statement:

“It would be great if all artists added a description to their paintings - some do, but some do not. The subject may be very familiar to the artist, but not to someone else in the world. A short text saying what the painting is of, what landmark we are looking at, or some historic trivia, or anything that the artist thinks someone else would find interesting - this would add so much more value to PaintMap.”

We cannot, however, extend the strict application of this criterion of moderation to all the paintings of those artists who started to cooperate with Paintmap since its first beta launching. This is the reason why any of you can find some paintings published without the artist’s comment while you are being asked to add your comment before your work is published. Please, understand our position and goals whose only objective is improving Paintmap and making this a friendly and useful site for all painters concerned with the world around us.